Tell Tale (37 page)

-How’s school?
I ask, relieved beyond belief. Suddenly, a new icon pops up telling me that
dramaqueen-jojo
has added a new picture to her album. Until now, there was just the tiny image of her next to her name.

I click on it. I hold my breath as the loading bar crawls slowly along the bottom of the window, bringing up a larger version. That same breath leaves my body in a dam burst when a full-size image resolves on the screen. Josie’s hair is hacked short and banded with bleached white and purple streaks. Her eyes are ringed with smudges of black, from both eyeliner and exhaustion. She looks nothing like the girl I remember.

-School sucks. don’t go much,
she types. My fingers slip over the keys, repeatedly typing the wrong letters as I try to reply.

-Why not? U must go to school.

-Don’t do anything now Mum’s dead.

I can hear her sobbing; feel the weight of her head as it drops to her desk. I can see the soft indent as she curls onto her bed, praying that the days will pass quickly.

-What have you done to your hair?
It’s the wrong thing to say, but the server wouldn’t cope with everything I really want to tell her.

–
I want 2 look ugly.
The cursor flashes on the screen.

-What do you mean?

-Then no one will like me. How do u know my hair’s changed?

Something from way back stirs in my mind, that whenever anyone told her what a pretty little girl she was, she pouted and said she wished she was ugly. Even as a teen, she didn’t like compliments.

-It’s just different 2 when I knew u. Shorter. That’s all.
I pray that this covers my mistake.
-Why wouldn’t you want anyone to like you?

-Because being loved too much can hurt just as much as being unloved.

Her reply echoes a thousand times through the internet, spreading like a virus. She tugs on every cell in my body. Stopping myself from going right back to help my daughter is so much harder than leaving her in the first place.

The gash split my cheek. What little sense of reality I possessed had been smashed from my head by the blow. I don’t recall exactly when it happened, just that I was left with a wound that refused to close and was a talking point wherever I went, when my aim was to be completely the opposite.

‘You should see your GP about that,’ the pharmacist commented, nodding at my cheek.

‘Just the Steri-strips, please. And paracetamol.’ I held out a five-pound note. My headache had grown worse during the morning.

I’d checked out of the motel before the owner asked any more questions. Blood had soaked on to the lumpy foam pillow during the night and made a mess of the sheets.

‘I don’t think that will heal without stitches,’ the pharmacist persisted.

‘I’ll give these a try.’ I took the paper bag and my change. I used the rear-view mirror in my car to stick the strips to my face. Before I left the motel, I’d showered, symbolically washing away everything that had gone before this day as well as the congealed blood on my face. For a while the strips held fast. But after an hour’s driving, I’d curled over the steering wheel from the pain and the wound strips had peeled off, leaving my skin gaping wide again. I couldn’t arrive looking like this. I pulled into a lay-by and stared at myself in the mirror. Who – or what – I wondered, had I become?

I was woken by a banging on the glass. My head rested on the passenger seat and the gear stick pushed up under my ribs. There was a man’s face staring at me, but all I could see was
him –
that scrawny face pasted on to the body of an anonymous lorry driver.

‘Shift forward a bit, love . . .’ He mouthed something about his truck, the mobile café up ahead.

Terrified, I drove off into the night, unsure if I was dreaming or driving or, perhaps, even dead.

Adam agreed to let me read the alternative draft. He left the computer lying warm in my lap but before starting on the crazy assortment of notes and rambling files that he’d
opened, I logged in to Afterlife. The strange conversation with Josie had left me more confused than ever.

My daughter doesn’t want to be loved.

Now, I am sitting here smarting from the virtual slap in the face she’s just given me when she swore and logged off, upset that I’d mentioned her father again. Tears are trickling down my cheeks when Adam comes back to my room. He wraps me up in his arms until I don’t feel real, until my anxiety melts someplace else. Adam becomes the antidote to my crumbling future simply because we have one thing in common: the past.

I sob uncontrollably on to his shoulder.

‘I haven’t read it yet.’ We stand on the sloping floorboards in my crooked-ceilinged room, him bending his neck because of the cross-beam, and me bending my neck the other way so he can’t see my teary face.

He holds me out at arm’s length. ‘There’s something else wrong, isn’t there?’

I want to pour out my heart to him but I can’t. It’s too dangerous and I’ve already said enough.

It’s then that I realise what has happened. He’d wrapped his arms around me and I hadn’t pushed him away. I’d felt the buckle of his belt and the rigid form of his chest against me. His legs ran the length of mine. I’d caught a trace of his scent and a whiff of his aftershave. I’d even smelled the fabric conditioner on his shirt – all the things that an embrace brings, and I’d noticed as if it was my very first time. As if I was hugging the only man I’d ever loved, as if he was still in my life, as if Adam did not exist.

I break down into tears again, desperate to tell him the truth. I’m not sure if I’m standing or lying crumpled on the floor or spinning around in space. The strong grip under my arms tells me that I am on the floor, knees bent against the knotty boards, palms collecting splinters.

‘Frankie, let me help you . . .’ His words are gentle as he guides me to the bed. He sits me down and crouches in front of me. ‘Speak to me. Let me in.’

Then we both laugh – me hysterically through the tears, and he because he reaches for a box of tissues but overbalances. He saves himself by grabbing on to something. My leg.

‘Sorry,’ he says awkwardly. Our smiles are brief, dropping away from embarrassment. ‘I want to talk to you. I’ve wanted to talk to you properly since you arrived at Roecliffe, but you’ve done a superb job of shutting me out.’

I sniff. I blow my nose. He tries to read my sadness. I shrug, plucking another tissue from the box. ‘I’ve had a lot going on.’

‘Tell me,’ he demands. He’s been so patient, so kind. It hurts to shut him out when I know all he wants is to help me. This is too much to bear on my own.

‘I can’t,’ I reply, giving away that there is indeed something to tell.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Frankie.’ He stands and shoves himself against the window sill, arms locked, jaw set. His knuckles are knotted and white, as if he’s about to fling something across the room. He swings round. ‘I don’t
fucking understand why you’ve taken a job at the very place you should want to escape from.’

He fires more questions, but I don’t hear them. Suddenly I want to tell Adam everything. Like me, he is searching for something he can’t have: another chance with those you love most.

‘I’m here at Roecliffe,’ I whisper, jumping right in, ‘because I’m hiding from one of the men who was involved in the death of your sister. He’s out of prison now. He found me.’ Adam is wide-eyed, a statue. ‘I thought that Roecliffe would be the last place on earth he’d look for me.’ I swallow. My mouth is dry. ‘And, in a strange way, I needed to come back. Crazy, I know. It was a big risk.’ I shrug, push my fingers through my hair. ‘It was because of me that they were caught. I saw . . . what happened. I told the police. I identified all but one of them.’ I hang my head in shame, but quickly glance up at Adam again, staring him right in the eye. ‘The one who actually killed Betsy, the man in the hood, he walked free.’ The knot of guilt grinds my stomach. ‘I’m sorry.’

And it’s then, as Adam pulls me close, that I realise the person I’m really hiding from is myself.

The horrid room where I’d seen the cameras, the place I believed was the centre of hell, was at the end of the forbidden corridor. I decided to search there first.

They couldn’t have her. We were leaving soon.

I ran out of the dormitory. The linoleum-covered floors, the cracked tiles, the painted panels on the walls, the waist-height trails of grubby finger marks, each telling a grim story, flashed past in a blur as I charged on.

I stood outside the dreadful room, breathing heavily yet trying to keep down the vomit as I summoned the courage. I burst right in, not caring what happened, hoping they would take me instead. The room was dark, empty, silent. There was a stink.

‘Betsy!’ I yelled. Turning, I ran out and legged it down another corridor that splayed out at right angles to the first. Door after door, I banged on them all, and flew down a dog-legged staircase that took me to a different entrance to the basement. I pushed through and found myself in a low-ceilinged chamber stacked with old furniture, barrels, paint cans and machinery. There was yet another door off this
chamber but it was locked. I swear I heard a pitiful wail coming from behind it.

Forcing my jellied legs to work, I tore back the way I’d come, dashing to the usual basement entrance. I pummelled my way through the series of doors, lashing out at light switches, straining to hear the wail again. The cry could have been Betsy.

I stopped, listened. All I could hear was my rasping breath entering and leaving the cage of my ribs. It was where I kept all my fears, stored up over the years, and now they were coming out,
pouring
out, in my desperate search for the little girl who had brought meaning to my life. She was like a younger sister to me and I’d let her down.

‘Betsy?’ I cried. My voice bounced through the chambers, dislodging clouds of dust, ghosts of the past, remnants of fear draped like torn, bloodied clothes over the stacks of rubbish. I was seeing things, imagining a cave of horror, watching the small skeletons crackling and shifting on the floor as I stepped over the bones of children long gone. ‘Are you here?’ I shivered.
It’s not real,
I told myself over and over as the horror of what had been going on dawned on me.

Nothing. I couldn’t hear the wailing sound now. Perhaps I’d never heard it, or perhaps it was someone else hiding, a balled-up body of fear snivelling in the corner, waiting to be found, waiting to die.

I screamed as a rat ran over my feet. I wasn’t wearing any shoes. Convinced that Betsy wasn’t in the basement after all, I ran as fast as I could back to ground level.

Roecliffe lay still. The children were asleep. The old clock told me it was quarter to three. A spillage of light came from the office where Patricia sat on night duty, hunched over her desk, praying that no one would disturb her.

‘Who’s there?’ she called out. I froze against the wall, pressing myself into the shadows as she ducked her head out of the office, then shrugged and settled back to her book. She didn’t want trouble; didn’t want to notice what went on at night.

I saw that the front door was open a crack. Had someone just been through it? My eyes cut through the darkness outside as I ran down the steps, praying that I was on the right track.

Barefoot, I flew across the rough stones, tarmac and cold mud. I ran as if my life depended on it.

Dizzy with fear, I spun round, staggering backwards while staring up at the grey façade of Roecliffe Children’s Home towering above me. ‘I hate you! I hate you!’ I screamed over and over at the silent stone. A thousand imaginary faces peered out of the dozens of dark windows, each one laughing at me. I lunged at the air, at the shadows, at the drizzle, and ran on again, tripping over my own terror.

On and on I stumbled, feeling as if I was tearing through a nightmare – one stride forward and three back. My arms flailed like wings. If I could have flown, I would. ‘Take me instead!’ I called out. Spit foamed on my lips. My ears rang from the bitter cold. Blood seeped from the welts on my feet as I tore down the drive that led to the gates of hell. I didn’t know where I was going.

I stopped suddenly. There was a light in the woods.

I ran towards it.

Everything familiar became unreal. The trees that we’d charged around, hidden in, climbed, suddenly became monsters with arms reaching out to snatch me.

I kept going.

I trampled the ground where the bluebells lay dormant.
Don’t. They’re special,
I’d told her as she’d ripped them from the ground. Later, during the sermon, her eyes flashed like coins as she crushed the petals in her palm. Purple confetti fell around our ankles, tumbling across the stone floor.

I charged on, leaping over twigs and branches that had fallen in the recent storms.
I’m coming, I’m coming
. . . I panted, convinced that the light would lead me to Betsy. Somebody was out in the middle of the night. I prayed they would have Betsy safe.

The drizzle turned to pelting rain, stinging my face as I ran. The trees grew closer together the deeper I went, as if they were joining arms to stop me trespassing in a place I wasn’t welcome. I focused on the light.

The undergrowth and trees finally cleared into an open space with the chapel at its centre. I slowed down. I didn’t want to be seen. I crept round the edge, careful to stay in the shadows. I stared up at the big arched window. Someone was in there and had lit candles – dozens of them lined up along the sills.

‘Please be all right, Betsy.’ She was in the house of God. She had to be safe, didn’t she? Or maybe she’d taken herself off there, preferring the comfort of the chapel at night, away
from prying hands. ‘Brave little girl,’ I mouthed, imagining her curled up on a pew. But until I knew for sure, I had to be careful. It might not be Betsy in there.

A clump of bushes stretched from the wood to the chapel. I crouched, following their path until I reached the dank smell of wet stone. I pressed my hands on to the lichen-covered building and followed the wall. Above me the candlelight drew me on, lighting my way to the front door.