The Broken Ones (13 page)

She’s a contented sleeper who barely moves. I watch and watch, occasionally skipping forward. Every so often, she rolls over and clutches the duvet. Then she’s still again for a while. I shake my head. This is ridiculous. Do I honestly believe Mum is the person in the garden?

I’m about to give up when I see her roll over and clutch the duvet again. It’s almost identical to the last time she did it. I rewind and watch it again. Then I rewind back to the last time she moved. It
is
identical. The video is a loop of the same hour over and over again. There are no headlights streaming in through the light fabric curtains. There are no changes in the shadows in the room. This entire night is a fabrication.

And if the footage from Mum’s room is a lie, that means I can’t trust anything I see on the cameras.

“Sophie.”

I stand so abruptly that the chair tips up behind me. “What is it, Mum?” My voice is shaking as I call back to her.

“Come here a minute,” she shouts.

I close the laptop lid and make my way through to the living room. As I step foot inside the same room as my mother, I’m sick with anticipation. She must know about the cameras. She knows I’m watching her. I don’t know how she did it, but she outwitted me yet again. What is she going to do next?

“Come closer, Sophie,” she says.

“What is it, Mum?” Despite trying to sound confident, I sound the opposite. Squeaking my words like a frightened mouse.

“Do you see that?” she asks, pointing towards the window.

I follow the direction of her finger. There’s a smudge on the window. Forgetting my concerns, I’m lost to intrigue. I turn my back on Mum and step towards the glass.

She’s right. There is something there. It’s a word, written by a finger, and written very small.

Shadow
, it says.

I’ve taken to carrying the locks of hair in my pocket, and whenever I sit and watch the camera feed, I twirl the hair around my fingers. It’s comforting.

I don’t trust anything the cameras record anymore. Instead, I sit at the kitchen table while Mum works on her jigsaw puzzle in the next room, and I watch the live feed. I take the laptop to bed with me and place it on the bed next to me, drinking wine while I watch Mum sleep, checking for patterns, checking that she hasn’t somehow replaced the live feed with a recording.

Mum is pretty good at navigating the internet, but is she capable of recording herself sleeping, creating a loop, and uploading it onto the computer? I spent a few hours discussing this very issue with the helpdesk for the security system I bought, and they spoke so much jargon it made my head spin.

The problem with my mother is that you can
never
rule her out. When I found myself rejected from every university I applied to, I thought I wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t until much later, when I bumped into Mrs. Vaughan, that she told me how surprised she was to see that I’d been rejected. I was a good student, she said, which was why she’d never understood the poor personal statement I had submitted along with my grades. She even went as far as to dig my application out of the files to show me. It was not the statement I’d written. It was drivel, filled with grammatical errors, typos, and a long paragraph about my desire to come to university for the parties. By that time, I’d completed my teacher training and had started at Eddington. If I’d discovered Mum’s betrayal in my teens, I might have finally been persuaded to leave her and live my own life. I remember the huge row I had with Jamie when I confessed that I knew what she’d done. He couldn’t believe that I’d never confronted her. But I couldn’t see the point. The past was the past. Nothing could change that.

Now I know that I was wrong. The past always catches up with you; at least, that’s what I’m banking on.

It’s eleven in the morning and I’m already eying the opened bottle of wine in the fridge when I retrieve milk for my cup of tea. Since I’ve been caring for Mum full-time, I’ve ordered a large delivery of groceries from Tesco and stocked up the house. Shopping with Mum is a complete nightmare. Last time, she wandered off in the freezer aisle and shoplifted a Mars bar. I didn’t realise until we got home. It didn’t seem worth it to take her back, so I let her eat the Mars bar.

Instead of reaching for the wine, I take out the remains of a chocolate fudge cake I started eating at midnight and shovel a large slice into my mouth. As I’m licking the creamy filling from my fingers, the doorbell rings.

“Who is it?” Mum barks.

“How should I know?” I reply. I wonder whether it’s the police calling round to tell me more about the trespasser. The fingerprints have now been washed away, along with that chilling word.
Shadow
.

The police took the fingerprints, of course, but I haven’t heard back. PC Hollis warned me that there would only be a slim chance that they’d find our trespasser on “the system”.

My fingers are still partially covered in cake crumbs and frosting as I open the door to find Peter standing on the front step. My first instinct is to try to slam the door shut, but he’s too fast. When I swing the door, he jams his foot in the way with those big boots of his. Then he has a hand on the door, pushing it towards me.

“Please, Sophie. I just want to talk.” His eyes are wide and beseeching, but also slightly deranged.

I cringe away from his dirty skin and hair. The man smells like he hasn’t showered for days. “If you force your way into the house, I’ll call the police. Mum! Mum, get the phone.”

“All right.” He backs away, raising his hands to placate me. “But please listen to me for a few seconds. Please.”

I slip the chain on the lock and angle my head so I can see him through the gap. “Make it quick.”

He shakes his head and his shoulders sag, reminding me of the “before” footage of a rescue dog. “I… I don’t understand how you could do that to me. Don’t you know what you did to my head? You’ve messed me up! How could you lead me on like that and then never call me back? Did you do it to hurt me? Is that it? Did you want to break my heart? I love you, Sophie. What we had was special.”

“It was a coffee, Peter,” I say. “Look, I’m going to call your mum, okay? I should call the police, but I won’t this one time if you leave now and never contact me ever again.”

“How can you be so cruel? After everything… How could you make love to me and then treat me this way?”

He takes a step towards the house, and I back away.

“What did you say?” I whisper.

“How could you make love to me and then never speak to me again? It was such a beautiful night. I know you had a good time too.”

The sight of him, the smell of him, and those words—those cloying, terrifying words—make my stomach lurch. The chocolate cake is dangerously close to hitting the hallway carpet. How can he believe these things? I can see it in his eyes. He actually believes that we’ve had sex.

“Peter, listen to me really carefully. We have never, ever had sexual intercourse. We haven’t even kissed. It was one coffee—”

“You look different.” He takes another step closer to the door, and I cringe away from him, hiding behind the chain. “Your hair, or… something.”

The stress eating has resulted in some quick weight gain, and the drinking has made my eyes puffy. That must be what he’s noticing. Jesus, I must appear even worse than I realised.

“I’m closing the door now, and I want you to leave. But we never had any kind of sexual relations. I think you must be confused.”

As I close, lock, and bolt the door, I can hear Peter insisting otherwise. I hurry through the corridor into the living room.

“Who have you been screwing?” Mum says with a sardonic smile on her face.

“Why didn’t you bring me the phone when I asked? Can’t you see the man is insane? I haven’t been
screwing
anyone. I’ve been stuck here taking care of you.”

Mum’s face contorts into a twisted expression of hatred. “You’re not the daughter I wanted. You’re all
wrong
.”

Half in the act of searching for my mobile phone, I turn and stare at her. She blinks, and her eyes go out of focus. Then she begins moving the jigsaw puzzle pieces around on the tray on her lap. I redirect my gaze to the rest of the room and find my phone on the armrest of the sofa. I’ll have time to worry about yet another of Mum’s strange outbursts later.

As I make my way back into the kitchen, I scroll through my contacts until I find Eileen, Peter’s mother. The camera at the front of the house shows that Peter has finally left. Even thinking about him makes my skin crawl. I push away the last crumbs of my chocolate cake and try to keep my breakfast down.

Eileen answers with a bright hello.

“Your son has gone too far.”

“Who is this?” Still chipper, like an early morning news reader.

“It’s Sophie Howland. Your son has been to my house claiming all kinds of lies.”

“Oh, dear.”

“It’s a bit more serious than that,” I say. “He has fabricated some sort of relationship between the two of us. I haven’t called the police yet, but I’m going to have to.”

“Please don’t—”

“This has gone too far. They need to speak to him about the stalker who’s been at my house anyway. I think it’s him, and you need to stop enabling him.”

“But he wouldn’t hurt anyone—”

She’s crying when I hang up, and I’m shaking. Whether that’s out of fear or anger or even pity, I’m not sure. I take a deep breath and call PC Hollis.

He listens patiently as I tell him everything that has happened, even though the more I say, the crazier it sounds. What if he thinks
I’m
the one making everything up? What if he believes I slept with Peter and treated him like shit, or I was the one who cut up my clothes? At least I couldn’t fake the handprint on the window or the figure coming towards the house. Unless he believes I snuck out there and did it. No, he took my and Mum’s fingerprints. They can rule us out as suspects.

I’m relieved when he assures me that I was right to worry and that they will be questioning Peter as soon as possible.

“Ms. Howland, though I do believe your case is extremely important and I will prioritise this, you should know that we’re particularly stretched at this moment in time. I obviously can’t go into details, but you should be aware that it may take us a few days longer to work through your case.”

The little bit of hope that I allowed myself to hold on to begins to fizzle out like a deflated balloon. “That’s okay. I know you’re doing everything you can.”

“There’s no indication that Peter will do anything to hurt you,” he continues. “Carry on with what you’re doing with the log. Notify us if he gets in contact, and keep your doors and windows locked. We can talk further about a restraining order in due course.”

I hang up the phone not feeling any better than when I called.

*

I keep the windows and doors locked, but it starts to feel more like I’m locking myself in with Mum than that I’m locking the doors to keep people out. I find myself with a constant need to check my mobile phone for missed calls, but there are none. Eileen doesn’t call back.

As I make lunch for Mum and tidy the kitchen, I work through a deluge of disparate thoughts. Peter’s words and his deranged eyes keep going round and round in my mind. And then Mum’s comment: that I’m
wrong
. What if there is something wrong with me? What if all of this is in my mind?

I can’t eat, only watch the cameras. The neighbour’s cat almost gives me the fright of my life when it jumps over the wall into the garden. I don’t even have the energy to bang on the window when it starts to do its business in the flower bed.

Mum shuffles back to her sofa while I finally open that bottle of wine. After the first glass, I pop my head around the door.

“Everything okay?” I can’t help but notice that she has hardly progressed on her jigsaw from this morning. But her problem-solving skills are diminishing by the day.

“Yes, Becca,” she says. “I’m fine working on my puzzle.”

“Sophie.”

“No, dear. Becca.” She smiles as though I’m the stupid one.

Maybe there’s more to this Becca person than she’s letting on. Talking to Mum is becoming increasingly like banging my head against the wall, and I didn’t find anything about a Becca when I went through the photo albums. But there might be another option. With my laptop under one arm and my glass of wine in the other hand, I make my way upstairs to Mum’s room.

Crossing the threshold with the intention of snooping is both exhilarating and terrifying. When I was growing up, I was never allowed in Mum’s room. Since she’s been ill, I’ve been in and out of her room to care for her, and, of course, I planted the camera to check up on her. But I’ve never properly searched through her belongings. I’ve always been too afraid to do anything like that.

Mum is a lot neater now than she used to be. I occasionally dust and hoover in here, but Mum keeps things tidy. She always puts her own clothes away, and her drawers are always firmly closed. In the weeks of watching the cameras, I haven’t seen her do anything strange in this room. She doesn’t drag anything out from under the bed at night or act suspiciously. But I have a vague memory from a few months ago. I came into the room to wake her up and found her sat on the blanket box at the end of her bed, staring at what I thought was a photograph. But when she realised I was there, she quickly hid the photograph in the pocket of her dressing gown. I never mentioned it to her because I didn’t want to embarrass her. It was clear to me that I’d intruded on an intimate moment, and I didn’t want to press. It felt too alien to have anything even resembling a heart-to-heart with my mother.

I head straight for the blanket box. This is where I saw her with the photograph. This is where I start. When I lift it gently, the lid opens with a slight creak. The smell that greets me is like talcum powder and dust. I’ve never been in this box before, so I didn’t know what to expect, but I thought it was where Mum keeps spare bedding and blankets. I was wrong.

It’s more of a keepsake box. There are a few old rusting biscuit tins and a locked box. I lift one of the tins out and flip open the lid. It’s filled with letters. With a jolt, I realise they are unsent letters to her mother, my grandmother. Every single one is dated. I read the top letter:

January 20
th
1990

It’s all your fault. If you hadn’t been such a terrible mother, if you hadn’t forced me away, I would never have had to do this. I would never have had to make that decision. I hate you with every ion in my being. You were a hateful, spiteful hag, and I hope you rot in hell with Daddy.

I would have been ten years old. Five years after we moved to Eddington, so five years after Mum spoke to my grandmother for the last time. I always thought that Mum had gone to Grandma to borrow money for our move, but from this unsent letter, it would seem unlikely unless Mum was able to hide her true feelings when she asked for the money. Mum can be manipulative when she wants to be, but I’ve never known her hide her anger. Her temper is too all-encompassing for that. It boils over, and God help anyone who gets in its way. Her temper has a personality all by itself.