The Well (44 page)

Ed started to protest but Julia silenced him. “This isn’t a discussion,” she said. “This is an ultimatum. You don’t come home until you get help. You stay somewhere else. And you get proper help with your drinking.”

“Now hang on –”

“No, you hang on. I mean it Ed. You get help with your drinking and – your temper. Or, you don’t come home. Ever. And if you come home before I agree to it, I’ll leave – with Hannah. And I’ll press charges for domestic violence.”

“Julia, I never –”

“Ed. You’re a policeman. You know what you’ve done to me, even if you’re trying to tell yourself that you didn’t. I’ve had enough. You’ve got one chance to put things right – and after that, no chances to slip up again. And, if you do come home – there’s no drinking. At all. That’s my offer. Take it or leave it.”

Ed said nothing, boiling inside.

“Look Ed, right now, you’re a hero – even if Steve and everyone else at the station know that you blundered in there drunk. Well, you can stay a hero – or you can be the hero who turned out to be a drunk who beat his wife. It’s your choice.”

“I want you to go,” said Ed, through gritted teeth.

“You’re mad right now, I know,” said Julia. “But you’ll calm down. When you do, I hope you’re grateful that I’m at least giving you a chance. Because to be honest, I don’t think you deserve it.”

Without saying anything else, she stood and left the room. Outside, she rested her back against the closed door, shaking.

“Are you OK, Mum?” asked Hannah, putting her hand on her mother’s arm.
Go, Mum!
she thought, having heard most of the conversation clearly.

“I’m fine,” said Julia. And, for the first time in many years, she believed that she was.

6

“How do you feel?” asked Sarah.

“Pretty rubbish,” replied Becca, understating just how terrible she felt. The physical pain was bad enough, but the guilt was eating away at her. The fact that no one had even mentioned Matt to her – probably out of consideration for her feelings – didn’t help.

They were alone; Jim was busy organising Matt’s funeral.
I want the funeral to be near Matt’s home
, Jim had said; the allusion that Bankside was no longer Matt’s home wasn’t lost on Sarah.

The doctors’ best guess at the moment was that Becca would be in hospital for a week or two – perhaps a few weeks more if the results of her blood tests weren’t good. Most of her scars would probably heal, they’d said, though a few could be lifelong trophies – especially the one on her hip.

Becca had remained pensive and unforthcoming since waking, something the doctors said was normal but would have to be addressed – probably with long-term counselling. Even the police had questioned her only briefly – after all, when most of the action had taken place, she had been below ground.

“Do you want to talk about it?” asked Sarah.

Becca shook her head. “Not really. It’s – it’s too horrible. Like a horror film. Except it was me in it.”

Sarah hesitated. “It doesn’t help to keep it to yourself, you know.”

Becca shook her head, tearfully.

“You feel a bit guilty, don’t you?” asked Sarah. “Like – why am I alive? And Matt’s not?”

Becca nodded.

Sarah hesitated. “Did you – did you love him?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” replied Becca, crying openly. “Nearly. I nearly did.”

Sarah wiped her daughter’s eyes and kissed her forehead.

“Mum?” said Becca.

“Yes?”

Becca paused. “Have you – have you told Dad?”

“I have. I had to, really. Didn’t you want me to?”

“No, it’s fine. I think – I think I want to see him.”

“Well, he wants to see you. In fact I had to insist that he stay away. I guess if he’d really wanted to, I couldn’t have stopped him. He was pretty upset. But I’ve kept him up-to-date with what’s been happening. He does want to see you, but I told him it would be up to you, like always. Are you sure you want to see him?”

Becca nodded. “I think so. It’s not like I forgive him or anything. But, well, he’s my Dad. You know.”

Sarah nodded. “I understand.”

“Thanks, Mum.” She paused. “How’s Jim?”

Sarah sighed. “Really bad, to be honest. I think he doesn’t know what to do. He’s busying himself organising things – but then he just sits in the chair and stares into space, or cries.”

“Oh God,” said Becca.

“Well, if I lost you I’d probably do the same. He’s devastated.”

Becca nodded in understanding.

“If you want to talk, I’m here,” she said. “I don’t care what happened, or what might have happened. I still love you.”

“I’m not worried about you being cross – well maybe a bit. But there’s stuff – horrible stuff – I had to do. All the detail. I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s stuff I don’t want you – anyone – to know.”

“I think,” said Sarah, “that you
do
want to talk about it. You’re just worried about me hearing it. Is that right?”

Becca nodded.

“I can take it, Becks, I promise. If you can live through it, I can at least handle listening to it. I’m
always
here for you. The doctors will want you to talk to people, the police will want to talk to you – you’ll have to tell the same story over and over. Or at least some of it, maybe not all of the detail. But I’ll always be here for you, to listen properly, and understand. If ever, whenever you want – I’m your Mum.”

Becca hesitated. Sarah passed Becca a tissue and she blew her nose.

“OK, Mum, I’ll tell you,” said Becca. “All of it. But only once. Don’t make me tell you again. Not all of it.”

Sarah listened – horrified inside, attentive and caring outside – while Becca hesitantly retold the events of the last few days. Becca told her everything – except the parts Hannah had asked her to leave out.

7

Murderer
, thought Hannah, considering her reflection in the mirror. It was the same face that she’d always seen when sat at her dressing table: slightly rounded and cupped by short, neat blonde hair that was still damp from her shower. For a moment she imagined that her eyes were somehow wiser or even tormented, but they weren’t. They were pretty, striking even, blessed with long, curved eyelashes.

She looked at her shoulders, still dotted with water – and pulled the towel closer around her. From the outside, she still looked like a normal teenage girl. But on the inside, there was a different truth, a truth that only she could see. A truth that had started to eat at her.
Killer
, she thought.

I ended a life
. It didn’t matter that the man had wanted to rape and kill her. The man was no more – because of her. She’d done it in anger. At the bottom of the well, Randle had no longer been a threat to anyone – they could have left him to the police. But she’d killed him anyway.
You can kill him now, if you want
, Sammy had said. She
had
wanted to. When she had flung the stone, it was with
satisfaction
.

The eyes in the mirror filled with tears.
I killed him
, thought Hannah,
and I fucking loved it.
Throwing the stone was exciting, like a death in the movies. But this wasn’t like a death in the movies. No one said, “cut”. The antagonist didn’t get up, dust himself off and go for a coffee in his expensive trailer.
He stayed down. Forever. Because of me. Worse
, she thought,
I’d do it again.
Hannah didn’t know what made her feel the most sick: the memory of Randle’s finger stroking her naked stomach or the awful sound she’d heard when the rock had ended his life.
The rock I threw.

Why don’t we just hit the bastard with that rock again?
The words echoed in her mind.

Both when the police had come and when she’d been reunited with her mother she’d felt like a hero. Her name and photograph were going to be in the newspapers and on the television – one of the girls who’d rescued the girl in the well and helped to catch a paedophile. But the fact was that Becca had rescued herself and the paedophile hadn’t been caught, he’d been killed.
Killed by me.
Whether he deserved to die wasn’t the issue: Hannah hadn’t stepped on a bug, she’d stopped another human being from breathing.
In the future,
she wondered,
who could trust me?
Is this something I could do again? Easily? What if I get married to someone like Dad? Would I give him another chance, like Mum? Or –? People who know me – friends – will they trust me, knowing I’m a killer? Will anyone, ever?

In one angry sweep, Hannah brushed everything off the top of her dressing table and onto the floor – brushes, make-up, lipstick, perfume, glitter, phone, everything.
Shit
, she thought, wiping her tear-soaked face.
I woke up one morning a teenager and went to bed a killer.
A little voice nagged in her head:
no, you woke up a killer, you just didn’t know it yet.

Hannah kicked a bottle of perfume across the floor and threw herself on her bed, sobbing. Downstairs, Julia was making bacon and eggs. The smell wafted upstairs and Hannah’s stomach groaned.
I killed someone,
she thought.
How can I think about eating?

Hannah felt utterly alone. She rolled off the bed and turned on her computer. While it was starting up, she dressed and rubbed her hair dry.

She thought about Randle’s eyes on her body; his hand touching her – and realised that while she may have escaped the physical act of rape, she was nonetheless violated. Yesterday, the thought of a boy kissing her, touching her, had been exciting. Today, it made her feel ill.
When will I forget?
When I’m twenty? Thirty? Fifty? Never? Will a man ever, ever touch me without me seeing those glasses, that tongue licking those lips, that big hand reaching out, that awful bulge in his trousers?
She realised with absolute certainty that not only was she a killer, she’d do the same thing again in a heartbeat.
I’ve been robbed,
she thought.
That bastard’s spoiled sex for me forever.
Hannah took her towel and wiped the tears from her face.

Hannah had scoffed to herself when she’d overheard Mister Carter talking to her mother about counselling and social workers. Now she couldn’t for the life of her see how any number of conversations could cleanse her of this feeling. Hannah thought about how her mother had allowed her father to take the joy from their marriage.
That bastard Tom Randle isn’t going to screw my life up
, she thought, determined but not convinced.

Hannah dropped the towel on her bed, sat at her computer and logged on to Simon’s on-line profile, hoping she could find his mobile phone number. She was a friend of his on-line, if not especially off it. His number was there – she tapped it into her phone and paused, her heart racing.
God this is hard
, she thought. In her mind, she saw herself holding Simon’s hand or perhaps letting him put his arm around her. She wanted to feel thrilled or turned on, but she didn’t. She felt repulsed.

Hannah stood up and screamed, throwing her mobile phone against the wall. The battery cover cracked open, releasing the battery. In three pieces, the phone fell to the floor with the rest of her scattered possessions.

1

After the funeral, everyone went back to the upstairs room of the Three Crowns, a pub not far from Jim’s house.

No funeral is easy, but the funeral of a child is something so deeply wrong that even the most positive person would struggle to make sense of it.

The service had been well-attended. Sarah had been worried that Becca wasn’t strong enough to come, but she’d insisted – although her doctor had required her to go in a wheelchair; she was still weeks away from being discharged.

Becca was grey and gaunt, unusually wearing make-up to help disguise her worst scars. Her distant eyes were inset within dark rings that the make-up hadn’t been able to hide; she was still unable to sleep for more than a few hours at a time and even then usually required sedatives. To make matters worse, she could no longer bear to be alone in a room with the lights off. Like Hannah, she was finding her newly started therapy sessions little more than useless and was desperate for a time when she, Hannah and Sammy could speak openly and unsupervised. Her hair was cut into an untidy layered bob. Sarah had been horrified when her daughter had decided to rid herself of her long dark hair, but once Becca had taken some surgical scissors to it she had no choice but to help her daughter to make the best of it.

Sarah had pushed Becca to the front of the church so that she could lay a rose on the coffin. Sarah then let Becca spend a few moments alone before wheeling her to the first pew. Although they weren’t family, Sarah had asked both Hannah and Julia to sit alongside them.

Sammy, still in hospital, couldn’t come – but both Abby and Helen were there.

Stephen and Jenny had sat on the last pew, in uniform, with three higher ranking police officers from the regional force. Conscious of their superiors, they’d avoided holding hands during the service – but when Stephen had sensed Jenny gently shaking next to him, he’d clasped her hand and squeezed it tightly.

The church was full of children and teachers from both schools – Matt’s old one and the one in Bankside.

Jim, ashen-faced, sleepwalked through the whole day. He nodded and shook hands, greeted people and even occasionally just about managed a smile – but that was his body executing a series of automatic gestures. Inside, he was numb.

Jim picked up both his beer and Sarah’s wine from the bar and went to sit next to her. Hannah and Becca were sitting at the next table, deep in conversation.

There was a long silence between Jim and Sarah; then he said, simply, “Sarah, I’m not coming back.”

“What?”

“I’ve been thinking. I’m not coming back. I don’t think I could.”

Sarah was shocked; she leaned towards Jim and whispered, “Can this wait? It doesn’t seem like the right time.”