Page 46 of The Perfect Son
If I could go back and do it all over again then of course I would’ve done something, but Tess didn’t tell me everything that was going on. Maybe if she had, things might’ve been different. You have to believe me, I would never hurt Tess, and if things had been different, I wouldn’t have hurt Jamie either.
CHAPTER 26
Transcript BETWEEN ELLIOT SADLER (ES) AND TERESA CLARKE (TC) (INPATIENT AT OAKLANDS HOSPITAL, HARTFIELD WARD), WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11. SESSION 2 (Cont.)
TC: I don’t know what I think. It’s hard sitting here knowing Jamie is out there somewhere. It’s all in my notebook. I wrote everything down. My memory wasn’t great, and I wasn’t thinking straight a lot of the time. But even so, I knew something was going on. I didn’t suspect Shelley at first but I knew someone was trying to scare me. There was a man who called me. He threatened me and Jamie. He said Mark was working on something for him and he wanted it back. I can still hear his voice in my head. It was horrible.
ES: Did he tell you his name?
TC: No. Oh God, what if it isn’t Shelley who has Jamie? What if it’s the man? He knew all about me and Jamie. Oh God. What have I done?
ES: Take a breath please, Tess. Let’s try and calm down.
TC: Has that ever worked?
ES: What’s that?
TC: Has anyone ever actually calmed down because someone told them to? Jamie is missing. I won’t calm down until he is in my arms. Can you get an officer to get my notebook? If you just read that, then you’ll see everything. I’m sure the answer is in there.
ES: The police have your notebook, Tess. They are looking at it right now. They are interviewing Shelley and Ian.
TC: What have they said? Do they know where Jamie is?
ES: Why don’t you tell me your side of things? Starting with the night of Jamie’s birthday.
TC: I need to know Jamie is safe first. I have to see him.
ES: Let’s take a break.
TC: I don’t need a break. Jamie hasn’t been found. Jamie is still out there. How can we take a break?
ES: Tess, you’ve had a serious injury to your abdomen which you are reluctant to talk about. If you want to help us find out what happened to Jamie then you need to rest. We’ll talk again later.
CHAPTER 27
Thursday, March 8
31 DAYS TO JAMIE’S BIRTHDAY
Something occurred to me this morning, Mark, as I watched Jamie dash into the school. Time is no longer the constant ticktock that it used to be when you were alive. In the daytime, when it’s just me, and in the dead of night when I can’t sleep and I listen for hours to the owl hooting for a mate, time grinds to a stilted crawl—a train drawing into a station.
But when I need to leave for the school run—no matter how many extra minutes I have—time seems to bound ahead of me like a dog chasing pheasants across the fields. Jamie is always the last one through the glass doors in the morning and the last one waiting in the school playground in the afternoons.
The minute I step back into the house and shut the back door I feel the shift in time, the cogs grinding down, but I won’t let it beat me today. I’m going to keep busy.
I’m on my way to the parlor to finish sorting the boxes when the phone rings.
It’s rung half a dozen times this week. Each time I’m frozen to the spot, holding my breath and waiting for the answerphone to pick up, waiting to see if it’s him again. Each time my voice from before echoes through the rooms, the message starts to record, and then they hang up.
Today’s call is no different.
Why? Who is at the other end? I wonder as silence fills the house.
I close my eyes for a moment and the image of the charred wreckage fills my head. I know I should carry on walking, carry on with my jobs, but instead I find myself in the living room with the TV remote in my hand.
Sky News appears on the screen.
An anchorwoman with glossy brown hair and the wrong shade of lipstick is staring right into me as she speaks: “A suicide note from the pilot of the Thurrock plane crash has been handed in to police.”
