Page 71 of The Perfect Son
It doesn’t add up. I slide my feet into my wellies and head to the garden. I walk the same route around the house as Shelley took the previous night. The grass is wet and the earth feels sodden with the week’s rain. I can still see the boot prints of the officers from when they searched the garden, trampling through the daffodils.
At the tree house I stop and stand exactly where I saw the personlast night. I can see straight into the living room. Even from this distance I can see Jamie hunched forward over the PlayStation controller and the TV screen displaying the dark world of hisMinecraftgame. From here I can see the study, and Jamie’s bedroom too.
I give a sudden shiver and I’m about to step away when something bright on the ground catches my eye. I drop down to my haunches and run my fingers over the leaves until I find it—a button. A shiny silver button.
I recognize it straightaway. It’s from Shelley’s jacket, the one she was wearing last night.
The logical part of my brain knows the button could easily have fallen off when Shelley was checking the garden last night, or the other day when we were gardening, and yet, I think again to how quickly she arrived, how cold she looked on the doorstep, and how strange I felt after drinking the hot chocolate. Just like the last time Shelley made me hot chocolate.
Suddenly the lullaby—Shelley’s soft voice—is turning in my head.“Your mumma loves you, oh yes I do.”
The last time I drank the hot chocolate Shelley made I could barely walk to Jamie’s room in the middle of the night. I could barely stay awake. The day after, my mouth was dry, my thoughts clunky, just like today. I thought it was a side effect from antidepressants, but what if I’m wrong?
I turn on my heel and run back to the house, kicking off my wellies at the door before racing upstairs to our bedroom and my notebook. I scramble through the pages. There are more than I remember writing, but I find the page with Shelley and add a question:IsShelley drugging me?
The thought is obscene. Shelley is my friend. And yet I run the nib of the pen around and around the question in a dark circle.
It wouldn’t be difficult. A few over-the-counter sleeping pills mixed into my drink when I’m already so tired.
I try to remember the argument I overheard after our shopping trip last week and Shelley’s cutting words that were so unlike the friend I know.“Are you purposefully trying to mess this up? Stay away from her,”I thought she said.
We spent so long in Tesco that day. I thought Shelley did it to help me, but I can’t shake the convenience of it all. The one time I leave the house that week for any longer than the school run and someone goes into the house. I’m sure that someone was Ian, which means Shelley and Ian are connected somehow.
It feels too far-fetched to even consider, but then I think of the disbelieving looks that passed between the officers, and how keen Shelley was for me to call them, as if she wanted them to doubt me.
What is going on, Mark?
CHAPTER 42
IAN
I didn’t see Tess in the weeks leading up to Jamie’s birthday. We may have spoken on the phone a few times. I can’t remember where I was on Saturday, the twenty-fourth of March, but I was probably in The Tavern in Ipswich. I normally meet friends there on a Saturday night. I’ll give you their names. I’m sure one of them can confirm I was there that night.
It’s ridiculous to suggest I was trying to scare Tess. Why would I want to stand in her garden in the freezing cold? I know she thinks I wanted the house back, but I genuinely didn’t care that they bought it. I’m quite happy in my waterfront apartment, thanks very much.
SHELLEY
I really didn’t know what to believe that night when Tess called me. She was very distressed and was convincedthere was a man in her garden. When I got there, I went outside to look because I thought it was Ian. I thought Ian was trying to help Tess at first, and I did think handing over all the probate stuff to someone who knows what they’re doing was a good idea, but I didn’t like the way he was pressuring Tess about Mark’s will and their finances. Whether he was owed money or not, it really wasn’t any of his business what Tess did or when she did it.
When the police officers arrived it was awful. Tess started acting all weird, like she was drunk. She could barely speak. I guess you’ve got the report. They searched the outside and we all went up and looked in Jamie’s room. PC Higgs and PC French were very understanding but I’m not sure they believed Tess. I know I didn’t at that point.
CHAPTER 43
Monday, March 26
13 DAYS TO JAMIE’S BIRTHDAY
For once I’m early picking Jamie up from school. There are no other parents here yet, and all the children are still tucked inside finishing off their schoolwork before the bell rings, signaling home time.
I sit on a brick wall by the teachers’ car park and draw in a breath, relishing the silence and peace and the buttery yellow sun on my face.
The brightness hurts the backs of my eyes but I don’t turn away. It’s nice to be out from the gloom; it’s nice to be early. I glance behind me, back toward the lane. A car is passing, slowing on the bend. Sunlight bounces off the window and I can’t see the driver, but I feel them watching me and I turn quickly away.
There’s something church-like about the school with its old burned red bricks and arched windows. Even the triangular porch that ends in a point in the middle of the building looks like a steeple. There’s a cockerel weather vane that sits on the highest spot on the porch roof and creaks in the breeze.
I wonder if they use the slim red door in the porch? Or do the children always come and go through the glass reception area that’s been built on the side with two wide double doors?
I imagine Jamie sitting at a desk somewhere beyond the worn brick wall. I imagine him concentrating on his looping script writing. To me it’s just a sentence but to Jamie it’s a long list of things to remember: words on the line, comma in the right place, speech marks, expanded noun phrases, a full stop at the end. He’s just like you, Mark. He prefers math.
