Page 72 of The Perfect Son
A light breeze, like a breath on my neck, makes me shiver, and with it comes the feeling of being watched again. I shift position on the wall and scan all around me but I see no one. Then a movement catches my eye and a woman appears at the glass doors of the school. She pulls it open and moves in my direction. She’s wearing a long black knitted cardigan over a lilac shirt and black trousers and wraps the cardigan around herself as a gust of cold wind travels across the farmland, creaking the weather vane.
She has jet-black hair that reaches her jutting collarbone. She’s painfully slim and her forehead is lined as if she’s in a constant state of concern. “Can I help you?” she asks, throwing a look back to the doors, where I see another face peeking out from behind the reception desk.
Her question seems odd and makes me smile. They clearly don’t recognize me, but then I’m usually late, and usually my hair is scraped back and I’m in welly boots and your tartan pajama bottoms. With my hair down and a pair of jeans on, is it any surprise they don’t realize I’m Jamie’s mother?
“I’m just waiting for Jamie. Jamie Clarke.” I smile and fumble in my coat pocket for my phone and blanch at the time. “Oh.” It’s only two p.m. School doesn’t finish for another hour. I’m not so much early as completely bloody wrong. No wonder the reception staff areworried. “I... I’m so sorry.” I shake my head. “I’ve got myself in a right muddle with the time, haven’t I? I didn’t mean to alarm anyone. I’ll come back in an hour. Sorry.”
Suddenly I’m not smiling but fighting back tears of embarrassment, which makes me want to cry even more. I only got the pickup time wrong. I read two thirty instead of one thirty on the clock on the fireplace in the living room. A simple mistake. No harm done, but it feels like a big deal. After everything that happened last week and at the weekend, it feels like a very big deal.
“Better to be an hour early than an hour late, I guess.” I laugh, but the sound is a choking cough of a thing, and when I stand up, the woman jumps back as if I’m an escaped mental patient.
I stride out of the school gates and back to the lane.
The woman is calling after me, but I quicken my pace. Wind stings the heat of my face and the hot tears now rolling down my cheeks. I’ll apologize to Jamie’s teacher at pickup. She can pass the message on to whomever I’ve just run away from.
My mobile is vibrating in my pocket and when I look at the display Shelley’s name is on the screen. I hesitate. I want to answer and tell her what an idiot I’ve been. I know she’ll say something silly that will make me laugh. But I still don’t know if I can trust her.
Then I think of Shelley’s large grin when she swept through my door with a KFC bucket, and the time before that when she looked after Jamie because I couldn’t.Shelley is my friend,I tell myself, pressing accept.
“Hey, Tess.” Shelley’s voice bounces in my ear.
“Hi.” I cross the road and tuck myself close to the bushes as I make my way back down the lane.
“You sound like you’re out somewhere,” she says. “Is now a good time?”
“It’s fine. I was just... out for a walk,” I finish. I’m not sure why I don’t tell Shelley what happened a minute ago. My own stupid embarrassment, probably.
“Ah, that sounds nice. I’ve been stuck in my office seeing clients all day,” Shelley says. “How are you? I meant to call you yesterday, but... well, things with Tim and me aren’t great. He moved out yesterday.”
“I’m so sorry, Shelley. You could’ve called me.”
“Thanks, I know, but you’re going through enough as it is right now, and I’m fine, honestly. I think it’s been a long time coming. But look, are you OK? Has everything been all right after the other night? You kind of shut down when the police arrived. I think you were in shock.”
“No, it’s fine. I’m fine.”
“Good.” She sighs. “That’s a relief. Anyway, I was wondering what you had planned for the Easter weekend. The weather is supposed to be nice.”
“Is it? Oh, I’m not sure. I haven’t thought about it.”
“Why don’t I pop by on Saturday and we can do something? Even if it’s just sitting in your garden stuffing ourselves with chocolate.”
I smile and am about to tell her that Jamie would love it when I hear something in the undergrowth ahead, a muffled cough and a rustle of leaves. I hold my breath, my gaze flicking one way, then the other. I can’t see a face but there are plenty of places to duck out of sight along the lane.
“Tess, are you there?” Shelley squawks in my ear, her voice suddenly too loud as I listen to the silent landscape.
“Yes, sorry,” I whisper. “That sounds great. I have to go.” I hang up but keep my phone gripped in my hand as I quicken my pace.
Someone is watching me. The muscles in my legs pull tight andmy eyes grow wide, stinging against the bright daylight. I stop moving, waiting, praying, for a bird or rabbit to dart across the road so I can laugh at myself and carry on. Except it isn’t a bird that moves, it’s the man who followed me in Manningtree.
He’s up ahead by the track opposite the house, the one where you fell off your bike when you were a kid and got the scar on your chin. I must be fifty meters down the lane, and there’s no way I can make it to the house before him. Saliva builds in my mouth and I swallow hard.
He takes a step into the road and turns to face me. He’s wearing the same clothes as before—a dark hoody and black jeans—but this time there is no baseball cap, no shadows to lurk in, and I can see his face clearly. His skin is pale and sags around small, watching eyes. His nose and lips are thin too, as if all his features are too small for his face. His hair is black and thinning and his body is slight beneath his clothes. He looks nothing like the burly thug I pictured when I first heard his voice on the answerphone, but it doesn’t change the terror gnarling my insides.
I don’t know how long we stand like that for—me frozen to the spot, wishing for a tractor to trundle around the bend and squash the man dead, and him waiting patiently for what I suppose is the inevitable. There is nowhere to run except back up the lane. How far would I get before he caught me?
He smiles as if reading my thoughts. His lips part and my breath catches in my throat waiting for him to yell his threat at me. He starts to speak but I can’t hear over the sound of blood rushing in my ears. He stops suddenly and turns away. There’s a movement on the lane behind him. It’s not a tractor, it’s a cyclist decked out in red Lycra.
The man jumps to the side just as the cyclist swerves and brakes and the pair collide. Both men are talking in tight angry voices as they pick themselves up from the tarmac, but I’m not listening.
