Page 1 of One Step Behind
Chapter 1
Wednesday, 12 June
Jenna
My heart is beating machine-gun-fire fast as I reach out to undo the new deadbolt at the top of the front door. I move to the chain next with the fluid movement of doctor’s hands – calm and steady – masking the truth, keeping the shaking fear deep inside. I used to think I was invincible. I used to think nothing could rattle me, but that was before.
Where will you be today? Leaning against a tree in the park opposite our house, standing in broad daylight? Or will you be a shadow watching out of sight? A feeling I can sense but not see? How many emails will you send? How many ways will you find to torment me today? The questions are like caffeine hits to my exhaustion. I can’t have slept for more than three hours last night. My eyes itch, my muscles ache with heaviness, but at least the fog over my thoughts is clearing. Three hours. It feels like less.
‘Are we walking or driving, Mummy?’ Beth asks from behind me.
I turn around and feel the love well up inside – a visceral heat. I wish I could shield them from you. Nine-year-old Beth, and Archie, six almost seven, are standing ready at the bottom of the stairs, school shoes on, dark-green book bags looped around one shoulder. Archie is a miniature version of Stuart, with shaggy brown hair and a wide toothy grin. He’s wearing grey shorts and a white polo shirt with a grass stain on the collar that hasn’t washed out. His arms and legs have tanned a golden brown in the weeks of endless sun.
Beth is more like me with her fair skin and the red freckles that sprinkle the bridge of her nose. Her green gingham summer dress is the new jumpsuit style, so she can do cartwheels and handstands without the boys seeing her knickers. Strands of dark-orange hair are already falling out of her ponytail and over her face, but I’ve given up trying to neaten it. She gets her independent streak from me, too.
There is no last-minute scramble for reading books, no final cramming of spellings for the test, no lost items to hunt for in our house. They’ve been conditioned from the get-go in efficiency and routines. I’d love to take the credit but it’s Christie, our childminder, who’s behind it.
‘It’s really hot. Can we drive?’ Archie asks, dragging out the final word in the whiny voice we dislike so much but can’t seem to get him to stop.
‘Good idea, let’s drive,’ I say, as though walking was ever an option.
There’s an instant sigh of relief around us, as though the hallway itself has been holding its breath. It’s your fault, of course, that my son is so scared. I’ve done all Ican over the last year to hide my fear from them. But then you disappeared for a week in May. Seven whole days of not seeing you. No emails, and none of your sick gifts left on my doorstep either. I was a spring uncoiling – slowly, slowly – hoping beyond hope, day by day, that you’d given up. Day seven fell on a Monday, one of the first warm days of the year and my first school run in ages; Stuart wanted to take my car in for a service, so we walked the half a mile to Greenstead Primary School. But then you know that, don’t you? You were waiting in the doorway of the corner shop, two roads away from the school gates.
We turned on to the road and there you were, just metres from us. Watching. I tensed up so tight that the world spun and I grabbed Archie’s hand and then Beth’s and we ran flat out; running for our lives, I felt. I only stopped when I realized I’d dragged Archie to the pavement and he’d grazed one of his knees.
We skipped the playground lines and went straight to the office, a mess of tears and blood and fear. Mr Bell, the head teacher, was a wave of calm and kindness over our panic. He sent Beth to class and Archie to the first-aid room for a plaster before sitting me in the staff room with a strong cup of tea that I slopped all over the new carpet because my hands were shaking so badly.
It was only later, when I grabbed a spare minute during the night shift to phone Stuart, that I learned about the book bag. ‘Archie thinks he dropped it when you were running. I’m sure someone will hand it in.’ They didn’t though. You took it. Another piece of us, of me, that’s yours now.
I lie awake at night thinking of Archie’s reading diary and the comments back and forth between MissBagri, Archie’s teacher, and me or Stuart. The little notes that are meaningless, really, but somehow feel so personal, so telling, in your hands.
A final big deep breath in before I down the last dregs of tepid coffee from my mug, grab the car keys and ready myself to open the front door.
‘Wait here,’ I say, throwing a glance back to Beth and Archie, who know without me telling them that they’re not to move until I’ve checked the doorstep.
I yank open the heavy wooden door a few inches, just enough to peek out without the kids seeing the tiled doorstep.
It’s a doll’s head today. One eye is open and staring up at me. The other has been burnt into a melted hole.
I bite the side of my mouth, keeping my scream inside, and slam the door shut.
‘What is it, Mummy?’ Beth asks.
‘It’s nothing.’ Of course she knows it’s not nothing. It’s always something, but how can I tell my children what’s out there, what you’re doing to me? I run through the house and grab one of Detective Sergeant Church’s clear plastic evidence bags.
‘Go sit on the sofa,’ I say, shooing Beth and Archie away. ‘And put the TV on.’
They move without complaint and when I’m sure they’re gone, I open up the front door and scoop the doll’s head into the bag, careful not to touch it. I can taste the coffee rising at the back of my throat, but I work quickly, desperate to get back to the kids and make things normal for them. At least there’s no glass this time, smashed into a thousand shards for me to sweep up.
When the bag is sealed I shove it into my handbag todrop at the police station on my way past. Then I wash my hands three times and pull myself together; I step back to the children, forcing a bright smile. ‘OK. We can go.’
I open the front door again, wide this time, and the heat hits us. Like the residue of candyfloss on fingers, it coats our skin in a sticky film. No sea breeze today, nothing to take the edge off the heatwave. Both kids leap over the step and land on the path as though an invisible evil lurks on it. It’s an effort not to do the same.
We hustle to the car, parked further down the road than I’d have liked – but with no driveways, the cars on the road are packed tight on both sides, like Starbursts in a tube, and we can’t always find a space right outside our house.
The street is a row of fifty semi-detached houses the same as ours, built a hundred and something years ago in dark-red brick, all facing out to the park with its boating lake, playground and many, many places for you to hide. We’re three roads back from the seafront where the property prices quadruple.
Our estate agent, Wayne, has boasted of sea views from our house, which is laughable really. If I stand on a chair at Archie’s window and crane my neck then maybe I can catch a glimmer of the green estuary and the slow cargo ships making their way towards London, but I’ve not corrected him. The sooner we move, the sooner we’ll be far away from you.
