Page 55 of One Step Behind
‘Should I go now, then?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘But please come back. It really will help him to see a familiar face. Are there any other family members or people he’s close to who can visit?’ she asks, raising her voice to be heard over Matthew’s shouts.
I shake my head. ‘It’s just the two of us now.’
She smiles sadly and gives my arm a gentle squeeze. ‘Come back tomorrow.’
I nod and try not to listen to Matthew’s shouts chasing me out of the ward.
‘SOPHIE, SOPHIE, SOPHIE.’
I move fast, my stride lengthening until I’m almost jogging towards the exit. When I’m outside, in the ruthless heat, I break into a run. Seeing the darkness in Matthew after all this time has shaken me to my core. All I want to do is outrun Matthew’s shouts echoing in my mind and the memories of the fire. Flames bigger than I could ever have imagined.
Chapter 29
Jenna
The kitchen got the biggest clean of its life today. I even took everything out of the cupboards and cleaned inside them. I scrubbed dried spots of pasta sauce off the skirting board, and glitter that has been stuck to the floor tiles since Christmas. And for the first time in as long as I can remember it wasn’t you consuming my thoughts. It was Rachel.
I haven’t been able to get our talk out of my head. There was something off about the whole thing. I’m sure her face changed when I mentioned your name and yet she said she didn’t know you.
I’ve watched patients look me in the eye and lie about what happened to them – the door they walked into that doesn’t explain the two-day-old bruising on their arms; the sixty-year-old man with chest pain and heart palpitations who’s lying about the Viagra he bought on the internet; the sixteen-year-old whose mum is by her side and swears she’s not sexually active. Some doctors call it a sixth sense, others think they read body language – imperceptible twitches – thingsno one else would notice. Me, I call it a bullshit radar, and over the years mine has become pretty good. And something about Rachel’s reaction this morning isn’t sitting right.
When my lower back is screaming in protest and there’s nowhere else left to clean, I stand back to survey my handiwork. Every surface gleams and the air is heavy with the smell of lemon-scented cleaner. I check the time. It’s two p.m. There’s still an hour before I have to collect Beth and Archie from school.
I reach for my phone and call Rachel’s mobile. I’m not sure what I hope she’s going to say that she wouldn’t tell me this morning, but I have to try.
The phone rings three times before she answers with a tentative ‘Hello?’
‘Hi Rachel, it’s Jenna. I just wanted to apologize for ambushing you this morning,’ I say, launching in before she has a chance to stop me. ‘I know it must have been a shock to hear about the photos Matthew Dover has taken of you, but I wondered, now that you’ve had some time to think about it, if you’ve remembered anything else?’
‘No, I haven’t,’ she replies in a hissed whisper. ‘There’s someone at the door, I have to go.’
She hangs up without a goodbye, leaving me staring at my phone in disbelief. I call her again, but this time it rings and rings before a recorded voice asks me to leave a message. ‘Rachel, please call me back,’ I beg. ‘It’s important we speak. Thanks.’
I sit at the kitchen counter and stare at my silent phone for ten minutes. Why doesn’t she want to talk to me? Is she hiding something? A nervous energy shoots through my blood. A part of me knows I should leave it now, that your months of torture havemade me paranoid, but another part of me, a stronger part, is egging me on to keep going. You’re awake now. How long will it be before you recover? And then what? It will be months before there’s a trial and a chance you’ll be sent to prison. If Rachel knows something about you, if you were harassing her as well, then I have to know. I have to do everything I can to make sure you never come near me or my children again.
I dig in my bag for the PTA information sheets Rachel gave me last week. I’m sure I haven’t thrown them away. I find them in a side pocket, screwed up and torn at the edges, but otherwise fine. The first is a pleading letter, urging parents to join, and the second is a list of all the PTA members, their names, addresses and phone numbers. Don’t these people care about their privacy?
Rachel’s home line rings five times before she answers it. ‘Hello?’
‘Hi, it’s Jenna. I really—’
The line cuts off dead. What the hell?
I dial the number again and this time it rings only twice. ‘Hello?’ a man’s voice barks in my ear.
‘Hi, I’m Jenna, a friend of Rachel’s. Is she there please?’
‘Hang on,’ he replies before there’s muffled noise. I imagine him covering the microphone and calling for Rachel.
‘Er … she’s … just popped out,’ he says a moment later. ‘Can you call back another time?’
‘Of course.’
Popped out? She was there sixty seconds ago.
When my phone vibrates on the counter I snatch it up, but it’s not Rachel, it’s Diya.
