The Jump (19 page)

She stood with the door closed at her back and listened. Just her own breath in her throat, a pulse in her ears. She took a step forward and heard her ankle click. Just a joint thing, it happened occasionally after she’d been swimming, but the sound of it was outrageous in the dark.

She angled her head to listen upstairs. Nothing. She crept towards the kitchen and stopped in the doorway. She looked at the floor to the left, where Jack had been lying that first day. She walked over to the spot and knelt down. Rubbed at the laminate flooring. No sign of blood. She brought her fingers to her nose and smelled. Particles of dust and grit between her fingers, nothing more. She stood up and looked along the work surfaces. A knife block with one knife missing. Presumably still at the police station as evidence. She wondered what they’d been able to make of that.

She went to the patio door at the back of the kitchen. Looked at the handle, the one she touched. People must’ve come and gone out this door since then. She wondered how many remnants of fingerprints had been left over the years. If the house was fifty years old, say, think of the hundreds of people passing through, new owners, friends, family, parties, a slice of mundane humanity in this insignificant corner of the world.

She went into the living room and did a circuit. Looked at the family portraits on the wall, the school photos of Sam and Libby, the holiday snaps, a picture of Alison holding a baby. Ellie couldn’t tell which child it was, and it seemed unfair that there was only one baby picture on the wall.

She went to the bottom of the stairs and began walking up. She’d read somewhere as a kid that the way to sneak upstairs was to place your feet at the sides of the steps, as the centres were more inclined to creak under your weight. She had no idea if that was true but she did it all the same, spreading her weight and placing her feet carefully on the edges of each stair as she went up.

She stood at the top, her hand on the banister, and cocked her head again. She could hear breathing from one of the bedrooms, the one to her right. It sounded male, though she wasn’t sure. Not quite snoring but close, a peaceful, rhythmic sound.

She went in the other direction to the bedroom nearest the bathroom. Stood looking at the door for a while, then pushed it open and stepped inside.

Libby’s room. It was a midden, as Ellie’s mum would’ve said. There were clothes scattered all over the floor, magazines and books in three tumbling piles next to the bed. Make-up, cheap bracelets and necklaces were piled on top of a chest of drawers, along with hair straighteners, and half a dozen bottles of grooming products. The desk was strewn with empty Coke cans, biscuit wrappers and crisp packets, schoolbooks buried underneath.

Libby was lying on top of her covers in a short T-shirt and skimpy pants, only her legs under the duvet. She was on her back with her arms behind her head, like a soldier surrendering.

Ellie walked over. Her breathing was deep but gentle, her face peaceful, her skin so fresh and smooth that Ellie wanted to pinch it. She stood watching the girl for a few moments, then rubbed at her own eyes and left the room. She headed for the snoring next, waiting for a moment at the door before going inside.

Sam. The smell of him straight away, not the deodorant but really him, earthy and animalistic, like a fox. She breathed it in. His room was more organised than Libby’s, but not much. Clothes on the floor, football stuff in one corner, an Xbox and television in the other.

Ellie stood over him. He was half-out from under the covers, and she could see he was only wearing pants, the pair of Logan’s that Ellie had given him. She gazed at his bare torso, wiry and hard, ribs ridged up his sides, his elbows and wrists thin and delicate, like they would break easily. He shuffled in his sleep, shifting his weight, turning his face away from her. Ellie’s body tensed. Sam’s back was to her now, a bony spine, the shoulder blades like nascent wings. She wanted to touch them, see them flutter free. She watched his shoulders rise and fall with his breathing then turned and walked out the room.

That left Alison.

Ellie stood at the door and listened. All she could hear was Sam’s breathing from the other direction. She swallowed and pushed open the door.

Alison had her duvet pulled up to her chin. Asleep on her back, a hand hanging over the side. She was tucked into one half of the double bed, hadn’t spread out. Maybe over time she would get used to the extra space and claim it. Ellie imagined having a double bed to herself – freeing or lonely?

An empty bottle of white wine and a glass were on the floor next to the bed. A lamp, clock and a packet of painkillers for the morning. Her clothes discarded on a chair in the corner of the room. A large mirrored wardrobe along one wall, a print of stones on a beach from IKEA on the wall above the bed. Nothing out of the ordinary, just a normal married couple’s bedroom.

Ellie stood over Alison, watched her. Imagined picking up Jack’s pillow and placing it over Alison’s face. She sat on the edge of the bed and put her hand over Alison’s mouth.

‘Wake up,’ she said.

She gave Alison’s rump a shake through the covers and Alison’s eyes pinged open. She grunted and squirmed but Ellie pressed down on her mouth, felt the hard enamel of her teeth and the skin of her lips.

‘Shhh,’ she said. ‘I’m not here to harm you, I just want to talk.’

Alison’s eyes were wide. She shoved Ellie’s hand away from her mouth.

‘What the fuck are you doing in my house?’ she hissed. ‘I’m calling the police.’

Ellie shook her head. ‘No.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘I know about your family.’ Ellie looked behind her at the bedroom door. ‘I want to talk to you, but I think it’s best if we don’t wake Sam and Libby, don’t you?’

Alison stared as Ellie got up. She could see that Alison was wearing silky underwear, burgundy with lace trim.

‘Put something on and meet me downstairs,’ Ellie said, walking out the room.

She sat at the kitchen table in the dark.

Alison came in, tying a dressing gown around her waist. She put a light on, a recessed spotlight near the fridge, went to a cupboard and took out two wine glasses then lifted a bottle of Rioja from the worktop. She poured, slid one across to Ellie, then glugged at her own, half of it gone already. She topped it up.

‘Well?’

Ellie examined her. Her skin was crumpled from sleep, but there was more to it than that. The drink was beginning to show on her face, thin red lines under the surface on her cheeks and nose. Her eyelids were puffed and heavy, hanging over her eyes as if trying to keep a secret. Thick lines across her forehead and bags under her eyes from worry and stress. Ellie could see her body relax as the wine began to work, her shoulders slumping, her breathing regular, but she still had her guard up, still ready for combat. This crazy woman had broken into her house in the middle of the night, after all.

‘I want to speak to you,’ Ellie said. ‘One mum to another.’

‘We’re nothing alike,’ Alison said.

‘You think?’

A gulp of wine and a shake of the head. ‘No.’

Ellie took a sip. Just a sip, she wanted to stay in control.

‘You love your kids,’ she said.

‘Of course.’

‘I loved my Logan.’

Alison took another drink.

Ellie stared at her. ‘I know what you’re thinking.’

‘What?’

‘How could I love my son the way you love your kids, if I let him kill himself?’

Alison’s head went down for a moment. ‘I wasn’t thinking that.’

‘I don’t blame you,’ Ellie said. ‘Everyone thinks that. I see it in their faces when I walk down the street. Oh sure, there’s pity and sympathy, but underneath is the animal in us, the bad side of humanity. It’s my fault, I did something wrong, that’s why my boy did it.’

Alison took a drink, but a sip this time. ‘I promise, that’s not what I was thinking.’

Ellie sipped too. ‘You’re the exception then.’

Alison lifted the Rioja and filled both glasses. A little splashed out the top of Ellie’s, a dribble down the side of the glass. She thought of Jack lying in the corner of the kitchen, his stomach oozing. She pictured him lying on the ocean floor, blood droplets infinitely diluted by the billions of gallons of water on the planet until there was nothing left of his essence. She thought about Logan’s ashes, dissolved and now part of the sea.

Alison took another big gulp from her glass.

‘Aren’t you going to tell me I’m drinking too much?’ she said.

‘I’m not in a position to have a go at anyone about their coping mechanism.’

‘Who says it’s a coping mechanism?’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘And what do I have to cope with?’

‘The collapse of your family,’ Ellie said.

Alison stared at her across the table. ‘You don’t know anything about my family.’

‘I know that Libby and Sam are back home. And Jack’s gone.’

‘How?’

‘The police came to see me. They said Sam had confirmed I was never in touch with him.’

‘He’s lying.’

Ellie looked Alison in the eye. ‘Of course he is. And of course you can tell. No one knows a boy like his mum.’

‘I should tell the police.’

‘If you send the police to me again, I’ll deny I was here,’ Ellie said. ‘And I’ll come back for you. I have keys.’

‘How do you have keys?’

Ellie waved a hand, as if that was of no importance.

‘I’ll change the locks,’ Alison said.

‘It won’t matter.’ Ellie took a sip of wine. ‘You really shouldn’t get the police involved.’

‘Why not? They need to find my husband.’

Ellie shook her head. ‘No, they don’t. Jack isn’t coming back.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He told me.’

‘When did you see him?’

‘He picked me up after my first police interview. Told me he was leaving.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘You know why.’

Alison drained her wine. She poured the last of the bottle into her glass, her hand trembling.

‘Not this again,’ she said. ‘Jack never did anything to Libby.’

Ellie grabbed Alison’s hand and pulled it towards her. Alison jumped at the sudden movement, her chair scuffing the floor.

‘You knew what he was doing,’ Ellie said.

‘I didn’t.’

Ellie leaned across the table and touched Alison’s temple. ‘Maybe not up here.’ She moved her finger to the woman’s chest. ‘But you knew it in here.’

Alison shook her head as tears came to her eyes. She lowered her face and her shoulders shook. Ellie was still gripping her hand in her fingers, like a buzzard with its prey.

‘Why do you think Sam stabbed him?’ Ellie said.

Alison was snivelling now, trying to pull her hand away.

‘My boy would never do that,’ she said.

‘Look at me.’ Ellie yanked Alison’s arm. Alison’s head came up.

‘Sam was trying to protect his sister. Your daughter. Do you understand? He’s a good boy, the son you’ve raised. He was protecting his family from harm.’

Alison’s tears landed on the table. ‘No, someone broke in.’

Ellie dropped Alison’s hand then slammed her fist down.

‘No one broke in, you know that. It was Sam. Because of what Jack was doing to Libby.’

Alison covered her face with her hands as she sobbed, elbows skidding on the table, her body shaking.

‘I swear I didn’t know . . . I couldn’t . . . how could he . . . ?’

Ellie watched her. She tried to put herself in Alison’s position. It was something the counsellor had said about empathy, trying to imagine what life was like for someone else. But that was useless in Ellie’s case, how could you possibly put yourself inside the head of someone suicidal? How could you empathise with that? And yet she did. Ironically, the very thing Logan had done put her in the same mindset. She wanted to die, she had wanted to die every day since he killed himself. She had all the empathy in the world. If she’d had any kind of religious belief she would’ve done it by now. If she had even the slightest feeling in her heart that she would see him again in some kind of afterlife, she would run over and grab a knife from the worktop right now and plunge it into her belly as deep as she could, right up to the handle, and she would feel good about it. But the truth was, she knew she would never see him again. She knew he wasn’t waiting for her with the angels, in a better place, all the clichés that get trotted out when someone young dies. They just die, end of story. They just create an unimaginably huge hole in the lives of everyone they left behind. That was the reality, and it was only once you embraced that and owned it that you had any chance of carrying on.

Alison was still crying, her sobs racking her body. She knew about what her husband had done, had admitted it to herself for the first time. What must that be like? A betrayal, of course, and massive guilt. Ellie understood both those things so well.

She couldn’t help herself from speaking. ‘How could you not do anything?’

Alison looked up, her face a crumpled mess. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘You did know, and you did nothing.’

Alison shook her head.

‘Libby tried to tell you,’ Ellie said. ‘She told me. She said you kept avoiding it.’

‘I don’t know about that. No . . .’

Ellie felt her anger rise. ‘Yes.’

She landed a fist on the table that made Alison jump. She looked scared. She should. Ellie thought about those knives in the block, a few feet away. She breathed, tried to control her body. Her fist ached.

‘I did something about it,’ Ellie said.

Alison narrowed her eyes. ‘What did you do?’

‘I made Jack go away.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Just that. I made your husband go away.’

‘How?’

Ellie laid her hands in front of her, held Alison’s gaze. ‘I persuaded him. I can be very persuasive when I need to be. I told him I would take Libby to the police. I said I had evidence. He understood it was over.’

She pictured him pleading with her in his car, saying it was all a mistake, that he hadn’t been doing anything. She saw Libby sticking the scissors into her dad’s stomach, then Sam planting them in his neck. Then herself strangling him as he tried to escape.

‘He said he was sorry,’ Ellie said.

Alison was crying again. ‘How could he?’

‘He won’t come back. Ever.’

‘Where did he go?’

Ellie shook her head.

‘He must’ve said something.’

‘Forget about Jack,’ Ellie said.

Alison stared at her. ‘After what you’ve just told me?’ Something hardened in her face. ‘Why should I trust you, who the fuck are you anyway? Why are you even in our lives?’

Ellie sighed and ran her fingers down her neck. She leaned in towards the middle of the table and lowered her voice, like a conspiracy.

‘I found your son on the bridge.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Sam. I met him the morning he stabbed Jack. He was on the Forth Road Bridge. He was going to jump.’

‘No.’

Ellie nodded. ‘He was over the railing, looking down. He was about to step off when I stopped him. I spoke to him. If I hadn’t been there, your son would be dead. Just like mine.’

Alison lifted her wine glass and finished the dregs in the bottom. Both her hands shook on the glass. She looked like a drowning woman clutching at a piece of driftwood.

Ellie pushed her chair back and stood up.

‘You’re lucky,’ she said.

Alison shook her head. ‘I don’t feel lucky.’

‘You’ve got a second chance. Both your children are tucked up in bed and you’ve got a chance to live a new life with them. You’ve got a chance to make their lives better, make it up to them. To talk to them, and listen to them when they want to talk. Don’t you know how precious that is? I would give anything to have that. Anything.’

Alison stared at Ellie, her head nodding as she tried to get her crying under control.

‘Don’t waste it,’ Ellie said.