24 Hours: An intense, suspenseful psychological thriller (15 page)

I
t turned
out I wasn’t going to extricate myself that easily from the Mal situation. Best laid plans, and all that.

I was too disturbed by Suzanne O’Brien’s claims to let them go. At tea-time Emily arrived with a DVD of
Black Beauty
for Polly, a giant tube of Smarties, and a stern word for me.

‘Retro is the way forward,’ she said, popping the DVD into the machine. ‘Let me know what you reckon to the riding, Pol. Roger?’

‘10-4,’ Polly blinked solemnly at her from the sofa, clutching her Smarties.

‘And don’t forget to save the blue ones for the Martians,’ Emily’s face was as serious as my daughter’s.

‘Over and out, roger.’

‘Hmm. She hasn’t quite got a handle on her CB name yet. Right, come on. I haven’t got long. Places to be.’ Emily shepherded me downstairs. She leant against the worktop as I loaded the dishwasher. ‘I just want to say. When are you going to start taking your own advice, Laurie Smith?’

‘What do you mean?’ I busied myself for a ludicrously long time with some forks.

But I knew what she meant.

‘You can dish it out, but you can’t see the wood for the trees.’

‘That’s a lot of metaphors.’ I shoved the forks into the tray very hard. ‘I’m not sure they make sense all mixed together.’

‘Whatever,’ she shrugged. ‘You know you have to speak to this guy. Soon. Whoever he is.’

‘Mal.’

‘Mal. You can’t just ignore it. You need to confront it.’ She handed me the phone from the side. ‘Call him.’

‘Really?’ I looked at her. ‘I don’t need any more confrontation in my life.’

‘Oh for God’s sake.’ She rolled her eyes dramatically. ‘Really, Laurie. Or it’ll be like one of those Medusa heads, growing more problems.’

So I called him. And when I heard the pleasure in his voice at my request to see him tonight, I felt horrible and guilty, like I was duping him, and then I felt stupid, because maybe it was the other way round; it seemed more likely that he was duping
me
.

Emily left. I sensed she was probably waiting for a call, but these days, she played her cards close to her chest when a new man was in the offing. She became cross when I got overexcited that this one would be
the one
. Phone in hand, she lectured me a bit more about how good I was at holding counsel but not taking my own advice, until I shoved her out of the door. Polly and I sung the
Black Beauty
theme tune as I put her to bed, and then I sat in the kitchen, waiting, and I wondered what Sid was doing now.

Mal arrived, brandishing a bottle of expensive Shiraz.

‘I don’t drink, actually,’ I said shortly. ‘But thanks.’

‘Oh,’ he looked confused, ‘but I thought … the other day…’

‘That was a one-off.’ I walked down to the kitchen and switched the kettle on, unable to quite bear facing him yet; rattling china and teabag around. Sid’s ‘Best Daddy’ mug, hand-painted by Pol, that he’d insisted on keeping here for ‘stability’, suddenly leapt out at me. I took a breath, and stuck it in the cupboard.

‘Tea or coffee?’ I said. ‘Or did you want to open the wine? There’s a corkscrew in that drawer.’

‘No, no, coffee’s good, thanks.’

Poor man. Obviously terrified now I was being so terse and unfriendly.

Mal hadn’t been downstairs before. Waiting for the kettle to boil, I was aware he was looking around, at the last surviving photo of the three of us, still pinned to the board, laughing on my mum’s seventieth birthday. Then he stood in front of Sid’s
Madonna Eats Eve #4
and suddenly I saw the painting through a stranger’s eyes, who would not understand it; who would no doubt be in the
Daily Mail
camp; think us odd or perverted for hanging a picture of women licking each other where we ate our cornflakes.

For a brief and utterly piercing moment, I missed Sid so badly it felt like someone had just gouged something out of my chest.

‘That’s amazing,’ Mal said. ‘That lithograph. I mean, I’m no expert, but the lines are really … pure.’

‘Yes,’ I agreed, surprised.

‘Is it—’

‘Do you mind—’ I felt the heat suffuse my face. ‘I’m sorry, Mal, but I’m not sure I can talk about it now.’ I sat heavily at the kitchen table, the fight going out of me.

‘Are you all right?’ Mal frowned, stepping towards me.

‘Not really,’ I admitted, and then I looked up, looked him full in the face – and finally, I began to relax.

This was in my head, surely. He was not a bad man, I knew that. I
knew
he wasn’t. Maybe my intuition
was
a little out of kilter, but I could read the honesty in his light eyes as he regarded me, and the struggle going on internally as he tried to work out what was happening. He was transparent. So much more so than Sid, who was so impermeable; so filled up with dark.

In the end, it was Mal who made the drinks.

‘There’s some biscuits in that starry tin,’ I pointed at the shelf. ‘Help yourself, please.’

‘I just ate.’ He plonked my tea in front of me, with the tin. ‘Fish and chips. Not so healthy,’ he patted his tummy ruefully. ‘Need to keep an eye on this!’

‘Hardly,’ I said automatically. He was about to make a joke – and I interrupted.

‘Mal, your wife came to see me today.’

‘Jesus,’ his coffee splashed on the floor. ‘Oh God. Sorry.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ I pushed a chair towards him. ‘Sit down, please.’

He did so, looking shaken.

‘She came to “warn me”. Her words.’

‘Warn you?’ Furiously he stood again, chair scraping noisily across the flagstones.

‘Apparently so.’ I looked at Madonna eating Eve. I felt exhausted.

‘The bloody bitch.’ Completely rattled, Mal stared down at me. ‘Warn you about
what
exactly?’

‘She said you are … obsessive.’

‘Oh, did she?’

‘Apparently,’ I repeated.

‘In what sense?’

‘She said you followed her here.’

He was struggling to contain himself, poor man. ‘Well, yeah, she might say that – but I had no choice. Because she upped and took a job and my son, with hardly any warning, making ultimatums.’ He ran his hands through his hair, slightly thinning at the crown, until it stood on end. ‘But I wouldn’t call that obsessive, would you? I would just call it being a good father.’

‘Fair enough,’ I said carefully. I didn’t want to meet his eye, I didn’t know how to phrase it. ‘But … she also knew about …’ I cleared my throat.

‘About what?’

‘About us.’ My words felt like boulders rolling down a hill.

‘Knew
what
about us?’ he stared at me.

‘That we’d slept together.’

‘No, she didn’t.’ He was furious, I could see, his face puce. ‘She doesn’t know that. Not from me, anyway.’

‘Well, she doesn’t know it from me either,’ I sat straighter. ‘I didn’t tell her anything.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’ He sat down too now. ‘I mean, she’s just guessing. After she saw us at the pub she had a complete meltdown.’

‘Right.’

‘And she’s insanely jealous, Laurie. Paranoid. That was part of the problem. She couldn’t bear me talking to anyone. Man, woman or child, she’d read badly into anything innocent.’

‘I see,’ I said. I wished I could remember more about that one time I’d met them at the Vale Centre.

‘She saw me kiss you in the car park after that quiz, and then she accused me of all sorts. She must have made the appointment then, I guess. I didn’t know, honestly.’

‘But why didn’t you tell me? About her – jealousy?’

‘Because. What would I say? “My wife’s shouting about you being a harlot.” That doesn’t bode well really, does it?’

‘A harlot?’ I grinned. I couldn’t help myself. ‘How very … old-fashioned.’

He looked at me warily and then he smiled too. ‘Yes, I suppose it is rather. I just – I didn’t want to put you off.’

‘Oh God, Mal.’ For a moment it seemed as if we were a proper couple, united by the madness of our respective exes. ‘This is all a bit ridiculous, isn’t it?’

And for the first time since the woman had come to see me, I felt better about the situation. Calmer. It made sense; she was just jealous, she was trying to stop Mal and I progressing in any way – not that we were progressing, of course.

‘Laurie,’ his face went serious in the way that means a man is either going to tell you something bad, or try to get you into bed. Funny buggers, men. He held a hand out to me and I took it and he pulled me up and then he kissed me.

I shut my eyes so I couldn’t see Sid in the photo behind Mal’s head, and I felt his lips on mine, warm, tasting of coffee, and then he lowered his mouth to my neck – and then I pushed him back quickly because I heard a footstep on the stairs. The spell was broken.

Polly was in the doorway, flushed and sleepy-eyed.

‘Oh, Pol,’ I rushed to her in the sort of over-protective way I wouldn’t normally; flustered, terrified she’d seen me in this man’s arms. ‘Bad dream, baby?’

She was still half-asleep, blinking at me like a koala bear, staring at Mal with huge eyes as I scooped her up and carried her, a small warm animal, towards the stairs.

‘Back in a sec.’ I didn’t really want to leave Mal alone in my kitchen, I wasn’t ready yet, but I had no choice.

Polly settled into bed with no fuss, eyes closing even before I pulled the cover up.

Rushing back downstairs, I found Mal standing by the kitchen door, car keys in hand.

‘I should go,’ he said.

I felt a strange kick of disappointment. ‘Yes of course,’ I bowed my head in acquiescence.

He flicked his jacket up from the back of the chair.

‘Lovely town, that,’ he pointed at a photo of Polly grinning from behind an enormous chocolate ice-cream. ‘Vejer, isn’t it? I recognise that church. We were there at the end of the summer. About six weeks ago. Last holiday together.’

‘That’s funny. It must be a place of …’ I searched for the word. ‘Of, you know, marking significance. It was mine and Polly’s first holiday alone.’

‘It was our last hoorah. To say goodbye, I guess.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I followed his broad back up the stairs.

‘It’s okay,’ I thought he said, but he was indistinct, ahead of me now in the hallway. ‘Such a big world, such a small one.’

He opened the door, and then turned, standing slightly below me on the doorstep. I waited, framed by the door. We didn’t touch each other. Instead we conducted that uncomfortable kind of farewell where neither party knows quite what to say, nor wants to commit to being the first to bring up the future – so neither of us did.

‘I’ll speak to her,’ was all he did say. ‘To Suzanne. I’ll tell her not to trouble you. I am so sorry that she did.’

‘It’s okay,’ I said.

‘She’s not handling it well, this divorce. Not well at all.’

You don’t say, I nearly replied – but I restrained myself. ‘I understand,’ I said instead, ‘it’s not easy. It never is.’ As if I was the great expert on divorces.

Although, in some ways, I was. Just not an expert on my own.

There was a brief pause, during which I realised I was hoping for something that did not then transpire.

‘See you soon,’ he said, and I nodded.

Mal walked down the front stairs into the cold night and there were no stars, and the moon was a tiny sliver of white high above us. I wanted to say something else, but I didn’t know what exactly. I was increasingly confused about the situation, and my own feelings, and I was scared that I was beginning to feel I rather liked this man.

So in the end I just shut the door behind him, as the phone started to ring inside the house.

But when I answered, rushing to pick it up, hoping maybe for my mother or Emily’s friendly voice, there was no one there.

T
he train has gone
. I cannot believe it. I look down the track into darkness, the track that heads to London, and I can’t believe it. My mother and my daughter float away from me, down the rails, whispering in the darkness – and I scream silently behind them,
Come back
. But of course they cannot hear.

The last Eurostar passed through the station about half an hour ago.

My daughter has gone.

The thought that if I hadn’t taken Saul to the hospital spins through my head – but I had to, I know that much, and that way of thinking is futile.

‘Are you all right, love?’ asks the solitary guard on the station, and I gaze with wide eyes that must reflect my fear, and I want to say no. I want to shout
No no no I am really not all right
– but of course he will just think I am mad and then what will happen? He might stop me, cart me off somewhere – and so I don’t shout that. I just back away and sit down on an orange metal seat with tiny holes in it, so cold through my cheap jeans, and I think fervently for a moment.

I check the time; I check my mother’s message again … and then it dawns on me. Stupidly, so stupidly, I did not allow for the French time difference. And so they must have reached London by now and I have not. The train has sped down the tracks to the big city – and I am still here. My mother is expecting me to meet them, and I won’t be there waiting – and where will she go next?

And worse, much worse.

Who else will be waiting at St Pancras?

I need to catch a break, as Emily would say. Emily. The thought of her makes me almost gasp out loud.

I find out the time and platform number of the last train to London. I have a ticket, bought with almost my last money. I think of Saul. I think of Polly.

I need help. I am delirious with fear and grief and exhaustion.

Digging out the disposable phone, I input the number that has been burnt into my brain for such a long time. There is a moment as my finger hovers over the call button where I think this way only madness lies – and then I hit it anyway. He will know by now that I am still alive – and what choice do I have? None.

My stomach churns as I listen to the ring. But he doesn’t answer.

So. That is that. Halfway through the automated voicemail, I cut the call off. There is no point leaving a message. What would I say?

And as I pocket the phone, all I can think of is Polly and somewhere underlying that panicked thought is the idea I will never be warm again, it is so cold; so cold I envisage my blood as ice now, my veins as frozen rivulets. I look for the waiting room and then my phone rings and it makes me jump.

‘Who is this?’ The tension in his voice vibrates down the line.

‘Me,’ I mumble. ‘It’s me.’

Your me
. There is no need for names.

‘Laurie? Is that you? For fuck’s sake, Laurie—’ 

I was always your me, wasn’t I?

For a moment I actually think he’s going to cry. 

‘For fuck’s sake, I’ve been sick with worry.’ But of course he doesn’t. Anger is his default position. ‘Where the hell are you?’

I am trying to formulate sensible thoughts. 

‘Are you okay?’ 

I swallow.

‘Laurie? Speak to me.’

‘Unfortunately for you, yes I am,’ I say. ‘Where are
you
?’

‘At home.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, really. Why? Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘Did you try to kill me?’

‘Are you fucking insane?’

Possibly. Probably.

‘No. Are you really at home?’ I crane my ears for background noise at his end, but there is nothing to say that he’s not telling the truth – about that at least. ’Did you speak to my mum?’

‘No.’

He’s lying. I’m sure he’s lying. I stare at the predictor-board that flickers as I speak. My train is in six minutes apparently. It can’t come quickly enough. ‘Surely you must have tried? When you … when you heard what happened?’

‘No, Laurie. I didn’t. I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. I still don’t. They said you were dead, Laurie.’

‘Well, I’m not. Despite your best efforts.’

‘Laurie,’ he howls. ‘Shut up, for Christ’s sake. Why would I want to hurt you?’

‘You always hurt me.’

Silence.

‘Sid.’ I need to know he’s not going near Polly. ‘So you didn’t speak to my mum? Did you go to the hospital?’

‘Yes … no. I didn’t know what the hell was going on, and I didn’t want to panic anyone until I understood, and I set off … and then … I … I didn’t get there.’ He pauses, changes tack. ‘Anyway, she’s abroad. They’re not back till tomorrow.’

‘No, Sid, they’re back now—’ The instant they’re out, I want to drag my words back in. ‘Maybe,’ I mumble, ineffectually. Too late.

‘What do you mean, maybe?’

I can’t think quickly enough. I’m too tired, too distraught. What I do think is this: if Sid doesn’t know they’re coming back, he’s no danger to Polly – except now I’ve laid my lie bare. And he knows I’m lying. He knows me too well and I’m so bad at it.

‘What do you mean?’ he prompts. ‘I thought they got in tomorrow night? From the hell-pit.’

He means Euro Disney. For a moment I feel a blazing hatred for myself; but that is not helpful. Nor is despising him for his antipathy; for not even knowing when his own daughter is back.

I’ve been so fearful that it was him who set the fire, him who would reach Polly first; but now my fear ebbs a fraction. However much he wanted to punish me, he doesn’t even know she’s headed for London. He can’t be a danger to her: to his, to
our
own daughter. 

Can he?

And suddenly, with great clarity, I see what my best course of action is. Of course. I need to get him on side. I need to stop fighting him and make him think I will depend on him for my survival. I see myself from above: exhausted, unwashed, spent. My need will appeal to his delusions of grandeur. If I get on the train, he could meet me. And if I am with him, he can’t hurt Polly. Of course. I don’t care what he does to me, but I know that I can save her if I am with him. I am so tired, so desperate, so maddened by worry and grief that I can’t think straight – but this feels like an epiphany. I take the plunge.

‘Can you meet me at St Pancras?’ I say. The boards flicker again. Three minutes and I’ll be on the train. I’ll be speeding towards Polly.

‘Sure,’ he agrees. ‘Whatever you want. When?’

‘Thank you. I’ll be there in forty minutes or so, I guess. Just call me on this number and tell me where you are.’

‘I’ll leave now.’ I’ve never known Sid so compliant. ‘I’ll text you when I’m there.’

‘And send me Mum’s mobile number, can you? The battery’s dead on my own phone. I can’t get any numbers out. I need to ring her.’

‘I’ll send it now.’

His strange enthusiasm unsettles me more. But I have no options I can see.

I hear the train before I see it; the relief I feel is so huge my knees almost buckle as the sleek metal monster slides into view from the darkness.

‘Sid,’ I yell above the noise. ‘I’m getting on the train. I’ll see you at St Pancras.’

In my seat, in the warmth I’ve craved, I’m nodding off, my head wedged between seat and window, when my phone bleeps. I expect my mother’s number but it’s the girl called Binny.

The kisses surprise me. It takes me a moment to decipher the rest. When I do, I text back.

Then I text Sid.
Mum’s number please
.

Two minutes later he responds:
I’ve left her a message for you. Having trouble fwd-ing numbers. On my way.

Liar. I start a terse reply, but I don’t send it: it only reminds me of our marital battles. In frustration, I chuck the phone down beside me; close my stinging eyes just for a second. I’ll get the number from him when I get there.

S
omething is tapping
at my arm. I can’t think where I am; my head’s so heavy it feels like my neck won’t support it as I come back to consciousness. I pull away with a gasp as I open my eyes.

‘You have to get off now, love,’ a man says. I struggle to focus.

He is awkward; slightly embarrassed. I imagine it’s my appearance that worries him. His breath is bad; rancid; I can smell it from here. Staggering to my feet, he points at something.

‘Your phone, love,’ he says.

‘Thanks.’ I scoop it up. There’s a text from Sid.

As I near the door, I ring him.

‘I’m here,’ I say. Stepping down from the train a black woman in silk trousers pulls a case across my path so I stumble and drop the phone. The man with bad breath retrieves it for me.

‘Hello?’ I say into the phone, but I’ve lost him.

I walk towards the exit through a station more empty than I’ve ever known it. Sleepy tourists lie on benches and rucksacks, hats pulled over faces, waiting for trains. A drunk wanders in and is quickly escorted away by a man in an orange fluorescent vest.

I know they are not here, but I scan the station for Polly and my mother. I imagine the euphoria of seeing them.

I don’t see them, of course. I follow the signs to the exit and, as I emerge into the night, I see the car across the street.

In my panic, I step out too quickly and a taxi blares its horn and slams on the brakes. I jump back. I look over at his car again.

Something is triggered deep in my brain; something I have buried. 

Sid is waiting – but I find I am frozen. I can’t take that step towards him. A memory rears from our past: an apparition that I grab at, slipping like smoke through my fingers. If he hurts me before I reach Polly … if he takes me somewhere and locks me away …

I waver, and then I turn away. I am suddenly desperate that Sid doesn’t see me. At the cab-rank, I sidestep the drunk, who wants to befriend me, his hair in matted clots around his filthy face. He isn’t very old. I climb into the first taxi that comes. 

When I’ve given my mother’s address, I sink into the back seat. As we pull out, I turn to look at the car. I imagine him sitting, smoking, impatient, thin fingers tapping on the steering wheel, the ever-present fury building in him.

The city unfurls around me, flashes past the windows. Exhausted, I’ve entered some realm of hyper-sensation; almost painfully aware of noise, lights, the mutter of the driver’s talk radio show. It is nearly midnight, but this city never sleeps. The streets are still busy, Camden’s pavements thronged. We cut through North London; we pass not far from the end of my road. Past the shadows of Hampstead Heath, up and out towards the suburbs.

I call my mother’s phone again. She must be home now; she must have got my messages. I imagine Polly trailing, exhausted, up to bed. I imagine my mother lugging her neat travel-bag up to her bedroom, disrobing, hanging her best travelling jacket back in the wardrobe; donning her long flowery dressing-gown with the zip right up the front. Bustling back down to her kitchen, relieved to be home, switching on the kettle.

So why doesn’t she call? I phone her house for the hundredth time, turn the phone over and over in my hands until it’s hot and sticky with my sweat. And then suddenly we reach my mother’s street and I crane forward anxiously. I imagine seeing Polly; running up the stairs, picking her up, her spindly legs flapping against me. I crave her like a drug.

I concentrate on Polly; force back the memory, the physical feeling of Emily’s loss; of having to tell my daughter her beloved friend is dead.

My mother’s house is in darkness. My heart contracts. Maybe they are in the back of the house. The spare room is upstairs, overlooking the Japanese garden my mother is so proud of, that John helped her plan and plant, the tiny wooden bridge, the pagoda he built for her, covered in vine. The kitchen’s at the back too. I fumble around: of course I don’t have enough money to pay the driver.

‘I just have to get some cash from my mum.’ I sound like I’m seventeen again. Tears spring to my eyes. If my mother was here, everything would be all right.

He casts a dubious glance at the dark house. ‘Really?’ he says; old, bald, tired. Too tired for London nights. He’s heard it all before.

‘I’ll only be a sec,’ I am out of the door before he can stop me. I run up the front path, the wet lavender bush dampening my cheek. I put my finger on the bell and hold it down. If I press hard enough, someone will come.

But there is no answering kerfuffle, no noise at all. I do not see my mother’s shape trundle down the hall behind the frosted glass. I do not hear stirring upstairs. I bend and peer through the letterbox. I find I am praying.

There is nothing. I can see mail stacked on the hall table, which my mother would have picked up to open immediately. So she hasn’t been home yet.

I stand again. My heart is racing too fast. I bang on the door now with my closed fist. Nothing.

The driver is still there, the engine ticking in the background.

‘Shit,’ I say. ‘Shit shit shit shit shit.’

I walk slowly back towards the taxi.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I root in my pocket. I can’t give him everything. ‘I thought she’d be back before me. Can I give you a fiver now, and send the rest?’

‘Send the rest?’ he sneers at me. ’Oh come on, love.’

‘I will, I promise.’

He appraises me. This is the first time he’s been able to see me properly. He looks into my face. Beneath the streetlight, I am aware I look a mess. Bruised face, bandaged hand, mad eyes, mismatched outfit. Why would he trust me?

‘I should call the police,’ he says. I don’t really care what he does: I am just trying to think where my mother and my daughter might be.

He snatches the note from my hand, muttering, and pulls off. And then, as I am about to despair, I have a brainwave! John must have collected them. Of course!

‘Hey!’ I wave my hand at the receding taxi, but he’s turning the corner now and even if he can see me, he’s not coming back.

How bloody bloody stupid. And I have a horrible feeling that I know John’s away; that he was going to Cumbria with his walking chums, to tramp the hills whilst Mum did her grandmotherly thing.