No Place to Hide (30 page)

Sallie Jo’s eyebrows rose. “I really don’t think that’s likely,” she protested, “and I already know I don’t want you to go. I’ve come to think of you as a friend, a real close friend, and I can promise you what you’ve told me today isn’t going to change that.”

Justine wasn’t sure what to say; she only knew that it didn’t feel right to continue arguing.

“Listen,” Sallie Jo said, more forcefully, “I understand that if it gets out you’re going to face some prejudice for a while, ignorant, narrow-minded people who can’t see any further than the backs of their Bibles, but you’ll have me to help take care of that, and believe me, folks around here, they know better than to get on the wrong side of Sallie Jo.”

This time Justine’s smile was real. It was true, Sallie Jo was a force to be reckoned with at times, and no one was ever going to take that away from her. “I still say you should give yourself some time to think it over,” she responded.

“OK, if that’s what you want, but I’m telling you my mind’s made up, and there won’t be any changing it. What’s more,” she ran on, a sudden light sparking in her eyes, “no way am I letting you go anywhere till we’ve been into that house on the lake and found out all there is to find out about your grandma.”

Justine felt herself blanch.

Sallie Jo smiled. “But I get that it isn’t going to happen today.”

Present Day—Culver, Indiana

It wasn’t until a week later that Justine spoke to Matt again. By then a blaze of fall colors was gleaming like fresh candy up and down the streets of Culver, all around Lake Max, and throughout the Academies. The whole town was glowing with the season’s radiance, the people seeming uplifted by its brazen flamboyance. She couldn’t remember the change happening so fast or so dramatically in Britain, which had something to do, she remembered once hearing or learning at school, with this being a continental climate, while the UK’s was maritime.

Whatever the geographical or environmental reason, it was more beautiful than any fall she’d ever seen and made her feel ludicrously, though pleasingly, proud to be an American. As if nationality could lay any claim to nature!

When Matt called she’d just returned from viewing an apartment uptown in a block next to the Culver fire station, where Lula and Hazel had joined a group of other children at the weekend to climb all over the engines. Afterward parents and kids together had traipsed across the road to the town park, where they’d picnicked, played on the swings, and had some fun wondering about two empty Adirondack chairs that had appeared on the beach. Who had put them there? Would they ever come back? Maybe the chairs were just out to enjoy the weather. Were they contemplating a swim?

It had all been silly, innocent fun that Justine and Lula had enjoyed. Then Justine had spotted a group of girls from the Academies on their way into town, and it had seemed to drain the light from the day. They had looked so engaging in their navy blue uniforms, so full of easy laughter and untroubled confidence. Just as Abby had when she was their age, not so very long ago.

For no reason she could think of, her eyes drifted to the top of the water tower behind Papa’s, where two dozen or more vultures sat watching the world, ready to strike. It made her feel deadened and queasy, as she was reminded of Ben in the tree with his crossbow. Telling Sallie Jo about him had been like smashing open a piñata to find all her happy memories infested with bugs and poisonous things. She had to try to put it behind her, close a door on the past, but even if she could, she knew it would always find a way in.

That night they’d gone to Sallie Jo’s for supper, and to her relief no mention had been made of Ben. Sallie Jo had only brought the subject up once since learning the truth, when she’d said that she didn’t intend to keep asking about it, but if Justine wanted to talk again, at any time, she would always be there.

“She seems to have taken it much better than I’d expected,” Justine told Matt after updating him on the conversation she’d had with Sallie Jo.

“Then she’s gone up even further in my estimation,” he responded. “Luckily not everyone’s as uncharitable or unforgiving as some of the people we’ve encountered this past year.”

Shuddering even to think of those occasions and how shockingly ready people could be to throw out judgment and blame—as if she and Matt didn’t blame themselves enough already—Justine said, “I tried calling you at the weekend, but there was no reply.” His failure to ring back right away had left her imagining him in that brutal visitors’ hall with Ben, or perhaps he’d been somewhere with Hayley.

“I was at the prison for some of the time,” he told her. “The rest I was at my mother’s and I forgot to take my mobile. I guess I get so few calls these days that it’s no longer the first thing I reach for when I leave the apartment.”

Knowing it would be the same for her if it weren’t for Lula, she said, “I don’t suppose Simon and Gina were there?” Even saying their names was hard; picturing them, imagining what they were still going through, how wretchedly empty their lives must feel without Wes, was enough to make her want to cower away in a dark, punishing place that might in some bizarre, merciful way alleviate the other families’ pain.

“No, they weren’t, but apparently they’re settling into their new place, which is only a couple of miles from Mum’s. I think they feel the need to be close to her, and she wants it too.”

Justine could understand that. After such a life-changing tragedy they’d obviously turned to each other for comfort and support, which meant that for a while Matt had lost his mother and brother on top of everything else. He and Catherine saw each other regularly now, but Simon never joined them, and she knew how much Matt missed his brother. She didn’t doubt that Simon missed Matt too, but how were they ever going to spend time together without thinking of why their lives had been so brutally torn apart? “Rob mentioned in one of his emails,” she said, “that Simon had applied for a job with the Hampshire force.”

“Yes, and he got it. He’s due to start at the beginning of next month. Gina’s getting involved in all sorts of volunteer works apparently, a lot of it with Mum.”

Gina had always put herself out to help others, so it was no surprise that she was trying to provide support for strangers in spite of being so much in need of it herself. Justine remembered how desperate she herself had felt over this past year to reach out to those in need, to share compassion and understanding, empathy and warmth, but no one would have wanted it from her. It was strange how giving comfort to others could provide a kind of comfort itself. “I don’t suppose,” she said, “there’s any news of Cheryl and Brad?” Thinking of Cheryl was sometimes almost as hard as thinking of Abby, mainly because Cheryl was still out there but had never tried to be in touch. They’d been so close, and Cheryl had relied so heavily on their friendship for moral as well as emotional support. At the very worst time in her life, she’d been unable to turn to Justine, and that alone nearly broke Justine’s heart. How fortunate, yet undeserving, she was to have found a new friend in Sallie Jo. Had Cheryl been able to find someone else to help her to face the future? Were she and Brad still together? How supportive had he been during those darkest, most horrific of days?

“Not that Mum mentioned,” Matt was saying. “I think they stayed in touch with Simon and Gina for a while, but I’m not sure if they’ve kept it up.”

“What about the others? Melanie, Maddy…?”

“All I can tell you is what you already know, that they left the vale soon after we did and no one’s been back. The whole area is deserted, apparently. No one goes down there from the village; it’s only the ghoulish type of tourists who make the trek and post selfies online:
Guess where I am?
I saw on the news that someone actually tweeted a picture of himself with a crossbow.”

Justine’s eyes closed as though to shut out the sick image. “Why was it on the news?” she asked.

“Because of its bad taste. There’s a lot going on about that sort of thing lately.”

This was why neither of them belonged to any of the social media sites. They really didn’t need to know what the world at large, mostly people who’d never even met them, thought of them or would like to do to their son. “Has anyone managed to sell their house?” she said.

“Not that I know of. No one wants to live there.”

Who would, now? Yet it was still difficult to think of that beautiful, special place with its quaint cottages and leafy park, the humpback bridge and trickling brook, the thriving village nearby, the countryside all around in an abandoned, overgrown state, and no longer able to provide happy memories for families who deserved them. Yet another consequence of Ben’s actions: people couldn’t get their money out of their properties. She and Matt were in the same boat, obviously, but Matt had earned very well over the years, and a large catering company from Bath hadn’t wasted any time in snapping up Portovino, absorbing it seamlessly into its own booming business, keeping Portovino’s clients and a lot of its stock, but losing the name.

“So when did you get back from your mother’s?” she asked, needing to move her thoughts away from the vale.

“This morning, and when I saw you’d rung I immediately cleared my diary and rang you back.”

She smiled. “So you had a lot on today?”

“Masses, but it can wait.”

Knowing he was teasing, that like her he was struggling to fill his days, she said, “Are we going to talk more often now?”

“I think we should, at least once a month.”

Thrown, she said, “I was hoping it might be more often than that.”

“It would be hard to build a new life if it were.”

He could be right, but surely he wanted to be in touch as much as she did? “Are we talking about you or me building a new life?” she heard herself asking, more tersely than she’d intended.

“Both of us. It’s not ideal like this, we recognize that…Apart from anything else, I need to know about Lula, what she’s doing, how she’s growing…Will you send some pictures?”

“Of course.” She couldn’t, wouldn’t ask him to send pictures of Ben even if he could take them, which he probably couldn’t. She didn’t want them, not of how he was looking now with his crudely shaven head and brutal stubble, presuming he was still like that. Perhaps he was even more thuggish. Prison would do that to him, make him appear meaner, maybe even more sinister than he had in the press, when he’d looked like someone anyone would be terrified to meet in the dark.

Considering his actions, they’d be right to feel terrified at any time of day.

In a tone she didn’t care too much for, she said, “Are you interested to know what I’m doing too?”

Without hesitation he said, “Always.”

So what should she tell him? She tried to think, but her mind had gone blank. In the end, she said, “It’s very beautiful here right now. I can send some pictures of that too, if you like.”

“Yes, please.”

She didn’t understand why he wasn’t reacting to her snippiness, or why she was finding this so difficult. What was making her angry, or upset, or whatever it was she was feeling? She guessed it was a lot of things: the frustration of not being together, the surprise that he hadn’t called before now, that he seemed to be coping better than she was, although she had no idea if that were true. Perhaps it was her failure to ask about Ben that was making her edgy, guilty, annoyed with Matt when really it was her own cravenness she was finding intolerable.

In the end, because she knew he was waiting, she braced herself and said, “Do you want to tell me about him?”

Sounding relieved, though cautious, he said, “I guess that depends if you want to know.”

She didn’t, and yet maybe she did, provided it was what she wanted to hear, such as remorse, cooperation with the authorities, a connection with humanity. “How was he when you last saw him?” she ventured.

“About the same as the time before that. Cocky, surly, bored…”

So he hadn’t changed. “Bored with you, or with where he is?”

With a laugh he said, “Probably both. I keep asking him why he sends me a visiting order if it’s such a chore to see me, and he says he doesn’t want to deprive me of the highlight of my week.”

She didn’t smile. Her son’s teasing was possibly even more grating than his arrogance.

“He was surprised,” Matt continued, “and I think put out, when I told him this week that I wouldn’t be able to make the next visit.”

“Why can’t you make it?”

“I can. I just didn’t want him to think that my whole life revolves around him.”

“Why not, when it does?”

“Not entirely. I’m going to start writing again.”

Her heart gave an unexpected lurch. Though she felt glad for him, obviously, for some reason thinking of him immersing himself in another world that didn’t include her, or Ben, or any part of their appallingly wrecked lives felt absurdly like a betrayal. Perhaps she was jealous. Wouldn’t she seize the same escape if it were open to her?

“I thought it would be best to do it under a pseudonym,” he was saying, “but Hayley isn’t convinced.”

“Oh? Why?” she asked stiffly.