The Broken Ones (8 page)

“I’ll show you the attic,” I say. Serial killers always hide in the attic. A shiver runs down my spine.

“Don’t get lost up there.” Mum’s voice is laced with sarcasm. Then she laughs.

PC Chowdhury is nice about it, but even as we’re walking up the attic steps, I get the strongest feeling that no one is there and no one has been there. I think he knows this whole thing is ridiculous as well. I begin to wonder about the recording and the implications of its contents. As I watched the two police officers listen to it, I figured that their raised eyebrows and intakes of breath were out of shock that there was an intruder in my home. Now I wonder if it was disbelief. Maybe they think I’m a crazy woman who doctored the file. Or maybe they think it was Mum.

As I stand under the single light bulb in the attic, I replay the voice in my mind. I don’t need the file. I know exactly what that voice sounds like. I know every nuance and tone in that serpent-like hiss. I know every word.
You will know me
.

Could it be her?

Could it be Mum?

The stifling attic air suffocates me, and the back of my neck dampens with sweat. What if Mum spoke on the recording to frighten me? What if all of this is a cruel joke? I want to be able to dismiss that thought, but I can’t. This could be her revenge. It would be just like her. She wants to make me crazier than she is because she hates me that much. My hand moves up my chest to circle my throat. I think of her, and I squeeze until I can’t breathe.

“I think I’m all done.”

My hand drops, and I blink my thoughts away. PC Chowdhury turns to me with a pitying smile on his face. I want to slap it off, but I settle for forming a fist at my side.

“There’s nothing here,” he says with a shrug. “Did your mum remember anything?”

I shake my head.

“That’s a shame. She could have helped us a great deal.”

He bends his head as he steps over the junk strewn around the attic floor. I finally manage to move my feet, directing him back towards the steps. He descends first. I glance back at the attic. There’s nothing here, only all our junk collected over the years. Old photo albums, boxes of winter clothes, my university work. I switch off the bulb and follow Chowdhury back downstairs.

*

The police are kind enough to open an investigation, but by the time they leave, I’m already doubting what I heard on the recording. They tell me to keep a log of anything unusual and to write down, or print out records, of all inappropriate phone calls. The words make me shiver. That’s what you do when you’re being stalked and harassed. Stalked women never have a happy ending in the movies.

I’m not taking any chances. My next phone call is to the locksmith to change our locks. Mum hovers around the locksmith after he arrives, breathing over his shoulder and staring as he works. I barely have the energy to distract her away from him. She’s confused for the rest of the day. She seems to forget all about the police coming to our home and asks me why the man is changing our locks over half a dozen times.

I answer her questions and make cups of tea. I do it all in a daze. My body is disconnected from my mind as I step around the kitchen like a zombie. Erin leaves with relief spread all over her face and with a limp wave I see through the window. The locksmith hurries out of the door, also relieved to be away from the demented old lady with the slack face and the funny questions.

And life goes on despite this little interruption. We eat dinner in relative silence, wittering to each other about mundane things like the weather and the tasteless food on our plates. We go to bed at the same time. We lie down on our beds in our separate rooms and we pretend that everything is normal.

But it isn’t. Either someone was in our house, Mum is deliberately trying to drive me insane, or the Alzheimer’s has her confused enough to make up voices in the night. None of those options bring me any comfort.

My dreams are as unfocused as my mind. They swim and swirl. I hear voices.
The
voice. Doors open and shut in my mind. A shadowy hand floats along the walls of our house, turning the walls into a dark, chalky substance, like ashes.

I call Alisha and Moira when I wake up, and they agree that I need another day off to recuperate from the events of yesterday. I explain what happened and they’re very sympathetic about the intruder, expressing the right amount of concern and alarm. For some reason it doesn’t feel genuine. Not even from Alisha, my best friend and the person I considered my only ally in this world.

The problem with finding that the world is imploding around you, and that your life has turned into a series of problems, is that there comes a time when the people around you are sick of hearing about it but are too polite to tell you they’re sick of it. You’re the bore who makes their day a little less sunny. You’re a negative influence in their lives and there’s nothing you can do about it, unless you want to keep your mouth shut and not say anything. No one wants to be the bore. When you’re not it, you avoid the bore like the plague. Then, one day, it comes around and it’s you and you’re alone.

I make one more phone call before breakfast. It’s to Erin, telling her to take the day off. I want to spend quality time with Mum to process the events of the last few days. At least, that’s what I tell her. Then I check my bank balance online and make a few phone calls. It’s time to make some changes around here.

Mum is quiet, which is good. I make her tea and toast and suggest she gets some rest after what happened. She waddles off to the living room to read her book as the doorbell goes.

I answer the door to a skinny chap in blue overalls.

“You called about setting up the security system?” he asks.

“That’s right. Come in.”

He glances down at a piece of paper in his hand. “So, it’s CCTV on the outside of the house and the nanny cameras in every room.”

He doesn’t say what he’s thinking. But I answer the question anyway. “My mother has Alzheimer’s disease, and I want to keep an eye on her while I’m at work.”

“Oh,” he says, apparently relieved that there’s a normal explanation for my security needs.

I don’t tell him that I want to watch my mother, or that I want to watch my mother’s nurse, too. I don’t tell him that I don’t trust anyone anymore. Instead, I join Mum in the living room so I can keep her distracted while he works in the rest of the house.

When he’s done with the upstairs, I suggest to Mum that we have a clothes sort-out. If there’s one thing that ignites the sparkle in her eyes, it’s the opportunity to criticise and throw out my clothes. She’s more than willing to sit on the bed as I hold up dress after top after skirt and she tells me which body part they emphasise. Some make my ankles look fat. Others highlight my wide hips or my chubby upper arms. By the time the security guy is done, I’ve packed up two fat bags of clothes for a cancer charity.

“Don’t forget to put them on the step,” Mum says as I begin to leave the room. “The collection is tomorrow.” She points to the label on the bag to demonstrate.

I swallow my snappy reply and head downstairs. The security guy is already packing up his bag.

“Are you all done? I’m sorry I completely forgot to make you a cup of tea,” I say.

“No worries. I’m more of a juice drinker, anyway.” He passes me a booklet. “Everything you need to know should be in here. My number is on the front, in case you need anything.”

I thank the man and show him the way out of the house. When the door has closed behind him, I can’t help but wonder whether I’ve done the right thing. Have I crossed a line? If Mum or Erin find out about this, I could burn my bridges as quickly as a forest fire. But when I examine things deeper, I can’t help but wonder whether either relationship is particularly strong anyway.

When Mum’s footsteps sound on the stairs, I slip the booklet into the top drawer of the cabinet and try not to stare at the hidden cameras. No, I think, I need to establish order in this house. I need to get to the bottom of whatever is going on. I’m not overreacting. This has to be done, even if I have to spend money on an expensive security system to do it.

“Was there someone in the house?” Mum asks.

“No,” I reply.

“But I heard—”

“There was no one here. Was there, Mum?”

For once, she’s the one who shrinks away from me. She’s the one who stands there with her mouth flapping open and shut. She’s the vulnerable one.

*

It’s a relief to have Erin back. A full day with Mum, especially with everything going on, can be taxing. I’m more than happy to hand things over to her and head to the school. But Erin walks in through the door with a puzzled frown on her face. She leaves the front door open and gestures for me to follow her.

“I don’t know what’s happened, but…” She points down to the driveway.

“What the hell?”

Our drive is covered in the clothes I left out for the charity last night. I bend down and pick up one of the bags.

“It’s ripped open,” I say. “As though someone has pulled the plastic wrapper apart.”

Erin bends down next to me. “Are you sure it wasn’t clawed or chewed open by an animal?”

I’m no expert on animal tracks, but I would expect a bag to be shredded by an animal, not pulled open like this. I collect a blue blouse from amidst the gravel—a top Mum said revealed my “bingo wings”. It’s cut open. Slit from top to bottom.

I turn to Erin. “Do animals have scissors?”

“Fucking hell, Soph.”

We remain there, staring at the clothes strewn over the ground. A few weeks ago, I would have chalked this up to bored teenagers, but now I’m not so sure. My head swims with possibilities.

I really am being stalked. But by whom? Peter is the first name who pops into my mind. He’s the one who has been calling me. But what about the other people in my life? Erin? Alisha? The woman across the street with the cat? My boss, Moira? My ex-boyfriend, Jamie?

Mum. Mum faking the extent of her illness, teasing me by mentioning a shadow, pretending to see people at night, making that terrible voice on the MP3 file… All of it to punish me.

I finally come out of my trance and snap a few photographs with my phone. I’ll need to keep this in my log of “unusual activity” to show the police. Then I hurriedly collect my clothes, shoving them into the ripped plastic bags, ignoring the extent of the damage. It makes me sick to my stomach to think of anyone deliberately waiting until night time, then bringing a pair of scissors and cutting through my clothes.

Then I remember. The camera.

My heartbeat quickens.

“I’m late for work.”

“I can finish up here,” Erin says. “I’m sorry this happened. I just don’t understand it. Why would anyone do this?”

I fold my arms across my body, flinching at the reminder of how creepy this situation is. How violating it feels. “Be careful today. Keep the doors locked, okay? Whoever this is only seems to come at night, but you never know.”

“You be careful too,” she says. The early morning sun highlights the fine hair on her skin. She runs a hand through her pixie cut. “They could be following you.”

I hurry to my car, wanting nothing more than to leave this house.

“Sophie, how are you?”

In my haste to get to my classroom, I almost walk straight past Alisha. She frowns when she sees me, a telling testament to how frazzled I must appear. I run the back of my hand over my forehead, smearing sweat across my skin. My left arm is filled with books and my laptop. My shoulder bag is hanging from my arm. I daren’t glance down at my clothes. Did I even iron them this morning? I can’t remember.

“Much better, thanks.” I force a smile.

Alisha does not seem convinced. Her frown only deepens, and a furrow appears between her eyebrows. Either she’s worried, or she’s disgusted at my dishevelled appearance.

“Are you sure? You seem stressed. Want to get a cuppa in the teacher’s room? We have ten minutes until registration.”

It pains me to see the hopeful expression in her eyes. I love Alisha. She’s my best friend. But there will always be a barrier between us, a wall that I keep failing to pull down. It’s jealousy. I’m jealous of her life, of her husband and her children, and the fact that she doesn’t have a bitter, slowly decaying mother to care for. Right now I’m the bitter one, because I have to go into my classroom, plug in my laptop and watch security camera footage to find out if that same decaying woman ripped open my bag of clothes and cut them into ribbons to spite me, because she hates her own daughter so much.

“I can’t, sorry, I have marking to do.” My tone is brusque and unfair. I’m walking away from her as she stands staring after me. All she ever does is try to help me, and I can’t find a way to be grateful. It hurts to be around her while my life is falling to pieces. It hurts to be around anyone happy, because I see the way I suck the happiness from the room.

It’s a relief to open the door to my classroom, and a relief to close it behind me. I dump the books on my desk and quickly set up my laptop. I don’t have a lot of time, and I’ve got a complicated system to work out. I spent most of last night reading and rereading the booklet I received with the installation.

I log in and pull up the camera feed from the front of the house. It takes me a couple of attempts, but soon I’m able to rewind the feed and play short busts through the night, rewinding and fast-forwarding until I find activity on the recording. There’s the neighbour’s cat again; a fox comes sniffing up to the bag and I freeze, wondering if my paranoia was just that… but then the fox turns away and runs into the night.

It’s not until about 4am that there’s movement again. It’s so quick that I almost miss it. I rewind and watch again. It’s almost a blur.

A figure darts from the hedge on the left of the screen towards our door. Then it disappears. I catch my breath, try to calm my heart, and watch again. The figure is almost completely in shadow and little more than a black blob in the darkness. But, despite its being hunched over, it’s almost certainly a person. The problem is, the person disappears directly underneath the camera, which is affixed to the wall above the door. They must be crouched down next to the step where the charity bag is still sitting.

I keep watching the recording. For almost thirty seconds, nothing happens. Then I start as a gloved hand reaches out and snatches the bag of clothes. The sickness in my stomach rises to my throat. I clamp a hand over my mouth to keep it down. I need to keep a clear head. I need to watch the rest of this recording and find out exactly who is stalking me and why. But there’s little else to see. At one point, some of my clothes fly up into the air, making me gasp. I’m watching a person destroy my things for no apparent reason. More of my clothes are thrown into the air, and then there’s another blur and the vandal is gone.

I sit back in my chair, covered in cold sweat, defeated and drained. I was so convinced that this would show that Mum was playing a cruel joke. Instead, I know no more than I did yesterday. The figure was so hunched, and moved so fast, that it could have been anyone. I didn’t even assess their physique. They could be fat or thin, male or female.

The children begin to filter into the classroom as I start to watch the footage from Mum’s room in fast-forward. About two hours in, the camera goes blank. I pause the feed and try to rewind it.

“Miss, are you going to do registration? Shall I do it for you?” Alice being a goody two-shoes again.

I pick up my register and read out the names of the students, but all the time—even as I’m marking ticks next to their names—all I can think about is the video feed. Why did it go blank? Could Mum have figured out what I’ve done? Did she turn the camera off somehow? And if she did, how did she do it without walking up to the camera? I would have seen her do it. Perhaps the camera is faulty. The timing is disastrous, but these things do happen.

It’s a struggle, but I force my concentration back to the children. It’s not their fault so much is going on in my private life. They still deserve an education. So, for the entire morning, that’s what they get. There are moments where I find myself zoning out, thinking about the stalker, about the clothes and about Mum, but I manage to be coherent enough to stick to the lesson plan. But as soon as it’s over, I’m back to my laptop watching the footage. The footage from Mum’s camera is completely blank for the rest of the night. I give up on it, instead switching to the live feed in the rest of the house. It jolts me for a moment. I didn’t quite expect the feeling of shame that washes over me as I watch Erin in the kitchen heating up soup for Mum as she sits at the table. It’s so intimate. So voyeuristic. And oddly compelling.

Erin appears to be chatting, while Mum sits stoically still. When Erin takes the soup across to the table, Mum is scowling. She folds her arms and turns away while Erin patiently places the bowl before her, with the spoon on the right. Erin sits down next to Mum with her sandwich, smiling brightly. But Mum is still scowling. Eventually she picks up the spoon and drops it into the bowl. The soup splatters over the table, and I’m still sat staring at them, watching the stubbornness of my mother as she refuses to eat. Erin even offers the woman her own sandwich, but still Mum looks away.

I’m so enthralled in the video feed that I hardly notice the children come back. I missed playground duty altogether. My face burns with embarrassment. I can’t remember who I was supposed to work with on playground duty. Maybe it was Samuel, the one male teacher on our staff, an older man with grey nose hair and a tea-spotted tie. I rub my eyes with the heels of my hands, failing to rub away the thoughts from my mind.

The rest of the afternoon is a diluted version of my lesson plan. I let the children get way out of hand during their individual work while I watch more of Erin and Mum going about their day. I see nothing out of the ordinary on the video feed. Mum is her usual stubborn self, nearly always sitting or standing with her arms folded, her chin high and haughty. Erin spends most of the time chatting, all smiles and patience. I can’t hear what she’s saying, but I imagine it’s the same kind of chatter I hear when I’m with them, comments on the weather or compliments on Mum’s outfit, anything breezy and light.

At the end of the day I have no desire to stop and chat with my colleagues, and I definitely want to avoid Moira, so I pack up my things and rush to my car.

The summer weather appears to be breaking. Dark clouds have formed above. The air is thick with a pre-storm atmosphere. My skin is slick with sweat from the muggy climate. At these times, when the weather changes so quickly, I no longer feel like I’m in England. I miss the grey drizzle of two-thirds of the year. This dramatic atmosphere belongs in an exotic country far from here. I want the comfort of my homeland back. I want a soggy umbrella and damp feet, not a pressure that makes my sinuses ache.

I want things to be normal again.

I run my fingers through my hair and take a deep breath.

*

PC Hollis promises to watch the video footage from the front of the house. But I know he won’t find anything significant about the shadowy figure appearing from the hedge. I check the camera in Mum’s room to find that a wire has come loose at the back. Then I email the security guy, who can’t fix it for another week. So I swap Mum’s camera with another while she’s taking a bath.

I have a few more calls from Peter on my phone. I take screenshots of each one for my log. I had hoped he’d got bored of me and moved on to someone else, but it seems he’s harder to shake than that.

It’s late by the time I finally stop moving. I sink into bed and fall into a deep slumber, dreaming of walking outside to find Mum hunched over the bag of clothes. Her head jerks to the left, like a startled animal’s. I take a step forward, holding out my hand as I would with a wild deer or a frightened horse. She rips open the bag and lifts out one of my shirts. I can only watch as she places the cuff of the shirt in her mouth and begins to chew.

“Stop it!” I cry.

But she keeps on chewing on my shirt until saliva drips down her chin.

I take a step back, horrified at the sight, when another figure appears from the hedge. There’s nothing about the figure that’s recognisable as a person. It’s a shadow, devoid of features, but it seems so familiar. Ignoring Mum, I step towards the shadow, but my head is ripped back.

I wake up with a start, sitting bold upright in bed. My alarm is blaring out. As I reach out to turn it off, I notice that my hand is clasped tight. When I open my fist, tiny flecks of brown scatter from my fingers.

Strands of hair. My hair.

I leap out of bed and examine the mattress. There is a clump of hair strewn across the bed and a patch of drying blood on my pillow. Slowly, dreading what I know I’ll find, and with a numb feeling spreading over my flesh, I lift my hand to the back of my head. When I find it, I let out a little gasp. Blood. I stare down at the hair in my hand with disbelief washing over me. Am I really so crazy that I’m ripping my own hair out of my head? In my sleep?

And yet… there’s something… so familiar about seeing hair in my hand. I close my fingers and make a fist, and as I do, I get the strongest sensation of déjà vu, that at some point in my life I’ve done this before.

“Will you turn off that alarm!” Mum bustles into the room, breaking the spell. She snatches my phone from the bedside table and thrusts it into my hand. “Deal with it!”

With shaking fingers I slide the bar across the screen to turn off the alarm. Then I turn and regard my mother.

She shakes her head. “Sort yourself out.” And walks out of the room.

I hurry to the mirror to examine the damage to my hair. Luckily, I pulled most of the hair from the back of my head, and the bleeding has already stopped. If I can wash my hair and get a plaster on the cut, I can tie my hair back and cover up the issue.

I drop the dead hair onto my nightstand and stare at it one more time. What am I forgetting?

The thought of my unconscious self ripping the hair from my head haunts me in the shower and even as I make breakfast. Every slight sound jolts me from unsettled thoughts. The toaster is a gunshot. The scrape of a chair is an intruder. My toes are kissing the knife edge, and I can’t see my way down.

When I greet Erin at the door, I expect to be soothed by her presence. Instead, I find a withdrawn woman with smudged makeup and red eyes. She barges past me into the hallway without even saying hello.

“I’m only doing today,” she announces.

“What do you mean? What’s happened?”

She yanks her jacket from her body, which is damp from the rain that finally began in the early hours of this morning. “I don’t know how you have the gall to ask me that.”

“I… I don’t understand—”

“You made it perfectly clear in the email. I don’t understand how you could have accused me of anything like that. I take
good
care of your mum. I’ve never done anything… I… I thought we were friends—”

“Erin, slow down. Tell me what you think I’ve done.”

“There’s no point denying it,” she says. “I know you didn’t mean to send it to me, but you did. We’re done, Sophie. I’ll work today because I know you can’t find another nurse on such short notice, but tomorrow you need to find someone else. I’m sorry, but I’ve made up my mind. I can’t work with someone who would stab me in the back like that.”

Before I can respond, she strides into the kitchen and slams the door behind her, leaving a clear signal for me to leave her alone. And I’m late for work. But on my way out, I check my email account to figure out what she could be talking about. There, in the sent items, is an email from my account going to Erin and her boss, with the subject:
Erin Jones is abusing my mother.