What You Left Behind (30 page)

“Since Simon …” Sonia trails off.

“For fuck’s sake, woman.”

More walking. Tony’s heels on the floorboards.

He is brave. He never cries. But he does shout and get angry. Sonia told me it’s his way of coping. She said that my way is to draw things. I asked her what her way was but she said she didn’t have one.

“You make it sound as if she’s a murderer, Tony. Lana didn’t kill anyone.” Sonia blows her nose.

After they took Lana away, Sonia went mad, as if she was fizzy inside and it was all coming out. She was doing a crazy dance around the kitchen, tripping on things. Tony grabbed her arms and she went quiet, falling to the floor, sobbing, saying she was sorry. Then, after Lana got back from the police station, Tony had finally put her to bed.

It’s morning now.

“Drink your tea,” Tony says, and I hear the chink of china.

“I should have gone with her, but it’s the police and—”

“I know. It’s OK.”

“I wonder if there’s news of Freddie,” Sonia says suddenly.

I clap my hand over my mouth to stop everything coming out. I am good at keeping secrets. If I tell, they’ll be really cross with me.

“I should call Jo.”

“I already spoke to her,” Tony says. “There’s nothing to report.”

“You called her?”

I can hear a rustling of sheets. I think Sonia’s sitting up.

“Briefly,” Tony says. “I wanted to help. You know.”

Sonia is quiet for a bit. “She’s
my
friend,” she says after a while.

Tony doesn’t answer.

“Did you ever think things would turn out like this?” Sonia has those little waves in her voice again.

“If I’d ever believed that my own son would do such a thing …
Jesus
 … Nobody ever expects that.”

“We just didn’t know him.”

“Fucking right we didn’t.”

More silence. Downstairs, a dog whines in the kitchen. I hear claws scratching at the door.

“She’s going off the rails like her brother.”

That’s what Tony said Simon had done after he died. Gone off the rails. I think that means he went mad. They once said that he’d been a mystery to them and who’d have ever known. They swore it would stay a secret that what he’d done was shameful. But I knew. I saw it. I see everything and I saw Simon hanging in the barn and it was horrid and it makes my insides hurt and it’s only when I do drawings that I feel better although not properly better like before he was dead.

We were going on holiday. A winter break. Tony said it would do us good. Take Simon’s mind off things, off all that nonsense he’d got in his head. Simon was going to be a vet although he didn’t really want to be one and was unhappy.

Then we couldn’t find him and everyone was panicking because we’d be late and miss the flight and we’d been searching for hours and then everything went horrid.

“And on top of everything, I’m worried about Gil,” Sonia says.

I shrink back against the wall even more.

“All this stuff about seeing that crash,” Sonia says.

She doesn’t want to believe I was there, saw everything.

“It’s nothing to do with us,” Tony says. “And Jo’s bloody sister could do with keeping her nose out.” I hear a rattle of pills again. “I’ll get you some more from the hospital.” Tony gets lots of pills.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Sonia says.

“I will
not
let this family fall apart,” he says, and that reminds me of what he said when they found him, when they were both wrapped up in each other’s arms and were standing in the barn shaking and
crying and unable to look at Simon. They didn’t know I was watching through the small window at the end of the barn as if it was a horrid television show I couldn’t turn off.

Simon had brown stuff on his legs. Simon had a rope round his neck. One eye was staring at me as if he knew I was there.

I drew a picture that night. Simon’s ribs stuck out and his knees looked too big. I drew everything in that barn, even the other man hiding in the shadows. Underneath I wrote what Tony had said: “Nothing will destroy my family. Not even this.”

When the police came they called Simon “number five.”

27

Lorraine opened the door to Freddie’s room. It still smelled of cheap body spray even though he hadn’t been in it for two nights now. The curtains were closed—the end of one was hanging off the pole as if it had once been torn open too roughly—and his bed was unmade with the fitted sheet wrung off the mattress.

It was a typical teenager’s room, she thought. She couldn’t help feeling a sense of sadness, the tang of despair or hopelessness, as if he’d shrugged off a layer of gloom and dumped it with the damp towels on the floor. She swallowed and sighed. This was her
nephew
.

“Jo said he virtually lived up here,” she said. Every surface was cluttered with books and papers, cables and toiletries, as well as an assortment of dirty crockery and pie and pasty wrappers. “This is the bedroom of a very fed-up young man. Not the Freddie I know.”
She picked up some clothes and put them on the bed. “Do you think it’s even in here? Apparently, he’s joined at the hip to it.”

Adam was already poking about in cupboards, having located a laptop charger cable amid the muddle on the desk. “Then why didn’t he take this?”

Lorraine shrugged. “Surely his laptop would be on his desk if it was here.”

She lifted a few tatty folders and old textbooks and let them drop back into the muddle. Nothing, so she began searching the rest of the room. Jo had already found the letter addressed to her, so maybe there was a diary, or another letter, or something else that could undo the desperate thoughts and words the note had contained. It had been heartbreaking to read.

As she opened the wardrobe, the door half dropped off its hinges. The whole thing wobbled forward and Adam moved sharply to push it back. Inside was a jumble of clothes sliding off bent coat hangers, a collection of muddy and smelly old sneakers that released a sour odor, and a shelf full of old papers and school books that clearly hadn’t been touched in a long time given the dust on them.

Lorraine sighed. “There’s nothing here.”

Adam was now on his hands and knees, peering beneath the bed. Reaching under it, he pulled out a flattened sports bag with some stained football kit lying on top of it, crusted and dry, as well as several more plates and a few A-level textbooks. He squinted into the dusty space.

“Nothing much under here either. Oh, hang on …”

He twisted his head round to look at the wooden slats, then stood and grabbed the corner of the mattress, lifting it up out of the frame and pulling out a gray laptop.

“Not joined at the hip after all,” he remarked.

He sat on the bed and booted it up into safe mode. Lorraine had seen him do this several times before, not least on her laptop, when
she’d forgotten her password. She turned away for a moment, not wanting to witness the forceful raid into Freddie’s life, which felt inherently wrong, yet necessary at the same time.

“Right, password off,” Adam said, handing the machine over.

“Me? I have no idea where to begin,” Lorraine said, taking it. “It’s not as if we’re going to be able to get into his Facebook account or email without some intervention.”

“OK then, let’s just trawl through recent files, his browsing history, that kind of thing.”

Adam leaned close as Lorraine methodically worked through the list of websites Freddie had visited.

“Social networking mostly,” she said as some familiar names reeled past onscreen. Lorraine reckoned any teenager’s history would look similar. “He’s been buying stuff, look. He’s been on music websites, there’s his webmail, and what’s this …”

Lorraine copied and pasted the address into a browser window and went to the website.

“Some kind of advice forum,” she said, not recognizing the website name.

They both peered at the screen, speed-reading as Lorraine scrolled down.

“Oh God,” she whispered as it became clear what people were discussing. “They’re asking for advice about suicide.”

Adam reached out and took the laptop from her. He continued trawling through the site, sighing and making despairing noises as he worked.

“Can you see if he’s posted anything?” Lorraine asked. “Are there any usernames that could be Freddie?”

“That’s what I’m looking for,” he replied, clicking the mouse several times. “Do you think this could be him?”

Lorraine read where Adam was pointing. She closed her eyes briefly.

“Curzed95,” Adam said. “A combination of Curzon and his birth year?”

Cursed
, Lorraine thought. Is that how the poor boy feels about himself?

They were both silent again as they read through the short but pitiful message he’d posted. It reflected what was written in the letter he’d addressed to Jo, except the message revealed more about the bullying he’d been suffering, as well as asking questions about suicide.
I might as well be dead
, Freddie had typed. The answers he’d received had been quite detailed, describing the best methods depending on whether he really wanted to end it all or just wanted to make a cry for help.
Hanging is the real deal
, someone had written,
so only go there if you’re sure. Pills or shallow cuts better for a gesture
.

Lorraine looked away, close to tears. She couldn’t stand to read any more. “Jo mustn’t see this,” she said, thinking of her poor sister and how she had to stay strong.

“Look at the date and time he posted this,” Adam said. “It’s when we were at the Hawkeswells’ barbecue, the night he disappeared.”

Adam opened up a few other websites that Freddie had visited, but they seemed unrelated. He moved on to some Word documents he’d opened in the last few days, the filename “Chemistry Project” catching his eye. “Why would he be looking at a chemistry project when he’s finished his exams and left school?”

Lorraine agreed and was about to say something when Adam clicked on the file.

“Christ,” he said. “Just look at this.”

The document was twenty-three pages long, each one containing images of what appeared to be a dedication to Freddie, as if he were already dead. First up was a picture of a gravestone with rotten flowers beside it. Lorraine noticed how someone had crudely drawn Freddie’s name on the headstone with graffiti-style writing. Then there was a smaller mug shot of him beneath it. Again, it had been
tampered with. Blood was dribbling from his eyes and mouth, and a noose had been put around his neck.

“Oh God, Adam, I’m not sure I can …”

“OK, I’ll scan down,” Adam said as Lorraine turned away. “This is one hell of a lot of shit for anyone to deal with, and it looks as though he’s been targeted for months. It’s nasty, Ray. Any one of these comments you’d be able to shrug off. But to have them coming at you for this long with images like this …” He blew out.

“He did well to save the screen shots,” Lorraine said.

She stole another glimpse at the laptop and was faced with slaughtered pig carcasses with Freddie’s face superimposed over the animals’ heads.

She turned away again.

“Ray, you should see this,” Adam said after a short while.

Lorraine turned back. The revolting images had gone and in their place were a couple of short emails.

“He’s saved an email exchange with Lana,” Lorraine said after reading the messages quickly.

“Do you know what they’re talking about?” Adam asked.

Lorraine thought for a moment. “No. It sounds as if Lana’s worried about something she’s seen and Freddie has promised to help her. We could ask Jo or Sonia.”

She read the last line again:
If it’s true, does this make us half brother and sister? Lana x
. Then, underneath, she reread Freddie’s reply:
I really hope not
 …

Adam logged into his own email account to send the files to himself.

“No wonder he left home,” Lorraine said. “He must feel so alone, so desperate.” Her heart ached for him, and for Jo. It was such a tangled-up mess of emotion and … and there was something else, she thought, something else that was now bothering her.

She went over to the window and pulled back a curtain. Her sister
was in the garden below talking to Malc. They were having a heated discussion by the looks of their hand gestures and body language. Jo looked tired and pale. Suddenly, Malc left.

“Put the laptop back where we found it,” Lorraine said quietly, closing the curtains again. “Let me deal with Jo.”