Before I Wake (9 page)

“James?” I said again.

“Would you keep your fucking voice down?” He spun around to face me. “Mother’s asleep upstairs, or have you forgotten?”

“Sorry.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “I just wanted to check that you’re okay. You’ve seemed a bit”—I chose my words carefully—“unhappy ever since we left Hels’s house.”

“Unhappy?” James stepped closer, towering over me. “Why would I be unhappy, Suzy-Sue?”

I racked my brain, analyzing the conversations we’d had over dinner. Nothing controversial, nothing that referenced my ex-boyfriends (Hels knows not to mention them in front of James), and nothing about my past that he might have found objectionable.

“Nothing?” James took another step closer and tapped me on the forehead with his index finger. “Really? You can’t think of a single thing you might have done to upset me?”

I shook my head. “No, I can’t. I thought we had a lovely even—”

“Liar!” His face was inches from mine, his breath hot and scented with the spices Hels used in the curry we ate.

“I’m not—”

“You are a lying bitch.”

“I’m not, James. I didn’t say—”

“Want a cig, Suz?” He said it in a high singsong voice and I immediately knew what he was getting at. He was imitating Helen, post-dinner, as she leaned across the table and offered me a Marlboro Light before sparking one up herself. My face suddenly felt hot as the blood rushed to my cheeks.

“Hels!” James continued in the same voice, his face bobbing from side to side in front of mine. “You know I don’t smoke anymore. I gave up weeks ago. Remember?”

“She just forgot, James. We used to share cigs all the time at work and it’s a habit. She forgot that I gave—”

“FILTHY FUCKING HABIT!”

I took a step back and wiped the spit from my eye.

“My father died from smoking, Suzy. He DIED. A long, painful death. I held him in my arms when he rasped and rattled his way into the next world, gasping for breath that wouldn’t come.”

“But your mum said that—”

James crouched down so his face was just millimeters from mine. “What did my mum say?”

I rubbed my palms against my skirt. “She said that your dad killed himself. You were in the kitchen, talking, and I heard her say that. I wasn’t snooping, I promise. But you’d been gone so long that I just wanted to check that—”

“Bullshit!” His breath was hot in my face. “You were sneaking around, listening at keyholes, looking for secrets.”

“That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No.” I wanted to take a step back, to widen the space between us and diffuse the tension, but I couldn’t. James was calling me a liar and yet he had been lying about the death of his father. “I don’t understand. Why would your mum say your dad killed himself if he died of a smoking-related illness?”

“He killed himself all right—with too much booze and too many cigs—but she was the one that drove him to it. Always going on and on, nagging and bitching and lying and manipulating.”

“But…” I didn’t finish my sentence. His mother said “the day he killed himself” like it was suicide, not respiratory disease. Or did I hear that wrong? Now I was doubting myself.

“So tell me,” he says, prodding me in the chest again, “are you still smoking?”

“No! I haven’t started again, James. I prom—”

“LIAR!”

He was right. I was lying. I hadn’t started smoking again, not regularly, but I had had a quick cig with Hels two weeks ago. We met for lunch, had a couple of G&Ts, and I just couldn’t resist when she offered me a cig. It was just one cigarette, but James wouldn’t understand that. He’d think I didn’t love him enough to keep my promise to quit.

He took another step forward, jolting me with his chest so I was forced to take a step back. “If you’ve lied about your dirty little smoking habit, what else have you lied about, eh, Suzy-Sue?”

I pressed my hands to my mouth. “Nothing.”

“Really? Really nothing?” He yanked my hands away from my mouth and gathered them in his. “You’re not secretly shagging Rupert again?”

“No.” I tried to wriggle my fingers free. “Of course not.”

“Going to our favorite hotels for a hot fuck?”

“No!” I wriggled harder and snatched my hands away. “Jesus, James, you need to let this Rupert thing go. You’re obsessed.”

“Obsessed? You’re the one who goes for coffee with him several times a week. And I’m supposed to believe that? That two people who used to fuck each other’s brains out can sit opposite each other, all alone, without their partners and have lovely drinky-poos and not be tempted to get it on again? You must think I’m an idiot.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, James.” I couldn’t believe we were back there again. “How many times do I have to spell it out? Rupert is a friend and nothing more. I’m as attracted to him as I am to Hels who, before you say anything about the so-called ‘sexual wild side’ to me, I’m
not
attracted to in the least.”

James shook his head. “You don’t get it, do you, Suzy? I could be friends with my exes too, but I’m not because I value our relationship too much. I value you too much. I value you more than anything else in my life. I love you, Suzy. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes.” My heart softened at his tender tone of voice. No one had ever loved me so passionately or so desperately before. No one had ever gotten jealous or possessive before. They’d never cared enough. “And I love you too, James.”

“No.” He cupped my jaw with his right hand and tilted my head up so I had no choice but to look into his eyes. “I really fucking love you, Suzy. You are everything to me. Everything.”

His left hand snaked around my waist, and he pulled me to him, roughly, brusquely, as he pressed his lips against mine. He kissed me deeply, and despite the anger I felt at being branded a liar, I kissed him back.

I snatch up Charlotte’s mobile phone and turn it over in my hands, then peer into the mouth of the envelope. It’s empty. Not a card, not a note, not a Post-it. Nothing. Just the phone.

I sprint out of the house and across the gravel with Charlotte’s phone in one hand, the padded envelope in the other. I pause when I reach the street. Which way would they have gone? I turn right, toward town, and continue to run. I pass a woman pushing a stroller, an elderly lady dragging a shopping bag behind her, and a teenage couple holding hands. I pass the number 19 bus, Bill’s the Newsagents, and three or four pubs. Still I keep running. I don’t know who I’m looking for or where I’m going, but I only slow to a stop when I notice Milly trailing behind me with her tongue hanging out. I’m no spring chicken, but she’s ten years old with a heart condition and fading eyesight. She shouldn’t be running anywhere, never mind down a traffic-fume-filled street with dangers at every turn.

“Come on, girl.” I reach down and pat her head. “Let’s go home.”

***

My first instinct, as I walk back in, is to find Brian and tell him what happened, but I say nothing. Instead I pour Milly a bowl of fresh, clean water and shut her in the porch, then go into the downstairs bathroom, locking the door behind me, and sit down on the closed toilet seat. I press the button on the top of Charlotte’s mobile.

An animation skips across the screen as the phone flashes to life. It takes me forever to work out how to access the text messages, but when I do, a list of names appears. I recognize several of them—Liam, Ella, Oli, Nancy and Misha, two girls from Charlotte’s class—and then a couple of names I don’t. I feel sick with nerves yet strangely exhilarated as I go through the messages, certain that I am about to reveal the reason why Charlotte tried to kill herself, but the more I read, the more disappointed I feel, and my exhilaration is soon replaced by awkwardness as I stumble across a thread of messages between my daughter and her boyfriend. Some of them are sexual, but the majority are fun and loving. The text that ends the relationship comes out of nowhere. In the text before, Charlotte tells Liam that she had an amazing evening with him, and then, in her final text to him, the relationship’s over and she doesn’t want anything to do with him. No wonder he was so angry and confused. What follows is a string of texts from Liam, initially hurt and desperate for an explanation, then increasingly agitated and angry. Charlotte doesn’t reply to any of them.

I open the thread of messages to Ella. There’s a brief conversation, two months earlier, about a project they were working on at school, but that’s it. There’s nothing else. Nothing about Liam or Keisha or why they might have fallen out.

I continue to search through her text history—through the ones between Charlotte and her dad (mostly requests for money or lifts), Charlotte and Oli (his version of her request for a hotel room was spot on), and then start going through the names I don’t recognize. The texts between Charlotte and the girls from school don’t reveal anything apart from a bit of gossip about who fancies who. And that’s it. That’s all there is apart from one more name—K-Dog. My heart sinks as I select it. I really thought Charlotte’s phone would provide some answers. I felt sure the mystery would be solved if only—

My skin prickles with goose bumps and I go cold.

My dad’s a sick pervert and I don’t know who else to talk to. Call me asap. Charlotte x

I read the text again.

No, it’s not possible.

He’d never hurt her.

Memories flood my mind. Brian taking Charlotte to the swimming pool. Brian teaching her to ride a bike. Brian giving her a bath. She would have told me if he’d done anything inappropriate or started behaving unusually. Wouldn’t she?

No. I give myself a mental shake. Stop it, Sue. Your first instinct was right. Brian would never do anything to harm his daughter. He loves her. He was devastated by her accident. He still is. But…

The image of cars hurtling toward us flashes through my mind.

Why did he drive into oncoming traffic when I told him Charlotte had talked about killing herself in her diary? Why turn the argument on me when I asked him about the swimming pool and his early morning walks?

I need to find out what Charlotte’s text means. I fumble with the phone as I select the name “K-Dog” and then press Call.

There’s a click, then a dial tone, and I’m mentally rehearsing what I’m about to say, when a noise from upstairs makes me jump.

Brian.

He’s walking around his study.

“Answer the phone,” I urge as the dial tone continues to sound and footsteps cross the landing. “Please answer the phone.”

Come on. Come on. Come on.

There’s a click.

Someone’s picked up.

“Hello?” I breathe. “Hello, my name is Sue—”

This
is
the
Vodaphone
voice
mail
service
for
07972 711271. Please leave your message after the tone.

The stairs creak.

“Hello?” I say after the beep. “You don’t know me but my name is—”

“Sue?” There’s a sharp knock on the toilet door. “Sue, who are you talking to?”

“No one!” I frantically stab at the End Call button and shove the phone down my bra. “I’ll be out in a sec.”

I brace my hands against the toilet walls, suddenly light-headed, and steady myself.

“Sue?” More knocking, louder, more frantic. “What are you doing in there?”

“Nothing. I’ll be out in a second.”

“Okay.” I hear him take a deep breath. “We need to have a chat, Sue. I’ll wait for you in the living room.”

I turn on the cold tap and splash my face, then look in the mirror. A tired fortysomething with dark circles under her eyes and a haunted expression pats her skin dry with a towel. I barely recognize myself. And what of Brian? Do I still know him or has he morphed into the very worst kind of man? Someone deceitful, someone predatory, someone dangerous. There’s only one way to find out.

I drape the towel back over the rail and unlock the toilet door.

Tuesday, October 23, 1990

“I’m sorry, Suzy.”

James reached an arm around my shoulders and pulled me into his chest. I closed my eyes, still half asleep. He smelled musky and warm. He smelled like home.

“What for?”

He didn’t say anything for a couple of seconds, then stroked my hair out of my eyes and tilted my face up toward him. I opened my eyes.

“For the way I’ve been recently. For the way I’ve treated you. I’ve been…unfair.”

I said nothing, but a huge wave of relief washed over me. His behavior over the last couple of days had really worried me. It had seemed so out of character, and when he’d screamed at me, calling me a liar, it was horrible.

“I’ve got a lot of anger in me, Suzy; anger about something that happened in the past that I fight to keep suppressed. Sometimes it explodes…” He traced a thumb over my cheekbone. “I took it out on the wrong person. I took it out on the person who would never hurt me, and for that I am truly sorry. I don’t want to be a monster. I don’t want to be like him.”

“Who was a monster?” I rested my hand on his chest. “What happened, James?”

He shook his head, and a single tear wound its way down his cheek.

“Tell me. Tell me what I can do to help, James.”

He passed a hand over his face, roughly rubbing the tear away, and looked down at me.

“See, that’s why I love you. You’re so incredibly caring.” He pressed his palm to my chest. “You’ve got such a huge heart.”

“What is it? Tell me so I can understand.”

He took a deep breath, and I readied myself for what was about to come. But nothing came. We lay together in uncomfortable silence for several minutes. Finally James spoke.

“Yesterday was the anniversary of my uncle’s death.”

I started to say that I was sorry, but he shook his head.

“He died when I was twelve, suddenly, of a heart attack. No one saw it coming. Men like Uncle Malcolm didn’t just drop dead in their fifties. My mother was distraught; she locked herself in her room and cried and cried and cried. I didn’t comfort her. I ran into the woods behind our house and I picked up the biggest branch I could find—so heavy I could barely lift it—and I smashed it against one of the trees until it was splintered and broken and my palms were bleeding, and then I screamed at God. I hated him for taking Uncle Malcolm away from me before I had the chance to grow up and I could kill him myself.”

A shiver ran through me. I didn’t need to ask him what Uncle Malcolm had done.

“He stole my childhood. He stole my trust. He stole my fucking innocence, Sue.” I yelped as he grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. He was breathing rapidly, his nostrils splayed, his eyes fixed and staring.

“James.” I tried to pry his fingers off my skin, but he was holding on too hard, digging in deeply as though he was rooting himself to me. “James, it’s okay. It’s over. It’s over.”

“It’ll never be over.”

“It is. It’s over. James, it’s over. Please, please let go of me. You’re hurting me. James, stop. He’s dead.”

He continued to stare at me as though he hated me, as though he wished me dead, and then, as quickly as the anger had flared, it died. His eyes softened, his face crumpled, and he wrapped me in his arms, pulling me into him, and he sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.