Losing You (40 page)

She was shivering so violently that her next words barely came out. ‘I cannot ... I am ...’

Realising she needed help stepping over the side of the bath, he took her roughly by the arms, heaved her clear and set her down. ‘Get dressed and then come into the sitting room,’ he ordered. ‘Charlie’s here, so you’d better make sure you’re decent.’

Looking about to pass out, she grabbed for the wall, missed and fell into him.

‘I’ll send Connie in to help you,’ he told her, and after depositing her on the bed, he gladly escaped the room, only wishing that he could take Charlie and get out.

‘What’s happening in there?’ Charlie asked, as Connie disappeared into the bedroom. He looked and sounded like a much younger, less confident version of himself.

‘She didn’t have a good night,’ Russ answered gruffly, ‘but she’ll be out once she’s dressed.’

‘Is she sober?’

Russ sighed. ‘Frankly, it’s hard to know whether she’s more drunk at this point or hung-over, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough.’

Charlie seemed to deflate before his eyes.

‘It’ll be OK,’ Russ assured him, coming to squeeze his shoulder. ‘I’m just not sure that we’ll be able to get through to her this morning.’

‘But we have to try,’ Charlie insisted. ‘It’s important for Oliver that we go back with a result, and once we’ve explained everything, I know she’ll want to help him.’

Deciding not to argue, since he had no idea what state Sylvie’s conscience was in, if indeed it even still existed, Russ went to put on more coffee. He wanted to tell Charlie how proud he was of him for standing by his brother like this, but was afraid that it might, in some way, put pressure on him to achieve even more than he already had. So he said nothing, simply began psyching himself up for the coming ordeal.

An hour later Jolyon still hadn’t arrived, but his secretary had been in touch to let them know he was running late. Russ felt this hardly mattered, as he and Charlie had got nowhere with Sylvie.

At first, after Connie had left, Sylvie had barely seemed to understand where they were, never mind what was being asked of her, and the copious amounts of coffee Russ had forced down her hadn’t done much to help.

However, mainly thanks to Charlie and how tender he was being with her, they’d finally reached a point now where she was starting to admit that she remembered calling Oliver that night. ‘I call him often,’ she said hoarsely. ‘He is my son, like you, so I must speak to him.’

‘Yes, but we’re talking about the night of the accident,’ Charlie reminded her. ‘You remember the accident, don’t you?’

In their puffed red sockets Sylvie’s eyes were blank.

‘Yes, you do,’ Charlie told her. ‘It happened the same night that you rang Oliver to tell him that you couldn’t go on.’

Sylvie blinked and looked at Russ. ‘I remember I followed your father to Fiona’s,’ she said. ‘Is it that night?’

‘Yes,’ Charlie answered, keeping an arm around her. ‘You were very upset ...’

She was nodding. ‘Yes, I was. Your father, he is always unfaithful to me and this time was with my friend. I cannot forgive you, Russ.’

Russ said nothing. He didn’t even want to look at her.

‘Mum, listen, this isn’t about that,’ Charlie said, gently turning her face back to his. ‘It’s about Oliver. He really needs your help. Without it, he’s going to end up losing his licence. He might even go to prison.’

Sylvie’s eyes moved edgily away from his to start hunting round the room.

Russ knew she was looking for a drink; she’d even begun shaking.

‘Did you hear what I said, Mum?’

‘Yes,’ Sylvie said distractedly.

‘When Jolyon comes, he’s going to take a statement from you, and we need you to say that you rang Oliver at about one in the morning and told him that you couldn’t go on.’

Sylvie’s attention was still vague. ‘But I did not say that.’

‘Yes, you did, or something like it. Basically, you let him think that you were going to commit suicide ...’

‘No, no, no. I cannot have said that ...’

‘You did, but look, the truth is, Mum, you don’t really know what you said. In a way it doesn’t matter, because all you have to put in your statement is that you were upset that night, or depressed, you’d had a lot to drink and you led Oliver to believe you ...’

‘I am not going to do this,’ she interrupted, starting to drum her fingers on the table. ‘It is not true, so I cannot.’

‘But it is true,’ Charlie insisted, covering her hand with his. ‘And this is for Oliver. You ...’

‘Please stop harassing me,’ she protested, trying to stand up.

Charlie pulled her back down again.

‘I want to ... I need to go to the bathroom.’

Getting to his feet, Russ said, ‘I’ll come with you.’

She looked frightened, then angry. ‘I don’t need you to ...’

‘I know what you’re up to, you’ve got a bottle stashed away somewhere ...’

‘If you would let me have a drink I could do as you ask,’ she cried. ‘It is cruel the way you are doing this to me.’

‘You have to be sober to give this statement,’ Russ growled, ‘so sober you will be.’

‘Then I shall not give it.’

‘Mum! You have to, for Oliver.’

‘I do not care. I will not be ordered around in my own home.’

Forcing down his temper, Russ said, ‘You’ll get a drink when it’s done, not before.’

She regarded him suspiciously. ‘You are trying to trick me ...’

‘What I’m trying to do,’ he shouted, ‘is save your son from the mess
you
got him into. You got drunk, you rang Oliver and threatened to kill yourself ...’

‘I cannot say that. I will not.’

‘You damned well will ...’

‘Mum, you can’t deny you said it, or at least implied it. We know you did, or Oliver would never have got into his car.’

She was losing focus again, searching the room with her bleary eyes. ‘I will do as you ask, after I have been to the bathroom,’ she stated.

‘Have you completely lost all sense of responsibility towards your own children?’ Russ demanded scathingly. ‘Has it really reached the point where even they don’t matter as much as the next drink?’

‘You are bullying me,’ she moaned, tears starting from her eyes. ‘You are being cruel and ...’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ Russ yelled, banging a fist on the table. ‘Don’t you get that an innocent young girl has practically lost her life because of you? And Oliver is going to pay if you don’t tell the truth about the call you made ...’

‘But I cannot remember what I said. It is a long time ago ...’

‘Just over two weeks. You’ve poured so much vodka down your throat since then that it’s a bloody miracle you’re still alive, but as long as you are, you are going to do right by your son, or so help me God you’ll be sorry.’

Trying to steady her as her agitation increased, Charlie said, ‘All you have to do is give a statement and then it’ll be over. You won’t have to go to court, it’ll be read out for you ...’

‘No, no. Then everyone will know my business. I don’t want that ...’

‘You can’t seriously believe they don’t know it already,’ Russ cut in incredulously. ‘The whole world knows you’re a drunk, so to try and start pretending you’re not ...’

‘Dad, don’t,’ Charlie interrupted. ‘If she doesn’t want people to know ...’

Realising Charlie was preparing another approach, Russ clasped a hand to his head and turned away.

‘We’ll keep it a secret,’ Charlie told his mother. ‘The only people who’ll need to know are Jolyon and the judge, and when the judge realises that you have a problem, which is why you can’t come to court ...’

‘I need a drink,’ Sylvie gasped. ‘I cannot think unless you let me have one.’

‘I told you,’ Russ said, spinning round, ‘no drink until you’ve given the statement. After that, you can do what the hell you like.’

Sylvie looked at Charlie.

‘You have to be sober for this, Mum, or it won’t mean anything.’

‘But I don’t understand why this is my fault,’ she cried plaintively. ‘It is your father who was unfaithful.’

Not trusting himself to stay in the room for a moment longer, Russ stormed through to the bathroom. He began tearing open cupboards, drawers, the top of the cistern, and finally the panel under the bath, where the vodka had been hidden. Grabbing the bottle, he returned to the table, slammed it down hard and went to get a glass. ‘One drink,’ he told her furiously, ‘and one coffee.’

Her eyes were gleaming as she looked from him to the bottle and back again. The pathetic relief of the addict was trembling in her hands, even her face, as she tried to unscrew the cap. It was too hard, so Charlie did it for her, but when he went to pour she seized the bottle from him to fill the glass herself.

‘That’s enough,’ Russ barked as the level reached half an inch.

She tipped the bottle quickly, then snatched up the glass before he grabbed it first. In moments she’d downed more than half a tumbler of vodka.

Russ looked at Charlie, and seeing how shaken he was,
he removed the bottle from the table and went to pour her a coffee. ‘That’ll be Jolyon,’ he said as the doorbell rang. ‘You’re going to do this, Sylvie, aren’t you?’

She nodded compliantly.

Believing her, now she’d had her fix, he went to release the downstairs door, knowing they had to act quickly because the insatiable demon inside her would soon be crying out for more.

He wasn’t wrong, because Jolyon was barely in the room before she began looking jittery again, her eyes shifting over to where Russ had put the bottle. Hating himself for doing it, he quickly added a slug to her coffee and set it down in front of her, knowing Charlie had seen and wanting to weep for what this must be doing to him.

Chapter Twenty-One

EMMA DIDN’T WANT
to believe what she was reading. She needed nothing more than to be able to put the book down and somehow carry on through the day, the week, the rest of her life, as though she’d never picked it up. In truth, she’d had no right to open it in the first place, no one had. It was a diary, private, nobody else’s business, but now everyone knew – at least she did, and so, God help her, did the police.

Knowing that Clive Andrews had read these entries was so excruciating that she wasn’t sure she could ever face him again. Could she face anyone, even herself?

She felt dizzied, sick to her soul and desperate to believe that the last few minutes had unfolded in a dream, a nightmare, even an aberration, but it was no more possible for her to do that than it was for her to unread what Lauren had written – in her own hand – or to change its meaning, or its course.

The course was over now, had reached an abrupt and violent end. No one could have seen it coming, least of all Lauren herself.

Feeling as though a discordant flute was shrieking inside her head, mockingly, terrifyingly, she tried to make herself look down at the handwritten pages again, but flinched and looked away.

No mother would ever want to read this.

Lauren was not this person. She could not have written these words, felt these feelings or lived these experiences. It wasn’t that she was too young, too old, too naive or even too intelligent to have been sucked into something like this. It was simply, please God, that this couldn’t be the reason
why she’d ended up in the middle of nowhere the very same night, same time even, that Oliver Lomax, drunk and distressed, had been on a mission to try and save his mother.

Yet it was the reason; it had to be.

The hand of fate was too cruel; it reached so maliciously for the undeserving that Emma could only wish it had found its own throat.

What had happened to Oliver Lomax’s mother? Had she succeeded in the attempt to end it all? Emma presumed not, or Clive Andrews would have told her. Was she still suicidal, depressed, riven with remorse for what had happened to her son, and to the girl he’d all but killed with his car? Emma didn’t want to care about that family; they meant nothing to her. Yet whether she knew them or not, their lives, their futures were intertwined now in a way that was as irrefutable, irrevocable, as the unthinkable events that had projected Lauren into their world.

Lauren had obviously taken great care to conceal the man’s identity; in the diary he was only referred to as S, and there was nothing on her mobile phone to give it away, apart from the mysterious number.

Emma still didn’t know for certain whose number it was, but after this it was easy to guess. She’d call Clive Andrews in the morning to ask if she was right – he must know by now who the phone belonged to. So why hadn’t the police acted?

Andrews’s words, when he’d told her about the diary, came back to her. ‘Lauren’s age means that no crime has been committed, but we will need to contact the school.’

Emma gave a sob of despair. She didn’t know what to do. Should she show the diary to Will? No, she couldn’t. No father should ever have to read this about his daughter, especially not written by her own hand. The mere thought of how he’d respond caused Emma to shrink inside. He’d blame her, of course, but she could cope with that – what frightened her was the kind of action he’d want to take. His anger, his need for revenge would be justified; God knew she felt it too, but how was it going to help Lauren now?

Hearing her mother coming out of the bathroom, she
put the diary under her arm to take with her, into her own room. This room was where her mother was sleeping; she didn’t want her happening upon these chilling lines written by a granddaughter she’d always considered so sensible and pure.

Having to force down the wall of hatred that was rising up from her anger, Emma tried to breathe normally as her mother came into the room.

‘Are you all right?’ Phyllis asked. ‘You’re very ... Something’s wrong, isn’t it? I didn’t hear the phone ring.’

‘It didn’t, and I’m fine. I ... I’m just thinking about the operation and how sad it was she didn’t come round when the anaesthetic wore off. I was hoping she might.’

Phyllis’s frown relaxed. ‘I thought you were. I was too, but it’s good you were there. I’m sure she senses it.’

Emma’s head went down. Her mother’s new sensitivity was welcome, but also jarring. ‘I should ... let you get some sleep,’ she said, moving away.