‘It’s not bullying, it’s unrelenting disrespect. It’s the constantly being made to feel small and useless when I actually do a good job, and the– Actually, I suppose it is bullying now I’ve said that out loud. I don’t want to deal with it any more, Gideon. Life is too short.’ That’s the first time I’ve said that since Joel died. I used to say it all the time when he was alive, probably even to him. I would utter those words when I was telling myself to do something that I knew technically I shouldn’t do. Or if I wanted to appear cool and enlightened like all the other would-be hedonists I met. I never let those words slip from my lips because I meant them – back then, as far as I was concerned, I was always going to live for ever. I said it because I could, because I’d never experienced the brevity of life. When it was proved to me in the most hideous way possible, I realised that I didn’t believe life was too short. I simply believed that the succinctness of life would never have anything to do with me.
‘How about a leave of absence?’ he suggests.
‘And come back to this, in fact, probably come back to worse because I won’t have been here and there’ll be a whole store of comments? No, thank you, it’s a very kind offer, but I think I’ll pass.’
He is silent, obviously thinking something over. ‘Don’t leave, Saffron. It doesn’t sit easy with me that you felt you had to take a demotion when you had recently lost your husband.’
‘I didn’t feel I had to take a demotion, I suggested it so I still had a job at a time when my whole world was imploding.’
‘Please. Please consider a leave of absence of a month and while you’re off, think through your options properly. You don’t have to come back, just consider your options.’
Ah, right. I see. ‘I’m not going to go blabbing my mouth off the second I leave here,’ I state. ‘I don’t care what you do. You don’t have to keep me here so you can keep an eye on me.’ Although I’m not going to lie for you: if anyone asks, I’m not going to plead ignorance.
A red that is dark and potent, the colour of the jumper I wore the day I dropped the blackberries, bleeds into Gideon’s cheeks. ‘That’s not what this is about,’ he replies. ‘I would like you to consider taking a leave of absence, and thinking through your options. I think you’re a good worker. I will do my best to speak to the people who run your department about their general attitude towards all staff. I have heard rumblings, but it’s difficult to do something if no one will speak out first. This is the first time someone has officially told me about what is going on, therefore, now that I am aware of there being a problem, I have a duty of care to my employees to investigate it. I will sit down with the head of HR and we will look through the issues, see what people have said in their exit interviews and then work out how to tackle the problem.
‘I am asking you, begging you, if need be, to give me time to address this problem. If you still feel after your leave of absence that you would like to resign, I will not argue with you. I will accept it with regret and we shall all move on. What do you say?’ Once again, he considers every word so he does not commit himself to something he cannot see through.
‘Fine,’ I say.
His relief is evident. It’s not me, I’m sure, employees are lining up to get work, it must be the company’s reputation – maybe the people who have left recently and there have been a few, aren’t keeping quiet about how they’re treated. A business that works to help other companies successfully brand and market themselves survives on its reputation as well as its work. ‘I’ll have HR go over the contract with you and you can start as soon as possible.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Oh, Saffron?’ he calls as I’m about to leave.
‘Yes?’ I brace myself to be admonished for walking in without knocking earlier, to be asked to pretend I had seen nothing.
‘I’m assuming if we need any back-up in the next month or so you won’t mind helping out?’ I like Gideon, really I do. Although I like him a whole lot less now that I know he’s a cheating scumbag, but if I didn’t know that, I’d like him because he’s very straightforward. He’s all about the business, all about the making money and all about trying to get me to work for free as well, it seems.
‘We’ll see, shall we?’ I say.
His shamefaced personal assistant is glaring a hole into her computer screen when I exit his office, silently agreeing that I saw nothing.
XLIII
It’s like a scar, a jagged-edged, shiny, bright scar that runs the length of the driver’s side of my car. Made by her, probably with a screwdriver, sometime between the hours of nine-thirty and five-fifty-five.
She’s slipped in here and done this. She’s placed it below the handle so I can’t miss it. So she can make her point. She’s following me to work – to make sure I don’t decide to drop into a police station at any point, I’m sure. Well, at least that’s one bonus – if she’s here, watching me, she won’t be in London with Zane, she won’t be in Queen’s Park with Aunty Betty, and she won’t be in Hove with Phoebe. She’ll be wherever I am. There’s an odd, unsettling comfort in that. It removes a layer of rawness to the vat of sickness at the pit of my stomach.
I am not going to freak out. If she’s watching, then what she wants is for me to break down or to start screaming (what I’d like to do) because what she is desperate for is a reaction. A way to know she’s got to me, especially because I’ve refused to open the blinds.
I cast a cursory glance around the car park, searching briefly in the gloom for any additional shadows beside the squat pillars; for someone lurking behind the other parked cars; for anyone breathing in the quiet of the underground level of this car park. I’m trying to sense someone, anyone, anything. I should be able to, especially now that I can experience the world in full, but there’s nothing there. It’s almost as if a ghost is doing this. Someone who leaves no trace of themselves is stalking me without actually being real.
*
There’s traffic, which I think is odd for a Monday evening.
Cars stretch bumper to bumper along Dyke Road: the red lights, like a line of glassy, blinking eyes, are extinguished as the cars move and then lit up again as the cars have to stop. I’ve been calling Phoebe with the hands-free and there’s no answer. I don’t have the number for the teacher who is covering library duty.
I could call Mr Bromsgrove, but I’m loath to give him more reason to talk to my daughter than necessary. She’ll be fine. She’ll wait outside for me and it’ll be fine. The panic that is fuelling the frenzied stirring of nausea in my stomach is only from general anxiety about being imprisoned here in traffic. It’s not the worry that she might not have stayed to see my reaction to scarring my car, that she might have gone after Phoebe now. It’s not fear that Phoebe will see her and will freak out that this person is around again.
I hit the call button on my steering wheel and my daughter’s phone clicks straight to answer machine. There’s nothing unusual about that. She’s probably run out of battery since she’s never off the damn thing – apart from the past couple of days when she doesn’t seem to want to pick it up at all.
The car in front of me is a huge people carrier type affair that holds one driver and three passengers. Joel had been angling for us to get a campervan not long before that day. He’d been willing to sell his BMW because we’d only be allowed two residential parking permits. I’d had to remind him several times that I wasn’t the camping sort. ‘I’ll take the kids on my own, then,’ he’d say happily. I wonder if the four people, two adults at the front, two child seats just seen over the top of the back seats, are a family in the traditional sense? Two children, two parents? I wonder if they go camping? I wonder, if Joel was alive, if we’d have gone camping?
There’s a surge forwards as we come up to new traffic lights where Dyke Road becomes Old Shoreham Road. I pull my car onto it and the knot of anxiety loosens in my chest, it won’t be long before I’m there. Probably around six-fifteen. Late, but not too late. She’ll be fine
. She’ll be there. She knows not to go off with anyone else.
I pull up outside the school and park on the double yellows, not caring that I might get a ticket – the parking inspectors being that conscientious until eight o’clock. As I exit the car, the way the school is in darkness, with no sign of Phoebe outside, whisks up that terror inside to a new level. It’s like those times you’re looking for something you’ve forgotten. You look and you look but even as you’re turning everything upside-down, and opening every drawer and cupboard you know deep in your soul that it’s gone. I used to do that in the early days with Joel. I would walk around the kitchen looking for something, looking for him, even though deep down inside I knew he was gone.
Deep down inside, I know Phoebe is not here. I know she’s gone.
But I will not panic. I will not go to the extreme place right away. I won’t connect Joel’s killer to this, this is simply me being late when I shouldn’t have been. There is nothing more sinister going on here.
I dial her number on my mobile.
‘This is me. Leave me a message. Or don’t. It’s really up to you,’ her recorded voice cheerily tells me after a click without a ring. I forget sometimes that Phoebe can sound happy, that she has the capacity to be and sound joyful, young, delighted with everything.
‘Pheebs, it’s me. I’m waiting outside. I’m really, really sorry I’m late. See you in a minute or two.’
My body starts to tingle, the sickness twirling inside. Phoebe is gone. I know she is.
No she isn’t, the sensible, sane part of me replies. You’re overreacting.
I would be overreacting if Joel hadn’t been murdered, if I wasn’t getting those letters, if we weren’t being stalked.
From the darkness of the school, two figures approach: one is tall, the other a little shorter. As they draw nearer, the smaller one two paces behind the taller one, I realise it’s Mr Bromsgrove and Curtis. He has a box filled with books in his arms, as well as his laptop case over his left shoulder, his school bag slung over the wrist of his right arm. Curtis is walking with his school bag over his shoulder while fixated on his phone.
He’s good-looking, is Lewis Bromsgrove. It’s not only the way his large, dark deep eyes stare at you, it’s not simply the way a smile is never far away from his full, oh-kiss-me-now lips, it’s not just that he has irresistible features. It’s also the way he stands, the way he exudes a quiet, gentle confidence, the way he looks in clothes. He is the entire package. It’s hard to believe he could be involved with Phoebe in ways he shouldn’t be, but it’s not an impossibility.
‘Mrs Mackleroy,’ he says, overtly pleased to see me. ‘Hello. What brings you here?’
Curtis looks up at hearing my name, then immediately dips his head, abandoning his phone in favour of his feet.
‘I’m picking up Phoebe,’ I say.
‘Phoebe? She went hours ago. I was on library duty and she told me someone was picking her up.’
Curtis, who carries on inspecting his feet as if he has only recently discovered them, develops a renewed and vigorous interest in them.
‘I am meant to be picking her up. She knows she only leaves school with me.’
I don’t need to see to know that Curtis’s face is twisted with anxiety, a partner in whatever Phoebe is embroiled in now.
‘Do you know something about this, Curtis?’ I ask him. ‘Do you have any idea why she would lie to your dad?’
He shakes his head without raising it.
I return my attention to his father with my eyebrows raised. ‘Curtis?’ he says in a modulation that suggests he’s not going to be impressed if his son is lying to him.
‘She didn’t really tell me anything. Just that someone was giving her a lift home and I should cover for her,’ he mumbles.
‘She didn’t say who?’ Mr Bromsgrove asks before I can.
Curtis shakes his head. ‘Honest,’ he adds.
I am not going to panic, I am not going to panic. Nothing has happened to her. Nothing is going to happen to her.
I am not going to panic, but Mr Bromsgrove is: his face tightens with apprehension, the same worry unpeeling in his eyes. He knows something I don’t know, no one worries like this over a teenager sneaking off. He balances the cardboard box in one arm, roots in his pocket until he produces his car keys. ‘Go wait in the car for me,’ he tells his son in an agitated tone.
Once his son is shut away, he turns back to me.
‘Why were you hugging my daughter?’ I ask.
Thrown, he frowns as he replies. ‘What?’
‘I happened to drive past the school last Thursday and I saw you hugging her, why?’
The lines on his forehead deepen. ‘Are you thinking … Because if you are, we can go straight to the police to sort this out. I’m not even going to entertain any idea that I might have been inappropriate with her.’
‘Don’t overreact,’ I say. I will go to the police about this. If he is a manipulative bastard, he’ll think that I won’t, he’ll believe him saying that will make me back off. It won’t. ‘I am simply asking why you were hugging my daughter. It’s a fair question.’
‘I was hugging her because she was upset.’
‘Why?’
‘I … I can’t tell you. I said to her I wouldn’t tell you.’
‘Really? You promised my pregnant, fourteen-year-old daughter that you would keep things that have upset her from me? Really?’ My voice is barely restrained. ‘REALLY? Tell me why I shouldn’t punch you out right here and now?’ Apart from the fact I’m not violent.
‘Phoebe needs someone she can trust.’
‘No, Phoebe needs someone who will keep her safe before having someone she trusts. If she’s not safe, no amount of people who she trusts will matter. What was she upset about?’
Has she told him? About us keeping vital information from the police?
‘At the end of last week, we don’t know how, it became public knowledge that she’s pregnant. She’s been getting messages online about it ever since. Some of them are hideous, and she doesn’t want me to tell the school officially, nor for me to tell you. I told her that if it hadn’t died down by tomorrow morning, I’d have a duty to tell the school and you.’
‘You kept this from me?’
‘I was trying to do my best for Phoebe.’
‘Well, you haven’t. What do these messages say?’
‘I can’t … I can’t repeat them. You have to see them yourself. She’s deleted a few, but on some sites she can’t so they’re still there.’
‘Sites? More than one?’
‘Yes.’ Jostling the box, he goes into his pocket again and pulls out his mobile. He attempts to unlock the screen with one hand, changes his mind and drops the box onto the ground. ‘I’ve seen online bullying, but this is the nasty end I haven’t really experienced until now.’
I was panicked before, now I am sliding into pure terror, even before he hands me the phone.
*
‘Phoebe,’ I say, ‘I need to know where you are. I need to know you’re safe. Please, call me. Or text me. Just let me know you’re safe. Please, Sweetheart.’ I need to calm down. In this state, the key won’t find its place in the ignition slot, my body won’t placate itself enough for me to check a mirror or to put the car into gear. Eventually, I find the ignition, insert the key.
I pause, pick up my phone, thrown onto the passenger seat, hit redial. ‘Phoebe. It’s me again. If you don’t want to talk to me, that’s all right. Call Curtis, Mr Bromsgrove, Aunty Betty or your uncle Fynn. Even Zane. Anyone. Just let them know you’re OK. That you’re safe.’ Safe.
I need this to turn out the right way. I need to not be that woman with the bowl of blackberries ever again.
Before I drive away, I make another call.
Monday, 13 May
(For today)
He used to say your name, not like the expensive, fragrant spice but like it was something sour, bitter and poisonous. A bit like you, really.
br /> XLIV
Knock-knock!
Phoebe has a key and I doubt she’d knock, but I run to the front door and snatch it open anyway because you never know.
Fynn.
‘I know you don’t want to speak to me right now,’ began the message I left earlier, ‘but Phoebe has gone missing. I need your help. A couple of other people are out looking for her, and Aunty Betty is here in case she comes home, but I need someone else out looking for her before I call the police. I hope you don’t ignore this.’
My disappointment is so evident that it’s him and not Phoebe, I have to explain: ‘I thought you were her.’
‘When did you last see her?’ he asks. He is not looking at me: he stares at the wall beside the kitchen door at the end of the corridor, way beyond my shoulder. Way out of reach of eye contact with me.
‘I dropped her off at school this morning. She’s been staying a bit later so I can pick her up after school. I got there a bit late and the teacher who covers library duty said she hadn’t come in. Mr Bromsgrove, you know, her form tutor, said she’d told him she was getting picked up instead of waiting for me and left at three-thirty.’
‘Did you have a row or something?’
‘No, but a few days ago people found out at school she’s pregnant. And she’s been getting nasty messages online and probably texts ever since. She never told me. I was trying to give her space. I didn’t want to pressure her until she’d made a decision, so I’ve not checked her Facebook, Twitter or anything like that. I’m so stupid. She’s out there, alone and scared and probably has all those things running through her head – I saw what they’d written – because I was too stupid to just clamp down on her. I’m so scared for her.’
He inhales deeply. ‘Who’s out looking and where have you looked?’ he says evenly. He is scared, like me. He too is back at that day and he is telling himself that it will turn out fine.
‘Is it her?’ Aunty Betty calls from the living room.
‘No. It’s Fynn,’ I call back. I return to speaking to Fynn: ‘Mr B—’