Tell Tale (43 page)

‘Is that why you’re helping me, so you can find out my story?’ I don’t care what he thinks. I just want to get home. My fingers curl round the seat belt, gripping the strap, praying it’s not too late. I am numb. Unable to face the truth.

‘You know mine,’ he says. ‘How else will we pass the time?’

I’m silent for a while, but as the motorway stretches ahead, a voice comes from nowhere. It’s mine but I don’t recognise it. It tells Adam all about Ava, the little girl who so
desperately wanted a family, but had her mother taken by illness and lost her father to drink and neglect. How she was dumped at the children’s home, how they took children in the night and abused them, how they’d taken
her.

‘But I’m no sob story; no case for sympathy. I’m alive, aren’t I? All those kids dead.’ A woman I don’t recognise brushes her hands clean of the past.

‘And no one ever said anything?’ Adam is incredulous. ‘About what was going on at the home?’

‘We all knew that telling would mean a beating or, worse, that we’d lose the only home we’d ever known.’ I stare out of the window. It won’t be light for a while yet. Other cars stream past us.

Adam wrenches the car into top gear. ‘Never gone this fast in her before.’ He pats the steering wheel and smiles at me.

‘Except me,’ I add minutes later, mulling things over. ‘I told, didn’t I? And see where it got me?’

‘What was she like, Frankie. Really. Tell me about my sister.’

I sigh. Lying about Betsy won’t do him any favours. ‘She didn’t speak much, Adam. She was as scared as a mouse when I found her alone down a corridor. They said her last home couldn’t cope with her. She used to . . . to mess herself a lot.’ Adam’s fingers tighten round the wheel. ‘But she was so sparky, so clever. We used to sing together and I’d tell her stories. She was like a little sister to me. She kept me sane.’ There was a pause, enough for several lorries to pass. ‘I made her stuff. Clothes and things, because none of
us had very much. When someone went . . . when one of the kids went missing, we used to raid their things. It kind of sweetened out their absence. Horrid, wasn’t it?’

‘Did she ever mention back home? About her family?’

‘She said brother a few times. As if she’d had one. As if she had this hazy memory of someone she loved. But apart from that, I knew nothing about her background. The carers didn’t either. They were quite happy for me to look after her so they didn’t have to.’ I imagine Betsy snuggled on her brother’s lap, like she’d done on mine.

‘Thank you,’ Adam says seriously. ‘I really mean it. Thank you.’ He rests a hand on mine, both of our fingers interlocking, woven with the webbing of the seat belt.

I must have dozed off. My neck is sore and my right hand warm, still encased by Adam’s. I glance over at him. He stares intently at the road ahead. To our left, a red and orange streak lights up the sky above the horizon.

‘Things got really bad,’ I continue, picking up where I left off. Adam listens. ‘After I’d identified the three men from the chapel, I was threatened constantly. They would have killed me if I’d not been moved. I got a name change. The whole works. I was a protected witness. Turned out that the few sickos in and around Roecliffe were just the tip of the iceberg. The network was massive.’

‘But Betsy’s killer walked free.’

‘Yes,’ I say sorrowfully.

‘So you had a new life.’

‘It was crazy. A kid in a children’s home one minute, then an adult woman with a new name the next.’

‘What did you do?’ Adam reaches for a chocolate bar. I unwrap it for him.

‘Went to college, worked hard. I made a few friends, but I’d had it drilled into me so many times about not trusting anyone, not returning to the north, that I was half scared to even open my eyes in the morning.’

‘That must have been hard.’

‘Hard, yet strangely exhilarating to have the slate wiped clean. A couple of years later, I met my husband. That’s when things really turned around.’ Adam glances at me, seeing my mood change. ‘We had a daughter, Josephine. She’s fifteen.’

‘The one we’re going to—’

‘Yes,’ I interrupt. ‘Then, twenty years later, one of the three men I’d identified was released from prison. God knows how he found me. There were crooked cops in the ring, I know that much. One or two were arrested during the months after I was relocated. I followed the story closely in the newspapers. It was big news when they discovered that an inspector was part of a paedophile ring. No doubt there were others that got away. That could be how he found me. They’ll all be on the internet now, hanging around places like Afterlife.’

The light grows every minute, transforming the shadowy scenery around us into a drab, grey day. Low clouds hang above, mirroring my mood as we head south. A hundred and twenty miles turn into eighty-four and, finally, signs for Bristol take over from those announcing Birmingham.

‘What would it take?’ I ask. Adam glances over, puzzled. ‘To make someone forgive you for disappearing so comprehensively from their lives that they believed they’d never see you again?’

He pulls a face. ‘What, you mean like you were dead?’

‘Exactly like that.’

He blows out hard. ‘A damned good reason, I guess.’

‘And what if that person came back to life? Suddenly appeared from nowhere?’

‘Again, I’d want some damned good reasons.’

I’m silent for a while then I leap. I just say it. Not trusting anybody, I’ve decided, doesn’t work. ‘Adam, on the twenty-ninth of August this year, I killed myself.’

Adam swerves the car. ‘What? You tried to commit suicide?’

‘I didn’t
try.
I
did
.’ He steadies the car, gripping the wheel with both hands.

‘But you’re here.’

‘As far as the rest of the world is concerned, I’m dead. You’re the only person who knows Nina Kennedy is still alive.’

‘Nina Kennedy?’ Adam’s driving slows, preparing for yet more shock.

‘I was originally Nina Brookes when I left the children’s home. I took Mick’s name when we married.’

‘So who’s Frankie Gerrard?’ Adam is taking this in his stride, as if he now expects nothing less than intrigue from me.

‘Frankie is the person I became after I killed myself. I
faked my own suicide, Adam, so that Karl Burnett, the man who was after me, would leave me and my family alone. He’d threatened me, threatened Josie. He made it quite clear that the only way he’d back off was if I was dead. I had no choice.’

Adam thinks, getting things straight in his head. ‘Why didn’t you just call the police? And why didn’t you take your family with you? You could have all escaped somewhere, started over together.’

‘You think I’d not thought of that? You don’t know this man. If we all suddenly disappeared, Burnett would have never given up looking for us. But with my suicide note, several witnesses seeing me jump off the bridge, it was pretty conclusive that I was dead. My body was assumed washed away by the tide. Suicide was recorded. A bereft husband and daughter, a few newspaper reports, that was just passable. But not three deaths. We wouldn’t have got away with that.’ I draw breath. ‘Besides, how could I shatter the lives of those I loved because of my wretched past? They knew nothing about who I once was.’ I pause, bowing my head. ‘I couldn’t let them down.’

‘But why Roecliffe Hall? Why go back there?’

‘Burnett was hardly likely to show his face there again, not right after he was freed. Anyway, as I told you before, I decided it was the last place he’d think of looking for me. No protected witness with an ounce of sense would go back to the very place they’d run from. I thought I was being clever.’

‘And what part did the police play in all this?’

I laugh. ‘None. Apart from some young constable who thought my husband was beating me up. I tried to tell them, without actually telling them, but nothing came of it. I’d been drilled about only trusting the witness protection contact who’d relocated me. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t find him.’

‘Frankie, this is an unbelievable story.’

‘You think I made it up?’

‘Far from it,’ Adam replies. ‘It’s written all over your face.’ And he reaches out and strokes the scar on my cheek.

We hit the rush hour in Bristol. It seems a lifetime since I was last in the city where I’d spent twenty years hiding. I give Adam directions, short cuts to navigate our way through the traffic, and eventually we are heading out the other side of the city to the place I once called home. The cold sea air blows in through the broken heater.

I glance at the clock on the dashboard. ‘She’ll be getting up about now.’ I’m wondering if it’s worth going to school first and waiting for her at the gates, rather than cause a fuss at home. She said she’d been going again. ‘I don’t know how to do this, Adam. I’ve never come back from the dead before.’

‘Sounds like you’re an expert at it. Tell me where to go.’

‘Home.’ The word that used to spread warmth in my heart now fills me with dread. ‘I don’t think she’s really been going to school.’ I think back to the odd online conversation we had.

I decide, too, that in case Josie has already seen my
message through Afterlife, it would be prudent to call Laura’s house and see if she has made it there yet. I ask to borrow Adam’s mobile phone and dial. I pray I can change my voice enough to sound like a teenager and pull this off.

Moments later, I’m hanging up, reeling from hearing Laura’s voice, from the deceit. ‘They’ve not seen her for days, apparently. That’s odd in itself. She virtually lived at Nat’s place.’

‘We’ll drive to your house first and then go to her school. Does that sound like a plan?’

I nod. We’re getting close. My fingers turn numb. My mouth is dry and I’m dizzy from trying to think what to say to the daughter I betrayed. ‘Hurry,’ I say as, when I close my eyes, the truth lashes out from the blackness.

An entire season missed. The trees are blackened skeletons, as if after a terrible fire. The lush front gardens in my memory are wilted and rotting, fallen for autumn and winter. The occasional house has baskets of dead summer flowers still dangling outside the front door. But only my house has the complete package of death for a façade.

‘It looks awful. Drive on,’ I say, breathless with fear that someone will spot me. I have the sun visor down, a woollen hat of Adam’s pulled low over my face. It looks as if gypsies have camped in the front garden. The curtains are closed. Rubbish everywhere. What’s going on?

Adam does as he is told and drives on past number eighteen. He stops at the end of the street, waiting for me to tell him left or right. ‘Can you turn round? I want another look.’

As we cruise past again, I recognise one of the neighbours walking with her toddler. On her way to playgroup, no doubt. Nothing much changes, I realise. Life goes on. ‘Why does it look as if no one even lives there?’

‘Maybe they’re still in bed. Shall I park?’

‘No! Go up this way. There are some shops. It won’t look
odd if we park there. We can walk back.’

Adam does as I suggest and soon we are leaning against the steaming bonnet of his ancient car.

‘I should call her.’ Adam passes me his phone again. I dial but it rings out. ‘Perhaps they left early.’

‘Do you want me to knock at the door? No one knows who I am.’

I could hug him, but I don’t. Instead, he walks the short distance to my home – a trip I made many times. He returns with a puzzled look on his face. ‘Could they have gone on holiday?’ he asks. ‘It doesn’t look as if anyone’s been there for a while. There’s post on the mat and six pints of milk at the door. I rang the bell several times. I was going to go around the back, but the side gate was locked.’

‘It’s just stiff,’ I say, remembering all the little quirks about home that only the inhabitants know; the things that
make
it home.

‘I’m going round,’ I decide. ‘What if she’s there alone, or with
him,
or injured or—’

‘What if you stop worrying? If anything was desperately wrong, your husband would have called the police.’ He takes my arm, but I break off into a run. ‘Wait,’ he calls, but it’s too late. I’m charging ahead, hammering on my old front door, expecting to see Josie’s face through the glass. Will she look older, paler, more womanly?

I ring the bell again. Nothing. Adam follows me to the side gate and helps me shove it open. I’m round the back, calling out, yelling for Josie, praying that she’ll hear me.

‘What about down there?’ Adam suggests, pointing
down the garden to Mick’s cabin. The grass is knee-high around the wooden structure. The roof covered in dead leaves.

‘That’s the studio,’ I say and suddenly, Mick is there, his face at the window, staring at me across the garden with love in his eyes. As suddenly as I saw him, the mirage vanishes – as if he was just paint on canvas wiped away.

I race down to the cabin and cup my hands to the glass. There’s no one there, just paintings propped everywhere, occupying every surface, exuding the smell of paint even through the wood.

I turn away, intercepting Adam. ‘No,’ I say, breathless. ‘No one’s in there.’ I steer him away. ‘We can’t go in.’ I’m dizzy, driven, determined to find Josie. ‘I don’t have a key anyway.’ I remember how Mick kept it on him at all times.

I run across the lawn – an unkempt bog of weeds, leaves and mud – and go up the steps of the deck. I dash to each of the three windows, staring in, ready to face anything, anyone. ‘Nothing,’ I call out to Adam. ‘It’s a mess in there. No one home.’ I’m panting, not so much from running, but what I might find. ‘Where
is
she?’

An arm settles on mine. ‘Just what is it you’re expecting, Frankie?’ Seeing Adam here, away from Roecliffe, at my house, knowing the link he has to my past – both recent and distant – makes me feel weak.

‘I . . . I don’t know,’ I say, faltering over words that want to come out but won’t. ‘There are bad people, very bad people, and I don’t want my daughter near any of them.’ I pull up Adam’s arm and steal a look at his watch. ‘I doubt
she’d be at school yet even if she was going. It’s too early.’ I rest my head on the window, and then I see it. Josie’s computer on the dining-room table – a disconnected mess with a bundle of cables wrapped around it. It’s as if she’s been bound and gagged herself. Has he taken her? The image of my daughter being held prisoner somewhere makes me want to vomit.