The Game You Played (29 page)

Sunday night

I WAS INSTRUCTED NOT TO LEAVE my neighbourhood. The police were in the process of gathering evidence. I wasn’t under arrest, but in all possibility, it was a matter of time before I was.

The process of searching the two houses I’d lived at had begun. I was to stay in the house while they were searching, next to Detective Annabelle Yarris, who’d been assigned to watch me.

Annabelle turned on the TV, either bored or to give me something to take my mind off the search. I discovered that the whole world knew about Dash and me and the hotel room. She switched the channel, but not before I’d seen exactly what the world had seen.

I had no secrets left. No privacy.

I wasn’t a person with rights anymore.

No quiet space in which to mourn Tommy.

No time to grapple with the contents of the fourth letter.

The police took three hours to search my marital home. Luke doled out tea and coffee to everyone from the kitchen, avoiding me completely.

The police made a mess of Tommy’s room. All of his things, everywhere. Things his little hands had touched tossed carelessly to the floor. They took away with them a book that had been passed down to me by my mother—a book of old rhymes:
Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater, Georgie Porgie, Little Miss Muffet, Little Boy Blue
. . .

Outside, a machine drilled down in Luke’s perfect lawn and took soil samples.

Having found nothing, they turned their attention to Nan’s house.

Nan’s face was chalky as I was brought inside. She’d already had a visit from the detectives—telling her what had happened and what was about to happen to her house.

She grabbed my hand, squeezing my fingers together. “I don’t understand this, Phoebe. Any of it.” It was a phrase she was to repeat over and over as the day wore on.

Annabelle steered Nan and I into the living room before the police flooded in.

I sat next to Nan on the sofa, too numb to speak.

Annabelle stayed with us, seeming oblivious to the state Nan and I were in. I guessed it was normal for her, seeing people like this, people in the worst situations of their lives.

With a rigid expression, Nan handed me a letter. An official government letter. It had been hand-delivered today. She had three months in which to find another place to live. The date for the demolition of her house was set. I reached for her hand, but I couldn’t give her any real comfort. All I had done was to add to her trauma.

The media appeared out of nowhere outside, like leeches in damp weather. Nan looked as though she wanted to go out and shoo them all away. The media had already had their juicy piece of scandal today. But now they were getting bonus gifts. Tommy Basko’s mother had not only
cavorted
with men in a hotel room, but she was the one who’d penned the kidnapper letters,
and
she was on the brink of being charged with her own son’s murder.

Bang. Clatter. Bang.

Doors and drawers being opened and closed. Nan trembled with every sound the police made through the house.

I noticed the chipped edges on the walls where the wallpaper met and the frayed edges of the carpet—things I was normally immune to. The house hadn’t seen anything new since my mother was alive. I knew that these were the things that the police were seeing. When you walked through a house for the first time, you zeroed in on all its spots and scars and wrinkles. Just like when you met a new person for the first time. But once you’d lived in a house for a while, or once you’d known a person for a while, you stopped seeing the faults. Luke always said that it was impossible for homeowners to see their own homes with fresh eyes—when they went to sell their house, they always overvalued it because all they saw were the memories.

Bang. Clatter. Bang.

I couldn’t bear the noises anymore.

With my arms over my ears and head, I tried to close it all out. I was an animal whose burrow was being torn apart by rampaging ferrets on the trail of a rabbit.

They’d forced their way in, and no one could get them out.

The sounds, the sounds the sounds.
The hammering, the hollow echoes of walls, the protests of hundred-year-old floorboards as they were wrenched from their moorings. The ferrets were moving between the walls, beneath the floorboards, scurrying across the roof, digging in the yard.

Clatter. Clatter. Smash.
There went another of Nan’s pot plants. They weren’t careful, the ferrets. They didn’t need to be. The ferrets had a licence to destroy your home.

But they’d never find Tommy.

Because they didn’t know where to look.

The ferrets didn’t know where to find the rabbit.

Nan clutched the arms of her chair as the sharp sound of metal on metal rang from outside. She rose to her feet. Annabelle tried to stop her.

“This is my property,” Nan reminded her curtly, her voice ragged.

Annabelle hesitated then stepped aside.

I stepped along the hallway after Nan.

In the courtyard, two police were on bended knee, breaking the lock of the toolshed. The ivy had already been ripped from the exterior of the shed.

Dread and blood rushed into my head until all I could hear was a drum thrashing. That drumbeat. I’d heard it at the back of my mind for so long. So long.

“Surely this is unnecessary? It’s just an old shed,” Nan said bitterly, to no one in particular. She stepped in front of Trent.

Detective Yarris tried to lead Nan away. “Mrs Hoskins, if you’ll just step over here for a moment. This won’t take long.”

“Take your hand off me,” Nan told her.

Annabelle surveyed Nan coolly. “If I do that, will you stand here quietly?”

Nan reluctantly moved a few inches, not completely giving way.

A final hammering at the lock made it fall away.

Detective Gilroy strode forward.

The old shed seemed startled as Trent pushed its doors open and the glare of police spotlights streamed inside. All of its spades and rusted tins of paint and crates of tools exposed.

Everything grew quiet.

Dead quiet.

There was something in the shed that I couldn’t see.

Trent turned back to glance at me questioningly.

The dozen or so police in the tiny yard moved aside as I stepped to the shed.

I now had a view of two large plastic bags that I’d never seen in there before. The bags weren’t old. They hadn’t gathered the signs of age that the other things in the shed had.

There were mangled shapes inside the bags. Twisted things.

Pulling plastic gloves on, Trent edged his way in around the crates. Carefully, he untied each bag.

A police photographer stepped inside, snapping pictures.

Trent dragged out a large teddy bear—Tommy’s bear—half-destroyed, its stuffing spilling out. Trent pulled more things from the bags. All toys. The missing stuffed toys and trucks that had belonged to Tommy. Either smashed or cut open.

There was something large in the second bag. Detective Gilroy spread the plastic back.

Tommy’s nightlight.

Mangled.

My mind in chaos, I twisted around to Nan. “Who did this to Tommy’s things?”

She folded her arms in against her chest. “You did.”

I shook my head. She hadn’t understood my question.

“It was you, Phoebe,” she repeated.

“Why are you lying?” I didn’t understand why my own grandmother would say such a thing.

Lifting her glasses, she rubbed away the wet that had gathered under her eyes. “It was in November of last year. You weren’t well. Not well at all. You tore up the cushions in the house and smashed the vases and plates. And yes, you did this to Tommy’s toys.”

“I didn’t . . .”

“I know you don’t remember. You’d been drinking heavily. The drinking made you forget things all the time back then. On this day, you called me on the phone and begged me to make you stop. I rushed straight up there with Bernice and her mother. We cleaned everything up. But you wouldn’t let us throw anything away. You said you wanted to fix it all and make it right again, when you were better. So I had to keep them. But there was no possible way of fixing those things.”

It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be. My voice weakened. “Where was Tommy when this was happening?”

She moistened her lips. “He was there. He was very frightened. Bernice took him with her back to her house while Mrs Wick and I did the clean-up. We had it all sorted before Luke came home from work.”

Hot tears burned the edges of my eyes. The memory was vague. But I remembered snatches of it now. I’d been drinking since that morning, rage slowly building inside me. The sound of the drum relentless in my head.

Stepping to Nan, I took her arm. “But why would you keep it so secret? The toys in the shed?”

Nan took in a shuddering breath. “That day, after you calmed down and realised what you’d done, you went hysterical. You threatened to kill yourself. Said you were no good as a mother. I was afraid for you. The next day, when you didn’t seem to recall what you’d done or what had happened to the toys, I thought it was all best forgotten.”

“I’m sorry, Nan,” I whispered to her.

Her fingers shook as she unfolded her arms and twisted her fingers together. “I never understood what the trouble was with you, but I did try to help you. Maybe I just didn’t do enough.”

I saw fear bright in her eyes. Did she believe that I’d killed Tommy? She knew about the fourth letter and the rhyme and the blood—everybody did.

No
, I had no memory of hurting Tommy. No memory . . .

But was my memory enough?

I hadn’t remembered what was in the tool shed. No wonder I’d dreamed of Tommy trying to get in there. He’d wanted his toys.

“I thought Luke’s mother threw Tommy’s things away,” I said, my voice falling away.

“I know. In the weeks after that day, you had another episode,” Nan told me. “Luke came home to find you’d been drinking and not watching Tommy. I tried to get him to have you sent somewhere to get better. But instead, he got his mother to come stay with you. You blamed her for taking away Tommy’s toys. But they were already gone.”

“But I did get better,” I said. “I know I got better.” But was that only because I’d had Luke’s mother to feel resentful of, rather than my own life?

“Yes, you did get better,” she agreed, but she didn’t sound entirely convinced.

The detectives were all observing me closely as the conversation between Nan and me ended.

“Phoebe,” Trent Gilroy said, “I have to inform you that you have become the primary person of interest in this case. Do you know what that means?”

I swallowed, feeling dry and burned inside. “It means you think I’m the one who hurt Tommy.”

He hesitated, the blip line in his forehead deepening. “I’d suggest you get yourself a good lawyer, Phoebe. We’re going to need to have you in for questioning. Within the week.”

Trent Gilroy’s face was very different to the way I’d always seen it before. This was a grim, masked face that was closed to me.

I gave a dazed nod.

Police were carrying the destroyed toys out of the shed. I watched them carry the nightlight past me.

Sleep, Tommy. Sleep.

I no longer needed to find out where the nightlight had gone.

And I didn’t even want to remember who I’d been on the phone with the day Tommy went missing anymore.

But it was too late.

I remembered.

Sunday night

IT SEEMED LIKE A GIANT STICK had pried the whole neighbourhood out of their burrows. There was nothing like red and blue police lights to tear people away from their TV sets.

I sat on the low brick wall outside Nan’s house, not caring who saw me or who filmed me. I couldn’t stand another minute of being inside Nan’s house or yard. The sight of Tommy’s destroyed playthings had sickened me.

I wanted to go to Kitty’s. But as much as I didn’t care who was watching me, I couldn’t bring her into it. And a camera crew might decide to follow me.

My wife was a monster. Nan had done way too much covering up for her.

I’d married a woman who’d murdered our son.

What had she done to Tommy? Who had helped her? Someone else had to have been there that day at the playground to abduct Tommy. Phoebe had planned this.

Maybe soon, when I found out what happened to him, I could finally grieve. I’d kept it all locked up tight for so long. There’d been no closure. No funeral.

A car pulled up across the road, behind the police cars. A middle-aged woman rushed out. My mother. My father followed, a lot slower in gait.

Mum crushed me to her in a bear hug. “My God, Luke. We were on our way home when we heard the news. We’d planned to stay overnight at your Aunty Felicity’s on the way, but when we heard the news, we just kept driving.”

“Mum . . . it was her. All along.”

“I didn’t want to tell you this before, but I always suspected her. But let’s not talk about that here. Too many people about. Let’s get you back to our house and leave them all to it. We’ll take Phoebe’s grandmother with us too. She’s probably half having a heart attack by this, poor old lady.”

“We’ll be looking after her,” came a sharp voice from next door.

It was Mrs Wick. Bernice and her mother were on their front lawn in their dressing gowns.

Mrs Wick stepped from her lawn across to Nan’s. “Bernie and I’ll be right there with Coral, helping get her place back in order. Coral and I have always lived in our own homes. We don’t just up and leave when there’s trouble. Now get away with you.”

“Tommy was our grandchild,” Mum said coldly. “We have a right to be here.”

“Not on Coral’s property, you don’t,” Mrs Wick informed her.

“Fuck off.” I took a step towards Mrs Wick.

My mother took hold of my arm. “It’s not the time or the place, Luke. People are watching.”

Bernice moved from the shadows of her house into the light. She shot my parents a look of what I could only describe as barely concealed hatred. She’d been a weird girl, and she’d become an even weirder woman. I could guess that Bernice hated me and my family because we were not fucked up in the head, like she was.

My mother led me away, past the Wick house and past number 29 to their house. Dad trailed behind.

“Bernice is unusual. I’ll say that for her,” my mother said quietly, even though she no longer needed to be quiet. Bernice was way out of earshot. “She should have got herself away from here and started her life a long time ago.”

“Yes, that would have been for the best. Poor Bernice,” my father said in a defeated voice.

I wanted to punch him in his soft gut. I hated the way he spoke through a sigh. He hadn’t stood up for my mother against Mrs Wick. He was always so damned placid.

And why the hell were either of them wasting energy talking about Bernice? They’d often said the same things about her over the years. What kind of catastrophe would have to happen before their normal lines of conversation swapped to the present moment instead of the past? An earthquake?
Jesus.

Mum unlocked the door and herded us inside. The house smelled a little musty, but it looked the same as always. Everything in place.

While Dad settled into his armchair, Mum buzzed about, getting tea and coffee.

It was only after Dad had dozed off to sleep and Mum had mentioned Tommy’s name to me that I cried like a baby in her arms.