The Date: An unputdownable psychological thriller with a breathtaking twist (22 page)

Now I have a plan, as I know you will have too. I know you so well, Ali. You’re predictable. You’re selfish.

You’re a liar.

I’ll almost be sorry to come to the end.

Almost.

Despite everything, I’ll miss you.

Visibility is poor as I speed towards the police station, my wipers swish-swish-swishing against the lashing rain. The life insurance policy flutters from the passenger seat to the floor as I tear around a corner, and as I lean to pick it up my car drifts. There’s a sharp blast
of a horn, and I look up just in time to straighten the wheel, missing the approaching car by millimetres.

Calm.

A speed camera flashes as I pass it in a blur, but I don’t care. My mind is racing too, trying to second-guess Matt’s next move. Will he come after me? Run? I can’t let him disappear along with Chrissy, for if they vanish, I know the cloud of suspicion hanging over me
never will. The car park is almost full. I slot in-between a police car and a black Fiesta, its wing scraped white but, as I step out of the car into a freezing puddle, I hesitate. Is the insurance policy enough? Will PC Hunter take me seriously running in without shoes with this one solitary piece of evidence to clear my name. I think of his abruptness. His sarcasm. There’s nothing in this envelope
linking Matt to Chrissy. ‘Circumstantial’ I think he’d say, and yes, I did learn that from the TV. My spirits lift as I remember the photo of Chrissy and Matt in my case at Iris’s. The letter she had written him. The phone call Jules overheard.

Surely that will be enough.

It has to be.

Yanking my seatbelt across my body, as my foot squeezes the accelerator, I watch the station
shrink in my rear-view mirror and promise I’ll be back soon.

I’m barely aware of where I am until I reach Iris’s, where the sight of Matt’s car parked in the driveway causes coldness to drip through me like the teeming rain streaming from the guttering.

He’s still here. Why?

There’s nowhere to park on the road unless I block the driveway and it occurs to me this is
exactly what I should do. I can call the police and Matt won’t be able to leave. Once I show them the photo, the letter and the insurance policy and have explained exactly what’s going on they’ll have no choice but to take him in for questioning. This whole nightmare will be over.

But my desire to call the police is overridden by the desire to check Iris and Branwell are okay. I’ve no idea
what Matt is capable of.

Enjoy the date, bitch?

It must have created the perfect opportunity for him when I agreed to meet the man I thought was Ewan.

The house is quiet as I push open the front door. Too quiet. I pull out my mobile phone and as I call ‘Hello?’ I’m scrolling through the recent calls list. Near the top is an incoming number I don’t recognise: it must be the
direct line for PC Willis when she phoned to ask me to go into the station.

‘Iris?’ I shout again. Silence wraps itself around me, suffocating the tiny spark of hope I’d been holding onto that Matt would be sat at the kitchen table, being plied with tea and custard creams, with no idea I’m aware of what he’s done.

Swallowing hard I begin to edge down the hallway. My socks imprinting
damp footprints on the oak floor.

There is no bubbling of the kettle, no muted tones of the radio that’s always kept on low ‘for company’, no conversation, no scrambling of paws tearing down the hallway to greet me.

My whole body tingles with an overwhelming urge to run. To get out of this house, where again, a sense of tragedy has settled into the atmosphere, but I can’t. I can’t
run. I can’t leave.

The kitchen is empty. Two mugs sit on the table, both half-f. One of the wooden chairs is upended, its spindle back snapped.

A sense of foreboding builds, a pressure in my head as though someone is inflating a balloon.

My thumb presses dial. I lift the mobile to my ear, waiting for PC Willis to answer, as I creep out of the kitchen and towards the lounge,
and that’s where I see them, poking out from behind the sofa.

Feet.

Iris’s beige moccasined feet.

She’s lying on the floor, eyes closed, an odd hue to her skin. I think she’s dead.

My head starts to spin and as I stumble backwards I notice the message written on the mirror in the orange lipstick she’s worn since the 1970s.

I’m whimpering as I back out of the room, phone clamped to my ear, willing PC Willis to answer. A muffled sound, like somebody trying to hum, draws my attention to the corner of the room.

Ben.

I hadn’t seen his car as I’d arrived but then I hadn’t been looking for
it, lost to my own thoughts.

He’s slumped onto the floor, wrists and ankles bound, tie skewed, suit crumpled. The frames of his glasses are bent. There’s a strip of what looks like Iris’s tea towel tied around his mouth, blood trickling from the corner of his lips.

‘Oh God. Oh Ben.’

He makes an urgent, indecipherable noise as I rush towards him, gesturing wildly with his head
but I can’t tear my eyes away from him, until a shadow shifts in the corner, stopping me in my tracks.

Matt is standing silent. Still. The hate emanating from him is as thick as the fear coming from Ben.

In that split second, I notice everything: the whites of Ben’s bulging eyes as he struggles to free his wrists, the stainless steel bread knife clamped in Matt’s hand. But it’s the
scarf looped around his neck that causes my simmering rage to erupt. I bought him that scarf last Christmas thinking the blue would match his eyes that now stare at me with venom.

Until death do us part.

Just as I’m about to spring forward I hear someone say: ‘Hello? Hello?’

Thank God. PC Willis’s voice drifts from the phone I am still clasping in my hand.

There’s a
fraction of a second where Matt’s eyes flicker from my phone to my face before he leaps forward. I scream.

Instantly, there is a frantic barking from the garden. I think I can reach the back door to let Branwell in. He may be small but he’d never let anyone hurt me. I spin, launching myself towards the door. Matt’s fingers grip my shoulder. I turn and kick him as hard as I can in the groin.
He crumples to the floor, and I gabble into the handset.

‘PC Willis. This is Ali Taylor. My husband. Matt. He’s killed my aunt. Hurt my brother. He’s trying to kill me. He’s going to kill us both.’

‘Alison. Where are you?’

Matt is kneeling now, fumbling for the knife that had slipped from his fingers as he fell.

‘Iris’s: 212 Station Road. Matt’s been seeing Chrissy.
She’s not missing. Oh God.’ I edge into the dimness of the hallway as Matt staggers to his feet.

‘Ali. Are you safe?’

‘No.’

Matt looms towards me.

I’m not safe at all.

‘My husband is going to kill me.’ I speak slower now. There’s an inevitability about it all.

‘The police won’t be long. Can you get to a room with a lock?’

‘It’s too late,’ I whisper,
as Matt prises the phone from my fingertips and smashes the handset against my head.

Blackness.

It’s too late.

Everything is fragmented. Indiscernible. Vaguely I am aware of being lifted. Cold air. Branches tugging at my hair. Being carried through the back garden. The thrumming of an engine. The creaking of the gate. Lying down somewhere warm and soft. Drifting-drifting-drifting. Blackness
once more.

We’re moving. My head throbbing. Lulled by the vibrations.

Safe inside the car.

Strapped in next to Dad. Driving to the corner shop. A block of Neapolitan ice cream from the freezer for Sunday tea. Swapping my strawberry for Ben’s chocolate.

Sleep.

There’s a whooshing sound in my ears as my senses reawaken with a roar. At first I think it’s my own
flow of blood I hear, my pulse beating rapid and light in my wrist, but then I realise it is the sea. The ground I am lying on is hard and damp, my teeth chattering. Above me I see exposed beams knotted with woodworm. Grey stone walls.

Dark things happen on dark nights
.

I realise the photograph on my Instagram page was taken here, the place Matt knew I loved. I’d shared my memories
of childhood picnics with Ben and Mum before she got sick. The place where he had proposed.

Rope bites into my wrists as I push myself to sitting. There’s a tugging at my ankles, Matt is tying my feet.

‘You bastard.’ I kick once. Twice. My heel connecting with the soft flesh of his belly.

He slaps me hard. The metallic taste of blood coats my mouth, and I glare at him wondering
what road we had taken since we had made our vows that could possibly have led to this. Had I really been such a bad wife?

He pushes his face towards mine, eyes burning into me – and suddenly I know.

I haven’t been a bad wife at all. This is not my husband.

‘Ben?’

The man so close I can feel his breath is wearing Matt’s clothes. Matt’s scarf. But the smell is distinctly
my brother.

In the corner, the man I thought was Ben is frantically nodding his head. The wire-rimmed glasses that don’t fit him properly sliding down his face. As well as feeling scared and angry, I also feel worthless and small. How easy Ben must have thought it would be to fool me with my prosopagnosia, and how right. Ben and Matt have similar hairstyles, short and dark, and when I’d
seen Matt tied up wearing Ben’s suit and glasses it never for a second crossed my mind to look a little closer.

Don’t believe everything you see
.

Although I cannot trust what is before my eyes, we all have a unique smell that’s almost impossible to replicate. And suddenly I realise exactly what this is about. It has been Ben all along. Taunting me. Scaring me. ‘Murderer’ painted
on my door. Antidepressants in case I couldn’t live with what I’d done. Now it all makes perfect, perfect sense.

‘Ben.’ I’m firmer this time. ‘I know it’s you.’

He opens his mouth in a gasp and I smell it again, the menthol cigarettes he always smokes when he is stressed, and there is nothing more stressful than killing.

I should know.

I had stayed up late revising for my GCSE mocks, it must have been about eleven thirty before I’d fallen into a troubled sleep. My eyes sprang open at midnight, and I wasn’t sure what had woken me at first. I sat up in bed and rubbed the blur from my eyes. Moonlight filtered
through the gap in my curtains, the wardrobe shadowed on my ceiling, and that was nothing out of the ordinary, though that night the shadows looked darker. Menacing somehow. Almost reluctantly I swung my legs out of bed, a sixth sense telling me something was very, very wrong. It’s the small details I remember now. The fabric of my towelling dressing gown against my goosebumps. The fur of my slippers
warming the soles of my feet. The squeaking hinge of my bedroom door as I eased it open, half-hoping it was just Ben that had woken me, but somehow knowing it wasn’t. There was still a lingering smell of the sausages we’d eaten for dinner but now these felt heavy and greasy in my stomach.

Ben’s door was ajar and in the soft tangerine glow of his nightlight I could see his small body tucked
up in his bed. Ollie the Owl had slipped onto the floor; despite having just turned nine, Ben still slept with him. I was about to pick it up, rest it back on his pillow, when I heard it. A noise. A whispering, growing louder and rising in pitch.

I kept my steps long and tiptoe light as I crept towards Mum’s room. The door was tightly shut. I pressed my ear against the wood and listened.

There was the sound of muffled sobbing and, at first, I thought it was Mum. My fingertips brushed the handle as I deliberated whether I should go and comfort her, when she spoke and I knew it wasn’t her crying. I knew she wasn’t alone.

‘You have to, Iris.’ Mum’s voice was thick. Slow.

More and more she’d been having difficulty swallowing, speaking. The muscles of her throat
and jaw growing weaker. ‘Sometimes the voice can be the first thing to go.’ The doctor hadn’t looked up as the nib of his fountain pen scratched on Mum’s notes. ‘You’re lucky.’ He had said without irony as though Mum should be thankful she could no longer use her left arm, barely use her right. Her legs were too weak to support her. The softness in her tone that used to soothe me back to sleep had
long since disappeared.

The crying grew louder.

‘I know it’s hard. But…’

‘Hard?’ Iris’s voice was scathing. ‘You’re asking the impossible.’

‘But you promised.’

‘You can’t hold me to that. Remember my first job when I got fired for kissing the assistant manager in the stationery cupboard and you said you wouldn’t tell Mum but…’

I pulled a face. I couldn’t
imagine Iris ever kissing anyone. Mum bit back chasing the image away.

‘You can’t possibly compare—’

‘I know.’

A silence. I held my breath, angled my feet towards my bedroom so I could bolt if Iris came out, but the sound of crying drifted through the door once more.

‘I love you,’ Iris said. ‘And if there’s the slightest chance…’

‘There isn’t,’ Mum said. Her
tone strengthened by the finality in her words. ‘You know there isn’t. You’ve been giving the kids false hope. Clinging on to—’

‘False hope is better than no hope.’ Iris’s words catch in her throat.

‘But you know.’ Mum’s voice is pleading but clearer than I’ve heard it for months. ‘You know.’

There’s silence again. I shiver, drawing the belt of my dressing gown tighter.

‘I need you. Please. You have to say yes.’

There’s a pang in my chest at the sound of Mum begging.

‘I’m here, aren’t I? I’m looking after the kids. The house. You. I’m doing the best I can.’

‘I know you are but it’s only going to get harder.’

‘You’re my
sister
.’

‘That’s precisely why I’m counting on you. I’d do it for you if the roles were reversed.’

‘But Ali. Ben. He’s so small.’

‘It’s
for
the kids. I’ve already lived longer than they thought I might. I’m going downhill quickly. Do you want them to suffer too? Without Justin, you’re all they’ve got, Iris. Please.’

There’s a beat. Two. Mum crying. ‘I
can’t
,’ Iris said. ‘I just can’t.’

Footsteps thudded towards the door and I darted into the shadows, scooching down
by the side of the bookcase. Iris pounded down the stairs. There was the chinking of keys, the slamming of the front door, the firing of a car engine and then nothing but an animalistic whimpering that cut me to the very core.

I was tempted to scurry back to bed, give Mum her privacy, but the sound drew me to her side and, skirting around her wheelchair, I slid into bed beside her, put
my arm around her shoulders, and let her sorrow soak my dressing gown. My own cheeks were wet too.

My arm tingled pins and needles by the time Mum lifted her head and her bloodshot eyes met mine.

‘Sorry,’ she said and there was the familiar slur to her speech as though her conversation with Iris had taken everything from her.

‘What’s going on, Mum?’ Apprehension prickled like
the sting from the nettles that grew wild at the bottom of the garden.

‘I remember so clearly the day you were born,’ she said painfully slowly, a faraway look on her face. ‘I was in labour for seventy-two hours and the contractions were unimaginable, almost unbearable but throughout it all your dad kept squeezing my hand, telling me to hang on, reminding me that eventually the pain would
end and we’d have something wonderful. You.’ Her eyes misted again. ‘It was worth it. Every single second. As soon as I saw your face I knew I’d go through it all again in a heartbeat.’

She swallowed hard. I remained silent not wanting my voice to jar her out of the memory she was enveloped in. She so rarely spoke of Dad.

‘I love you, Ali. Please know that but…’ She shook her head.

‘What, Mum?’ She was scaring me.

‘But this. It’s unimaginable, unbearable and there’s no one to tell me to hang on.’

‘I’ll tell you to hang on. So will Ben. Iris.’ I rummaged around in my mind for other names to pluck out, friends, neighbours, but it had dawned on me that over the past three years everyone had drifted away and I wasn’t sure whether it had been what happened
with Dad before, or what was happening with Mum then. Sadness washed over me. Mum was always so social. I thought of the times lately I’d raced upstairs to do my homework, shouting a hello as I passed by her door. Calling ‘see you later’ whenever I went out as though that was enough. Failure overwhelmed me. I’d let her down.

‘I’m sorry, Mum.’ Desperately so. ‘I’ll spend more time with you.’

‘I could have a million days with you and Ben, Ali. Live to be a thousand and it would still never be enough, but…’ She was hard to understand then. Exhaustion paled her face, deepened the grooves that ran from the corners of her mouth to her chin. ‘I’ll have to leave you some time. It’s the natural order of things.’

‘But not yet. The doctor said…’

‘I’m not going to get better,
Ali,’ she said flatly. ‘However positive Iris tries to stay, whatever she tells you and Ben, I’m not going to get better. Two to five years the experts said, and it’s already been three.’

‘I know but…’ I trailed off. I wanted to say ‘but I want you to get better’ as if that could possibly make a difference. Unlike Ben I was old enough to understand. I’d googled. Read the statistics. Mum
was going to deteriorate further before she died. It didn’t bear thinking about.

‘Is it awful?’ I’d never asked her before, as though, if she didn’t say it out loud she couldn’t be suffering. But she was.

‘Yes,’ she said simply and there was none of the self-pity that would have come if it were me or Ben answering the questions, and I felt a stab of shame at the fuss we both made
when we had chickenpox. ‘My muscles cramp, there’s spasticity in my hands, my joints ache. I’ve sores where I’m stuck in one position unless someone helps me move. I’m helpless. Reliant on Iris to do everything for me.’

‘I’ll help more.’ I’d always known it must be awful for Mum being so dependent, but I’d only ever considered the lack of mobility. Her frustration with not being able to
do things for herself. I’d never really thought about the physical pain she must be in and I felt horrible. ‘It must be difficult when you can’t move around.’

‘It’s not just that.’ It was an effort for her to force her words out. ‘My speech is going. I’m lucky it’s lasted so long. Soon I won’t be able to communicate with you all.’

‘But you will. On the last home visit we were told
about the apps, remember? There’s options.’

‘Like the feeding tube when I can no longer swallow? As it is I can only eat soft things. What kind of life is it to not be able to move, speak, eat? It’s been three years since my diagnosis, I’m luckier than most but I’m tired, Ali.’

‘Sorry. It’s late.’ I shifted my weight ready to leave, let her sleep.

‘Not that sort of tired,’
she said. ‘I’ve been stockpiling sleeping tablets.’

‘Do you want one?’ That was something practical I could do for her.

‘Iris was going to help me take them.
All
of them.’

There was a silence as I turned her words over as though they were written on paper, and it was a gradual unfolding, and even now I don’t know whether I didn’t understand or whether I didn’t want to understand.
I covered my mouth with my hands, as though I was the one who had spoken, as I stared at her in shock as though she had betrayed me, and it almost felt as though she had.

‘You can’t leave us.’

‘I will be soon anyway and how long do I wait? Until I can’t tell you what I want. I can’t bear it anymore, Ali. I want to slip away with what dignity I have left. But Iris. She… she…’

‘Shhh.’ I held Mum in my arms, her cheek resting against mine, breathing in the rose-scented face cream Iris massaged into her face twice a day. My mind whirred as panic built while I tried desperately to think of ways to help her, but I returned time and time again to the sleeping tablets. I pushed the thought away once more, my skin becoming slick with sweat at the prospect of being without
her, as memories gathered and retreated.

Mum outside on a winter-dark morning, hands stinging and raw as she scrubbed at the graffiti sprayed on our garage. Mum shielding me from the baying reporters who pushed and shoved as she took me to school each day during the trial.
Eastenders
, hot chocolate and custard creams. Movie evenings when we could no longer afford cinema trips, curtains
drawn, popcorn in bowls, me and Ben lining up at the lounge door as she took the tickets she’d made. So many memories but they all dipped and weaved, carving their own path in my mind, always, always leading to the same conclusion. Mum loved me. And my stomach whirred like the Catherine Wheel Dad had nailed to the fence all those years ago as Mum heaped beans onto jacket potatoes, hot chocolate simmering
in the pan while fireworks whizzed and popped.

‘You can’t just give up.’ On us, I wanted to add, but I knew that wasn’t fair.

‘This isn’t something I’m taking lightly, Ali. Leaving you and Ben. I’ve been mulling it over for the past year. Me and Iris have talked about it tirelessly. I love you and Ben more than anything, you know that, but I want you both to remember me being able
to tell you I love you. As the person I was, not the person I’m becoming. Dad’s in prison and yet he has more freedom than me.’

She closed her eyes and I had lain back, head sharing her pillow, staring up at the hoist hanging from the ceiling, and I was furious with God, with the universe, with everyone. Furious but certain.

‘Are you sure?’ I asked. Her eyes met mine and I saw pain
and regret but the overriding emotion was a flash of relief. She nodded, her eyes flickering to her bedside cabinet.

‘It will be classed as an expected death,’ she’d whispered. ‘My GP can come and sign the death certificate tomorrow. As I only saw him last week, legally there isn’t a need for a post-mortem. No one will ever know.’

Hearing the research Mum had clearly done, the thought
she had given to what will happen after, made up my mind. Wordlessly, I pulled open her drawer. My hands were shaking so violently I could barely open the bottles. I tipped the white pills that looked so innocent onto the duvet and snapped each one into four. Mum could no longer swallow them whole. I cradled her head as she forced them down with the warm water that was stale with dust and bubbles
– but if I’d gone to fetch her a fresh glass I’d have followed Iris. Run away. Like a coward.

When the tablets were gone we locked eyes.

‘Ali,’ she said, and I lifted her hand, pressing her palm to my cheek. ‘Sarah.’ And it had been so long since I had heard my real name I dissolved into tears.

‘Don’t cry, sweet girl. It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault.’ I didn’t
believe her. I thought back to the hours I’d spent hunched over my laptop, pouring over Google, reading page after page of research into MND. The theories stating damaging genetics and environmental factors, including stress, could play a part in the onset. It all circled back to me. Dad stealing to pay for my birthday presents, me letting the police in. However much my heart felt like it was
being torn in two this was the least I could do for Mum. I owed her.

‘Talk to me,’ she murmured and there were so many words I wanted to say but this was the last thing I could do for her, so I said what I had always said in the small, lonely hours as I held Ben and he’d drifted back to sleep. ‘The owl and the pussy-cat went to sea…’ But my whole body was shaking with shock as the enormity
of what I’d done hit me time and time again. I kept losing my thread, starting the verse again, while Mum lay beside me, but like one of Dad’s scratched vinyls I kept getting stuck. Then, I don’t know when exactly, her muscles were no longer twitching. Her breath no longer rasping.

Dawn finally broke. The sun streaking the sky red – the colour of my shame. Ben would be awake soon and I
slid slowly off the bed, noticing the yellowing stain of egg yolk on Mum’s nightie, her slippers half-tucked under the divan, the grey hair clogging her brush on the bedside table.