The Birthday Weekend, page 18
‘You’re not, you can’t be.’
I held my breath, eyes riveted to his face, needing to see his true feelings. For a second I thought the worst, couldn’t breathe. Then his mouth twitched and broke into a smile, and I breathed again. ‘Oh no, that’s brilliant, but also terrible … oh no, I don’t know …’
Sam’s smiles were infectious. We grinned at each other like chimpanzees, then he held his arms out and we hugged each other and rolled onto the bed.
‘Now do you get it?’ I whispered into his ear as his hands snaked under my jumper and over my back. ‘Let’s tell Hannah together. Then she’ll understand.’
Everything was going to be all right.
Sam arranged to meet Hannah the following day, outside the arts block. He didn’t mention that I was going to be there, because we both knew she wouldn’t come if she knew. The night before, I stayed over in his room, but I woke up after a couple of hours and couldn’t sleep. A doubt had crept into my head and I couldn’t get rid of it. What if I hadn’t been pregnant? Would Sam have stood by me then? Every time I saw him, we ended up in bed. Was there enough substance in our relationship to last beyond this phase?
Most guys would have been turned off by the pregnancy, but I’d known Sam wouldn’t be. He’d gone on about children ever since I’d known him. Amy used to tease him that he’d be the first of us to start a family. Thinking about Amy made me hurt. I missed her and Louise and Kat, our little group churned up by this fallout between me and Hannah. I still wasn’t sure whose side they were on, and I was determined to make it mine.
Sam was sprawled out on his back, handsome face looking peaceful, and I envied him his ability to sleep no matter what was going on. A light flashed on his bedside table. His phone. I eased myself up and out of the bed, careful not to make a noise. I picked up the phone and slipped out of the room and into the student kitchen, for once not caring about the pile of unwashed dishes stacked on the draining board.
I didn’t put the light on, but pulled a chair over to the window, where a street lamp cast light into the empty room. I typed in his PIN number, went to his messages and found Hannah’s name second in his most recently contacted list. I started reading.
I want to see you.
It’s difficult.
I miss you.
Me too.
Can we talk
It’s difficult.
Stop saying that.
It’s the truth.
Have you stopped loving me?
You know I’ll always love you.
That’s not what I mean.
Can we talk? Don’t mention the D word.
I told you, it’s difficult.
Difficult because of her?
Difficult because if I see you I might change my mind.
That last message made me jolt my head up, and the chair shifted and squealed against the floor. Sam was all over the place. It was just as I feared: if he saw Hannah, I risked losing him. I went back to the messages to check when these had been sent. The night before last, so he didn’t know about the pregnancy then. I was right – without the baby, he wouldn’t want me.
That was the last text exchange between them. I paced the kitchen for what felt like hours. When I crept back into Sam’s room and placed the phone back beside him, he hadn’t even moved. Still dreaming away without a care in the world. A rush of power took hold of me as I stood looking down at him; I could do anything to him now and he wouldn’t be able to defend himself. That knowledge made me feel powerful.
Over the rest of the night, I devised my plan. We’d go and meet Hannah together and I would make him choose between us. And if he made the wrong choice, then somebody was going to pay. But would it be him, or would it be Hannah?
Once I’d decided what to do, I was able to get back to sleep. Sam would meet Hannah after her lecture ended and I’d drive his van over and pick them up. We could go somewhere off campus where we could all talk properly and I could make Hannah understand once and for all that Sam and I were together now. And always would be, baby or no baby.
Sam was fine with the plan. I suggested we drive out to Blackwood Forest because the weather was lovely and we could easily find somewhere private. Did I know then what might happen? I can’t say I did, but something was driving this need for privacy.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Daisy
I pulled up in the road adjacent to the arts building as arranged. I could see Sam waiting outside the block, headphones on, wearing a distinctive red cap, carrying his sports bag with his cricket bat sticking out. I’d forgotten he’d had a game this lunchtime. Every now and then he’d look around, pace up and down, then go back to the same spot. Students spilled out of the building and I lost sight of him. I nearly had a heart attack when his face appeared in my wing mirror. He was with Hannah and they had almost reached the van, so I started the engine. I waited for the agreed rap on the side of the vehicle, and the door screeched as Sam slid it open.
‘We’ll both get in the back,’ he called to me.
‘What’s going on?’ I heard Hannah ask.
‘Hurry up, traffic warden’s coming,’ I said. It wasn’t true, but I was getting antsy and I wanted to be off before Hannah changed her mind. It wasn’t as if we were kidnapping her. A conversation was needed, that was all.
A hint of sickly floral fragrance entered the van as Hannah climbed in, long hair falling over her face, and my pulse sped up. The smell made me want to puke.
‘Where are we going?’ Hannah asked.
‘Blackwood Forest,’ I told her, watching her in the rear-view mirror. Her face was drawn and she’d lost weight since I’d last seen her. She muttered something to Sam and he replied, but their voices were too low for me to make out what they were saying.
‘I can’t hear you,’ I said. A fly settled on the dashboard and I thumped it hard, obliterated it. I didn’t want any more secrets to be kept from me.
Hannah winced at my harsh tone and shifted position away from Sam, looking out of the window. I recalled the texts, Sam’s betrayal, and gripped the steering wheel even tighter.
‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ I said.
She didn’t react, her gaze fixed on the world outside, which sped past as I drove fast, too fast, anxious to get to our destination.
The car park at the woods was almost empty, and I parked in the nearest spot. The sun had gone in and the sky was dark, brooding. I pulled my hoodie around me, put the hood up as I got out of the car. Hannah didn’t move.
‘I don’t get why you’ve brought me here. I don’t want to talk to her.’ She’d lowered her voice but the words sailed out of the window into my ears. I didn’t want to talk to her either, but it was necessary.
I rapped my knuckles on the roof.
‘Come on, it looks like rain.’
‘Which is why I don’t understand why we had to come here,’ Hannah said as she got out of the car and slammed the door. She held her cotton jacket around herself, faking a shiver. It wasn’t that cold. Sam jumped out too. His phone slid out of his pocket onto the floor of the van. I knocked it out of sight under the seat before locking the doors.
‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’ he said to me as Hannah wandered away from us.
‘Yes, come on. We don’t want to lose her.’
‘But …’ He held up his bag. ‘Let me put this back in the van.’
‘I’ve locked the doors. Just bring it with you. Hannah, wait up.’
‘Let’s get this over with,’ she called back.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘There’s a clearing there, look, we can sit on that log. Come on, Sam.’ I reached for his hand, but he pulled it away. His rejection stung. I thought about the texts again.
Hannah hovered by the log, only sitting down when Sam did so first. He dropped his bag on the floor next to him, then pulled out his cricket bat and drew patterns in the soil, creating little puffs of grey around their feet.
‘What’s so important that you had to drag me out here?’ she said. ‘I’m not comfortable with this at all. You’ve changed, Sam, since you got mixed up with her.’
‘I have a name,’ I said.
She shrugged.
‘I wanted you both here to tell you where we stand,’ I continued. ‘Sam has been a bit confused lately.’ Hannah flashed a glance at him. ‘It’s OK, I know about the texts, Sam told me. How you still want to be with him. How you think he still wants to be with you. But you’ve got it wrong.
‘You see, what he hasn’t told you is that I’m pregnant. We’re having a baby, me and Sam. We’re planning a life together after university.’
‘But—’
I stopped him with a look. ‘Whereas you, Hannah, will be going off with your first-class degree and leaving us all behind.’
‘You haven’t told her your plans, have you, Sam? She doesn’t know about your master’s.’
What master’s?
‘Tell her, Sam,’ I said.
Sam didn’t even look at me, which was infuriating; he was still poking the bat around in the ground.
‘Tell her,’ I repeated, and grabbed the bat from his hand. He jumped to his feet.
‘This is crazy. What are we doing? I’m so sorry, Hannah, for dragging you out here. Let’s go back to the van.’
‘Not until you tell her you’re finished with her.’
He shook his head. Hannah was still perched on the log, her face ashen.
‘No,’ he said. ‘This isn’t right.’
‘Difficult, Sam? Is that the right word?’ I jabbed the bat at the ground. ‘Difficult, eh?’
Sam glared at me.
‘Do you know what happened last night, Hannah? Sam was fast asleep – he looks so angelic when he sleeps, but you probably know that, don’t you? Lying on his back, dead to the world. And I had a feeling even then that he was keeping secrets from me. So I took his phone, went to the kitchen and read through his messages. Messages from you, hounding him, begging him to stay with you. Pathetic it was, pathetic. That’s why I had to be here when he tells you for good that he’s chosen me and you should leave him alone.’
Hannah got up. A bird screeched and flew through the air.
‘I’m going back to campus,’ she said. ‘And I’m going to report you to the campus police for threatening behaviour. This is madness. I’m surprised at you, Sam, for going along with it.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a lift. Give me the keys, Daisy.’
‘What?’
‘You didn’t look at Sam’s phone this morning, did you?’ Hannah said. ‘The text he sent me saying he’d made up his mind and wanted to be with me? I don’t think you know him very well after all. He told me about the baby, how he feels trapped.’
‘Liar.’
She glared at me, a smirk on her face, her chin held high, as if she’d won a battle. Despite my words, I knew Hannah didn’t tell lies. She hadn’t got it in her. Which meant she was telling the truth.
‘Don’t you dare turn away from me.’ A twig crackled under her feet as she stepped away, and my temper snapped. I lunged at her with the bat and whacked her across the back of the head. I had to stop her leaving, leaving with my Sam. The cry she gave didn’t sound human, and Sam was shouting and dropping to the ground, and I couldn’t believe how much blood there was dripping from the bat.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Sam groans, clutching his head. We’re all transfixed by Daisy’s account. The air is thick with the horror of her words.
‘Is that what happened, Sam?’ Amy asks.
‘Daisy swung that bat in a stupid fit of temper. Not only did I lose Hannah, but she ruined our lives,’ he says. He won’t look at us and his words are muffled.
‘Not ruined, Sam. We have two beautiful children. That’s not any kind of mistake. You love them as much as I do.’
Now he looks at Daisy. ‘Of course I do, but we made choices – I made choices – that day that changed the course of my life forever.’
‘What happened then?’ Amy asks, breaking the hushed silence that has settled over the rest of us as this horror story unfolds. All we need is a campfire and I’d be back at Girl Guide camp. At least then we were able to scream into the night when the spooky stories terrified us, and comforting one another made the thrills somehow delicious. Now we’re all frozen, incredulous, unable to believe what’s happening. Jade is holding Kat’s hand as if she’ll never let go.
‘Daisy regretted it as soon as it had happened,’ Sam says.
Daisy nods. ‘You know when they say someone sees red? That’s what it was like, a flash of red-hot fury and I lashed out without thinking, Hannah was on the ground and there was so much blood. I couldn’t stop screaming. Sam said he’d check she was breathing before he called the ambulance, but then he said she was dead and what on earth were we going to do?’
‘Daisy had been acting crazy.’ Sam picks up the story. ‘But we were in it together. Hannah hadn’t wanted to come with us. I’d made her, said we had to save our relationship and we should hear Daisy out and then I’d tell her I’d changed my mind and was dumping her.
‘Daisy would have gone to prison for the rest of her life for a moment of madness, and the chances were I would be implicated too. I was being selfish, but it was my van and my cricket bat and my love triangle. I’d never seen this side of Daisy before and I wasn’t sure anyone would believe she was capable. And she was carrying our baby. I was scared of what she might do. Now that Hannah was dead, I realised I couldn’t let the baby go. That was the clincher for me. You all know what I was like about wanting kids; ever since my little brother died, I’d wanted my own little boy to remember him by.
‘We talked it through and decided it would be better if nobody ever knew what had happened. We had to …’ He swallows hard. ‘We had to fake the hanging and hide Hannah’s body. I didn’t want her to be found for ages, if ever, and it was pretty windy, so it would be natural for her to be camouflaged. It was getting dark by then. My uncle’s tools were in the van, and we used his shovel to cover her over – there was load of debris, leaves and twigs and …’ He clears his throat as if the words are stuck. ‘Anyway, we covered up what we’d done by placing a rock by her head, to make it look like she’d hit her head on it when she fell. Daisy took the SIM card from her phone and we dug a hole and buried it, along with her bag. The earth was wet, as we’d had so much rain that week, and it didn’t take long. Then we vowed to each other for the sake of our unborn little boy – I knew it had to be a boy – never to tell a soul what had happened.
‘I thought we’d be found out. I lost my phone somewhere that night and I was sure the police would find it in the forest and arrest me. That last term was torture. Every day I was convinced the police would turn up. By the time they did discover her body, I’d almost convinced myself she would never be found. And still they didn’t come for us.
‘But it meant we had to stay together, no matter what. We married soon after, as you know, and then Daisy miscarried. But by then it was too late and we resolved to stay with one another.
‘And we made it work, for a long time, didn’t we, Daisy, when the kids were little; it was all worth it for them. Everything was about them. Telling the secret would have meant ruining their lives. They needed us and it was our duty to stick around for them. But the last few years have been torture. Guilt chewing away at my gut.’
He looks up at us, and I see the face of the young Sam I first knew, so eager to learn and to begin his university life, so full of hope. Hoping he’d overcome the death of his little brother, get through the trauma.
‘Inevitably there were cracks in our marriage, I knew Daisy had been unfaithful, but she had this hold over me. We had to stay together. As soon as I heard about this reunion, I knew it was a bad idea, that ghosts would be waiting for us, the forest so close. But Daisy persuaded me, like she always does. Though not any more.’
‘You’re both guilty,’ Kat says. ‘You both deserve to be punished.’
‘I didn’t kill her,’ Sam says. ‘That was never my plan. The truth is, Hannah and I were going to make a go of it. I made out to Daisy it was all pretence, but it wasn’t. I would have chosen Hannah over Daisy and she robbed me of that. If it wasn’t for Daisy, I’d never even have been there, and Hannah wouldn’t have died.’
Daisy is staring at him coldly.
‘You’re lying,’ she says. ‘You’re equally guilty. You lured her there, you told me you wanted to get rid of her. I was only going along with your instructions.’
‘You bloody liar.’ Sweat pools on Sam’s forehead.
‘You’re just saying what you know they all want to hear – Hannah’s bloody fangirls. You wouldn’t have left me, not when I was pregnant. You wanted that baby more than I did.’
‘You don’t know me. Hannah was the only one who ever understood what I was really like. Maybe it’s better that it’s out in the open.’
‘Oh, Sam,’ Daisy says. ‘You think I didn’t know you were going to double-cross me? I was always one step ahead of you. You dropped your phone in the van and I took it to check whether you were telling me the truth. It was all there, all your lies. I buried it in the woods near Hannah.’
Sam hangs his head.
‘You’re as much to blame, Sam; you were there,’ Kat says.
‘Of course he’s to blame,’ Daisy agrees. ‘He had a hold over me; it was only much later that I could see how he’d manipulated me.’
‘You’ve got me all wrong. I loved Hannah.’
‘Not as much as I did.’ Kat lunges forward and pushes her hands against his chest. Jade pulls her back, holds her to stop her shaking.
