The Safe House, page 11
Ned paused. What she did next was vital, because, after all, he was packed – what could stop him from leaving now? She couldn’t let that happen. Hannah let her head dip, so that at least some of her hair hung over her face. Behind her back, the fingers of one hand dug into her palm, the pain a point on which to focus.
Ned twitched, almost as if her snake word – ‘No’ – had sunk its fangs into his leg. ‘Han, I’m …’ but the sentence hung there, limp.
Hannah knew him. Ned. Who liked Star Trek and tatty books bought from second-hand shops that stank of mildew, who preferred a cup of tea to a glass of beer, who genuinely found tax laws interesting and liked to make cute little claymation films for Pips. Patient, kind, level-headed Ned. Who loved her.
‘I’m sorry, Ned.’ She made her voice crack just the right amount. ‘It’s just, I’m …’
She didn’t know what else to say but then, she didn’t have to as that was when the sky outside exploded into flaming colours and a deep booming sound shook the floor where they stood.
The steelworks had erupted into flames.
Chapter 29
Esther
Esther lay in the darkness by the front door, heart pounding, eyes closed.
Mother’s voice: ‘Esther? I told you not to come down here tonight.’
For a second, as Esther peeped from one half-opened eye, it didn’t look like her mother, hunched over itself as it was – just a shape in the gloom. It looked like the kind of vague monster children scared themselves with each night, the kind that lived under the bed.
The kind that kept their daughter hidden from their father.
Who was alive.
Esther closed her eyes again. She didn’t know what to think of that just yet so she did the easiest thing: not think of it at all. Just get through this bit. It was the best plan she could come up with in the few seconds she had had after hearing her mother’s voice and dashing out of the gym, leaving Tom inside.
There was something in her hand, she realised in a dazed way, an envelope that Tom must have given to her though she couldn’t remember that happening. She tucked it into the waistband of her pyjamas. There definitely wasn’t time to read mysterious letters.
The figure at the top of the stairs muttered to itself.
‘Esther?’
Time for her performance. She moved in what she hoped was a just-waking-up kind of way and pushed herself into a seated position, making her voice sound weak and sleepy. ‘Mother?’
To her side was the rough arch into the tunnels with its packed earth floor, a dry, grave-like smell, those alcoves filled with machinery and tools and appliances and dried food in mouse-proof boxes. The sound of her mother’s slippers against the floor was a kind of shuffling, a kind of scraping, a sigh.
Shuffle, scrape, sigh. The combination of sounds was suddenly a cold finger between Esther’s eyes pushing hard and for a moment she felt as if the House around her could tilt and tip into something else … a memory … a dream … the dream she had had only a few days before, the last time she had found herself lying here by the front door, instead of in her bed.
Her mother took her by the arm. ‘Have you been sleepwalking again?’
‘Is everything okay? Mrs Allbright?’ Tom’s voice came from behind the closed gym door.
‘Yes, yes! Stay where you are!’ Mother shouted and then turned back to Esther who was now doing what she hoped was a passable impression of someone just awake and rather confused. ‘Pips?’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know how … I must have …’
Mother gripped her tightly under one arm, leading her back to the stairs. ‘We can’t have you wandering around the place. You’ll hurt yourself.’
‘Maybe I need something to help me sleep better?’ Like the pills you might already be slipping into my food?
Mother did not look at her and did not respond to that. ‘I thought you’d gone to talk to him.’
‘Tom? Really?’ Esther was proud of her innocent tone and a little bit shocked as to how quickly lying to her mother came to her. ‘Why would I? You told me not to.’
‘I did. You’re a good girl.’ Mother patted her hand as they got to the top step but this time the phrase did not sound quite as loving as it normally did. The softness had gone and in its place was a sharper scratch, something that wanted to scrape a little more.
This time, when she looked at Esther, it wasn’t simply out of panic and concern, a searching for a flushed cheek or a wheezy breath; no, this time, there was something else mixed in with all of that – something that made her eyes flick from Esther’s hands to her feet, to the print on her pyjama top, trying to catch her out.
Esther yawned. ‘Gosh, I need to go back to bed. I’m shattered.’
‘Yes. Though … you didn’t speak to him, did you, Esther?’
Esther put a hand to the waistband of her pyjama bottoms, feeling the square shape of the piece of paper stuffed there. ‘No,’ she said and the word was strong. She was pleased with it and the extra shades of indignation she laid upon it.
There was silence as Mother didn’t move, didn’t take her eyes off Esther, didn’t say anything in return. It would have been easy at that point, to lay it all out in front of her and explain everything Tom had told her, every last detail. She was a tree trunk and running through her were the age circles representing the years of always obeying and trusting Mother.
Mother pulled her cardigan tighter around her, knotting the belt. ‘You see we have to be careful. We don’t know him.’
Stood in front of her was the person Esther was supposed to know.
‘Well, I’m off to bed. See you in the morning,’ Esther said. There was no reply. Mother remained at the top of the stairs, looking down.
‘Do you believe that’s what he came for? Paper signing?’ Mother asked.
‘Yes.’ Like her ‘no’ before it, this word was also firm and steady.
Mother sighed. ‘Well, it’s only a couple of hours until morning and then he can go. I’m awake now. I’ll make a cup of tea, get a jump-start on the day.’
‘Okay then.’
Closing her bedroom door, Esther made it to her bed before the shaking began.
‘Hello, girlie,’ Mr Wiffles greeted her from the bedspread. ‘We’ve got ourselves into a bit of a pickle, haven’t we?’
Outside her door she could hear the soft soles of Mother’s slippers shuffling around, making her tea, so she had told Esther, but Esther knew the truth. She was patrolling, keeping watch – making sure Esther did not leave her room again that night. As she flopped back onto her pillow, the edge of the letter tucked in her pyjama waistband dug into her stomach.
It was a plain white envelope with nothing written on it, the ghost of someone’s handwriting just about visible through the thin paper.
There would be no sleep for her tonight either.
Chapter 30
The envelope wasn’t even stuck down properly. Inside was a letter and two photographs.
Dear Pips (or do you prefer Esther now?)
What did she tell you about me? I’m guessing she told you I died that night in the explosion at the steelworks and, if I’m honest, there were times that evening when I wondered if I would survive. And, in those times, I thought of you.
When it was over, when I’d done all I could to help, which wasn’t near enough, all I could focus on was getting back to our home. To you.
Except, when I got there – you both had gone.
I should have known she would do something like that. It was my mistake. And it’s a mistake I have had to live with for the rest of my life. But I didn’t have time. I found those plans of hers, of the house, the one you’re probably in right now, and we argued and I knew then that I would have to take you away. That your mother was a lot sicker than I had realised. But that was when the sky exploded. It felt like a giant had slapped his hand down hard on the town. My steelworks. My area staff on their shifts. Of course I had to go – I didn’t even stop to think about it.
Chaos. Smoke and fire and people and a lot to do, so much, and too much that I wasn’t able to do … I got home dirty, saddened and exhausted and found an empty house. I was left with nothing. No clue, no note …
No you.
Your sweet little face, with your big serious eyes and your hair in plaits with the bobbles in the shape of shells because you loved the sea. The way you adored that toy I got you, Mr Wiffles, which was always clutched in your hand.
God, the planning that went into something like that – the sheer scale of this whole other life your mother had going on! Hidden bank accounts, I mean, I still don’t know where she got the money to build that thing, or renovate it, or whatever she did. Before she left, she took all of the information with her.
I couldn’t believe it at first. I gave myself reasons, as I stood there in our house, the smoke in my hair, my clothes, the pores of my skin. She had run to a neighbour, I thought, frightened by the roar of the flames and a night sky turned red. But none of the neighbours knew anything. It was Mr Wiffles that convinced me. He was missing from your bed. I knew he lived on your duvet – it was his sea and whales can’t live out of the water, can they? I remember tearing through the rooms, seeing that some of your clothes were missing, a suitcase, your shoes, coats. I remember the sound that came from me, from deep in my stomach, a wailing I’d never heard myself make.
I want you to know that I tried.
I had the memory of those architect’s plans. The house. A black blot on a hill where she could seal you up. But it could have been anywhere.
I reported it, obviously. But there isn’t much the police can do when a person has left no paper trail, no e-trail, someone who has disappeared like a smoke ring. Uncle Adam came back to help. Anything I earned, after food and bills, I put aside into a fund to find you. I got cleverer and did my own research, narrowing down the places in the world with the cleanest air. I did my homework.
If I make it sound business-like, that is not how it was. I was … broken, I guess. There are piggy banks you have to smash to get at the coins inside and this had smashed me open like that. There were only bits of me left to deal with everything, but I remembered what it was like to be whole and I yearned for it. I would wake up from a dream where I’d been watching you sleep and the pain of it, of knowing that I was forgetting how your hair smelled, that pain was almost too much.
But I’ve found you. A piece of luck. And I was due that luck after all this time, lately on my own, my whole world narrowed to one focus: finding you. People have been kind, but they have their own lives and commitments: Adam had to go back overseas for work; the police could not keep searching indefinitely.
Esther, your mother is ill. She has been ill for a very long time and, when she was with me, I should have done more to help. When she looks at the world, she sees only its dangers and her solution has been to hide away from it all, telling herself that she is keeping you safe. And she is, I suppose, though at every doctor’s appointment I went to with you, they all said your asthma was only moderate and would never have to affect your life, as long as you had your inhaler.
I can’t tell you the world is safe, because it is not. But we live in it, Esther. We do the best we can. There are regulations being brought in to try to curb the air pollution in the cities and I won’t say governments are doing their best because that is not what governments do, in my experience. But the alternative is hiding in a hill and, as your father, I would advise you not to waste your life doing that.
So here I am. I’ve written it all in this letter more for me than for you, to try to explain it all to myself, this crazy life I’ve been forced to live without you. I don’t know if I’ll even give it to you.
One thing I do know though: now it is up to you. You have a father who loves you. I’m here alone, no police, nothing to scare your mother because I really don’t know how she’s going to react to me turning up like this. I want you to leave this place.
I love you, have always loved you, always will,
Your father
Esther spent a while smoothing over the handwritten sentences, imagining her father writing them, noticing the wobble on the loops of his letter “y” and the way his capital “I” looked more like a “Z”. Real words written by a real person, a tangible, very much not-dead father.
It therefore took her a while to see that, tucked in the envelope, were two pictures. One was familiar because they had its twin in their own possession. It was of them all on the grass, her mother holding her up and her father sat behind. In theirs her mother was caught mid-gesture, her arm stretched to someone out of shot; in this one Esther had caught her finger and there was the start of a smile. Her father was their bulky, strong backdrop, his blond hair blown across his forehead, big smile, kind eyes, sweatshirt and jeans.
That photo did not prove anything. It only proved what had been. Past, history, done and dusted.
The second photo fast-forwarded sixteen years. Before and after. There was only one person in the picture, a man in his fifties, in walking boots with his trousers tucked into his thick socks, a backpack on his shoulder and a T-shirt with an embroidered badge Esther could not read. The blond hair now more white than grey, the bulky frame somewhat deflated, the sharper smile a pale ghost of the one in the first photo. The kind eyes now wrinkled and shadowed. Haunted.
Unmistakably her father.
Chapter 31
Breakfast the next morning was served with a side order of suspicion and a garnish of exhaustion.
Esther drank tea that she made herself and declined her mother’s home-made flapjack all the while admiring how her body did those things so calmly whilst her brain churned through the same thoughts and questions that had kept her up all night, clutching the letter and those two photographs.
Her father was alive – if she believed Tom and the paper now stuffed under her mattress.
Her father was dead – if she believed her mother.
‘You can’t possibly be thinking of going out there in this weather?’ she said, as her mother stood and reached for her waterproofs.
‘He’s not staying a minute longer.’
Overnight the rain and wind had wound itself into a frenzy and Esther had got out of bed to see the view from her bedroom window distorted by a blur of water.
‘He can’t walk in this weather.’
‘He’ll manage. I can get my wellies on over his leg despite the swelling. He’s got small feet for a man.’
‘Umm … they’re average-sized …’ Tom put his coat on as slowly as he could, casting Esther a glance. She was supposed to know what that look meant, but it skimmed over her, merely a movement of eyebrows.
Esther stood too, only knowing that she didn’t want Tom to go. She had no clue what was true or not, who to trust or what to believe but she knew if Mother walked him out of the House there was little chance of her ever seeing him again.
Or finding out more about her father.
Her father was, simultaneously, dead and alive. Undead. A ghost who would haunt her for the rest of her days if she didn’t at least try to find out if Tom was telling the truth.
And that meant he couldn’t leave.
But things moved too quickly for her. Her mother had the waterproof coat on and had found the spare wellies and still Esther was stuck at the table, trying to think what to do. The letter. She had to show her the letter, she had to ask her why she had lied, if she had lied.
The letter.
Esther dashed to her room to get it but, as she had hidden it under the mattress, by the time she came out again, her mother had gone. She ran down the stairs, but she knew before she’d even opened the door that the gym would be empty. Her mother had left without her.
Again.
Something hot welled up in her chest and Esther gave a half-scream, half-wail as she thumped the front door.
Except.
This time she wasn’t going to be left in this place, a moth under glass. Barely registering if she had put on a coat and boots, she fastened her mask and opened the door with shaking hands.
Rain stung her face, a weird, prickling sensation that she hadn’t experienced in years. Screwing up her eyes, she tried to see if she could spot them but it didn’t matter if she couldn’t. Moving was the thing, and so she did, and it was nowhere near as hard as last time. In mere seconds she was beyond the door with the wind yelling and tugging her, her eyes on the ground to watch out for traps lurking like alligators in the grass.
She would stop them and bring Tom back and then they would all sit down and work out what the hell was going on and it would be weird and probably hard, but it would be the right thing to do – even Mother would see that. Esther would make her see.
Her foot slipped in the mud slurry that had become the dirt track leading between the trees, and she teetered to a stop, wrenching her ankle. Ahead of her was the treeline though the rain lashed at her face so hard she could only take quick glimpses from under her hood, water already seeping coldly onto her neck.
There they were.
Esther slithered closer, the mud underfoot sucking at her feet one moment and then letting her slide the next. She tried to shout but all she got in her first attempt was a mouthful of rain and a slap from the wind. Because her mask did not seal to her face, the rain got in and she could hear the fans within labouring.
They both had their backs to her and now she understood why they had stopped. The path that should have led down to the trees was no longer there – in its way was a floodwater river.
Slick as seals, Tom and her mother stood side by side, gazing at the water as it gushed past them, the rain flattening their hoods to their heads, their cuffs dripping, and as Esther looked at them, clambering closer down the mud slide, it was almost as if they were a team, working together.
If it hadn’t been for the rock in Mother’s fist.
Esther could only watch in horror as her mother took a step back from Tom and raised her fist and there was still a part of her that couldn’t believe she would use that rock as a weapon. It was unthinkable that she would even consider hurting Tom on purpose – or even try to kill him. But then she remembered pills and guns and letters from undead fathers.
