No Safe Haven: A gripping, twisty tale of loyalty and survival, page 16
‘I’m sure he’s fine,’ I said, as we left the surgery and made our way out into the car park, where cheerful clumps of daffodils nodded their heads in the breeze. ‘It’s just a precaution.’
‘People don’t go to hospital when they are okay,’ Harriet insisted as we reached her car, parked in the corner under a tree coated lavishly in powder pink blossom. A sudden gust of wind caused some loose flowers to cascade over us and I brushed fallen petals from my coat. ‘It’s just to be on the safe side,’ I reassured her. Somehow, despite it being my pregnancy, I was in the position of having to calm her nerves. ‘I’m sure there’s nothing wrong. I think I just got a bit out of breath and tired from walking here and maybe that’s affected the baby.’
‘Then you should have let me drive you!’ Harriet burst out.
‘You had to be at the shop.’
She lowered her voice. ‘Apart from anything else, we don’t want everyone seeing you in the village. You can’t hide your bump any more.’
‘There was hardly anybody about. And it’s a nice day, I wanted some exercise. I’m going crazy cooped up in the house.’
I got into the car beside Harriet, whose lips were pursed with unvoiced reprimands. Her face softened as we approached the hospital, and I was glad to have her with me. It had taken me a long time to get to sleep after we’d finished our conversation the night before, and I was drained. Harriet navigated the hospital corridors for me, and sat beside me in the maternity unit once the heart rate monitor had been set up for the baby, but she was clearly on edge.
‘Was Jessica okay to take over in the shop for you?’ I asked her.
‘Yeah, she was fine,’ Harriet said. Then she turned to me, a frown creasing her forehead. ‘She’s acting a bit weird though.’
I nodded. ‘I think she got a message last night, after we’d been talking. I was worried she’d be upset after… what we talked about, but she was quite happy, if anything.’
‘That’s what worries me.’
‘Well, if she’s happy that can only be a good thing.’
‘You’d think so,’ Harriet said, ‘but with Jess, you can never be too sure.’
…
By the time we left the hospital with the all clear, Harriet had calmed down a little, though she couldn’t resist imploring me to look after myself, until, in frustration I snapped, ‘I have been pregnant before!’
She recoiled as if I’d given her a slap, and guilt flooded me. ‘I didn’t mean it to come out like that,’ I said.
‘I’m going to tell Jessica to stay at the shop for a bit longer. You need a proper, healthy lunch and to put your feet up. And I’m not taking no for an answer.’
I opened my mouth to argue, but held my tongue. It wasn’t worth the aggravation.
By the time Harriet had left to take over in the shop again and Jessica arrived home having picked Reef up from school, I was relieved to get some respite. Harriet had got carried away babbling on about how excited she was for the baby to arrive, and when she said we should start researching baby yoga classes I’d wanted to scream. Couldn’t she see what a mess my life was? I couldn’t focus on making plans like that. I couldn’t imagine myself going to baby yoga or baby massage or any of these things with my new baby. I wasn’t like the other mums. My life was a disaster, and the secrets I kept couldn’t be shared. It was bad enough that Harriet and Jessica knew any of it.
She’s not looking at the classes for me. She’s looking for her. She’s planning how she’ll spend time with my baby if I’m in prison. I shook myself. Perhaps she was, but then I had agreed to the plan. If I was given a prison sentence for the fraud, Harriet and Jessica would be the ones doing activities with the baby, not me.
‘Is the baby okay now, Poppy?’ Jessica asked. ‘Harriet told me what happened.’
‘Yes, he’s fine. It was just a precaution I think.’
She nodded distractedly. ‘I don’t suppose you could do Reef’s reading book with him, could you? I need to make a phone call.’
She dashed off upstairs without waiting for me to reply. I patted the sofa beside me and Reef obediently sat down. ‘I don’t like reading books,’ he told me matter-of-factly.
‘My little boy – Dominic – didn’t always like his reading books,’ I said. ‘But if you practise reading them, it will help you read the things you’re really interested in, won’t it?’
If he was with Jessica I’m sure Reef would have argued further, but since he was with me he nodded and read his book happily enough. The baby kicked a few times, and I put my hand on my tummy.
‘When will it be born?’ Reef asked me.
‘In a couple of months.’
‘How does it get out?’ he pressed me.
‘That’s a question to ask your mummy later.’
He frowned at me intensely. ‘Is your baby going on holiday?’ he asked.
I stared at him. What a bizarre question. ‘What do you mean?’ I said.
‘Auntie Harri was reading about getting a baby passport on her laptop yesterday. She didn’t want me to see, but I could read what it said. I said passports are for going on holiday so why does a baby need one? She got cross and told me not to sneak up behind her.’
I sat completely rigid and Reef looked at me in alarm. I forced myself to smile at him. ‘It’s all right,’ I told him. ‘It was just a misunderstanding. Go and play for a bit, your mummy will be down soon.’
He trotted off, and horror washed over me in waves. A baby passport. Harriet wasn’t planning to just look after the baby for a few months if I got a prison sentence. As soon as he was born, she was going to take him away from me completely. What other explanation could there be?
Habmouth
36
I stared at the blonde strands in my hairbrush, uncomprehending. I brushed my hair again, and more hairs came away in the brush and in my hands – far more than there should be. What was happening to me? I got up and went to the window. Max was outside in his car and a new wave of fear and dread swept through me. Why wouldn’t he stop? Why wouldn’t he just fucking stop? I ran my hands through my hair and more strands came away, making me cry out in dismay. What had he done to me? After weeks of stress, fear and anxiety, my body was beginning to fall apart. I nearly always felt ill; there were the blinding headaches, the sore throats, and then on top of that the morning sickness. I was either so stressed and terrified I couldn’t stay still, or so exhausted I couldn’t move. I tried to take care of myself, but my mind was so addled I constantly made stupid mistakes, forgot things, and struggled to concentrate.
This morning it was more important than ever that he left me alone. I needed to go to the doctor’s surgery for my initial appointment with a midwife, and on my way home I planned to do a big shop at the discount supermarket as my cupboards were virtually bare. But how could I leave with Max there? I tried to time my trips out of the house carefully and keep them to a minimum – mainly the supermarket or the job centre – but I was painfully aware that if he wanted to, he could find some pretext to leave the office at a different time of day and turn up unexpectedly. Early mornings and lunchtimes had already been added to his schedule of watching me, and there was no telling when or where he would spring up next.
I glared down at his car. Surely, surely he would leave in a minute to go to work and I would be able to escape.
…
‘Poppy?’
I turned, already knowing exactly who I would see. How long had he been following me for? His appearance briefly stopped me in my tracks – he hadn’t shaved for days, his eyes were dark and his face had an unhealthy pallor to it. But then of course he’d be letting things slide. All his spare time was taken up tormenting me, not looking after his appearance.
‘Why don’t you let me carry your bags?’
I clutched my shopping bags close to me, acutely aware of the information from the midwife nestled near the top of one of them. I glanced down as discretely as I could to check whether I needed to worry – yes, I could see a leaflet, with its title clearly visible. If he looked down into the bag…
‘I can carry them myself,’ I said stiffly. I continued walking, and he continued following, his footsteps echoing mine.
‘Poppy, this is silly,’ he said. ‘It’s a horrible day; let me help you so you can get back home sooner.’
He was right – the December morning was bleak and grey, the clouds seeming to reach right down to the pavement and envelop me in a chilling mist of rain. But it could have been the middle of a blizzard – I still wouldn’t let him help me.
I carried on walking. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone!
‘Come home,’ he said. ‘Please. Let’s forget all about this madness. I know you’re not happy. I can see you’re not. I’ll help you find a new job, and Dominic will have a proper home to come back to over the Christmas holidays. It would be so good, all you need to do is stop being stubborn.’
I gritted my teeth. Of course he could see I wasn’t happy. He spent enough time watching.
‘Poppy!’ he called after me as I sped up. He increased his pace to catch up with me, and I turned to face him. ‘Listen to me,’ I said, ‘I know you’re finding it hard to move on, but I will never come back and live with you again. You threw me out on the street, you forced me out of my job, and you’ve left me with nothing. Please, please just let me go. Let me move on with my life, and perhaps you’ll get some closure.’
‘I still have the knife,’ he hissed.
I stopped and examined his face closely. Was it an empty threat? His eyes were unreadable. I had to take him seriously, the stakes were too high for me to dismiss his words as a bluff. ‘You care about Dominic,’ I said carefully, ‘I know you do.’
‘Yes, and so do you. But you’ve got a funny way of showing it.’
‘Well, are you going to go to the police?’ I asked him directly. ‘Is that what you’re telling me?’
‘No. Not yet. I want to give you time to see sense. But I will. Believe that I will, if I have to.’
For a brief moment his eyes moved downwards, and I was so sure he would see the leaflet about antenatal classes in my shopping bag that my legs turned to jelly and I had to reach out and steady myself on the bus shelter we were passing.
‘You’re not well,’ he said. ‘Let me take you home.’
Thank God, he hadn’t spotted it. I would have seen it in his face. ‘I’m just a little light-headed,’ I told him. ‘I’m okay now.’ I continued walking, and to my relief he didn’t follow me, but his next words stopped me in my tracks.
‘I’ll kill myself,’ he said.
I turned and stared at him in astonishment. ‘Don’t say that.’
‘You and Dominic are the only things that matter to me. If I don’t have you, I might as well be dead.’
The words flashed through my mind, accompanied by a pang of guilt. And it would be easier for me if you were.
‘I’m not joking Poppy. I’ll do it.’
I put one of my heavy bags down on the pavement, but kept hold of the one I didn’t want him looking at too closely. Did I really make him feel that bad? No matter how much I hated him, I didn’t want him dead, and certainly not like that. I just wanted him to get out of my life and leave me alone. ‘I know you’re not joking,’ I said. I had no idea if he really was serious or not, but he wanted me to believe him, and I wanted him to calm down. I was starting to shake.
‘Why won’t you even have a conversation with me?’ he said. ‘You don’t answer my messages, and you keep trying to walk away from me.’
‘I don’t know what I can say that will help you.’
‘Meet me tomorrow night. I’ll take you out for dinner. We’ll talk properly and I can give you some of the things you left at mine. I found your passport, and Dominic’s. There is a whole folder of documents, Dominic’s birth certificate, all that kind of stuff.’
I watched him warily.
‘Well, okay,’ I said, with great reluctance. ‘I would appreciate having my things back.’
‘That’s settled then,’ he said, cheerful all of a sudden, while a deep sense of dread settled around my heart. I didn’t want to meet him. But I did need my belongings – especially stuff like my passport – which I’d forgotten he still had. I didn’t want him keeping important things like that in his house. And maybe I could talk some sense into him, though I seriously doubted it.
I practically ran back to my flat once he’d walked away, slamming the door behind me and yanking the security chain across. What the hell had I got myself into? The only tiny silver lining was that it was clear he didn’t want to give the knife to the police and accuse Dominic. Whatever his feelings towards me, he didn’t seem in a rush to do Dominic any harm. But perhaps if his patience with me reached its limit, even that would be a line he would cross.
Cattleford
37
I couldn’t give Harriet any sign that I knew what she was planning. I carried on as normal – not that much about my existence hidden away in their cottage was normal – while I tried to plot my next move. There had to be somewhere I could go, something I could do. But I was damned if I could figure out what it was. I lay curled up on the sofa in the living room one evening watching TV and trying to switch my mind off from it all, when I was startled by a burst of angry voices upstairs.
I crept halfway up the staircase and paused, trying not to make a sound. Harriet was standing in the doorway of Jessica’s room, blocking her sister’s exit.
‘Have you lost your mind?’ Harriet was saying. ‘That man does not love you! He barely even knows you.’
‘You can’t stop me again!’ Jessica shouted. ‘He wants to be with me. And I want to be with him. I’m going to go and live with him and nothing you say will make me change my mind.’
Tyler. He must have got in touch with Jessica at last.
‘And how long have you been planning this?’
‘He messaged me a couple of days ago, and we’ve been talking all the time since then. We’re soul mates, he said so himself.’
I could barely imagine what expression was on Harriet’s face at this statement, and there was no mistaking the derision in her voice. ‘Soul mates? I think he means bed mates. For God’s sake Jessica, he doesn’t want you, not really. This is just like it was with Ben – he filled your head with nonsense, and in the end he was the first to admit that your relationship was meaningless. He laughed at you for believing a word he said.’
‘Just because you’re miserable and cynical, it doesn’t mean everybody else is! Why is it so impossible for you to believe somebody could love me?’ Jessica cried, trying to wrestle her way past her sister, without success.
‘I don’t think it’s impossible,’ Harriet said, her voice softer. ‘But the men you pick are all wrong. I only needed five seconds with Tyler and I knew exactly what his game was.’
‘You mean you only needed five seconds with Tyler to judge him. Like you judge everybody. Me, Reef, even Poppy. You said horrible things to me about her when she got pregnant as a teenager.’
I shifted uncomfortably. The sisters hadn’t realised I was halfway up the stairs, and now I wasn’t sure what to do. Should I go back to the lounge and pretend I’d not heard any of it? Why had I decided to eavesdrop in the first place? Now that Harriet’s plans for my baby had come to light I just needed to get as far away as I could, as soon as I could, and the sisters would have to work through their problems without me around to referee.
‘I didn’t mean any of what I said about Poppy!’ Harriet protested, and I paused, placing the foot I had raised back down again softly. ‘I was just worried about her, and I was being selfish, thinking about how I’d lose her as a friend once she had a baby to take care of.’
‘You called her a stupid slag.’
‘How the hell can you still remember that?’ Harriet burst out. ‘I was sixteen, and I was angry I was going to lose my best friend. I knew everything would be different once the baby came, and I was lashing out. Of course that’s not really what I thought of her.’
‘But it is what you think of me, isn’t it?’
‘Well, you did sleep with my husband,’ Harriet shot back.
‘Yes, I did,’ Jessica said, ‘and you will never, ever let me forget it, will you? That’s why you don’t want me to leave, because you don’t want me to ever move on and be happy.’
Jessica shoved her way past Harriet onto the landing and towards the door to Reef’s bedroom, so I quickly dashed down to hide in the kitchen. ‘You don’t get to run away!’ Harriet shouted from upstairs. ‘You don’t get to leave me here, surrounded by the memories of what you did to me!’
There was a thundering of feet running down the stairs and Jessica’s voice was loud from just the other side of the kitchen door. ‘I can’t stay here! I’m not like you. I can’t carry on like everything is okay. I’m suffocated here. I can feel it, I can feel him–’
I clutched the worktop with trembling fingers at the sound of a slap from the hallway, and Jessica stopped talking.
‘After everything I did for you,’ Harriet said, ‘after what you’ve put me through! You’re just going to walk out and leave me? You’re supposed to be running a business here, Jess. Your son goes to school here. Have you even–’
The front door slammed and I let my breath out shakily. Jessica and Reef had gone. Harriet and I were alone.
Habmouth
I’d known meeting him wouldn’t help, but as I arrived home after the awful evening I’d spent with Max I had to admit it had been even worse than I’d imagined. The only positive was the carrier bag in my hand, stuffed with some of mine and Dominic’s more important possessions. ‘To show I’m being reasonable,’ he said as he handed it over. ‘I’m not trying to hurt you. I want you to be okay.’
That set the tone for the whole of the meal we shared – his over-the-top generosity, the excruciating way he picked apart my life, explaining how he could make things better for me in a voice so patronising it set my teeth on edge. It was crystal clear by the end of the night that he was, if anything, even more deluded than I had feared, and that there was no chance of him moving on and leaving me alone. It was as if he truly believed that the sheer force of his persistence could make me fall in love with him.
