The Woods, page 12
“I went to get breakfast.” I put the milk and bread on the table.
“In the middle of the night—on your own? Are you insane?”
“It’s hardly the middle of the night—it’s nearly six. And it’s quite safe around here, I do it all the time.”
“Jesus, Tess. I thought it was Lena who had the death wish, not you. It only takes one night, one crazy to be out on the prowl. You of all people should know that.” He’s scowling, face twisted in unfamiliar hostility. It’s a stranger’s face, someone angry at more than me just going out for bread. His fists are clenched and he looks like he’s spoiling for a fight.
I stiffen and push past him. I’m cold and I want to get in the shower. “It’s not a big deal—I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d get us breakfast. I thought it would be a nice thing to do. I’m fine—I didn’t see anyone.” I’m trying to placate him.
“You couldn’t sleep? Not even with these?” He holds up the box of sleeping pills I got from the doctor. I freeze, looking at the crumpled-up pharmacy bag on the sideboard. He’s been looking through my things? I curl my hands into fists. No, not now. I don’t want an argument at five thirty in the morning, not with Max. Never with Max.
I push past him without answering and close the bathroom door behind me, my hand hovering over the lock. No, no need for that. It’s Max.
I pause as I get undressed. The bathroom cabinet door is open. I’m sure it was closed before.
I come out of the shower, tying the belt on my bathrobe, with my hair wrapped in a towel. Everything looks wrong, a little bit out of place, like someone’s been shifting furniture around while I was out. The drawer is open in my dressing table, a door ajar in the living-room cupboard. I find Max making coffee in the kitchen. He has a cabinet door open and he’s rummaging for something.
“What are you looking for?”
He glances back. “Painkillers. I have a headache.”
It explains the bathroom cabinet, the open cupboards and drawers. He’s looking for Tylenol, that’s all. I open a drawer and pass him a box of pills. In the time I’ve been in the shower, he’s got dressed, shoes on, bag by his feet.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to head home.”
“At six in the morning?”
I don’t really want to hear the real reasons he’s going, but in the morning half-light I can’t bear to hear his excuses, the awkward lies, either.
“I listened to your messages,” he says, and I stiffen.
“I’m sorry, but you were gone and I was worried. God, Tess, you’re in trouble, aren’t you? What did you do?”
“You shouldn’t have listened, you had no right.”
Max stares at me. “I can’t do this. I don’t need another messed-up woman in my life. Lena is enough to deal with. Coming here was a mistake. I thought I wanted…” He hesitates and I think he’s going to say something else, something big, but then he ducks his head. “Sorry, Tess.”
I could push it, but I don’t want to face the fact that this was just a one-night stand that Max already regrets. An awkward after-sex moment made more awkward by the fact that I literally ran out the door as soon as it was over. Did he really wake up because he sensed I was gone? Or did he wake up to sneak out only to find I’d beaten him to it? I tried to have sex with the Max I used to hero-worship but that’s not who fell asleep next to me. In my sleep-deprived paranoia, I see more than regret on his face. I see distaste.
I nod, take the coffee he holds out, turn away to drink it so he can’t see my face. “It’s okay—it’s fine. I get it.”
It’s no big deal. He’s not my first one-night stand, not the first man to walk out on me. Hell, it’s not like it’s the first time he’s walked out on me, is it? Where was he after Bella died? He left, disappeared. They all did. It was just me and Dad, Julia hovering on the edges, for such a long time.
“Jesus, Tess—don’t. Don’t do that. It was my fault. I could tell you weren’t into it, but I wanted…Lena warned me.”
“Warned you of what? Warned you against sleeping with me?”
“She said I shouldn’t try and make something happen, when…”
More secrets, more whispering behind my back. “I kissed you.”
“But what were we doing? Trying to rekindle something that never happened? I wanted some time with you away from the house, but I didn’t intend…”
Don’t, I want to say. Don’t tell me you felt sorry for me, don’t tell me you always knew I had a crush on you, that our half-assed sex was out of pity.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, hovering awkwardly. “But I’ll still give you a lift to the station.”
“You don’t have to. I can get the bus.”
“No, don’t be silly. I practically drive past it. I’ll wait for you to get ready.”
Now? We have to go now? I walk away from him, closing the bedroom door behind me and sinking onto the bed.
Well. Could I have screwed up in a more spectacular way? But it’s not just me, is it? After we had sex and I came back from the shop, he seemed…what? Angry. Resentful. Was that just because he was worried about me—me going out, the sleeping pills, the messages? This whole thing seems like more than a spontaneous mistake, almost like it was planned, staged. Which is ridiculous, isn’t it? It was me who asked for a lift, me who invited him here, me who kissed him. But…
I know it’s my paranoia, but the Max who was in my flat last night—the Max standing in my kitchen right now—it’s not the Max I remember. It’s not the Max I thought I knew.
Chapter 13
He’s tense on the drive to the station, not talking. I look across at him and see what Sophie saw last night—a well-groomed stranger. I close my eyes. Despite the amount of sleep I got last night, I’m still exhausted. I feel myself drifting and force my eyes back open.
I look back at the road and that’s when Dean House stutters into view—it’s there, right in the road, right in front of us, and someone’s running out of it—toward the car, arms waving. It’s Bella, fear on her face. And behind her, there’s someone else—someone—
“Look out!” I shout as Bella runs into the road, and I reach to grab the steering wheel.
The car swerves, Max pulls hard on the steering wheel and the car lurches back to the left. There’s an awful screeching, grinding noise and the car spins and turns.
Oh God, oh God, I don’t want to die.
I wake up on a stretcher in a hospital corridor. Max is standing next to me, a bruise on his forehead but otherwise okay.
“What happened?” I say, my voice croaky.
“There was an accident—you grabbed the steering wheel and the car crashed, don’t you remember?”
I wince and close my eyes. Oh God. “I’m like the grim reaper version of King Midas—everyone I touch dies.”
“I’m not dead.”
I look at his bruised face. “I did my bloody best, though, didn’t I? You could have died.”
“It was an accident.”
I look away. I could have killed him. I could have killed him and me. If I close my eyes I can see it again—the house looming up in front of me, Bella in front of the car, shadowed by the trees. Was I asleep when I saw it? Had I drifted into a dream? Or was it a memory—someone chased Bella out of the house. That’s what made me reach for the steering wheel. Someone was chasing her right into the path of the car.
I reach out and grab his arm. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but I thought I saw…”
He pulls his arm away from me. “What? What did you see? I didn’t see anything. It was an empty road and you just screamed. You grabbed the wheel and drove straight toward the wall.” He shakes his head. “You’d drifted off—one minute you were asleep, the next all hell broke loose.” He looks away from me to where my dad, a nurse, and a uniformed police officer walk toward us. He leans down to whisper in my ear. “But don’t worry. I told the police you must have grabbed the wheel to avoid an animal or something. I didn’t see anything but…tell them that. Tell them you did it to avoid hitting a dog or a cat or something. You don’t need to be in more trouble than you already are.”
“I’m sorry,” I say as my dad and the policeman reach me. I don’t know whether I’m apologizing to Dad, to Max, or to the police.
“There was a cat,” I say. “I saw a cat in the road and I acted instinctively. I don’t know what happened.”
I turn my head away and it explodes with pain. I close my eyes and feel myself drifting. I don’t want to because the woods are there, waiting for me in my dreams. They’re always waiting.
The hospital is quiet. I don’t know what time it is, but when I close my eyes, I see a house made of bones, ghosts haunting every room. As I drift, I find myself walking through the woods toward Dean House and I sense Bella next to me. I can smell dirt and blood and dead leaves. I can hear something dripping on the ground and I won’t turn my head to look at her because I’m scared of what I might see.
“Let me tell you a story,” Bella says.
“Stop it, Bella,” I say. “I don’t like your stories.”
“That’s because they’re not really stories.”
“Maybe there’d be more happy endings if they were.”
She brings her death-smell closer and I close my eyes. “Listen. Let me tell you about the time two girls went into the woods and only one came out…”
I wake with a gasp and sit up, hunched over in the bed. No, no, no, I don’t like that dream.
Dad picks me up from the hospital.
“I’m so sorry,” I say as I climb into the passenger seat, doing up my seat belt with shaking hands. “How’s Max? How’s his car?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Dad says, leaning over to kiss my forehead and stroke my hair. “It’s not your fault. Max doesn’t care about his car—we’re just so relieved it wasn’t worse. You and Max are both fine, that’s all that matters.”
“But…how did he get home? How’s he going to get to work?”
“He’s been signed off work for a few days. He really is fine, just a nasty bump to the head.”
“So is he…?”
“He’s back at home with Julia, yes. Lena too. She came back when she heard about the accident.”
So all we need is for Jack to resurface and the whole gang will be back together. My throat closes. No, not the whole gang.
“You should be with Julia, not dealing with more crap.”
“Don’t, Tess—it was an accident. You couldn’t help it. Julia’s okay. She’s sleeping, she doesn’t know anything about it.” He glances at me as he starts the engine. “Max said…he mentioned something about the strain you’re under. Some trouble at work.”
I close my eyes and turn away, suppressing a surge of irritation. Max chose to tell Dad now? When his wife is dying and his daughter was just in a car accident? Who else has he told?
“It’s fine, Dad,” I say stiffly. “Seriously—it’s all sorted.” No need to tell him it’s sorted by me being fired.
We drive past a huddle of smokers ignoring the no smoking signs outside the front of the hospital. My hands are curled into fists on my lap. I could have killed Max, killed myself. The thought won’t go away, it keeps getting bigger, ballooning in my brain and my chest so I can barely breathe and I can’t think about anything else.
I still don’t understand what happened. I closed my eyes for a second—was I really asleep like Max said? The vision—the memory—of the house, someone chasing Bella, was so real and vivid. It has to be real, doesn’t it? But when did that happen? Was it the night of the wedding? Is that what sent Bella into the woods, me running after her? Were we running away from someone else? I try but I can’t see the person chasing her out of Dean House. All I can see is Bella, fear on her face as she ran in front of the car.
I shake my head. Memories coming back or not, I’m becoming a danger to more than just myself. I need to start taking those sleeping pills. Hallucinating, sleepwalking…and now I’d almost killed Max.
It won’t go away even now, though. We’re driving through the town, but in the front of my mind, tucked between the terraced streets, there’s the sound of the wind rushing through trees, the feel of a storm gathering.
The sky is gray, thick with cloud. Reluctant to fully commit to day, it could be twilight, slipping back into night without the sun ever making an appearance. Dad slows the car as we approach Dean House. He’s pale, his hands tight on the steering wheel. A uniformed policewoman stands by the gate. People in forensic suits are moving around inside the tangled garden.
“Wait! Stop. What’s going on? What’s happened? Is it Sean? Is it…”
“No, Tess, Sean is fine.” He pauses. “The property developers that bought the house came in yesterday to start work on demolition.”
“And? So? Why are the police there?”
Another pause. “They found bones.”
My scalp prickles. “What?”
“In the woods. Just outside the garden at Dean House, but within the boundaries. The new owners brought in the diggers and they dug up human bones.”
I’m instantly thrown back ten years. A body in the woods. Like Bella. Like Nicole and the other murdered girl. My vision goes dark and I think I’m going to pass out. There’s a roaring in my ears, a roaring that sounds like screaming, that sounds like rain and wind rushing through trees and mud sliding down a bank and…it sounds like death.
“Who?” I whisper. “Is it another girl? Is it another murder?”
Dad shakes his head. “I don’t know. The police have been there most of the night, that’s all I know.”
I turn to face forward again, afraid that Bella’s ghost will creep into my waking world if I keep looking. Bones—they’ve found bones. Who is it?
“Let’s get out of here,” I say to Dad. “Please.”
Dad reaches out to stop me from opening the door when he pulls up outside the house.
“Wait, Tess.”
I can see Max watching us from the window.
“What is it?”
“Jack’s here.”
I sink back into the car seat.
“I’m sorry—I know you two don’t get along, but Julia wanted to see him so badly. Sean spoke to him. Persuaded him to come back.”
Part of me wants to beg Dad to turn around and drive away again, but I’m not sixteen anymore.
Dad shakes his head. “He turned up last night. It was him that told us about the police being at Dean House. We’re all in shock, Jack and Sean most of all. It’s their house—or it was. We’re expecting the police to turn up any minute and I’m frightened about how the stress will affect Julia.”
“Does she know?”
“No. I’ve asked everyone to keep it quiet.”
“But won’t the police want to speak to her as well?”
His hands tighten on the steering wheel again. “I won’t let them. She finally has all her family here, a chance to say…I won’t let them ruin it.”
And I can’t ruin it either with a stupid, decade-old fear of being in the same house as Jack.
“It’s okay,” I force myself to say. “We’ll sort it between us. We won’t let anyone spoil this for Julia.”
Dad sighs. “Jack hasn’t actually seen her yet. But she knows he’s here. If you’d seen how happy she was…”
Jack joins Max at the window, watching us like he can hear our conversation, and I want to duck down in my seat and hide. He looks so much like his brother, but his hair is longer, darker, swept to the side. He has stubble that’s almost enough to be a beard, but the eyes are the same, that light, light blue. The difference is the smile. Sean rarely smiles, but Jack’s smiling out at us, like we’re not here waiting for his mother to die, like bones haven’t just been found in his garden, looking happy to be here.
Jack steps out of the house as we leave the car and Dad frowns.
“Go on in, Dad,” I say.
“Are you sure?” But he’s already looking up at Julia’s window.
“Go on. I’ll get my bag and I’ll be right behind you.”
I wait for Dad to go in before I turn to face Jack.
“Hey, Tess,” he says. He reaches for my bag but I snatch it away from him.
“Hello, Jack.”
He smiles. “It’s been a long time.”
I grit my teeth. “So is it just you, or do we have the pleasure of meeting your family?”
His smile gets wider. “You don’t sound like you’d consider it a pleasure.” His smile drops. “And no, I came alone. This isn’t how I’d want my wife and son to meet my mother.”
“I’m sorry. About Julia.”
He sighs. “Yeah, it is a bit of a shit show, isn’t it? Julia, whatever the hell is going on at Dean House, and you, Tess—I hear you tried and failed to kill off our darling Max. What the hell did he do to make you try the whole murder/suicide thing?”
“Ha ha, very funny, Jack. As always, it’s so lovely to see you. And so unchanged.”
He grins. “Funny how that doesn’t sound much like a compliment.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
“Well, is that any way to be with a poor man whose mother is dying and whose family home appears to have become a graveyard?”
“I can’t say you look like you’re either grieving or in shock.”
“Funnily enough, neither do you.” He bursts out laughing. “Your face, Tess, so furious. You are so easy to wind up. You know, Max is unnerved by you. Told me you walked out of your flat and he thought you were a ghost. He said you were just like Bella.” He pauses. “I don’t see it, though. You’re the good girl, aren’t you, Tess? Always were. Nothing like your sister.”
I turn away from him.
“So virtuous,” he continues. “I remember you tattling to your dad and Julia about catching Bella drinking with me and Lena. Little saint.”
“Stop it.”
He laughs. “Don’t like the reminder, do you? Don’t like remembering how miserable you made Bella, how much trouble you got her into.” He steps closer. “Especially when it was all a lie—your Goody Two-shoes act. You were never who you pretended to be.”
