The Night They Vanished, page 21
Yeah, the rest of me wants more of that. I smile. “You sound like Dee. Are you going to join my fan club? You and Dee against the rest of the world.”
“Clubs with exclusive memberships are the best kind of club,” he says.
I bite my lip to stop the automatic need to put myself down, to tell him worse things, to list all the bad things I’ve done. I suppose I don’t need him to recoil in horror at my past misdemeanors. I punish myself enough. I lift my head and kiss him this time, pulling him closer, closing my eyes as his hand curls into my hair.
I’ll allow myself this. I’ll allow myself one night.
And then I’ll tell him the rest.
Chapter 30
Sasha—December, two months earlier
It’s two days before Christmas and I’m still under virtual house arrest. No punishment has been given out, but I know the rules. Still. It’s two days before Christmas, so I summon my courage and go downstairs. Mum is in the kitchen finishing off icing the Christmas cake and Dad’s reading the paper at the table. I can smell mince pies cooking in the oven and if it weren’t for the packing boxes everywhere, it would feel like a normal Christmas. Except for the fact that none of us are really talking.
“Um… I was wondering if I could go into town and do my Christmas shopping?” I say it to Mum, but it’s Dad’s permission I’m asking. Even Mum knows that because she looks at him rather than at me.
“Emma asked if I wanted to meet for a Christmas coffee and exchange presents and I still need to get you guys something.” I can feel myself going red at the enormity of my subterfuge, but as they don’t ever ask about my friends, or lack of them, it’s not a glaringly obvious lie.
“Do you really think you can be trusted to—” Dad begins but Mum interrupts.
“I think that will be fine, don’t you, Daniel?” she says, and there’s that edge to her voice again, the one I heard the other night.
Dad looks at her over the top of his newspaper, and it’s like there’s some kind of silent war going on. I expect Mum to back down as usual, but then Dad sighs and puts his paper down. “Okay. For two hours—that’s all. I’ll take you in—I have some things I need to get myself.”
I blink and my attention swivels between them. What did I miss there? Maybe he’s just realized he needs to get Mum a present. That must be it. Ha. Result. It also means I know exactly where he’ll be so I can avoid him—the jeweler’s and the chemist. Earrings and perfume, standard Dad gifts. Mum doesn’t look particularly happy she got her way, though.
“Brilliant—thank you! I’ll go and get my coat and bag.” I run upstairs before he can change his mind, closing my door before pulling my phone out of its hiding place. I send a quick text to Ethan. I don’t know if he’ll be able to meet me at such short notice, but if not, I’ll use some of my credit and call him when I’m safely away from the house.
Dad parks at the station in West Dean and we go our separate ways. Ethan texted me back straight away and agreed to meet me. I’d suggested the café in the old part of town—it’s well away from all the shops so we should be safely hidden from Dad there.
I’m practically skipping down the street like some stupid idiot, giddy with the thrill of doing something so forbidden, and, of course, it smacks me in the face when I turn the corner and see Ethan waiting. But not just Ethan, Ethan with a girl, standing next to the black car Ethan met me in the other night.
I slow down, not wanting to interrupt if this is Ethan’s girlfriend and not sure how to feel if it is. I don’t like him like that. Not at all. He’s way too old. So, I think mostly what I’m feeling is awkward—because if it is his girlfriend, what’s she going to think when I skip into the picture? What would I say? What would Ethan say to explain me?
But I can’t go any slower and it’s too late anyway, because they’ve seen me and both of them are looking at me. Ethan’s a bit scowly, but his girlfriend is smiling. Closer up, though, I can’t really call her a girl. She’s older than Ethan, obviously so, not nana old, but more like Hanna’s age or a bit older.
“Hiya,” she says to me, big smile, very friendly. “Don’t mind me—I was just off. I’ll see you later,” she says, turning to Ethan, kissing him on the cheek before getting in the car.
“Sorry if I interrupted something,” I say into the sudden heavy silence. Ethan isn’t looking at me, he’s frowning after the disappearing woman.
“You weren’t interrupting. It’s just Carrie,” he mutters, still looking in her direction.
“Is she… is she your girlfriend?” I ask. “Or the woman you mentioned—the one who’s been hassling you?”
He finally turns to look at me, but the frown is still there. “Who, Carrie? No, of course not. She’s a friend of a friend, that’s all. She had a message for me.”
“Sorry. I just thought… you looked angry about something and it looked a bit intense and—”
“Stop fishing, for God’s sake. It’s personal, private business, okay? Not some stupid playground gossip.”
“Sorry,” I mutter again, and he sighs.
“Forget it,” he says. He turns to pick up two cardboard cups from the wall behind him, handing one to me. “It’s pretty full inside, so I got takeaways—are you okay out here? Not too cold?”
“It’s fine,” I say. And it is. It’s cold, but bright and sunny and tucked away out of the wind, with a coat and scarf on, it’s nicer out than in.
There’s a silence that’s getting beyond awkward, so I flounder for something to say. “So, what are you doing for Christmas? Spending it with family?” I realize, as I ask, that I have no idea how Ethan is living, where, with who… He’s just been someone associated with the holiday camp.
He shrugs and takes a sip of his coffee. “I don’t have family, so I guess it’ll just be a quiet one. Me, the TV, my four walls. Or I’m sure I can cadge an invite off Owen—he owes me one.”
“No family? That’s awful. You should…” What? What am I about to do—invite him to Christmas with us? Oh, yeah, that would go down well with Dad.
He smiles as my voice trails off. “You don’t have to feel sorry for me, Sash. I was in care from when I was younger than you and I’ve spent the last few years in prison, so a Christmas in my own place, with my own TV, a bottle of something, and a takeaway sounds pretty damned fine.”
But it’s not, though, is it? How is any of that fine? When I got old enough to wonder about it, I used to worry that Hanna was spending Christmases alone. The thought became an obsession that manifested as almost full-blown panic attacks when I was around ten. I used to wake up sobbing, with this weight on my chest that had me gasping for breath.
It totally freaked Mum and Dad out and they even took me to a doctor about it, but I could never say why I was panicking because we weren’t supposed to talk about Hanna, so I’d pretend I was having nightmares. It stopped a few months later—Hanna came on one of her mini-visits and mentioned her Christmas with Dee and Dee’s family, so the panic attacks stopped. But I still remember that weird crushing weight and the awful, well, grief I felt. It’s a faint echo, but that same feeling is there as I think of Ethan in some scummy bedsit on his own watching the depressing EastEnders special, eating a takeaway Chinese, no tree, no presents.
“Wait here a minute,” I say on impulse, and jump down off the wall we’re sitting on. I run up the hill and around the corner before he can say anything, into the Spar. I’ve got a couple of pounds left out of the money Mum gave me to buy presents and I spend it on a Cadbury’s selection pack and a tube of Jelly Tots, scrabbling around in my purse for enough for a fifty-pence gift bag to go with it. I shove the sweets in the bag as I walk back to Ethan, handing it over with a smile.
“Merry Christmas, Ethan. It’s to go with the takeaway on Christmas Day.”
He looks inside the bag and smiles. “You’re a good kid, Sasha,” he says as I pull myself back up onto the wall. He puts an arm around my shoulders and pulls me in for a hug.
It’s nothing more than that, nothing more than a quick hug, but I pull away fast when I hear a familiar voice saying, “Oh my God!”
Too late. Caught. Seen. Totally screwed. There’s six of them, coming out of the little tucked-away café I thought would be safe because the kids from school normally go to Greggs on the high street—Carly, Seren, and their gang of boys. Carly and Seren both look gleefully horrified.
“Sasha Carter—is this your boyfriend?” Seren calls out, way too loud.
I jump down off the wall, trying to think what to say, when Carly, who’s been looking at Ethan and frowning, suddenly gasps and recoils. “Holy shit,” she says, even louder than Seren. “I know who that is—it’s that crim who’s been working up at the holiday park.”
“Jesus, Sasha—how desperate are you?” Seren says.
Ethan jumps down from the wall and stalks over to Seren, and as they all back off, even the boys, even though there’s six of them, I’m reminded how big and actually quite intimidating Ethan can be.
“Ethan, I don’t think…” I start to say but let the words trail off as Ethan glares back at me. He looks angry. Like, really, really mad.
“Yeah, that’s it, call your boyfriend off,” Seren calls in a mocking voice, then gasps as Ethan reaches out and shoves her, like really hard, sending her stumbling back into Dylan and Finn. Carly lets out a little scream and Ethan spins round toward her.
“Why don’t you piss off, little girl,” he says, “before I decide to show you what I was in prison for?”
For a second, I think he’s going to do it—he’s going to launch himself at a bunch of fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds and beat the crap out of them. I don’t even feel relieved when they all make a hasty retreat. I’m too busy wetting myself in fear. Because I am dead. My life is over—there is no coming back from this. And Ethan, by scaring them to death like that, has actually made things worse.
“Stupid assholes,” Ethan mutters, before turning to frown at me. “You okay?”
I flinch away from him and regret it when I see the anger on his face. Oh God, he never answered me that time I asked what he went to prison for, and his threat to Carly just now…
“Christ, Sash—don’t look at me like that. I was just trying to scare them, that’s all. Come on—you know me… Do you really think I’d have a go at a bunch of kids?”
Oh God, he looks so hurt. But…
“Of course. I know you wouldn’t have done anything. It’s not just that, though…” I shake my head and take another step away from him. “Dad’s going to find out,” I say, panic making my voice high and shaky. “They’re going to tell everyone and Dad’s going to find out.” The awfulness of it hits me again. “And they’re going to say they saw us together. Like together together. They’ll lie and exaggerate. He’s never going to believe me when I say we’re just friends. Not after Hanna, not after what she did.”
“Calm down, Sash. Keep it together. All you have to do is deny it.”
“Deny it?”
“Play it down. Tell him they’re the school bullies. Tell him you ran into me outside a shop, and we were just saying hello and they’re stirring up shit.”
I stare at him. He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand what Dad is like now, what he’s been like since Hanna left. Like, even if what he was saying were true, that I just ran into him and said hello… it wouldn’t matter. Not to Dad.
“Why did you have to do that?” The words burst out of me. “You were terrifying—and you pushed Seren. She’s fifteen, for God’s sake, a girl. And you threatened Carly!”
I’m shaking but I can’t stop berating him. “They could go to the police—don’t you get that? Or tell their parents and they’ll ring my dad.”
“Jesus fucking Christ—will you shut up?” he shouts—roars—at me, and I freeze.
“I was helping you out, you ungrateful little—I should never have listened to Owen.”
“What?” It comes out as a whisper.
“I know how to piss off the old man, he says. Chat up the kid, he says. An ex-con and his precious kid, that’ll do it, he says. Bloody Owen. I should have stuck to ignoring you.”
“I have to go,” I mutter, already walking away, my eyes stinging. Oh, why did I come here? Why, why, why? I won’t think about what Ethan just said. I need to find Dad before Carly and Seren spot him. Not that it matters—if he doesn’t find out today, he’s going to find out at some point over Christmas, as soon as he goes into town again, into a shop. And even if he doesn’t, I know what this town is like: someone will find a reason to search him out to tell him. This gossip is too juicy to go unheard.
I get back to the car before him and spend the ten-minute wait in a paranoid hell of imagining all the people he might bump into who will tell him that his daughter was all over his ex-offender groundskeeper. He’ll put two and two together, remember me sneaking out, think of all the times and all the places I could have been meeting Ethan when he was working at the holiday park.
I can’t remember, right now, a single sensible reason I had for any of it.
Chapter 31
It takes five days. I know this is only because it’s Christmas. Any other time of the year, Dad would have found out within forty-eight hours. Village gossip is good, especially when it’s teenagers spreading it. It starts on social media, but it only takes one parent policing their kid’s Snapchat or Instagram for the gossip to spread wider. Then as soon as it hits one of the gossip hubs—the shop or the pub—boom, everybody knows. And if it’s killer gossip like this, someone will be desperate for the inside intel. Someone will go straight to Dad.
Ethan keeps texting. I read the first and it was an apology, but I didn’t read past I’m sorry. I got home and hid my phone under my mattress, and I don’t take it out, but I keep hearing the thing buzzing as messages come in. It’s my very own beating heart under the floorboards, like in that Edgar Allen Poe story we read in school. I don’t fool myself that it could be Hanna, the only other person with the number, finally responding to me. I no longer hold any illusions that she will come riding in to save me any time soon. Not when it’s her that started this whole thing.
The worst—the absolute worst—is on Christmas morning. We’ve opened our presents and Mum turns to me with a smile. “I know you wanted a phone, honey, and I know I said no, but your father and I have been talking and we’ve decided if you settle in well to your new school and continue to do well, we’ll consider letting you have a phone for your birthday.”
I know this is a guilt thing—Mum still trying to smooth things over. Dad looks sour-faced, so I’m guessing it’s another argument that Mum’s won. I wonder for a second what he’s done wrong to have to give in—twice now.
And I nearly laugh at the sheer bloody irony even as my forbidden phone-heart beats from its hiding place upstairs. I manage to smile and act thrilled, because that’s what they’re expecting. A phone of my very own, a reward for being the good daughter, for doing so well, for always toeing the line, for never breaking the rules.
Dad watches me as Mum makes the announcement. This promise of a reward, along with the silent treatment received for my misdemeanor of sneaking out… He thinks this will be enough to keep me on the straight and narrow. Too late, Dad. Too bloody late. I fell off the path, I plunged into the pit, I am doomed, I am just what he never wanted me to be, I am just like Hanna.
Five days I wait, in limbo, in purgatory. I expect the ax to fall when Dad or Mum have to go into town, when we’ve run out of bread or milk, but in the end, the gossipmongers can’t wait.
The phone rings at ten thirty in the morning, three days after Christmas. I leap up to answer it, but Dad gets there first. I hear him making small talk and sounding confused at first. But then he goes quiet and he’s only listening, but he’s looking at me and, oh God, the expression on his face…
He ends the call without saying goodbye and there’s a silence so heavy I can barely breathe. I feel it sitting on me, pushing me down, pushing all the air from my lungs, from the room, from the world, and as he finally opens his mouth to speak, I am literally gasping for air.
“Is it true?” He takes a step closer and his voice rises to a roar. “Is it true?”
“I don’t… I don’t know…” The words come out between gasps and there are tears in my eyes as I sit before him, shaking.
Mum comes running out of the kitchen. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”
Dad turns to her. “Your daughter has been sneaking around with the… criminal, the prisoner, who’s been working here.” He looks back at me. “She was seen with her arms all over him in town before Christmas. When she told us she was shopping, when she told us she was meeting a school friend, she was with him. A man nearly twice her age, who has only just been released from prison.”
“Oh no—oh, Sasha. You wouldn’t—you couldn’t…”
“Dad, please. It’s not like that, it’s not. We’re friends, that’s all.”
“Friends? With a man nearly twice your age? A violent criminal?”
“He’s not violent. He said he was innocent. And even if he isn’t, he made a mistake, that’s all. But he’s been released now, he’s been rehabilitated. Isn’t that why you employed him? You said it was good to give him this chance.”
Dad is quiet for a long minute. A minute that lasts a millennium. “Is that what he told you? That’s he’s innocent?” He pauses and shakes his head. “You have no idea. You foolish little girl, you have no idea.”
“He wouldn’t have lied, why would he? And there’s no way you would have employed him if he was violent, no way. Why would you do that when me and Mum were here on our own sometimes when he was working?”
He ignores me and goes back out to the hall and picks up the phone. “I’m going to contact Owen and then the probation service—inform them what one of their ex-prisoners has been up to with my underage daughter.”
