Page 73 of The Perfect Son
I turn and run back in the direction of the school. There’s a gap between the hedges on the left that I’ve never noticed before. Without thinking, I dart through it. The path beneath my feet is slick with mud from last week’s rain and I slip and skid, moving as fast as my boots and my fitness will allow. The path slopes upward between two fields, where the earth is black and deep divots run in lines from one side to the other. Sprouts of green litter the field with the first shoots of a crop.
The mud hardens as I clamber onward. At the top of the fields I twist around to look behind me, but my foot slips and I hit the earth so hard that the impact ricochets up my spine. I turn onto my back and lie for a second, the wet ground against my head. I close my eyes and check for any damage. I’m bruised, I know that much, and a tiny, sharp stone is embedded in the skin of my palm, but nothing is broken.
When I sit up to catch my breath, the lane seems far below and there’s no sign of the man. I’m alone up here. I stand and step carefully this time, down the path and back to the road and the school, where Jamie will soon be waiting for me.
Who was that man, Mark? What does he want from me?
I picture his face and those little ferret eyes and think again how little he resembles the image I attached to the voice on the phone. He said something to me just before the cyclist came round the bend, and now that I think about it, I’m sure he said,“Mrs. Clarke?”
Not Tess.
Not Tessie, but Mrs. Clarke.
CHAPTER 44
Transcript BETWEEN ELLIOT SADLER (ES) AND TERESA CLARKE (TC) (INPATIENT AT OAKLANDS HOSPITAL, HARTFIELD WARD), WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11. SESSION 2 (Cont.)
ES: The threatening phone calls—
TC: What about them?
ES: Someone was following you. You believe someone came into your house while you were out. And then there was a man’s voice on the phone telling you that he was going to hurt you if you didn’t get what he wanted—
TC: And Jamie. He threatened Jamie too.
ES: I see. And yet you still believe Shelley is the one behind what’s happened.
TC: She is. I’m telling you she is involved somehow. I should’ve seen it coming. She (pause) she drugged me. Twice. It was some kind of sleeping tablet, I think. I think she did it to keep me out of the way so she could spend time with Jamie.
ES: Why did you continue to spend time with Shelley if you suspected something was wrong?
TC: I don’t know. I really don’t know. I had suspicions, but every time I started to think about it, something else would happen or Shelley would say just the right thing and I’d convince myself I was wrong. She charmed us somehow. She used Jamie’s feelings for her to get what she wanted. She knew I’d do anything for Jamie. And Jamie loved spending time with her. She’s really good at this football PlayStation game he’s obsessed with. Shelley wants Jamie and Ian wants the money. If you get my notebook then you can see for yourself. I figured everything out. The answer is in my notebook.
ES: Why don’t you just tell me?
TC: It’s hard to think straight. That’s why I wrote it all down. What are you doing to find Jamie? Take me through it step-by-step please, Detective. Every one of your officers—where have they been? Who have they spoken to?
ES:We’re looking into everything. Do you know a man named Richard Welkin?
TC:(Nods)
CHAPTER 45
Friday, March 30
9 DAYS TO JAMIE’S BIRTHDAY
There is a hurricane moving across the North Atlantic. Hurricane Bethany. It’s about to hit Scotland and Northern Ireland. It won’t get as far as the South East but the strong winds are pushing a warm front across the rest of England. A balmy seventy-eight degrees Fahrenheit on Good Friday—the first day of the Easter holidays—that nobody was expecting.
We are on our way back from the village playground, and as I slip-slap along the lane in my old Birkenstocks the temperature reminds me of that first August with Jamie when he was four months old. Jamie and I spent almost every day on a picnic blanket in the park with the other mums on the estate, eating sausage rolls and drinking sticky Pepsi turned warm and flat in the sun.
Pepsi, was it? I thought it was prosecco.
Only sometimes.
You’d come home from work and we’d share a bottle of chilledwhite wine and move the kitchen chairs into the garden so we could drop our feet in the paddling pool.
I seem to remember nappy rashes and teething too, Tessie.
