24 Hours: An intense, suspenseful psychological thriller (9 page)

T
he train rattles
through the dusk. Far away the sun, invisible all day, begins to set, bleeding into the sky, the clouds to my left stained vermillion, reminiscent of yesterday’s fiery heavens.

I think of Sid’s work, the paintings that made him famous, a kneeling naked Mary holding her dying son in a desert beneath a clashing sunset, distraught. The idealised mother he had always felt would have saved him from himself; the mother who would never have abandoned him. So very far from his own experience. The other Mary licking the Son of God’s feet, sucking his toes, imbued with an eroticism and a bond it felt almost embarrassingly personal to share. When Sid suggested Magdalen for our daughter’s name, I’d already seen the sketches for this work. Blanching, I refused flatly.

I push Sid firmly from my mind.

Think, Laurie, think
. Who else is out there? Who else can help?

Normally I would find peace on long train journeys, but there is no peace to be had here. Every minute is torturous.

I try to ring my own mother again but there is still no answer from her landline, and no life at all in the old phone to retrieve her mobile number, and as we sway between the high banks and the tall trees, the signal keeps cutting out anyway. The guard comes back the other way; thank God he doesn’t notice as I slink down in my seat. Across the aisle, an old lady pops paracetamol from a box, offered by her doughy-faced son. Like some kind of junkie I watch her gnarled hands on the pills, desperate to ask for some. I don’t dare. I don’t want to draw attention to myself.

I listen to their conversation. They are talking about her hip operation, and how well it went. Then they move on to whether George will come and collect them, and whether he will arrive on time, which they doubt, because he’s always at least five minutes late, and will he have brushed the car seats down because the dogs are so dirty and moulting all the time, and smell, and it’s all such a pain.

It’s so very normal in its mundanity, I am soothed by it.

The Tannoy announces that we are nearing our next stop and the old lady and her son begin to clear away their clingfilm and their Tupperware; I am about to dial directory enquiries again to see if I can get a number for the Eurostar office when the train comes to a sudden juddering halt; brakes screeching, metal on metal, a hideous jarring sound.

For a moment there is silence in the carriage and then chatter breaks out, spreading down the aisle with a sense of outrage.

I stand up and move to the door to see what is happening, but all that’s visible in the gloom are a few cows mooching in the field beyond the hedge. Nothing more.

Anxiety rises.

‘Typical,’ a low voice says behind me.

It’s the tall boy from earlier; the boy with the rings in his face.

‘What do you think’s happened?’ I ask, peering out into nothing.

He shrugs. ‘Sheep on the line, probably. Usually is.’

‘Perils of the countryside.’ But even as I make the innocuous remark, the despair wells up. ‘Oh God.’ I bite my lip so hard in an effort to quell my impatience that I taste blood. ‘I really need this train to keep going.’

Laconically, he considers me. ‘Why so desperate?’

‘I’m not …’ I begin, and then I meet his eyes. In a hard, angular face, they are beautiful; deep-set, long, grey. Why lie? ‘I need to get to my daughter.’

‘Where is she?’

‘With my mother. Coming back from France.’

‘Is it?’ he shrugs again. ‘Is your mum, like, bad news?’

‘No,’ I actually smile. My bustling little mother, efficient and endlessly kind. I would trust no one with Polly to the degree I trust my mother. ‘My mum’s great. It’s … it’s someone else I’m worried about. Getting there first.’

‘Right.’ He doesn’t ask any more questions and it doesn’t surprise me. He looks like he understands hardship, this boy; complicated, dysfunctional situations. He has a long scar on his head that runs livid through the crew-cut; tough-looking, maybe, but with an air of something I can’t describe. A kind of weary acceptance. The expression ‘old beyond his years’ comes to mind.

What has he seen, I wonder, in his short life?

The Tannoy announces a ‘
brief delay whilst we check what the problem is
’. I taste my own blood on my tongue again.

The boy, who on second glance is older than he first looked, holds his tattooed hand out.

‘Saul.’

‘Laurie.’

I estimate his age: about nineteen or twenty, probably.

‘Where are you going?’

‘London.’

‘Me too. The streets are paved with gold, ain’t they?’ he regards me gravely, but I see he is joking.

The Tannoy crackles into life again. The sun has set. It is almost completely dark outside, there is nothing to see now but hedgerows.

I look out at them and I have a sudden flash of my first holiday with Sid.
Holiday
might be too grand, in fact; it was more of a camping trip. Sid wanted to paint the sea; I bought us a tent. We were broke but, a few months after we’d met, already inseparable, contemplating a move to Cornwall. A tent seemed romantic. But we arrived on the campsite late because we’d got lost down Norfolk’s narrow lanes, following the first real row we ever had. Sid had shouted at me about my map reading, and I’d shouted back at his loss of humour, and then I cried and he kissed me to say sorry. By the time we put the tent up it was dark and neither of us really had a clue what we were doing, but accompanied by a bottle of red wine and some whisky it seemed quite simple. We sat in front of our funny little stove and cooked baked beans and then we went to bed. When we got up in the morning it had rained so hard the tent was practically floating and we were soaked because we hadn’t put the ground sheet down properly. Then Sid, wringing wet and foul-tempered, had a fit about the campsite.

‘It’s so ugly,’ he kept saying, marching back and forwards in outrage, ‘this bloody campsite – and I hate the bloody hedgerows. I’m all boxed in. I can’t breathe. And where’s the fucking sea?’

He was so irate about the hedgerows, stomping about in his boxer shorts and his unlaced boots, with his hair all up on end and his sweatshirt on inside out that I started to laugh, and it was one of those Sid moments which could have gone either way, as he glared down at me and I managed to stifle the laughter, just about, until he put both feet in one leg of his jeans and promptly fell over backwards. And then I laughed till I cried and although he debated shouting even louder, eventually he saw the funny side and laughed too. Then we took down the tent, and along with a tiny, delicate animal skull that I’d found in the grass, we shoved everything into Sid’s bashed-up old Mini. We found a room in a B&B on a farm on a hill overlooking the sea, and when it rained for most of the weekend we didn’t care because we just stayed in bed, ate cheese and chocolate biscuits and made love, though Sid made me put the animal skull in the cupboard before he would touch me.

Sid refused to ever go back to Norfolk, but he did find the sea in the end.

The Tannoy crackles into life.

‘
I regret to inform you we may be held here for some time due to suspected damage on the track ahead
.’

Trapped.

Oh God. For the first time today, but perhaps inevitably, tears spring to my burning eyes.

‘Laurie,’ the boy looks at me. ‘Is that your name?’

‘Yes,’ desperately I try to hold them back, but I fail. One tear escapes, trickles down my cheek.

‘Don’t cry,’ he says. His voice is soft now.

‘I’m trying not to,’ I smile wanly. But it’s always worse when people are nice. ‘I really, really am trying.’

He regards me again for a moment as I wipe the tear away.

‘If you could get off the train, would you?’

‘Yes I bloody would. Though I don’t have a clue where we are.’

‘We’ve crossed Salisbury Plain, so probably somewhere in Hampshire. And I reckon I can.’

‘What?’

‘Get us off.’

‘How? The doors are all locked till we get to a station, aren’t they?’

I have a flash of last night. Of a room and a door. Of rattling a door frantically, Emily on the other side. I hear my name being shouted … or was it me? It was me, shouting hers, over and over again, slamming my shoulder against the door. And the door was wedged; I am sure it was, something heavy against it on the other side. I had slid the key-card into the slot over and again, and every time it flicked green – and every time, it refused to open, and turned red again.

I close my eyes against the memory.

‘Follow me,’ Saul says.

Quickly we walk the length of the train, through the grumbling, disconsolate carriages, through the fluorescent light and the smell of too many bodies too close together, knocking into people’s bags and feet. After a while I stop apologising.

We make it to the far end; to the guard’s carriage. Saul knocks on the door.

‘Why don’t we just ask?’ I whisper. ‘If we can get off?’

‘Don’t be daft,’ he doesn’t bother looking at me. ‘They wouldn’t let us, in the middle of nowhere. Health and safety bollocks.’

In the middle of nowhere.

The futility of my situation is hitting me in great waves. I am exhausted, physically and emotionally. My best friend is dead and I am in considerable pain. I don’t know where Polly is and I don’t know what the killer intends and I am frightened and I am alone.

I hear a voice on the other side of the door.

The boy turns and grins at me.

Not quite alone, perhaps. I don’t know why I should trust this scarred, tattooed lad I only met ten minutes ago, but I do. I have little choice. It is, actually, as simple as that.

‘Okay?’ he mutters.

‘I guess.’

‘Just follow me, and when I say jump, jump.’

He bangs on the guard’s door again. As we wait, he holds out one rather grimy, nail-bitten hand behind him. ‘Ready?’

I take it.

‘Ready,’ I say.

T
he second time
I heard someone in the house, I called the police.

They sounded politely uninterested, especially when, after some probing from them, I admitted I had recently separated from my husband.

‘He’s got rights, love,’ the voice on the phone explained wearily, as if he had heard this type of thing too many times before. ‘If he co-owns the house, he has rights. You can’t lock him out.’

‘I’m not even sure that it’s him,’ I said.

‘It is actually illegal to change the locks, if he is on the deeds,’ the voice said, ignoring me. ‘Your husband.’

But they did send someone round. The someone looked at my expensive alarm system. ‘You’re pretty safe with that, aren’t you? Linked up to the local station.’

Normally I never even remembered to switch the blessed thing on; we only had it installed because of the vast insurance premiums on Sid’s work. Some of his art was still here, in the studio at the end of the garden, bolted, triple padlocked. I never ever went anywhere near it. I couldn’t bear to. But I supposed someone might want it.

‘Where did the “
intruder
’’’ – heavy emphasis on this word – ‘break in?’

‘I’m …’ I paused for thought. ‘I’m not absolutely sure. I just … someone has been prowling around at night.’

‘Inside the house?’ she frowned. She had a huge gap between her front teeth, I noticed. Big enough to fit a straw through.

‘Um – not necessarily.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Not necessarily inside.’

‘Where then?’ she raised one eyebrow now.

‘Possibly in the garden.’

She snapped her neat little book shut. ‘Right. So you’ve no absolute evidence of a break-in? You haven’t actually seen someone in the house?’

‘I did see someone walking down the path a few days ago.’

‘Outside? In the back garden?’

‘No.’ I realised this was sounding stupid. ‘In the front.’

‘So, no one in the house, or the back, secured garden?’

‘Not really. But I’m pretty sure someone has—’

‘Mrs Smith.’ She stifled an obvious sigh. ‘Without any obvious signs of break-in or visual evidence, there is really nothing we can do. Are you sure it’s not just your imagination running away with you?’ She was kind but patronising. ‘It is quite a big house for just you.’

‘And my daughter.’ And the fish and the rabbit, I didn’t add.

‘And your daughter. I noticed the
For Sale
sign outside.’

‘Yes,’ I turned away from her. It was my job to ask the questions; I hated divulging anything personal to a stranger. ‘It’s on the market.’

Our house. Our first house together as a family. It wasn’t grand, not considering what we could have bought once Sid started to make his fortune. Bought after a particularly bad patch; meant to be a new start. It was safe, my haven; four walls against the world. Our home.

‘Marriage breakdowns are hard. You’re probably under some stress.’

Jesus. Who was the counsellor here, her or me?

‘I’m fine.’ I locked the back door, and hid the key on the side. ‘I am quite sure I have heard someone moving around at night but I understand that if you have no evidence …’

And
was
I quite sure, anyway? I was sleeping badly, fitfully. I dreamt of Sid; I dreamt strange vivid dreams that I forgot again by morning.

I didn’t bother to finish my sentence. I walked the policewoman to the front door instead.

‘Let us know if you actually see anyone.’ She put her hat on. ‘Have you contemplated CCTV?’

‘No way,’ I shook my head. ‘I hate all that Big Brother stuff. We probably won’t be here much longer anyway.’

God only knew where we were going though.

A
gainst my better judgement
, and largely because Emily forced me, I went to the school parents’ quiz night at the local pub.

‘You have to get out,’ Emily said, drowning my protestations over lunch round the corner from work. ‘You cannot sit in and mope about Sid forever.’

‘I’m not.’ I refused to meet her blue-mascaraed eye. She was channelling Farrah Fawcett today apparently.

‘Yeah right.’ She pinched a chip off my plate. ‘And I’m the Pope’s uncle.’

‘Are you?’ I said. ‘How’s your Latin?’

‘Hilarious.’

‘You know me. Anyway,’ I said stoutly, ‘it’s absolutely the best thing I ever did. Leaving Sid.’

Emily stared at me until I looked away.

‘Best thing, but hardest thing too, eh, kid?’

‘Best thing.’ But tears threatened behind my pathetic façade. Fortunately she knew me well enough not to comment.

‘Well, that’s as maybe, but you’re hardly a picture of unadulterated pleasure in your new state, and you still need to go out,’ she donned her white fake fur. ‘I’ll babysit. Happily. I need to watch
Mary Poppins
with Polly. It’s been ages. I’m in withdrawal from Chim-chiminey.’ She made cow-eyes at me. ‘That Dick’s my idea of heaven, don’t you know.’

Laughing, I shoved her out of the café door, a sense of relief washing over me. Of course I would be more than happy to have Emily there. She would stay, and the house would not seem so quiet, with just the two of us rattling round in it, Polly and I; and maybe her presence would allay some of these silly night-time fears that someone was prowling.

And if someone
was
prowling, well then Emily would see them too and, finally, I’d know I wasn’t mad.

So I did a deal with the devil and – on the proviso that she would stay for the weekend – I agreed to go out.

At seven I met my friend Roz at the Irish pub on the high street; by eight I was half-cut. I had sworn I wouldn’t drink – I hadn’t since that night in Spain – but I was a little overwhelmed and nervous, and frankly, I hadn’t been out in ages. Literally months; not since Sid and I, on our last legs as the successful couple, had gone on our final outing: a dinner party at his art dealer’s penthouse in Holland Park.

Typically of Randolph, I had been seated at the far end of the huge oak table from Sid, at the ‘unimportant’ end, next to the perfect Russian wife of a gallery owner who spoke no word of English, her mouth so swollen with collagen I was amazed she could open it. From the other side of Sid, Randolph kept saluting me with his overflowing glass. I smiled back, but it was a false and empty gesture. I knew exactly what was really meant.

Randolph and his world were winning.

In the distance, on Sid’s other side sat a pneumatic young actress whom I didn’t recognise but apparently was in the latest Bond film. She laughed like a coquette at all his jokes, tossing her dark mane like a frisky pony; I’d just had my own hair cut into a severe bob, seeking something missing – a new look, something to excite both me and Sid – but only ending up with something he hated. ‘Very school-marm’ was all he’d said, and he didn’t mean it as a compliment. I was driving that night; remained stone-cold sober whilst all around me the evening descended into bedlam, half the guests not eating as they disappeared into the marble bathroom time and again, exiting with running noses and eyes-a-glitter, fighting to be heard in the cacophony.

Occasionally Sid would catch my eye, and then very deliberately turn back to the pony-girl who whickered with delight as his ruthless eyes bored into her. Very attractive man, my husband. So controlled on the surface, so turbulent beneath. Still waters run deep, and need a lot of soothing. And so very easy to imagine him fucking you …

Eventually, able to stand it no more, I turned away from the Russian doll and began to charm the man on my left, a critic from
The
Times
, who responded with alacrity. Sid watched in silence, the Bond girl forgotten.

It hadn’t been a good idea to flirt, I discovered later. It never was.

Never quite knew what would happen when we got home.

So tonight, by the time Emily had shoved me out of the door, and Roz had hugged me hello with a ‘Whoop whoop, no kids, hey?’ and we had greeted the rest of the parents’ team and started on the second round, I was already a little wobbly.

And so when, just as the quizmaster asked a question about the origin of the word ‘dipsomaniac’ and we were giggling girlishly about his enormous red glasses, Mal walked in, I wasn’t quite sure how to react. More sober, I would doubtless have been more cautious.

But I wasn’t sober.

He bought himself a pint and as someone stood up to go to the bar, he slid into the seat next to me.

‘Hi,’ he smiled, holding up his drink. ‘Cheers.’

‘Cheers.’ Tentatively I smiled back. ‘Are you any good at general knowledge?’

‘Completely useless. Memory like a sieve. But I thought it’d be nice to meet some more parents.’ Did he look slightly pained? I felt a stab of guilt. ‘Get to know some locals.’

‘Yes, of course.’ I busied myself with my glass. ‘Best place to come.’

‘So,’ he tried to catch my eye. ‘How are you?’

‘Fine, thanks.’

‘Really?’ he frowned. ‘You didn’t seem so great the other night.’

I thought of Sid squaring up to Mal; I thought of him entwined with Jolie.

‘No, but that was then,’ I drained my drink. I didn’t want to discuss Sid with him. ‘And this is now.’

‘That’s a song, isn’t it?’

The quizmaster announced the sports round. As one, the women at the table groaned.

‘Football not your forte then?’ Mal teased. He really was quite attractive. Big. He looked like he would be able to just scoop me up and …

I felt myself blush. ‘Er, no, I quite like football actually. All those men in shorts …’ I trailed off. Apparently I was drunker than I realised. Then our eyes met and we both laughed, the tension dispelled.

For the next half an hour, I sat with Mal and we worked out answers together and I felt myself slide into a more comfortable place, where I was not worried or bothered by anything other than ‘the similarity between Britney Spears and Venus?’ – to which I never learnt the answer.

Roz winked at me over Mal’s bent head as he filled in a question, and I smiled back at her, and his leg brushed mine, and I felt a brief surge of something that I didn’t want to feel. I looked at the clock, and it was nearing last orders and I felt disappointed because I knew the evening was drawing to an end.

And then two things happened.

I got up to go to the loo. As I stood, I heard my phone ring. Plucking my bag from the back of the chair, I grabbed the phone.

‘Laurie,’ Emily. Voice tight, stressed. ‘Where are you?’

‘Still at the quiz.’ My heart was thumping. ‘What’s wrong? Is it Polly?’

‘Polly’s fine. It’s—’ the line broke up. ‘She—’

‘I can’t hear you, it’s too noisy in here. Hang on.’ Quickly I pushed the back door of the pub open, walked out into the car park, my breath unfurling before me in the freezing night. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Did Sid call you?’

‘No? When?’

‘He spoke to Polly earlier. She told him you’d gone to the pub. He made her cry.’

‘Why?’ Cold fury pressed down. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t know really. I couldn’t hear exactly what he said, but I think he was angry.’

‘Did you talk to him?’

‘He hung up before I could.’

‘Where’s Pol now?’

‘Tucked up in bed, asleep. She’s fine, really. It’s just … I thought, I know it sounds silly, but I thought I heard something a little while ago.’

‘What do you mean, something?’

‘Something upstairs. And then I checked and there was no one. But then I’m sure someone tried to unlock the door, only I’d put the chain on.’

‘You should have called me.’

‘I am calling you,’ she sounded impatient. ‘But I didn’t want to bother you, really. It’s probably nothing. I want you to have some fun. And Polly’s fine. You know what Sid’s like. He put the wind up me, that’s all. It’s just that, when the door went, I wanted to check …’

‘He’s still got keys. And rights, apparently,’ I remembered the weary policeman. ‘But he won’t do anything.’

Would he?

‘I tried to phone Sid just now,’ she said, ‘but he didn’t answer.’

‘Oh for God’s sake. I’m sorry, Em.’

‘Look, it’s fine. No harm done. Just wanted to know when you’d be back.’

‘I’ll come now.’

From the pub I could hear the bell for last orders ringing.

‘You don’t need to rush,’ Emily said, but she didn’t sound convinced.

‘I’ll get a cab.’

Someone stepped up behind me. I spun quickly.

‘Okay.’ Emily sounded relieved. ‘I’ll see you soon.’

Mal was standing there. ‘All right?’ He looked worried.

‘Yes. No. I don’t know, really.’ I looked at him helplessly. ‘I’ve got to get home.’

‘Shall I give you a lift?’

‘Would you mind?’

‘Of course not.’ He reached out and pushed a strand of hair from my eyes. ‘Laurie,’ he said quietly.

‘Mal. Please, I need to go right now.’

‘Sure, let’s go. I’ll just get my jacket.’ And before I knew it, he had leant down, and touched his lips to mine.

There was a commotion behind us as the pub door swung open and I heard Roz’s voice calling me urgently. ‘Laurie.’

We jumped apart, but not before another woman appeared, pushing past Roz. With a jolt, I recognised the vivid Titian hair.

‘I wondered where the hell you’d got to.’ Strident, angry. An Irish brogue that suddenly seemed familiar.

‘Christ,’ muttered Mal.

Christ indeed. It was Susie Cooper. Mal’s wife.

This wasn’t my mess. My mess was waiting at home.

‘Sorry,’ I mumbled to Mal, quietly so no one else could hear. ‘I’ve got to go.’

I fled the car park, out onto the high street, flagged down the first cab, heart racing, palms sweating; realising, in my panic, I’d left my coat in the pub. I thought of Mal’s face; put my hand on my mouth where moments ago, his lips had been.

I headed home, towards my daughter, my best friend. My empty bed.

I had done nothing wrong, had I?

Apparently, that remained to be seen.