Try Not to Breathe (30 page)

A
sharp knock came from the front door.

“Oh hi,” Alex said.

“Hi.”

“Come in. Let me help you.”

“I’m sorry to come here like this but I don’t know what to do. Everything’s a mess.”

“Has something happened?”

“Nothing new. My wife thinks I’m having an affair and I can’t bear being in Edenbridge.”

“I’m sorry,” Alex said, patting Jacob’s arm uneasily.

“I thought that perhaps I might be able to help you some more, while I still have a couple of days off work,” Jacob added. “Maybe I could work some of this stuff out and then, I don’t know, put it to bed and move on. I need to come clean to Fiona and I need to be fully hers—‘fully present,’ she calls it. To be fully there for Fiona, I need to say goodbye to Amy, but I can’t when I still don’t have any answers. I know I can’t because I’ve tried and failed before.”

Alex helped him into the living room.

“My baby’s due soon. I can’t be separated from my wife, that’s not how this is supposed to go. No matter how badly we’re getting on.”

“How long does she have left?”

“It really could be any day now.”

Alex tried to forget the smile that had spread through Matt’s face as he digested what she’d told him. “We’re going to have a baby?” he’d said, eyes wide. “Really?”

“Yes, really,” she’d nodded, smiling with relief at his reaction.

He’d grabbed her hands in his, stared wide-eyed at her and drank in the news. Good news, finally. Weeks after losing her mother. And he’d squeezed her, wringing out every drop of what she’d just told him. A secret she’d held for many weeks.

Then she’d handed him a glass of Champagne, offered her own glass to toast.

“It’s fine in moderation,” she’d protested. “The French…”

“You’re not fucking French, Alex.”

She really did scale it back then, to moderation. Or somewhere near.

Maybe Matt’s new baby had been born already. She’d tried not to think about it and hadn’t asked. Babies stopped things dead.

“I was going to call you later anyway,” Alex told Jacob.

She’d been mulling over whether to share her concerns about Paul with him. In many ways it was too soon, it was just a theory and not a watertight one. But it didn’t feel right withholding anything, and Paul had originally crossed her desk because of Jacob.

Alex waited for him to settle, a look of disquiet creeping over his face. She wished she could offer him a drink, and throw one back herself, but she only had a few servings on the plan for the day and not for many, many hours.

“What is it? You’re worrying me.”

Alex took a deep breath. “It might be nothing. But some stuff has come to light and there’s a slim chance we might know who did it and why.”

“Shit, really?”

“Yeah, maybe. But it’s only a maybe.”

“Who?” Jacob stared expectantly.

“Paul. Paul Wheeler.”

“Paul Wheeler?” Jacob sat back for a moment then sprang forward in his seat. “Seriously? You really think he’s capable of that? Why? You didn’t think that the other day.” Jacob looked absolutely horrified. Sweat collected on his temples and his eyes were wild. Alex wondered how on earth to tell him the possible motive.

I
had the dream again. I don’t think it can technically be called a nightmare because it starts so nicely, but it is “nightmarish” by the end.

In the dream, it’s finally happening. I’m lying flat on my back and I’m trying to remember the bit in
Forever
by Judy Blume where Katherine has sex with Michael for the first time. He’s done it before but she hasn’t. And I’m trying to remember the details and how she got through it but I can’t because all I can think about is how much it hurts. I can’t feel any other part of my body except where it hurts, and the pain is radiating through the rest of me with every heartbeat. In the dream, he seems to get heavier with every move of his hips. And he doesn’t seem to notice, or maybe doesn’t care, that I’m holding my breath and screwing my eyes shut.

I knew it would hurt because we’re told it will hurt, just like you know it will hurt when you have a baby because your mum still complains about it years later. But I’m sure that when I actually have a baby, it’ll still be a surprise and I’ll probably yell at everyone, including my mum.

The pain of him blinds me, right through the dream and out the other side. And I’m thinking about how you see pictures in
More
magazine of women wrapped around men, sitting on chairs to do it or throwing their hips around without a care in the world, no grimace on their face. But all I can do is lie frozen and try not to cry. I can’t imagine this ever being easy, never mind feeling nice. I can’t picture myself ever becoming a
More
magazine woman.

Even in the dream, I feel sad knowing that the story I’ll tell my best friends about this will be full of lies. If I even tell them. And if I don’t, I can’t bask in the glory of getting there first. Which sounds pathetic and is pathetic but it’s also true.

And as soon as it’s over, every single time I have this dream, I realize I’ve made some kind of mistake. Sometimes, I’m in the wrong place. Other times I realize I’m running late for something really important. Or there’s someone else there. One time I dreamed that my mum was calling me from outside the door. This time there was someone else actually in the room, a woman. I don’t know who she was but she was saying things like, “It’s not your fault, Amy, it’s not your fault he changed,” things like that. And I was trying to whisper to her to get out before he sees her but she wasn’t listening. Before I realized it, I was screaming and
she
was screaming and then everything went black.

When I woke up this time, the dream was still hanging around me, caught in my sheets and my hair. I could feel the echo of the sting, the weight of him on my chest. I could almost smell his breath in my ear as it turned to wet drips of condensation.

That’s it now, I’m never going to shake these dreams and how realistic they are. Robbed of the real thing by a stupid dream. It doesn’t matter that it didn’t really happen because my body, my brain and now my memory all think otherwise. It’s so unfair that I start to cry, but no sound comes out.

J
acob was in the passenger seat, pushed as far back as possible to give his leg space as Alex drove him back to Edenbridge. He’d barely spoken for the last twenty minutes, while Alex had barely stopped.

His girlfriend. His sweet, fun,
normal
girlfriend, sleeping with her own father? No. There was just no way. Alex’s latest idea was plain wrong. Not necessarily wrong about Paul Wheeler hurting Amy, he could well believe that, but way off base about the rest. She had to be.

“What happens next?” he interrupted. “Are you going to the police about this?”

“Not formally, no. Not at this stage anyway. It’s such a serious crime to accuse someone of, and like I’ve said a few times,” Alex looked at him briefly, “it’s just a theory, one of several.”

Jacob nodded and looked dead straight at the road.

“I’ve asked Matt to look into it to see if there’s anything more on Paul’s record that might be relevant.”

“Okay.” Jacob ground his teeth as he watched his hometown creep into the windscreen and along the sides of the car.

Amy’s stepfamily setup had always been a bit alien to him. He knew it was one of the many things that his mum looked down on about the Stevensons, even if she’d never openly admitted it. In his mum’s world, marriage was forever, no matter what. It wouldn’t have mattered what his own dad had done or not done, Jacob knew full well the Arlingtons would have remained resolutely, lockjawed together to the bitter end.

He wondered what his parents really made of his own predicament. How far down the line from fracture to permanent break did they think he and Fiona were? How far down the line
were
they, for that matter? Would someone else end up as Weekday Dad to his child? He shuddered with a bolt of unexpected anger.

Alex’s black Polo had just passed Edenbridge Town station when her phone rang in its cradle. Jacob watched her fumble to answer it on loudspeaker. She seemed almost ditzy, which was new to him.

“Hi, Matt.”

“Hi, Alex, can you talk?”

Jacob looked at Alex, who looked at the phone.

“I have someone in the car with me at the moment,” she said. Silence from the other end. “Hang on,” she added, “I’ll pull over and get out.”