24 Hours: An intense, suspenseful psychological thriller (19 page)

‘What, like I always cry?’

‘That’s not what I mean.’

‘Well, what do you mean? Why are you
so
cross with me?’

‘Because I can’t bear to watch him hurt you again. And I don’t even mean emotionally. I mean physically.’

‘He didn’t hurt me last night,’ I said stiffly. ‘I swear.’

‘I don’t want to know,’ she shuddered dramatically.

I stared at her and I started to lose my patience.

There is undoubtedly a difference between sex that is physically rough, and violence. Sid crossed the line about a year after Polly was born. Delirious still with lack of sleep – Polly was a colicky baby who cried a lot – and Sid, who slept badly at the best of times, became almost psychotic with exhaustion. I had thought it was the new mother’s prerogative, but Sid trumped me again. He painted, catnapped, walked the baby round and round the flat we lived in at midnight, round and round the block, singing to her, crooning to her. With Polly, he showed an indefatigable patience and calm.

With me, however, it was a very different story. I was hampering him, apparently; holding him back from his work. Not Polly, whom he loved with a raw, pure emotion; just me. It was all my fault. I’d forced him back from his beloved Cornwall. And my body was different, and, even worse, it wasn’t purely his anymore. Sid was never good at sharing. As a youngster, he’d had to fight for everything he owned in his cesspit of a home; hiding any possession he managed to retain; regarding what he couldn’t have with a silent, simmering jealousy. He couldn’t change.

But we were just about holding it together until I made
the
fatal mistake. Foolishly, in a daze of new and overwhelmed motherhood, I contacted his family in the hope that a grandchild would be a salve to their relationship. I thought it would be a nice surprise for him; to see his own mother again.

How little did I know.

I was out with Polly at some heinous local music group, where Gap-clad babies dribbled all over wooden maracas, and mothers, counting the days till they could return to work full-time, sipped their take-away coffees, pretending to derive some sort of pleasure out of singing ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’ for the twenty-seventh time that day, when Sid’s mother arrived at our flat. I never really knew what happened, but when I got home, there was tea all over the floor, a Bells bottle smashed in the sink – and no Sid.

He didn’t come home for two days. I was frantic; calling and calling and getting no answer. Polly picked up on my sickening anxiety and proceeded to cry all night both nights he was missing.

On the third day, Sid turned up. He looked like he hadn’t slept at all and the knuckles on his right hand were grazed badly. The navy cashmere jumper I’d saved up to buy him for Christmas was torn irreparably. He refused to speak to me, though he took Polly for a cuddle.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

He lit the first of a packet of cigarettes that he continued to chain-smoke that night.

‘My family.’

I held out my arms for the baby as she almost disappeared in a cloud of smoke, bit back my words about considering her health.

‘She needs changing,’ I smiled tremulously at him. I knew I had messed up.

‘One thing, Laurie,’ his voice was horribly low as I reached the door. My stomach turned over with anxiety. ‘Don’t ever, ever contact them again. Any of them.’

I bowed my head. ‘I won’t.’

That night I slept, out of sheer exhaustion and relief I think, and so, unusually, did Polly. When I woke in the morning, Sid had been up all night; had begun work on what was the darkest picture of his career. When it was finished, he called it
Filicide
.

At the weekend, I asked my mother to take the baby for a night. I cooked Sid the most expensive steak we could afford, Dauphinoise and steamed pudding. I put my best underwear on beneath my fanciest frock, and rented a clever French film. I’d hoped that without Polly in the bedroom, we might make love, and that everything might start to look a little more rosy again.

Sid devoured the steak, none of the potatoes or pudding, and far too much red wine. I felt oddly nervous; he hardly spoke. We sat on the sofa with the pinging springs in front of the television, and when I snuggled up to him, he responded – but there seemed little love involved in the sex that followed. I felt odd; was ashamed of my fat, I wasn’t relaxed; he made me nervous. I drank too much brandy after dinner, seeking Dutch courage. He drank too much whisky, which was normal by now.

We started to row. We stopped, and started to fuck again. Then we went back to rowing. In the bedroom, at some point in the early hours, Sid pushed me backwards in frustration at some nonsense I was spouting, and I fell onto the bed, banging my head on the headboard. I started to cry. He started to fuck me again. During it, he started to hit my head, quite gently, but deliberately, against the headboard. I was too drunk and too emotional to stop him at first, but then I began to complain, to wriggle and push him off.

He stared down at me and I had the sense that he was absent; had almost left his body. His eyes were dark and wild as he gathered my hair in one hand, so tight I was wincing, yanking my head back – and before I could even protest, without warning, he raised one hand and slapped me across the face so hard that afterwards his palm-print was imprinted on my cheek. Then he stopped and climbed off me and locked himself in the bathroom. When I tried to get in, he begged me to go away and leave him. Forever.

So I took the baby and went to my mother’s and we stayed there for three nights.

But I missed him. And he missed Polly. And I knew he needed her, more than anything in the world, for his sanity. He rang me eventually. ‘Sorry,’ he whispered. ‘Sorry I’m such a fuck-up.’

I thought it was a one-off.

So we went home.

E
mily
and I glared at each other across the stupid floating island thing that had come with my expensive kitchen; the kitchen which had initially made Sid feel like he’d arrived; that made me feel like the world’s most un-domestic, entirely failed goddess, and that only heralded a lifestyle that Sid could never settle down to.

I opened my mouth to speak; the kitchen phone rang. It would be my mother or someone automated and infuriating, offering to settle my debts. The answer-phone kicked in.

A woman’s voice echoed round the kitchen. At first, I couldn’t tell who it was.

‘I’m so sorry you’re taking it so hard,’ the voice said sweetly. ‘I know you’re a good woman, Laurie. But you have to let Sid go now. It’s hard, I know. But it’s over. If I can, though, I’ll help any way I’m able.’

It was Jolie.

W
hilst Mal bangs
around the kitchen and makes me a cup of black sugary tea, I call 999.

I don’t tell them who I am but I report Polly and my mother missing. I tell them Linda is the last person to have seen them, and I give them her address. The woman on the other end of the phone sounds frankly disinterested, but she promises to deal with it. She reels off some lines about missing persons usually turning up, and time allotted before searching. I say, ‘Just find them, please.’

Then Mal comes in and forces me to sit down on his horrible beige sofa and drink the tea.

While I do, my eyelids closing a couple of times before I jolt back to reality, I’m aware of him watching me from the table in the window. Then he says, enunciating the words carefully, ‘I read …’ he stops and clears his throat. ‘I read that you were dead.’ And the look that flickers across his face is hard to read, but I would guess that it is a mixture of pain and relief. The anger I saw there before has dissipated.

‘Where did you read that?’

He gestures at the duty-free bag flung on the table, newspaper peeping from the top. ‘I picked up someone’s
Evening Standard
on the terminal shuttle. You were on the front cover.’

I start to explain, and then I start to cry. I am so tired and overwhelmed and frightened, and all I can get out is ‘Emily’s dead, Emily’s dead and I don’t know where my mum or Polly are.’

Mal takes the mug out of my hand and puts it on the floor, and then he hugs me. And even though I still don’t really trust him, and he hurts my sore shoulder and squashes my sore hand, the feeling of arms around me is momentarily blissful. I could sleep here, standing up, leaning on him.

Then I pull back.

‘I must call Sid.’

‘Oh,’ Mal says flatly. He stands now. ‘Must you?’

‘He was coming to get me. But then they said I’m wanted for questioning.’

‘Why?’ For the first time, Mal’s eyes narrow slightly.

‘Don’t look at me like that,’ I say.

‘Like what?’

‘Like I’ve done something wrong.’

There is an infinitesimal pause.

‘Well. Have you?’ he asks.

I stagger slightly, shocked, and I knock the mug over, the remnants of the tea spreading in a dark pool across the carpet.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ I snap. I think of his hug a minute ago and I realise it’s typical. All these bloody men, with their egos and their hang-ups. ‘Something wrong like what? Like murdering my best mate? Yeah sure, that was me,’ I start to laugh, and it becomes hysterical and overwhelming, and I clench my fists and practically drum my head with my own fists, and try to think, think, because I must have a plan.

What comes next?

Who wants me dead?

Who hates me that much?

‘Laurie!’

Mal is staring at me in disbelief. I stop hitting my head.

‘I’d say you need some sleep,’ he says. ‘You don’t look very well.’

I feel horrible; sick and bone-weary. ‘There is no time to sleep. Not until I know where Polly is.’

‘Your call,’ he shrugs. He picks up the mug. ‘I’m sure Polly is fine. It’s just my advice.’

He walks out of the room and, after a second, I follow him.

‘Well, Mal,
you
might be sure Polly’s fine but until yesterday everything else was fine.’ Was it though? Was it? Not really. But I plough on, my voice rising. ‘Everything was fine, I was on a nice little break with my best mate and my daughter was having a whale of a time with Mickey Mouse and her granny, and then Emily and I were nearly killed on the motorway, only no one believed us, and then we had a nice dinner and went to bed in a nice posh hotel room and then,’ I am shouting really loudly now, so loudly that I am surprising myself, and I am also thinking, thank God Emily did have a nice dinner before she died, she had some sort of duck, which was her favourite. ‘And then, Mal, then she was dead. And now they seem to think that I did it, that I might have killed my very best friend in the world, and I need to tell the police to find Polly, and I can’t because they’ll arrest me so I need to find Polly first but she’s God knows where, and so really, how the fucking hell can you say that anything is fine?’

I go into the bathroom and slam the door behind me, locking it.

‘Laurie,’ he bangs on it.

‘Go away,’ I say stiffly. ‘Please.’ There’s a pause. ‘Thank you.’

He rattles the door once or twice and then he goes away.

I rinse my face. The cold water will wake me up.

I close the door and wash my face. Then I sit on the edge of the bath for a moment, gathering myself. Finally, I am calm enough to continue on. I will call the police anonymously and leave to find Polly. I stand, looking across the room, and there are women’s things on the shelf, I see for the first time. A bottle of some sickly Givenchy perfume, a bottle of horrible blue nail varnish, eye make-up remover, a jar of cotton-wool. My eyes track the room. On the back of the door, a small boy’s Batman dressing-gown – and there, poking out below it, the sleeve of something horribly familiar.

My stomach lurches.

Polly’s small red cardigan, the one she wears for ‘best’.

The feeling that rises inside is so strong that I turn and lean over the basin for a moment and heave, and heave again. I try to calm myself, gripping the basin so hard with my good hand that it hurts; trying not to hyperventilate. So it was Mal, all the time.

Hands shaking, I pull the dressing-gown and then the cardigan off the hook and bury my face in it, searching for the smell of my beloved daughter.

I slow my breathing; think back desperately. The red cardigan. And slowly, slowly it filters through. I rack my brain; think of packing her small bag and of the tears last week. She didn’t have that cardigan in her bag for Euro Disney, I’m fairly sure. It’s been lost for a while, much to her chagrin. She was upset about it because it has her Hello Kitty badge pinned on one side and because she wanted to take it to show my mother. And I blamed Sid; thought it must be at his place.

It just smells faintly of roses and washing powder. And I think back, and maybe the last time she wore it was to Sid’s opening in Cork Street – when everything imploded.

When everything imploded, and Sid half-killed Mal, and Mal drove us to my mother’s afterwards, his hands trembling slightly on the wheel and me trying to calm Polly whilst she howled in the back.

But why is it here? And who does the perfume belong to? Is it Suzanne’s?

I listen at the door, my heart hammering. It sounds like Mal is still in the kitchen. I pluck the door open quickly and walk up the stairs and into the shabby front garden, fumbling for my phone.

I call Sid.

When he answers, he is incoherent with rage.

‘Why the fuck weren’t you at your mother’s? Are you having a laugh?’

‘No. I had to leave. They think I killed Emily.’

He’s not listening. ‘I went there and you were gone. I seem to be running round London after you, Laurie, and—’

‘Sid,’ I start to say. ‘Who did you tell—’

‘I know where Polly is,’ he interrupts. ‘I’m on my way now.’

‘What?’ I say stupidly. ‘On your way where?’

‘To fetch her. Randolph went to get them.’

‘
Randolph?
’ A tall, fair – if greying – man. Slightly balding. A big expensive car.

‘Yeah.’

‘How the hell did Randolph know where to go?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did you tell him I was alive?’

‘Yes. No. I can’t remember who I spoke to, to be honest. It doesn’t matter now. But they’re at his apparently, so I’m on my way.’

‘Come and get me first,’ I implore.

Footsteps behind me. I turn too quickly, lose my balance slightly. Mal stands there.

‘Yes?’ I say. I feel a tremor through my body. ‘I’m just on the phone to the …’

‘To the?’

He can’t kill me whilst I’m on the phone. Can he?

‘Where are you?’ Sid is saying.

‘I’m at …’ I choke back the words. I don’t dare inflame anyone at this moment in time. Recriminations can wait until later, and it would be best for Sid to get to our daughter quickly. I inch away from Mal; my instinct telling me maybe I should run. ‘Actually, look. I’ll meet you there.’

‘Fine,’ Sid says, his voice fading in and out now as his reception falters.

‘Just wait for me at Randolph’s, for God’s sake,’ I beg, but I don’t know if he hears me before the line goes dead.

Through the fog in my brain, sane thought is breaking. I stand on the pavement for safety, Mal stands in his front garden, waiting. He doesn’t look dangerous; he looks like a big disordered bear.

‘Mal,’ I say. ‘Why is Polly’s cardigan in your bathroom?’

‘What?’ he looks even more confused.

‘Her red cardigan. It was on the door in there.’

‘Oh. I’m sorry,’ he says, rather helplessly, running his hand through his hair. ‘I kept meaning to call you but then … well. I went away. As you know. And really, I’m not sure how it ended up there. Probably it was just with Leonard’s stuff. You know.’

We gaze at each other; black spots dance before my stinging eyes. If I don’t sleep soon, I am going to lose it irreparably.

‘Laurie,’ Mal makes his voice gentle. ‘I know everything went to crap between us. But I’m not going to hurt you. I don’t know what the hell’s going on, really, I have no clue. Just as I have no idea where Polly is. And I’m so sorry you are having to go through this – but, please. I’m on your side.’

How many times have I believed that of someone recently?

I calculate. I need to get across town to Holland Park – now. Tucked deep into residential North London at this time of night, there will be no black taxis down these streets.

‘Can you call me a cab?’ I ask Mal.

‘Sure. Will you come back in?’

‘No thanks. I need …’ I look at the front door, yawning at me cavernously. ‘You know. Fresh air.’

Mal looks at me with a mixture of sadness and disbelief. Then he walks inside with a shrug, and calls one.

‘Twenty minutes,’ he says when he returns. ‘Please come inside and wait.’

I don’t have two minutes, let alone twenty.

‘Can I borrow your car please?’ I ask hopefully, and he looks at me with doubt, and says, ‘In that state? No way. You’ll kill yourself. I’ll drive you.’

I consider his words.

‘Are you back with Suzanne?’ I say, and it’s stupid and painful to ask and I don’t know why.

‘Suzanne?’ he laughs bitterly. ‘Are you joking?’

‘No,’ I say blankly. ‘Why would I be joking? There’s Ysatis on your bathroom shelf.’

‘Ysa-what?’

‘Perfume. Nail varnish and stuff.’

‘Oh. No, it’s Dora’s. My sister’s. She stays sometimes. When she comes down from Lichfield for work.’

‘I see.’ But I don’t see anything, and I don’t trust him anymore. ‘Anyway. I’d better go.’

‘Laurie, this is insane. Let me at least drive you.’

I stand, my plan being to walk in what I reckon is the direction of the main road.

‘No, really—’ I start to say.

‘I’ll give you a lift.’ He moves towards me, I step back quickly. ‘You don’t look well.’

I have a strange impression of weightlessness; matter over gravity as I feel myself falling. Then I don’t feel anything anymore.