No Longer Safe (23 page)

I didn’t take a sleeping tablet that night; I
wanted to stay alert – apart from anything, I was concerned for my own safety.

I spent most of the night tossing and turning, working out
my next move and waiting for dawn to rescue me. I turned to my clock, but it
was only 4am. By 4.05, I’d made my decision.

My bags were packed within ten minutes. As soon as it was
morning, I was leaving.

The brave thing to do would be to ask Karen what was going
on, of course, but I was afraid of what she might do to me. There was now an
alleged prison sentence to factor in and, while that still seemed preposterous,
Karen had Mark and Jodie to call on. If I caused any trouble, they would be at
her side in the blink of an eye. It would be three against one.

Everything felt slippery and insecure. I no longer had a
handle on the truth; the landscape was shifting drastically at regular
intervals within these four walls, just as it was outside.

What
was
the truth
about the night Charlie died? In my gut, I felt certain it had been Karen who’d
hit him over the head with the stool. It must have been self-defence, but why
didn’t she just come out and admit it? I would have protected her – after all
she’d done for me – she must have known that.

Would the divers find him in the loch? There was no way I
could hold it all together if they did. Every waking hour I was on full alert,
expecting a police officer in the doorway at any time.

As soon as my alarm went off at 7.30, I scurried to the
bathroom and grabbed my toothbrush and final toiletries without making a sound,
then I crept down the stairs with my bags. I did a final check to make sure I
hadn’t left anything, unlocked the front door and stepped out into freedom.

Outside, the night was still refusing to let the light take
hold, but the dense snowfall from yesterday was beginning to thaw. I wished the
weather would make up its mind.

I hurried down the track, not daring to look back. The
landscape was like a vintage postcard, completely still, apart from tiny silvery
white chunks that dropped from branches on the edges of my peripheral vision.
Always just to one side or behind me. I turned each time but not quickly
enough. Bit by bit the world was crumbling around me.

At the end of the track, I took the path towards the
village. There was a phone box at the far side of the green, where I could ring
for a taxi to get to Fort William. I’d make calls to Stuart and Nina once I was
there.

Stuart could then decide if he wanted to collect me, but I
had my sights set on Edinburgh or London – I didn’t want to stay anywhere near
Duncaird. I couldn’t spend one more hour in this place. I’d send a text to
Karen as soon as I was far enough away that she couldn’t come and find me.

A tractor clattered past me, kicking up brown slush. There
was no other traffic. I’d considered going straight to Stuart’s cottage, but I
was starting to doubt whether I could be with him when I wasn’t able tell him
the truth about his nephew. Besides, I hadn’t paid attention when we’d driven
over and there was no way I’d find my way.

It occurred to me how inhospitable it was up here, how cut
off I was from civilisation. Anything could happen to me and no one would know.

It was quicker to stick to the lanes; from past experience
out here it was too risky to head through the undergrowth, especially before
the sun came up fully.

I had reached the second crossroads when I had the strange
sensation I was being followed. There were sounds around me all the time –
creaking trees, the rush of the wind, the rattling of faraway freight trains –
but they were mostly sporadic. There was a more regular sound, hard to pinpoint
and muffled because of the remaining snow. Every time I stopped and turned, it
stopped too, so it was difficult to track it down. After a while I decided it
must be the fabric of my anorak catching as I walked.

I had to put all my effort into not slipping over in the
crunchy banks of dirty snow at the side of the road. I thought again about the duplicity
of snow; hiding things, but also revealing what was normally invisible –
footprints, for example. I thought back to the trail we’d made getting
Charlie’s body to the lake in the wheelbarrow and wondered if the thaw would
throw up fresh clues that would link us to Charlie’s death.

There was another sound behind me now, like a small tractor.
I came to a standstill to swap my suitcase from one hand to the other and as I
turned I saw two headlights, like beasts’ eyes, in the road. It was a Land
Rover.

Stuart wound down the window and called out, trailing
alongside me as I started walking again. ‘I’ve found you – what are you doing?’

‘I was going to ring you as soon as I was on the train.’

‘Train to where?’

‘Fort William to start with.’

‘What – without saying goodbye? What’s happened?’

I stopped and dropped my bags. ‘It’s time for me to go,
that’s all.’

He rubbed his forehead, dislodging his cap. ‘What’s going
on? Are you hurt? Was it Karen?’

I pulled myself up tall. ‘I’m okay – I just can’t carry on
here anymore.’

‘I can’t let you go like this – this is awful.’ He pulled
over onto the verge and got out to bundle my bags in the back. He wrapped his
arms around me. ‘Come on…’ He opened the passenger door.

I climbed in, my body inert. ‘I didn’t want to leave you
behind, but I didn’t feel I had much choice,’ I said.

‘You could come to mine,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to stay
with them.’

‘I don’t want to be anywhere near here,’ I said.

‘But you’ll be safe with me at my cottage.’

I hesitated. ‘What are you doing out at this hour? How did
you know I was here?’

‘Karen rang me.’

‘
Karen
rang you? How
did she get your number?’

‘She rang the cottage…maybe the owner gave it to her. Karen
said you’d gone and she was worried about you.’

Stuart switched up the heater and I dropped my head back
against the headrest. I didn’t have the energy to insist on getting to Fort
William. He was hunched over the wheel, giving me a sideways look every few
yards with concern in his eyes and deep grooves in his brow.

‘What did Karen say exactly?’

‘That you had a kind of seizure in the bathroom.’

Bloody Karen
. ‘That
you’ve been sleepwalking and doing strange things during the night,’ he went
on. ‘Is this true – is she telling lies again?’

I shut my eyes. She’d taken it upon herself to tell him
about the sleepwalking. She was making me sound like I was completely off my
rocker. ‘You know I’ve been having the occasional panic attack,’ I said, too
tired not to sound defensive. ‘Well, I had one in the bathroom that’s all.’

‘She said you completely blacked out – she thought you’d had
a stroke.’

‘She’s exaggerating,’ I huffed. ‘What did she tell you about
the sleepwalking?’

‘That she’d found you in the kitchen in the middle of the
night…that you’d been taking sleeping tablets…acting out of character.’

‘
Out of character!
Oh, great!’ I banged my fist on the dashboard, then realised it only confirmed
any suggestion that I was unstable.

‘She said you’re still troubled by the headaches,’ he added.
‘More than you let on. Is that true?’

‘I’ve had a few headaches,’ I admitted. ‘But, you’re the one
who told me Karen has a criminal record and isn’t to be trusted – why are you
paying so much attention to her all of a sudden?’

‘Because I’m worried about you – because you haven’t denied
what she told me.’

‘I’m fine. I’ve just had enough – that’s all.’

He pulled away from the next junction with a squeal of the
wheels. ‘We’ll get a decent breakfast inside you and talk this thing through
properly. Then we’ll decide.’

I didn’t appear to have a great deal of choice, short of
throwing myself out of a moving vehicle. I said nothing further until we got to
his cottage. I was angry that he’d intervened but also touched that he cared
enough to rush out and find me.

We left the bags in the car and he unlocked his front door.
The sun had come up by now, splitting open the sky like a wide yawn.

‘Bacon and eggs, or cereal?’ he offered.

‘Just coffee, please,’ I said, as he led me through to the
kitchen.

He switched on the oven, unhooked an apron from the kitchen
door and tied it around his waist.

‘Help yourself,’ he said a few minutes later, putting a pot
of coffee, orange juice, granola, muesli, cornflakes and a plate of hot
croissants between us on the table. The aroma of buttery pastry won me over and
I took a croissant and scooped a teaspoon of black cherry jam on to the side of
my plate.

‘Thanks for this,’ I said.

Stuart sat back looking at me, his eyes wrapping me in a
glowing warmth as I ate.

This was what true attachment felt like and it came to me
then that our little group – Karen, Jodie, Mark and I – were connected only
through a volatile tangle of secrets, bribery and deception.

‘I can see how people get taken in by Karen,’ he said, as if
reading my mind. ‘She’s very charismatic.’

‘When I first knew her she was like a warm apple pie giving
off an aroma that drew people towards her before they had any inkling as to
what was happening.’

‘And how do you feel about her now?’ he said.

‘Regardless of what you find out about her,’ I said. ‘I
don’t feel the same way anymore.’

I was still beholden to her because of what she’d done at
Uni, that was true. But the adoration was over. Since being here, I’d seen
things afresh. Our association wasn’t really a friendship at all; it was a
trade-off, based on a series of subversive errands I’d felt coerced into
running, because I thought it was the only way to be accepted. I’d been a
performing monkey in her little troupe of followers.

I tried to explain. ‘Coming to the cottage has been like a
time-travelling exercise,’ I said. ‘Throwing the four of us in the ring
together: Mark, the cocky layabout, Jodie, the insecure wannabe, Karen, the
shining light, and me. I used to be everyone’s puppet, but not anymore. The
dynamics have shifted.’

Mark didn’t scare me anymore – I could send putdowns
straight back to him and he had nothing more substantial in his arsenal. Jodie
was taking anti-depressants, trapped in a subservient role with Mark. And
Karen? I was no longer under her spell – she wasn’t enviable to me anymore. She
seemed unhappy and there was an undercurrent of aggression and manipulation
about her. She was little more than a bully.

‘I’m not sure there’s any genuine friendship left,’ I went
on. ‘It’s all an odd kind of barter system.’

I thought about the ten thousand pounds I’d found in the
attic room. Surely it must play a part in this too? I recalled Karen’s words:
leverage – never give up leverage easily, Alice
,
she’d said.

I wondered if blackmail was involved. Perhaps Karen was
making Mark pay in order to keep secret other misdemeanours I knew nothing
about.

Stuart’s phone rang at that point and he took the call.
‘It’s Jim,’ he said.

I cleared the dishes, catching snippets of his end of the
conversation. I knew they were talking about Karen; I heard certain key words,
sentence…Holloway…guilty
. When he ended the
call and turned to me, he looked concerned.

‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘You need to hear this.’

I dropped heavily into the chair, staring at his face.

He hesitated. ‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘What did she do?’

‘In February 2008, Karen gave birth to a baby girl. The
child cried a lot and…when she was nine months old, Karen shook the child to
make her stop. She shook her so violently that she died.’

I felt like I’d wandered blindly out of a safe dugout onto the
frontline, with bullets flying at me from all sides. ‘Oh, my God – she killed
her own baby?’

Stuart’s words kept coming at me. ‘It used to be called
“shaken baby syndrome”; now it’s known as “non-accidental head injury”. She was
sent to Holloway prison in 2009. She came out in May, this year.’

Now it made sense. Of course Karen had changed. She was
completely removed from her former self. It was suffering I’d seen. That’s what
it was – suffering – dragging at her face. Now I knew why. In the years I’d not
seen her, she’d been locked away behind bars. All that guilt. She’d had all the
softness hammered out of her.

I couldn’t stop staring. ‘Why didn’t I hear about it?’

‘Her case was overshadowed on the news at the time by
another big story – remember the Arvon Bank data scandal in 2009?’ It vaguely
rang a bell. ‘Jim said that computer discs containing bank details and National
Insurance numbers went missing. It left millions of households susceptible to
identity theft. Karen’s case didn’t even hit the local London news.’

‘Are you sure it’s her? I mean – her child is that kind of
age
now
…and she’s called Melanie. I
don’t understand…’

‘Well – it’s her alright. Convicted, fair and square in
2009.’

‘I still can’t see it – I can’t imagine her wanting to…harm
her own child. I’ve seen her with Mel – she’s been amazing, making special
things for her, doting on her – going to see her all those months when she was
ill.’

Admittedly, she’d been sharp with me, lately. More than that
– rough and mean, at times. But shaking a child to death…she seemed so sweet
with Mel.

‘You hear about it all the time,’ he said. ‘Often parents of
young babies don’t realise how tender the neck muscles are. I remember my
father telling me he came across far more cases than he wanted to believe. A
baby cries, the adult has had enough and wants it to stop – one shake is
sometimes all it takes.’