Tell Tale (36 page)

‘It needs work,’ he says. He reaches for it; tucks it in the safe place under his arm. ‘I have to speak to more people. Get some things straight.’ He even looks embarrassed. ‘There’s so much missing.’ He shakes his head, paces nervously.

‘I could help,’ I reply. ‘If you like.’

He folds himself on to the dressing-table stool. ‘You haven’t read the real draft,’ he says. I frown, leaning on the door. ‘I gave you the version I write when I’m feeling detached, as if I was never Betsy’s brother, as if we never shared the same parents, or have –
had –
the same blood in our veins.’

‘So there are two versions?’ I’m confused.

‘Yes.’

‘Of the same story?’

He nods.

‘Can I read the real one?’

Nina had been waiting in the car for Josie for two and a half hours. Did she imagine the shadowy figure as it went up the steps and in through the stage door? Was it really him? Or was her tormented mind playing tricks on her?

She pushed up the sun visor and squinted. She’d been trying to distract herself with work phone calls while she waited for Josie to finish rehearsals. There was no way she was leaving her at the theatre alone. Nina stared at the old bricks, the paint, the metal railings as if he’d left a dirty trail for her to follow.

She chucked her notepad on to the passenger seat. Quick talking and help from Tess had temporarily appeased
Grave’s
producer for another couple of days. Her limbs shook as she got out of the car. She had to get Josie out of there.

Nina glanced at her watch. It was twenty to twelve. Josie’s first
Chicago
rehearsal was due to finish at midday. Most likely, she’d find her daughter in the green room, chatting excitedly with the rest of the cast, comparing lines, hunting for lost dance shoes. She swore she’d seen him go in – hadn’t she? – lurking, waiting to make his move. She shook as she approached the theatre.

Knowing the place as well as she knew her own home, Nina pulled open the stage door and followed the dark corridor down into the belly of the building. Her legs felt weightless, almost incapable of holding her up as she strode on. She heard the familiar banter of the youth theatre group as the excitement of a new show stretched in front of them. She listened at the door.

Dizzy with anticipation, Josie had spent the last six weeks of summer longing for rehearsals to begin. But when, only twenty-four hours ago, Nina had inexplicably forbidden her daughter to take the lead role in the production, insisting she quit the theatre company, giving absolutely no reason other than ‘things had changed’, Josie had broken into a thousand pieces.

‘Mum,
please,
don’t do this to me. When I act, it’s the only time I feel like
me
.’ From the floor of her bedroom, behind a curtain of matted hair and tears, Josie had pleaded with her mother not to crush her dreams. ‘Do you know how hard I’ve worked? How long I’ve waited to get a part like this?’ Josie’s pleading was raw and desperate until finally Nina cracked and conceded.

‘I just don’t understand, Mum,’ Josie said, still sobbing from the shock, backing cautiously away from her mother, hardly daring to breathe in case she changed her mind again. She limped off to the bathroom to recover from the outburst, wondering if her mother had suffered some kind of breakdown, or one of those mid-life crises that she’d heard her friends go on about. Either way, it was so out of character it was terrifying, and her dad had gone mad too,
barring everyone from setting foot in his studio. Alone, confused, shaken, Josie logged on to Afterlife to find solace.

Nina burst through the green-room door, half expecting Josie to be pinned up against the wall by Burnett.

‘Mum,’ Josie gasped. Someone chuckled. ‘What are you doing in here? We’re not finished yet.’ Josie’s indignant look and her mother’s crazed expression sent a ripple of laughter through the teenage cast. Josie turned her back on her mother and pretended to riffle through her bag for something.

‘Looks like you are,’ someone quipped.

‘Mummy’s here,’ another said. More laughter.

‘Josie, it’s time to go.’ Nina’s eyes flashed between the other girls as they busied about gathering their belongings. He would be here, somewhere, she was sure. Lurking, hiding, waiting for their backs to be turned, their guard to be down. She could
smell
Burnett’s presence. She glanced behind the door. Sweat gathered on her forehead, her top lip, along the length of her back. She felt physically ill.

‘Josie, come
now
,’ she said. She was aware of Josie frowning, of her cheeks flushing red, the snatch of her bag as she whiplashed it over her shoulder. More laughter from the rest of the cast as smart comments rained on their leading lady’s premature departure.

‘I . . . I have the dentist,’ Josie said to her friends.

Striding along the corridors, Nina broke into a run. ‘Hurry up,’ she said, dragging Josie along by the arm. When they reached the stage door Nina paused, panting with fear and exhaustion. She stared at Josie, reaching into the
disbelieving depths of her eyes as the gap between mother and daughter widened. It was an abyss Nina had sworn would never exist. Their relationship would be different to other mums and teens – built on trust, respect, confidence, communication. In the last few days, Nina had seen to it that a wide chasm had cracked the ground their lives were built on; made a mockery of all the values she’d held dear.

‘Mum, what’s—’

‘You just don’t get it, do you?’ Nina lunged at Josie’s shoulders, shaking her at first then pulling her into a painful embrace before opening the door.

‘Mum, what’s happened to you? I want to call Dad.’ Josie fumbled for her phone. Her mum was in need of more help than she could give. She was scared; hadn’t had to deal with anything this weird before. She dialled home but before it even rang, Nina had swiped the phone off her and snapped it shut.

‘We have to get out,’ she said urgently, blinking as they went outside. She scanned the street for Burnett, expecting to see his angular body bent over her car, cutting the brakes, planting a crude bomb beneath the seat, wiring her life for destruction. Shapes morphed in and out of her vision, teasing her brain into believing he was there, doing all these things, stepping seamlessly back into her life as if he’d never even been away.

‘Get in the car,’ she ordered. Reluctantly, Josie did as she was told. Panic leached from mother to daughter. Josie pulled the seat belt across her body, clicked it in place as her mother crunched the car into reverse.

‘Mum, stop it. You’re scaring me.’

Nina had to get Josie to safety. Her fingers clawed at the steering wheel and her feet shook on the pedals. Then a sudden jolt as she smacked the car against a wall. Nina wrenched herself round, yanking the wheel to opposite lock. As she sped forward, as she forced the car to maximum revs, she swore she saw Burnett standing outside the stage door watching their escape.

‘Do you remember,’ Nina said, her hands shaking round a mug of tea as Laura’s fingers stroked channels of calm into her shoulders, ‘when we all four went out for the first time? You said that Mick was my missing half.’

Laura had stopped crying now. Instead, her tears had turned to laughter – an incredulous gutter cry of disbelief that Tom had actually left her. Nina’s arrival had served as a timely distraction, except that Nina also appeared in a terrible state. Somehow, as the women swapped woes, each found a measure of solace. But why Nina had insisted on locking both back and front doors, checking the windows and closing all the curtains, Laura had no idea.

‘I still think that,’ she said. She dropped down into the sofa. ‘You know, I never once thought that about Tom. That we were two inseparable halves of a whole. You’re so lucky, Neen.’

She gripped Laura’s hand. ‘I am,’ she whispered, but instead of providing comfort, it just reminded her of everything she had to lose. ‘I have a long way to fall. You said it yourself.’

Laura nodded, trying to make sense of what Nina was saying. They sat together, working speedily through a bottle of wine while their daughters gossiped upstairs about their distressed mothers. Tom briefly returned home to collect some belongings, chucking clothes angrily down the stairs, comforting Nat when she cried and begged him not to leave.

Nina stared out of the living-room window as he drove off. ‘Whose car is that?’ She squinted at the dark green vehicle as it sped off down the street. ‘I thought Tom drove a silver BMW.’

Laura made a disgusted noise. ‘He did until it was taken off him. Company cutbacks. He’s been driving about in that Rover for a couple of weeks now. My heart bleeds for him.’ She laughed hysterically. ‘He was annoyed that he didn’t get the newest model.’ Laura laughed again. ‘Serves him right.’

Nina nodded slowly. Then her mobile rang.

Mick moved in with Nina eleven days after the picnic they’d shared on the Downs. ‘Why wait?’ he’d said, and she’d agreed, hating the thought of him living in that trailer park. It made sense. She’d been missing work, too lazy to leave Mick’s warm bed to catch the early bus to the city. And Mick needed the extra space for his paintings. Even her tiny bedsit allowed him more room to spread out than his trailer did, although it meant giving up part of the kitchen.

‘We’ll eat out,’ he said.

‘We don’t have any money,’ Nina replied.

‘Then we’ll steal.’

‘We’ll be thrown in prison.’

‘I’d die without you,’ he said, laying her down amongst the tubes of paint, the sketchbooks, the shoeboxes stuffed with photographs, the remnants of their once separate lives. On the mess, they forgot who they were, left behind the people they’d been just days ago. Nina thought only of who she would become, completing the transformation. From that moment, Mick became as integral to her life as the new colour of her hair, or the unfamiliar name on her chequebook.

A week later, Mick sold two paintings, cementing his belief that Nina was his lucky charm; that he had found her for a reason. ‘I got sixty quid,’ he told her proudly. He decided, from that moment on, he would change the way he painted. He was done with his old ways and banished to the past everything that had gone before. He only had to think of Nina when he held a paintbrush and his canvas was filled with the future. That was what he told himself as he stroked the knots of her spine, wondering how he would have survived without this young beauty in his life.

As well as the TV work, Nina had taken on another job making sandwiches three nights a week in a local factory. Mick had added warmth, comfort and purpose to her lonely life. She drank up his presence as if she were quenching a great thirst. Mick was everything she wanted him to be – friend, lover, comedian, playmate, soulmate.

When Josie came into their lives a few years later, Nina believed things would be this good forever. She had forgotten the past. She had stepped out of a horror movie
and taken the lead role in a love story all set for the happiest ending ever.

‘It’s a sad ending.’ Nina recalled Ethan Reacher’s guffaw as she’d tried to sidestep his probing questions about the nonexistent film stunts she’d been grilling him on.

‘Sad ending?’ Laura said, only half listening to what Nina was whispering under her breath. She’d been distracted since the phone call a minute ago, and wasn’t making any sense. ‘Bloody right it’s a sad ending,’ Laura continued when Nina stared vacantly ahead, her skin bleached white. ‘It’s a sodding tragedy, that’s what it is.’

She snatched wet washing from the machine and picked out several men’s shirts, bits of underwear and other items that were clearly Tom’s. She dropped them into the pedal bin. ‘I can’t believe he actually
admitted
to having an affair. I suspected as much.’

‘Don’t let him leave,’ Nina said quietly. She stared straight ahead at the kitchen tiles, vaguely aware of her friend’s ranting.

‘What?’ Laura stopped what she was doing.

‘Get him back.’ Nina was deadly serious. She put a hand on Laura’s arm. ‘If you let him go, that will be it. Over.’

‘Bloody good job.’

‘It’ll be like he’s dead,’ Nina said. ‘Do you really want Tom to be dead?’ She turned her gaze to Laura, desperately trying to pass on her meaning. ‘Don’t let him die,’ she whispered before calling out to Josie that it was time to go. She wanted to get back to Mick.

They set off on the short drive home, wheels spinning as they pulled off the gravel. Her head swam with the crazy, mixed-up images of the last few days. She knew that, if Burnett had his way, dying was something she would soon be doing herself.

-Have you ever felt as if ur life’s over?

I crush my head between my palms.

-Yes

-What did you do?

I pause. How can a few words sum it all up?

-
I made another one.

-I miss my mum so much. Do u miss urs still?

-Of course,
I type. Truth is, I can scarcely remember her. It’s odd how our minds become a scrapbook of smells, words, feelings, images. A patchwork of a life long gone.

-Dad won’t speak about her. He’s moody all the time.

-He’s coming to terms with it. Let him grieve in his own way.

-He’s different with me now. Cold.

-That’s normal after a loss like this.
Pretending to be a fifteen-year-old girl is hard when all I want to do is throw the arms of a mother around her.

-But he hasn’t been the same with me for a long while.
I can hear her small sob, sense the tinge of sadness in her voice because she thinks her daddy doesn’t love her any more. When he looks into her eyes, it’s me he’s going to see.
Another message flashes up.
-When I was little, he loved me so much.

-It’s your mum he’s angry at, not you.
I have no experience of decent fathers to share with her. I leave it at that in case she becomes suspicious.
-Does that man still come to your house?
I have to know.

-Not for a while,
Josie types.