Author: Amanda Robson
Category: Thriller
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/amanda-robson/page,20,560635-my_darling.html
Jade, your looks are the ones I love.
I have always tolerated your moods, your accusations, because I know you can’t help it and because in between times, no one is more fun, more intelligent.
I love you my darling Jade. Thank you for being my wife. I will love you forever.
Tomas
I know you didn’t write it. The Stereotype copied your handwriting and planted it here to try and fool me. To cover up your relationship. I know you were unfaithful, whatever this letter says.
124
Alastair
Fred and I are watching TV. The early evening news. Knife crime in London is rocketing. Frightening. I know there are knives in here. If you have money you can get hold of one. Money makes the world go round even when you are incarcerated. I zone out, stop focusing on the screen in front of me and think about my visit from Stephen.
My son with his wistful expression, grey eyes turning to stone as he tells me they call him low-life at school. Low-life. Because I’m in here. Because of you, Emma.
I know your name, Francis Hudson, you little prick. If my son is such a low-life, do you really think you will get away with this?
125
Jade
The wood burner is roaring like an engine. Flames as hot as flamenco dancers, twisting and gyrating. Intertwined – stretching, kicking, reaching. I open the door to the wood burner and throw in the letter. The one the Stereotype forged. Blue flames lick its edges. Dancing orange tongues engulf it. The paper turns black. It fragments into ash, and collapses to the base of the wood burner. Ash like your body. Is this how your body went in the oven at the crematorium, so many months ago? Black and fragmented? Collapsing to dust.
Next up, your passport. The flames diminish as they try to engulf the leather cover. I throw in a firelighter and the passport takes. Your birth certificate. It ignites and burns in seconds. And your death certificate. No proof you ever lived.
Your memory still hurts me. You damage me, even from the rose garden in the cemetery. When everything you touched or owned is gone, will I be able to forget about you? Will I stop talking to you? Stop feeling your arms around me?
126
Alastair
Visiting time. You are here, sitting in front of me. A vision of perfection, in your camel coat, and designer boots. With your carefully blow-dried hair. Gold jewellery that matches your skin tone.
‘Why did you want to see me, Emma?’ I ask, voice clipped.
You swallow and take a deep breath. ‘Please stop phoning me.’
I smile a long, slow smile. ‘I’m only being friendly.’
‘Friendly? Harassing me, threatening me, calling me a bitch?’
Your usually sweet voice sounds whining and plaintive. Good. I must be getting to you.
‘Why should I stop harassing you?’ I hiss. ‘Look at where I am. Look at what you’ve done to me.’
You shake your head. You bite your lip. ‘I told you. It wasn’t me. It was Jade.’
This Jade excuse is so pathetic I’m not sure whether it makes me want to cry or laugh.
‘You didn’t need to go along with it,’ I snap. ‘And how come Heather is your sudden alibi for the night of Tomas’ murder? Is it three bitches working together?’
‘Heather was harassing you, remember? She came to my house to try and find you. She was there that night.’
‘How convenient.’
You raise your chin, your shoulders. ‘If you carry on ringing me and being abusive I will make a formal complaint. You’ll have your room searched. Your mobile will be removed. If you ring from a prison landline your calls will be monitored and abusive language will not be tolerated.’
Now, I cannot help it, I laugh. ‘Listen to yourself, Miss Hoity-Toity.’ I pause. ‘I know you won’t complain to the authorities. You won’t want to do anything to draw attention to yourself after the flimsy way you have set me up.’ I push my eyes into yours. ‘Two can play stupid games, Emma.’
There is a pause. I sit looking at you as you clasp your hands together on your lap, clicking tastefully tapered nails against one another. Nails painted to match your shiny lip-gloss. I lean across and take your hand. I pull you towards me, inhaling your scent of musk and vanilla. The scent I once so loved, that now makes me want to vomit. The woman I once thought was so much kinder than Heather, who has turned to her and used her against me.
‘Come on Emma, the onus is on you to make things right between us.’
Tears well in your eyes. ‘I wish I could, Alastair. Why don’t you try and see what will happen when you stop bullying me.’
I squeeze your wrist tight. Chinese-burn tight.
You wince in pain and pull your hand away. ‘Hurting me won’t help. It’ll only make things worse for you,’ you hiss.
Memories
Colin was good at Chinese burns, too. One snowy winter’s day – sun streaking through bare trees – walking in the woods behind our house, Colin reached for my arm and twisted his hand around it until I yelped in pain.
‘Why are you hurting me? What have I done to annoy you now?’ I asked, tears streaming down my face.
‘You’re dawdling behind me. I want you to keep up.’
‘Let go and I will.’
He released his grip. My bruises lasted past Christmas. I covered them with a false smile and a long-sleeved lacy dress.
127
Jade
The Stereotype’s navy-blue Mercedes pulls up in her drive at the same time as mine. I hear her car door open as I slide out of my Porsche. I see her wearing her cashmere coat, and a fancy blow-dry, walking slowly towards her front door. Head heavy. Mouth in a line.
‘Hey,’ I shout over the hedge. ‘What’s up, Emma?’
Surprised to see me, her body jumps a little. She must have been in a daydream. ‘Where’ve you been?’ I ask.
‘To see Alastair,’ she shouts back.
I pad down my drive and onto hers, feet crunching across gravel. She turns to face me. I stand looking into her emerald eyes.
‘Why did you go to see him?’ I ask. ‘I thought we were going to keep our distance.’
Her eyes darken. ‘He keeps sending me unpleasant texts and messages. I went to tell him to stop.’
‘And is he going to?’
She shakes her head. ‘I don’t think so.’
Unpleasant texts and messages? Visiting him to ask him to stop? Are you and Alastair about to stitch me up for the second time? I can’t trust you further than I can throw you. I will watch you more closely from now on.
128
Alastair
Lockdown. Fred is glued to Hollyoaks this evening. I close my eyes, pretending I’m sleeping. But I’m not. I just want some privacy. I’m lying on my bunk, thinking. Always thinking. About you, Emma, and what you have done to me. About Stephen, the haunted look in his eyes when he came to visit me. About my mother, holding his hand, hobbling into the visiting area.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll look after him,’ she promised when I was first charged.
She shouldn’t have needed to do that. It should have been you and me, Emma.
The image of your face rotates in front of me. Your blonde hair soft as silk. Your deep-green eyes. Your little nose, so perfectly shaped. The tasteful clothes you were wearing when you came to visit me. Your designer boots. Your camel coat. You always dress perfectly, don’t you? Your smile moves towards me, your soft, sweet lips moving to kiss me. Then your lips change shape. They begin to snarl. Your hair begins to spread out around your head, thinner and thinner strands, spinning into a spider’s web. I reach out to touch it. My hand is stuck. My body is sucked in. Surrounded by threads. Threads that tighten around me. I’m curled into a ball. The threads are squashing me. Trying to kill me. I begin to scream.
Fred is leaning over me, shaking me. ‘Stop it, mate.’
I cling on to him, and even though the scream is still in my head, no sound comes out. ‘Calm down. Calm down. Take a breath,’ he says.
>
Calm down. Calm down. Take a breath. The scream is diminishing.
‘I need you to help me sort things out,’ I beg.
129
Jade
One last check around my house to make sure none of your possessions are here to remind me of you. To hurt me with your memory. I’m pretty sure everything has gone. I have even poured your remaining aftershave down the sink and taken the empty bottles to the bottle bank.
Just going through your drawers, one last time. The drawer in your bedside table. A piece of paper sticks out past the lining. I pull it gently. A photograph. Our wedding day. I am wearing a floaty white dress, and a headdress of white roses. You are resplendent in top and tails. Did you cherish this photograph?
Hands trembling, I take it downstairs. One last look at our young faces, before you broke my heart. I open the door to the wood burner. I fling it in. It melts and bends in the heat. Then the flames take, and cut across our images.
You and I are over, Tomas. Once and for all.
Memories
A crisp spring day. Trying to keep away from Colin. In my garden planting aconite. Acontium carmichaelii. Arendsii kelmscott. Royal flush. Planting in the large south-facing border I had dug out behind the tennis court, breath condensing in the air as I worked.
Working in the garden relaxed and soothed me. Apart from my work, gardening had become my main interest. Aconite, aka monkshood, aka wolfsbane, was my favourite plant. The medieval soulmate of vagabonds and witches.
130
Alastair
Visiting day again. That tinge of excitement in my toes, in my stomach. A tingling, a vibration when I know that Stephen and Mother are coming. The buzzer goes. Fred smiles his craggy smile at me as the door opens and we rush to take our seats. His wife arrives and his face lightens.
They hug, and as they hug I envy them. My hatred for Emma rises up inside me again.
I watch the door as the visitors move through it. Mothers. Wives. Children. Faces all brushed with a strange combination of anticipation and sadness. Mother and Stephen are here, standing in the entrance, looking across at me.
They walk towards me. I hug Stephen first, then Mother. Then Stephen again. Missing physical contact is one of the worst things about being in here. Touching my mother, my son, is so precious I feel like weeping. I force my body to pull away. We sit down.
‘How’s it going?’ I ask.
They exchange glances.
‘What’s up?’ I ask.
‘There’s been an incident at school.’
I lean across the table, closer to Stephen, to listen.
‘It’s Francis Hudson,’ Stephen explains. ‘He’s been badly beaten up. The police were called. They questioned everyone in our class. Asked us if we knew anything about it.’
‘What happened to him?’ I ask, as if I don’t know.
Stephen’s eyes widen. ‘He was walking home from school, when a man jumped out from behind a tree and punched him so hard he fell to the ground.’ There is a pause. ‘He broke his nose.’ A shake of the head. ‘He’s had to have an operation to straighten it.’
Mother grimaces. ‘It was awful. Such a frightening thing to happen to a young child. The whole school is in shock. The head is advising children not to walk home without an adult.’
I smile inside. ‘I suppose if someone is always mean like him though, they’re asking for trouble. Imagine how many people must despise a little shit like that.’
‘People have been very upset for him.’ There is a pause. ‘Even me,’ Stephen says.
‘Did he recognise the attacker? Has he been able to assist the police?’
‘Not much. He said the guy was tall. But he was wearing a black balaclava, so he couldn’t say anything about hair and face.’
I sit shaking my head.
‘Anyway, he’s back in school now. I took him a cake that Grandma had baked, to cheer him up. He smiled and said thank you and forgot to call me low-life.’
I smile inside. A little bit of violence seems to have worked.
131
Emma
A wad of post thumps through the letter box and lands on the hall mat. I step into the hallway and bend to pick it up. The usual. Adverts for local estate agents. For gardeners. For cleaners. A free glossy magazine – adverts again, no real articles. No substance. My credit card bill. My bank statement. And one more thing. A jiffy bag. I inhale sharply when I see it has prison franking and my address written in your handwriting, Alastair.
I step into the kitchen, and sit down. I rip the bag open. It contains a series of photographs of us, together. Walking along the river. Drinking at the Angel. Our day out at Oxford. With Stephen the weekend he came to stay: eating pizza, eating eggy bread, playing cricket. An envelope with my name on it is tucked between the photographs. I open it and pull out a note.
How could you, you bitch?
132
Alastair
Mum is here, without Stephen. He is on a school trip today to the science museum. I took him there last year. His favourite part was the friction slides in the Forces Zone. He spent almost the whole afternoon sliding down them. I wish I was there with him again. Hearing his laughter. Buying him pizza and ice cream.
I’m holding Mum’s warmth against me as I hug her. As I inhale her scent of lilies. Reluctantly I let her go. We sit down at opposite sides of the grey plastic table. She looks at me with dark worried eyes. The lines on her face have deepened since I last saw her. Darker panda bags have formed beneath her eyes. It is getting closer to my trial and I know she won’t be sleeping. After Dad died she had to go to a sleep clinic. It took months and months to sort her problems out.
She leans across the grey plastic table to take my hand.
‘No touching,’ a guard barks through his microphone. The guard with the widest chest; nicknamed ‘The Wardrobe’. There is a rumour going around the prison that he weighs twenty stone.
Our limbs jump apart.
‘First things first,’ she says. ‘The kids at school have stopped calling Stephen a low-life, since the mugging. I wouldn’t have wished for such an awful thing to have happened to that boy, but …’ She trails off and smiles. A slow sad smile. ‘How are you dear?’ she asks.
I daren’t tell her the only thing that keeps me going is retribution. Against arrogant pricks like Francis Hudson. Against Emma. She would disapprove so strongly if she knew.
I look into her eyes and try to smile, but my lips don’t move. ‘I’m OK.’ I pause. ‘Bearing up.’
‘You’re low. I can tell from your voice.’ She leans forward. ‘Tell a warden. Try and get some help.’
‘I’m fine.’
Her eyes narrow. ‘Are you eating?’
‘Yes.’
A short, clipped smile. ‘That’s a good sign.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yes. People who are really low don’t even want to eat.’
I shake my head, unsure as to when my mother became an expert on depression. ‘Look, I’m not depressed, Mother.’
‘Is anyone bullying you?’ she continues.
‘No. No one is bullying me. Fred is protecting me. He is well respected both inside and outside this prison.’
She folds her arms over her ample bosom. ‘Is your barrister any good?’
‘Are we playing twenty questions?’
‘Don’t be sarcastic – just tell me, is your barrister any use?’
I shrug. ‘How do I know? I’ve got no choice but to trust him. He’s the lawyer, the QC I was allocated. He can’t be that bad, he’s a Silk.’
‘When you explain what happened to the court the jury will believe you.’
My lips tighten. ‘I wish I could share your optimism. My brief thinks it’s fifty–fifty.’
My brief, with his truncated vowels and nasal hair, who came to see me last week and stayed ten minutes. I’m almost in tears looking at my mother, brandishing her over-cheery smile, and false optimism. Wearing the ruby-red woollen dres
s I bought her for her birthday. How could life take me away from her when we need each other so much? Anger solidifies in my heart, in my stomach, when I remember it isn’t life that has done this to us, it is you, Emma. My fingers tighten as I think of you. As I imagine the satisfaction I would have if I could crush your flesh with my fist again. Did you enjoy looking at the photographs I sent you?
I lean towards my mother. ‘I need you to do me a favour.’
Her eyes soften. ‘Anything to help, Alastair.’
‘I need you to pay four thousand pounds into a bank account. I owe someone some money.’ I fumble in my pocket and pull out a piece of paper. I hand it to her. ‘Here’s the account number and the sort code.’
She frowns. ‘Have you got yourself into a mess, Alastair?’
‘No, Mother. Don’t ask questions. Just do it please.’
The buzzer goes. She waves the paper at me and nods her head as she leaves. I pull my body up from the plastic chair and join the throng of prisoners walking back to their cells. Doors locking behind us. Doors and locks and revenge. That is all my life is now.
133
Jade
I park my Porsche at the crematorium, slip out and slam the door. A dull November day, rain hovering in the atmosphere waiting to fall, making the air feel damp. A swathe of mourners skulk in the car park, waiting to enter a chapel and pay their last respects. A constant flow of grief and pain moving through these buildings. You know what they say: nothing is certain except death and taxes.