The Child Across the Street: An unputdownable and absolutely gripping psychological thriller Read online

  ‘Rob? Just teenagery stuff. He’s eighteen and probably off to uni in September. He’s waiting on results and wanted to show me some email he got off UCAS. I don’t know why he couldn’t do it with you there.’

  I think back to when I was a teenager and the way I used to be around my father’s friends. Around any adults, really. I certainly wouldn’t have been talking about my future in front of them.

  ‘We’ve already been up to Liverpool for a look around the university,’ Holly adds. ‘I know he’s my son and I would say that – but he’s clever. Did way better than any of us. He’s predicted As for his exams. If I’m honest, I dunno where he gets it from. It’s not his father.’ She stops and then adds: ‘I’ve been trying to encourage him to find a university closer to here. Liverpool seems so far away…’

  I let the thought sit, though the kettle plips off anyway and Holly asks if I want tea. I don’t – but say I do out of politeness. We settle back at the table, though I opt for a drink from my bottle instead of the tea.

  ‘What’s with that?’ Holly asks, as I place the bottle on the table. She doesn’t mention that I specifically went back to the house to retrieve it. It’s nothing special; just a clear hard plastic bottle with a spout at the top.

  ‘I got used to carrying it around,’ I say. ‘Save the oceans and the planet. All that.’

  It’s half empty and Holly eyes the clear contents knowingly. She points a thumb towards the fridge. ‘There’s filtered water in there if you want it refilling…?’

  There might be the merest hint of a smirk in the corner of her lips, though the more likely explanation is that it’s in my imagination.

  I almost play the game and tell her that would be great – but I can’t quite do it.

  ‘I’m fine for now,’ I say instead.

  She nods and I look for the smirk that doesn’t come. Perhaps it was never there.

  ‘Things are changing here,’ Holly says, unprompted.

  ‘Changing how?’

  ‘Hendo’s is closing. It was bought out by a company in America. They started cutting jobs straight away – mainly the managers – but it’s the shop floor next. Some are saying it’ll all be gone in a year.’ She sighs a long gasp and then has a drink of her tea.

  Hendo’s is a shoe manufacturing plant. It has been a part of the town for as long as I’ve been alive. Longer. It was always there, always offering a profession to the people who didn’t want to leave the area. There was security in that more or less anyone could get a job there – but it was an insult, too. Teachers would often tell the boys in our class – always the boys – that if they didn’t put more work in, then they’d end up working at Hendo’s. Some lads wanted to follow in the same trade as their fathers, others couldn’t wait to move far away from its possible grip. In the current age of zero-hour contracts and temporary jobs, it would be one of the few places that could still offer a job for life.

  Not any more.

  ‘That’s terrible,’ I say, meaning it.

  Holly sinks lower in her chair.

  ‘Did you work there?’ I ask.

  A shake of the head. ‘Not me. Everyone knows someone who does, though.’ She jabs a thumb to the side. ‘Ian next door’s on the shop floor, then there’s a lad over the road who started there eighteen months ago. Can you imagine what it’s going to do to Elwood when it goes…?’

  I don’t reply because there’s nothing to say. I might not have lived here in a long while, but anyone could see that the town is going to be pulled apart.

  Holly has another sip of her tea. ‘It is good to see you again,’ she says, not looking up from the table. ‘You left so quickly. I wish you’d said.’

  ‘I didn’t plan it. Not really. I just went.’

  She peers up now, catching my eye. ‘Because of your dad…?’

  I can’t hold the stare. ‘Right.’

  We sit quietly. Holly sips her tea and I have my bottle.

  ‘Have you seen Jo since you got back?’ Holly asks.

  ‘At the site. I called 999 after I found Ethan. I didn’t know his name, or that he was her son. She turned up, then I saw her again last night. She was at the spot where he was hit and I’d gone out late for a wander.’

  ‘Did you talk much?’

  ‘It wasn’t the time.’

  Holly nods. ‘I guess not. Shame you couldn’t have caught up when it was better.’

  Something feels different now that we’re here, compared to when we met on the street. I don’t know what to ask Holly about. She has an adult son, for one, and our lives have forked so far apart that none of the things we once had in common seem to be there any longer.

  ‘It’s terrible, isn’t it,’ she says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ethan. I was sick when I heard. Actually sick. Poor Jo.’

  ‘When I saw her last night, Jo said Ethan was in intensive care.’

  ‘They said critical on the radio.’

  I don’t know the difference between those two things, if there is one. Either way, it doesn’t sound good.

  ‘Jo thinks the driver comes from Elwood,’ I say.

  Holly nods along. ‘Makes sense.’ She bites her lip and then makes eye contact again. ‘Have you met Neil?’

  ‘Who’s that.’

  ‘Jo’s fella. He, um…’ She tails off and turns to the fridge, using her mug of tea to shield her mouth for a moment. Whatever she wants to say isn’t coming straight out.

  ‘What is it?’ I ask.

  ‘It’s just… don’t tell Jo I said this, but…’

  I wait – and then it comes, all the words pushing into one another.

  ‘He’s banned from driving. He built up enough points. I think it was speeding that did him in the end, but he got caught going through a red light at some point, too. It was all in the paper. That was about three months ago, but Rob reckons he saw Neil driving the other week.’ A nod towards the hall. ‘That’s the other thing he told me just now. I guess that’s why he didn’t want to talk in front of you.’

  I take a drink – of tea this time – and then press back into the chair. I have no idea who Neil is, but it doesn’t sound good.

  ‘Are you going to tell Jo?’ I ask.

  Holly shakes her head. ‘She wouldn’t want to hear it. Once she kicked out Mark, she was infatuated with Neil – even though he doesn’t have a job and doesn’t do anything.’

  ‘Mark?’ I query. ‘Not Mark Ashworth.’

  ‘Right. They stayed together all the way after school and had Owen and Ethan. Then, at some point, Jo moved on to Neil. She kept the two kids with her.’

  More names and faces swirl in my thoughts. Mark and Jo got together at some point around the time when we were doing our GCSEs. The idea of them still being together for long enough to have two kids is both unsurprising and strange. It’s hard to imagine the two teenagers I knew having a teenager of their own.

  ‘It probably doesn’t mean anything,’ Holly adds. ‘Rob says he’s certain it was Neil driving – but it was a couple of weeks ago. What good would it do to bring it up now?’

  She lets it hang, but she must be having the same dark thoughts that have flickered through my mind about what happened to Ethan. They must have occurred to Rob, too, if he shared them with his mother.

  ‘There’s no reason to think he was driving yesterday,’ Holly says, although it sounds more like she’s trying to convince herself than me.

  ‘No,’ I reply.

  It’s the truth, of course. There is no reason to think Neil might have hit his stepson and then disappeared. I’ve never even met him. And yet, whoever left the scene did stop momentarily. I saw that much. Anyone could have done that – but the fear of driving illegally would be a big reason to disappear.

  ‘Maybe you should try to find out what Neil was up to yesterday?’ I say.

  ‘Hard to do that without asking outright.’ Holly finishes her tea and then stretches to place the cup in the sink. She turns back with a long gasp
and then continues with a cheery-sounding: ‘So what about you…?’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘Are you married, or…?’

  ‘Not quite.’

  There’s a gap and I wonder if she’s going to push.

  She waits and it’s a stand-off, wondering who’s going to break first. Luckily, it is neither of us – because the doorbell sounds.

  Holly gets up slowly, as if she’s expecting a quick reply from me before she goes. She doesn’t get it and I stand, following her into the hallway, ready to make an excuse and head off. I never wanted to talk about myself anyway.

  Holly squeezes past the boxes and gets to the door just as it rings a second time. She pulls it open to reveal Jo on the step. There are streaky tear stains down her face and a tissue in her hand.

  Jo steps inside. ‘It’s Ethan,’ she says through a sob.

  Nine

  Holly stands to the side, allowing Jo fully inside. ‘He’s not…?’

  Jo shakes her head. ‘He’s still in intensive care.’

  Holly lets out a long, low sigh of relief. It’s not great, but intensive care is better than the alternative.

  Jo looks up and notices me. She reels a little with surprise and then turns between Holly and me.

  ‘I guess the Spice Girls are finally back together,’ Holly says.

  Jo smiles, though it’s more of a sob as Holly nods towards me. I was going to leave, but I can hardly do that now. Instead, I lead us back past the boxes into the kitchen. Jo takes the seat where Holly was and, as Holly stands in the small alcove near the back door, I sit in the other chair.

  ‘The hospital staff told me to go home and rest,’ Jo says. ‘It’s not like I can sleep, though. Then the police came along.’ She wipes her eyes with the tissue in her hand – but that only smears the streaks wider.

  Holly catches my eye and I know she must be thinking about Neil.

  ‘What did the police want?’ Holly asks.

  ‘They want me to go on TV,’ Jo says. ‘Do some sort of appeal to the driver, asking whoever it is to come forward.’

  Holly glances towards me again and there’s a moment in which it feels like the past twenty years haven’t happened. That we’ve slotted back into these roles as if we never stopped being teenagers. Where the things unsaid are as understood as the things that are.

  ‘When are you going on TV?’ I ask.

  Jo stares at me wide-eyed, as if I’ve just asked why she has two heads. ‘I’m not doing it,’ she says. ‘You know what they did to my dad.’

  Holly and I are having a silent conversation with only our eyes. She raises a single eyebrow.

  ‘I’m sure they’re trying to help,’ I say, trying to be tactful.

  ‘It killed him,’ Jo says firmly, more angry than upset now. ‘That’s down to the police. When he got out of prison, he was never the same.’

  I don’t look up to Holly because I already know how she’ll be watching me with scepticism. This happened while we were in our final year at school and there was never any doubt that Jo’s father was guilty of stealing the TVs for which he was convicted. He’d been knocking on doors in the local area, offering them for sale, and saying they were in his rented garage. When the police raided the garage, they found eighteen televisions that had been stolen from a delivery lorry a week before. Hardly a master criminal and zero chance he’d been ‘stitched up’ as Jo insisted. He defended himself in court, pleaded not guilty, and got fifteen years. It was barely a week after he was sent down that we all sat our first GCSE.

  ‘You can’t trust ’em,’ Jo adds for good measure.

  ‘You might have to,’ I say.

  ‘I’m going to find the driver myself.’ She speaks with firm determination, as if this is a genuine option.

  I continue to avoid Holly’s gaze, though I know she’s searching for mine.

  ‘I’m serious,’ Jo adds, with a gentle thump of the table. She turns between Holly and me. ‘Nobody knows the area better than we do. We can find the person. I want to know who left my son to die in a ditch.’

  The statement goes down as well as a drum ’n’ bass track in an old people’s home. Aside from the fact that I don’t know the area that well any longer, and that I’ve only been back for less than a day, this is definitely a job for the police. I’m also not sure how this has suddenly become ‘we’, not the previous ‘I’. I’ve never been one of those people who believe in fate, or destiny – and yet here we are, as if it was always going to come back to this.

  ‘The police will stitch someone up,’ Jo adds, surely getting that we’re not on board. I’m not sure whether she was expecting our resounding support, but she sounds even harsher than before.

  ‘I don’t know what I can do,’ Holly says, sounding almost as unsure as I feel.

  ‘Ask around,’ Jo replies. ‘Someone knows something.’

  ‘The driver might not be someone local,’ Holly replies.

  ‘Course it is. Who else drives around here? Someone we know did this. Someone’s hiding it.’

  There’s an uncomfortable pause. I have no idea what to say, but Holly at least has a go: ‘Do you think Ethan might need you more at the moment…?’

  Jo sits up straighter and it feels dangerous. When she replies, it’s not the volcano I expected; instead, she sounds far more measured.

  ‘That’s why I need your help.’ Jo turns to me. ‘You, too. I just want to know what kind of person could leave a child for dead…’

  I look up and let Holly have my attention this time. It’s like we’re psychic, because I know she’s questioning whether Jo’s partner could be the type of person who’d drive off after hitting someone.

  ‘Will you come over later?’

  I glance back to Jo and realise she’s talking to me.

  ‘Please say yes,’ she adds. ‘I’m going back to the hospital, but I’ll be home for seven. You can come over then. I’d love to do some catching up. It’s been so long.’

  ‘I don’t know where you live,’ I say.

  ‘I’ll text you. It’s not far from you, down near the school.’

  It doesn’t feel like the right time, but I can see Jo scratching a nail across the back of her knuckles, where there is already a deep red mark. It’s not as if I could say no, anyway.

  ‘I’ll be there,’ I say.

  Ten

  The funeral director’s name is Damien, which would be either funny, disturbing, or both, if it wasn’t for the circumstances. It does remind me that I was with Jo the first time I ever saw The Exorcist. It was one of those dodgy videos that my dad had got from a bloke down the pub. We scared ourselves witless watching it one night when he was out.

  This Damien speaks in constant hushed tones, as if there’s a militant librarian on our tail. The reception of his office – is it called an office? – is fully carpeted, and decorated with plenty of neutral colours and soft, inoffensive prints on the walls.

  ‘Would you like to view the body?’ he asks. He’s standing with his arms behind his back and leaning forward at an odd angle to talk.

  ‘How do you mean “view”?’ I reply.

  ‘It would take a little time, but you could return tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m still not sure what you mean.’

  ‘I can make your father look as he was for you to, um, view.’

  ‘Why would you do that?’

  ‘Some people find it a peaceful experience. It might be a chance to say goodbye. It’s entirely your choice.’

  It’s only now that I notice the melodic piano music in the background. I guess it’s supposed to be calming, but everything is so toned down that it’s having the opposite effect on me. I have a drink from my bottle while trying not to clench my other fist.

  ‘I don’t need to see him,’ I say.

  ‘That’s absolutely fine. All the funeral arrangements were already taken care of by your father with his will. His only major wish was for no cremation. Your father paid for a spot in the cemetery a
t the Elwood Anglican, as well as the headstone. The main decision left for you is for what type of service you want.’

  I glance towards the door, wanting out. I have to take a breath, but Damien misreads it. He steps across to the counter, grabs a tissue from the box, and passes it over to me.

  ‘We don’t have to do this right now,’ he adds.

  I feel awkward holding the tissue, not knowing what to do with it; it’s not as if I was going to cry.

  ‘What are the options?’ I ask.

  ‘There might be a waiting list, but there’s the church—’

  ‘No.’

  Damien takes the rejection in his stride, not missing a beat: ‘How many people do you think might wish to pay their respects to your father?’

  ‘Not many.’

  ‘Fewer than fifty?’

  I have to stifle a snort. ‘Fewer than twenty.’

  ‘For a service that small, we could accommodate those numbers here. Either that, or—’

  ‘Here’s fine. Just, maybe… different music.’

  I look for a reaction, but there’s none. This guy must be one hell of a poker player. What sort of chat might someone have to have with a careers officer at school to end up doing this as a job?

  ‘You can have whatever music you want,’ he says, as he reaches for a pad from the counter.

  He asks if I mind and then makes a note.

  ‘Would you like to say something at the ceremony?’ he asks.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you think someone else might like to?’

  ‘I doubt it. Can you do it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He writes something down and it’s at the point where I’m wondering how much I could request without him reacting.

  ‘Your father paid for a notice in the paper,’ he says. ‘I am happy to arrange if—’

  ‘Do that.’

  ‘Is there anything specific you’d like it to say?’

  ‘Whatever you think.’

  I wonder if there’s a norm for this sort of thing. He must have seen relatives stricken with grief, barely able to make a decision, as well as those who have that sort of stoic control when something bad happens. It feels like I’m being rude for not wanting to engage.