Tell Me I'm Wrong Page 2

  Escapism goes a long way, and it comes in many shapes and forms. That’s not something that’s easily explained to many people, though. Sometimes things aren’t black and white. Whilst one person might find something wrong or immoral, to someone else it’s just escapism. Horses for courses. One man’s rubbish is another man’s gold.

  I have my own form of escapism, besides fishing. But that’s not something I can tell Megan. Right now I don’t think I can tell Megan anything. We’ve always been pretty close, but sometimes there are things a husband needs to keep from his wife. Beyond that, sometimes there are things a person needs to keep entirely to himself. After all, we all have our own secrets, don’t we?

  4

  Megan

  Evie’s finally gone down for a nap. Although it’s such a battle to get her down, she tends to stay down for at least a couple of hours once she’s gone. That means I get some time to myself, a chance to relax. Of course, that never actually happens. There’s always hoovering to do or paperwork mounting up. Now, I’ve got to prepare dinner.

  Just as I’ve opened the fridge door and have started to piece together in my mind what I could make which might come close to resembling a meal, the phone rings. I answer it without looking at the screen. It’s Mum.

  ‘I just wondered how you were both doing,’ she says, despite the fact she saw us yesterday.

  ‘We’re fine. She’s just gone down for her afternoon nap,’ I say, as if Evie’s on a schedule, which she keeps to perfectly.

  ‘That’s good. I told you she’d get the hang of it eventually.’

  It’s comments like that which make me wonder about my mum sometimes. Not that I’d get the hang of it, that I’m the one who has to go through all the work of getting Evie down to sleep. No, it’s Evie’s achievement for actually shutting her eyes and drifting off like every normal baby does.

  ‘So how are you and Dad?’ I ask, knowing nothing will have changed since yesterday. Nothing ever changes in their house.

  ‘We’re fine. Lauren called earlier. They’re moving house, apparently.’

  ‘Oh. That’s nice,’ I say, hoping she’ll move on to another topic. I don’t really want to hear about how well my sister’s doing. I don’t want to hear about her full-stop.

  ‘Five bedrooms, three bathrooms and half an acre of land,’ she says, despite the fact I haven’t asked.

  ‘Great,’ I say.

  ‘Needs a bit of work doing to it, but they’ve got big plans. Apparently they want to knock the downstairs bathroom through into the study and turn it into a wet room. Why you’d want one of those downstairs is anybody’s guess, but it’s their money. You know what Lauren’s like.’

  I don’t know why she says things like that. I do know what Lauren’s like. I know exactly what she’s like, and accidentally spending a few grand on a bathroom conversion isn’t the worst of it. But the way Mum says it is almost as if it’s designed to get me onside, as if to pacify me, knowing my sister and I don’t speak.

  I don’t say anything in return, but she still carries on, not getting the hint.

  ‘Oh you should see it, Megan. It really is beautiful. It’s got a thatched roof and everything.’

  ‘Good. I’m pleased,’ I say, hoping this will at least shut her up for a while. If she’d been prodding to see how I’d react, this should defuse the situation.

  ‘And how are things with you?’ she asks, as if I’m not going to notice that she’s making a direct comparison between me and my sister. Look how well she’s doing, juggling a busy career and buying a five-bedroom thatched mansion while you’re sitting at home unable to even cope with a baby.

  ‘We’re all good,’ I say, despite the fact she knows exactly how things are.

  Mum and I have a funny relationship. I readily admit I couldn’t get through most weeks without her. She’s there when I need her and she does her fair share of looking after Evie for me. But at the same time there’s this dirty undercurrent of knowing that I’ll always play second fiddle to Lauren, who’s always going to be the favoured daughter. Especially while she’s ‘doing so well’.

  Sometimes I have half a feeling that Mum’s willing me to do better, secretly hoping I’ll outdo Lauren and be both the more human and more successful daughter. If truth be told, I really don’t care. We’re happy. Happy enough. We don’t need enormous mortgages and exotic holidays to feel like we’re doing well.

  At least, that’s the spin I put on it. Happiness is a veil we all wear. But, deep down, we all have our problems, all have our issues, our insecurities. And they’re the things that keep us going. The chinks in our armour which make us want to keep improving, that give us something to focus on as we plod on towards our inevitable deaths.

  Morbid.

  I don’t know how, but Mum has this wonderful knack of ringing me for a nice friendly chat and inadvertently making me feel like utter shit. Maybe she’s just trying to make me feel better. Perhaps she thinks hearing how well other people are doing will spur me on and make me want to do the same thing. It’s funny how family politics work. How no-one ever says what they’re actually thinking. How it’s all smoke and mirrors and veiled comments designed to try and elicit information or gauge a reaction. It’s sad really. I often wonder why people can’t just come out with it and be honest with each other. It saves all the James Bond bullshit.

  ‘Anyway, sorry to cut it short but I’m just in the middle of preparing dinner,’ I say.

  ‘Oh, no worries. Give my love to Chris and Evie, won’t you? Is he fishing?’

  ‘Yes,’ I reply, trying to make it sound like it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. And there I am, playing the game. Falling right into the trap and doing exactly what I hate other people doing. ‘He should be back soon, though.’

  ‘Okay. You call me if you need me, alright?’

  ‘I know, Mum. Thanks.’

  And it’s times like this that I get really, really confused about my family. Is it some sort of passive-aggressive thing which makes them need to sound as though they care, when actually they’re just probing and poking their noses into my business, trying to find some sort of salacious scandal or gossip?

  This is one of the reasons why I’ve tried to keep them at arm’s length, emotionally speaking. Mum’s great with Evie, if a little contrary. It sounds bad saying it, but her willingness to babysit and take Evie off my hands on a regular basis has been a godsend. I won’t say it’s been her only redeeming feature, but it certainly helps.

  I smell burning and turn around.

  ‘Shit!’ I hiss, opening the oven and flinging open the kitchen windows as I try to fan the smoke out of the room.

  I sit down at the kitchen table, put my head in my hands and wish I’d never answered the phone.

  5

  Chris

  We’ve all got secrets. We’ve all got things we’d rather our family and friends didn’t know. Not because we want to be duplicitous, but because we want to protect them. Protect them from harm. Protect them from the truth.

  After all, everybody does it, don’t they?

  The hot water beats down on my back as I scrub under my fingernails, hard. I work the shower gel into a lather and rub it over my whole body seven or eight times, just to be sure. I wash my hair so many times I think it’s going to fall out. Eventually, though, I know I’m as clean as I’m ever going to be.

  I always shower in the evenings, whenever I get home from work. Or from fishing. She doesn’t need to know why I’m doing it so thoroughly this time.

  Megan has her secrets, too. She doesn’t know that I know, but you don’t live with someone for that long and not work it out. I catch the odd glimpse of something in her eyes that makes me wonder. I don’t think she’s been up to anything bad. That’s not like Megan. Not the Megan I know. This is something deeper, something internal.

  I had my suspicions shortly after Evie was born. All new parents are told to look out for the warning signs. It was almost textbook. The comments abou
t being a bad mother, loss of memory, not taking care of herself as much as she used to. Megan always used to be a proud woman, but that seems to have gone out of the window. Sometimes she needs me to remind her to shower. We don’t see friends as often as we used to. And I’ve noticed that she doesn’t seem to be bonding as well with Evie as she should be.

  I’ve tried bringing the subject up tactfully, but she seems to just close down and refuse to admit anything is wrong. There are times when things seem to be a bit better. Chinks of light, if you will. And it’s in those moments that I hope it’s all improving, that she’s starting to realise she’s not a bad mother or a bad person and that we can start to look forward.

  I don’t know if she thinks I haven’t noticed, or if she’s just ignoring it and hoping it’ll go away. Either way, it’s not helping any of us. They say you need to talk about these things, need to get them out in the open. After all, what’s the point of suffering in silence? I’ve done all I can, but this can’t be one-sided. She needs to open up and tell me what she’s thinking, how she’s feeling. Keeping it all wrapped up isn’t going to do anyone any good, least of all her.

  That said, I think I’ve kept my own secrets pretty well. I know that for a fact. Megan’s not the sort of woman who’d react well if she suspected the truth. Not this sort of truth. She’s always said she’d be able to forgive most things if I was open and honest with her about them, but I’m pretty sure this doesn’t fall into the category of ‘most things’. This isn’t the sort of thing I can be open and honest about. This is the sort of thing that ruins lives.

  Telling her certainly wouldn’t be a good idea. Telling anyone would be a very bad idea indeed. People always say it’s best to be honest, but that’s absolute shit. What you don’t know can’t hurt you. The only risk is being found out further down the line, and making things worse by not being open from the start. But all that means is that I have to make sure no-one finds anything out further down the line. If they never find out, they never know I’ve been hiding anything and no-one needs to get hurt. No-one else, anyway. I need to make sure this stays as my little secret. Forever.

  6

  Megan

  Chris gets home at about five, and I try to put on a positive face. It’s the same positive face I’ve been putting on every day since Evie was born.

  Although I feel so lonely when Chris is out, at least it means I can drop the fake smiles and stop trying to pretend everything’s fine. It’s amazing how much that wears you down after a while.

  I’m still reeling from Mum’s phone call earlier. She calls most days, especially if she’s not at the house or looking after Evie. She always means well, but she’s got a habit of not knowing when to stop and ending up putting her foot in it. And today she ‘just happened’ to mention Lauren. Again.

  My sister and I haven’t spoken in about four years. Not since that day at the Waterside. She and James had invited the family out for Sunday lunch. It was something we did every couple of months or so, so it didn’t seem too out of the ordinary. Just after we’d ordered the meals, though, Lauren revealed the real reason for inviting everyone there. She was pregnant.

  I forced the biggest smile I could imagine, and told her how happy we were for her. Chris squeezed my knee, knowing I was dying inside. We’d been trying for years to have children, but it wasn’t happening. We hadn’t told anyone. It just was what it was.

  During the main course, Lauren asked if Chris and I were planning to have children. Lauren’s always been about as tactful as a breeze block to the face, but this time she’d really excelled herself with her timing. All that was going through my mind was how she wouldn’t shut the fuck up about what colour they were going to paint the nursery, what names they’d picked out, the 3D scan they’d booked. It was relentless. And it was tearing me up inside. So I told her. I told her that yes, we’d love to have children, but that we weren’t able to.

  For a brief moment, I thought it had finally sunk in. I thought she might have realised how selfish and thoughtless she’d been with the comments she’d made, but her brain seemed to stop short of that realisation. Instead, her response was ‘Well can’t you have IVF or adopt or something?’

  I don’t know how most people would have reacted to that. All I know is how I reacted. I stood up, remaining as calm as I could, picked my handbag up off the floor and walked out. Chris followed me, and although he didn’t make any comment about what Lauren had said, he didn’t make out that I’d been unreasonable.

  After the dust had settled, I probably could’ve forgiven it. I could have put it down to Lauren’s usual insensitivity. The spoilt younger sister syndrome. But she didn’t even call to apologise. That told me more about her than a lifetime of having her as my sister. That was the last day we spoke.

  So no, I didn’t want to hear about their new house with five bedrooms, three bathrooms and half an acre of land. I really couldn’t fucking care less. I don’t know what she expected me to say. ‘Great, we’ll have to pop in and say hi’?

  My positive face clearly works, though, as Chris doesn’t seem to pick up on anything. It’s not something I’d want to talk about, either. Even though we have Evie now, that doesn’t change what happened with Lauren beforehand.

  He always seems so much more relaxed when he’s been fishing. I guess it’s a man thing. A chance to sit on his own, clear his head and chill out for a bit. I should be so lucky.

  When dinner’s over, we sit in the lounge and watch the news, as we tend to do every evening. We used to joke about the local news bulletins that come on after the national headlines, always amused at how the most boring and inane stories managed to make it onto the TV each night. It was either a local man who’d invented a new kind of nutcracker, a company manufacturing cable ties who’d just won an award or a Burnside couple who’d been without gas and hot water for the past three weeks. It tended to be the sort of stuff you wouldn’t even mention to your friends in passing, never mind broadcast on the regional news.

  But tonight is different.

  The trailer at the start of the news programme stops us both in our tracks. We recognise where the reporter is standing before we realise what she’s saying. She’s walking towards the camera, down a bridleway next to the stream that runs through the village, her hands in front of her stomach, fingers intertwined, occasionally releasing them to gesture loosely as she speaks.

  Her words seem to blur into one huge fuzzy noise, as she speaks for barely five seconds about the body of the young boy that’s been found in this ‘sleepy, peaceful village’.

  ‘What the hell?’ I say, eventually. ‘Here? Did you hear about this?’

  Chris sits staring at the screen, his eyes glassy. ‘No. Nothing. I’ve not even looked at my phone. It was on silent.’

  I can tell what’s going through his mind without even asking. The chances of the boy being one of his students or ex-students is high. Chris has taught practically everyone under the age of eighteen within a three or four mile radius at one point or another. This is a small place, a tight community.

  Chris picks up his mobile, taps the screen a few times and puts it to his ear.

  I give him a quizzical look.

  ‘Calling Rebecca,’ he says. His boss. The headteacher at the school. ‘Rebecca. Hi. I just saw the news. What’s happened?’

  Rebecca’s voice is loud on the other end of the phone, and I can just about make out her saying he had only been found an hour or two earlier, and that they’d tried to keep it quiet until friends and relatives had been told, but that the press had somehow got wind of it.

  ‘Who is it?’ he asks, his voice shaking as he leaves the lounge and walks into the hallway.

  I don’t hear Rebecca’s answer, but I see Chris stop in his tracks, his shoulders and upper back sagging. And in that moment I know something isn’t right.

  7

  Megan

  It took Chris almost twenty minutes to speak to me. When he finally did, he told me all about
the sort of boy Riley Markham had been. Not the most gifted student academically speaking, but far from struggling. He’d been the archetypal cheeky chappy; he’d had a good telling off once or twice and seemed keener on playing football at lunchtime than paying attention in some classes. But he was the sort of student teachers tended to have a bit of a soft spot for. It seemed Chris was no different.

  Rebecca seemed to know more than the news reporter, thank God. It seemed it had only made the local bulletin right at the last possible minute, and had managed to come in too late for the national news. That would all change for the News at Ten, we were told. And they were right. The late national evening news bulletins had it as their second item. It wasn’t often that seven-year-olds were found dead.

  Chris said those words to me, paraphrasing Rebecca, but he didn’t say the last one. I filled it in for him. He corrected me.

  Not dead. Murdered.

  Rebecca didn’t have the precise details but, from what she’d managed to find out, Riley’s killer had attempted to strangle him, and had also hit him over the head with some sort of blunt object. She mentioned blood at the scene.

  I don’t know what to think when I’m hearing these words. As a mother, it should fill me with horror and revulsion, with thoughts of how I might feel if that was my child. But I’m not sure I feel any differently to how I would have done before Evie was born.

  It’s a tragedy. An absolute tragedy. No-one deserves to go through what Riley Markham’s family are going through right now. But I hate my present situation for not making me feel far more empathetic.