The journey home was long and arduous. My wrist ached and my back was sore from where I’d hit several rocks in the rapids. The bumps in the road were jarring my spine against the seat, rubbing the grazes. I wish now I’d let the nurse dress some of them but I had been in such a hurry to get out of that place that I hadn’t let her.
Originally, I had wanted to travel with Alfie, but he was being flown down to Southampton and there was limited space for passengers. In the end, I’d watched as they took him out to the air ambulance and hoped he would remain sedated for the journey.
Seb settles me in the living room and brings me in a cup of tea, while I listen to the message Mum has left on the answerphone.
‘She’s on her way,’ I say, taking the cup from Seb. ‘She’s going to come straight from the airport. She should be here by about six o’clock.’ Seb makes an effort to check his watch discreetly. I know he’s got to leave soon to get back to work. ‘It’s OK, you don’t have to babysit me, I’ll be fine.’
‘I could call in and try to arrange to start work later,’ he says.
I can tell from the poorly disguised concern on his face that it’s not something he wants to do. Not because he doesn’t want to be with me, but because he’s under pressure from work to be there.
‘Honestly, Seb, I’ll be fine. It will only be a couple of hours at the most. It will give me time to have a little nap before Mum gets here. She’ll be fussing round me when she arrives, I need time to prepare for the onslaught.’ It’s a feeble attempt at making light of it. Mum does fuss and I’m not sure how much of it I’ll be able to cope with.
Seb sits beside me and we watch the TV, although I’m sure neither of us is taking any of it in. It’s nice to sit quietly and feel safe with Seb by my side. Alfie is constantly on my mind and I wonder what must be going on inside his head. Although he’s not speaking, he’s conscious and I wonder if he can process his thoughts. Can he remember what happened on the river? How does that make him feel now? The hospital phoned to say he’d arrived safely and they were making him comfortable. I’m going to visit tomorrow with Mum.
I doze and my half-dreams are filled with images of Alfie as a young child. When I awake, I can feel a physical pain in my chest as I recall those magical years. I have an urge to sift through all the baby photos and the pictures of him growing up. I need time to grieve for Alfie. I have lost the son I was given in life and been left with one I neither know nor understand. I still love him, but I feel broken when I think about what has happened. I need time alone with my thoughts and feelings, some of which I feel ashamed to even acknowledge. I won’t be able to do that with Mum here. She won’t understand. Sure, she’ll be fussing and clucking over me, she’ll be able to offer sympathetic words and comforting hugs when words are not enough, but she won’t truly understand. How could she? She’s never been through what I have gone through. I’m her only child and I have always loved and respected her. Mum won’t understand the level of emotional pain I’m feeling or the scarring it will undoubtedly leave behind.
I want to look at the photographs of Alfie before Darren’s death, when Alfie was a baby, a toddler, a little lad and a teenager. I want to drink in those photos, absorb and harbour all those happy times, all that love I had for him and he had for me. I need to feel that again, to remind myself that I did once have a loving son. It will help me counter the emotions I am dealing with now and those yet to come. Or at least I hope it will. I’m not quite sure how I’m going to get over this.
Far too soon, Seb is gently rousing me. ‘I’m sorry, Carys, but I’ve got to go,’ he says, kissing the top of my head.
I snuggle into him, my cheek resting against his firm chest and I breathe in the fresh zingy scent of his body wash. I wish he could stay but I don’t want to put any pressure on him. He’s done so much for me already. ‘I’ll miss you,’ I say.
‘Shit, I’m going to miss you too. And worry about you. Are you sure you’ll be OK?’
‘Yes, please don’t worry.’ I look at my watch. ‘Mum will be here soon.’
‘I could hang on,’ says Seb, again.
He is so thoughtful and yet so not needed right now. I don’t have the heart to tell him. ‘Please, Seb, I do appreciate it, but I will be one hundred per cent fine. Besides, I could do with an hour or two to prepare myself mentally for Mum. After all, she’s having to deal with what’s happened to Alfie too.’ An irritated tone clips the last few words which I immediately regret when I see a small flicker of hurt dash across Seb’s face. ‘Thank you, anyway,’ I tack on the end to soften the blow.
‘I’m sorry. I’ll get off, but if you need me, call. I can come right back.’ He kisses me and hugs me gently one last time. ‘Make sure you lock the door behind me. I’ll ring you when I get there.’
‘Be careful,’ I say, following him out to the front door.
Seb picks up his overnight bag and stops on the front step. ‘I love you, Carys.’
I watch him pull out of the drive and disappear down the road. I close the door and flick the Yale lock, remembering to put the chain across. I’ll run myself a bath and dig out the photographs while I’m upstairs.
In the bathroom, I pour my favourite bath cream under the running tap. The sweet smell of coconut fills the steamy air. My bath is notoriously slow at filling and I potter around in my bedroom sorting out clean nightclothes. Ideally, I’d like to wash my hair but am unsure how I’ll manage with only one good hand. Perhaps I’ll have to wait for Mum to help with that tomorrow.
The sound of my mobile, the new one Seb bought me, rings out from downstairs in the living room. I nip downstairs and pick up the handset. It’s Mum.
‘I’m so sorry, darling. The flight was delayed and now the traffic is horrendous. I’m not going to be with you until at least nine this evening. Is that OK?’
‘Of course, don’t worry,’ I say. ‘Are you driving now?’
‘I’m on the hands-free,’ she replies. I hear an impatient blast of the horn. ‘Bloody idiot! Not you, Carys, the moron in the BMW, just cut across me to get into a different lane.’
‘Look, Mum, you go. Concentrate on your driving and I’ll see you when you get here. Take your time.’
I put the phone down on the arm of the sofa and notice something out of the corner of my eye, tucked around the side. It’s the bag the hospital sent home containing all the belongings I had on me when I was airlifted from the riverbank.
I take it into the kitchen, emptying the contents on to the stripped-pine surface of the table. My clothes had been given to Seb yesterday and are now languishing in the washing machine, waiting for Mum to attend to when she gets here. Mum had been insistent that I was to do nothing and, to be honest, I don’t have the energy to argue. I know letting Mum help in a practical way will give her far more satisfaction and a sense of being useful.
Amongst my clothing, I spot the little waterproof bag I had hung around my neck when Alfie and I took the kayaks. My mouth dries as I run my fingers over the plastic. I can feel the outline of the mobile phone. Alfie’s phone. Only one person knows I have this and they will be equally keen to make sure it stays out of the hands of the police.
I drop the phone into the pouch and pop it into my pocket. I’ll hide it at the back of my wardrobe in the box where another time-bomb silently ticks. One that I don’t fully understand but the sense of anticipation that it’s about to go off any day now is getting stronger and stronger with each thought.
‘Hammerton,’ I say out loud. Once again, I take the stairs to my room, stopping at the bathroom to switch off the bath. The built-in wardrobes face me. Darren had them specially designed to maximise the space either side of the fireplace. I slide the right-hand door open. This part of the wardrobe, nearest to the chimney breast, has a set of drawers. The top drawer is only half the depth of the other three and at first glance, once the clothes are in, socks in this case, you wouldn’t notice the false back. I take out the drawer completely to reveal a secret hidey-hole, precisely the right size for a hotel-room-style safe. I tap in the number and the little red LED turns to green.
I haven’t opened this safe for nearly two years. The ghosts of my past have been secreted in a dark corner of my room, not a dissimilar place to where they have been buried in my mind. I close my eyes, take a deep breath and open the safe.
Inside is a brown A4 envelope marked ‘Private’ with my name on it, written by my own hand.
Sitting at my dressing table, I empty the contents on to the glass surface. A newspaper clipping. A photocopy of a student profile from college. A feather and a small message card, the type you leave on a bouquet of flowers for someone’s birthday. Or funeral.
I think of Darren’s funeral and the crowds of students who had come to say their last goodbyes. I had found it particularly moving, seeing those young people who Darren had a real affinity with, seeing his affection for them so clearly reciprocated. I had felt compelled to comfort their young broken hearts, despite my own heartache. It was a touching moment and I am sure they gained as much from the gesture as I had.
When I turned away, however, I had seen one lone student. She hadn’t noticed me looking at her. It was the abject sorrow that filled her eyes and the pain so clearly etched on her face that caught my attention first, that and several plaited strands of hair, wrapped in multicoloured thread, finished off with a feather attached to the end. I had approached her, to try to offer some form of comfort, but as soon as I said hello and asked her if she was one of Darren’s students, she had gone such a deathly white, I thought she might faint. She had backed away from me, taking two or three steps before turning and running out of the cemetery. It was later, after going through Darren’s paperwork, that I found a printout of her student profile. Leah Hewitt. I’d been able to find her on Facebook but her privacy settings didn’t allow me to find anything else out.
I had asked about her at the college, but was told she had left and even if they had a forwarding address, the admin staff couldn’t possibly pass it on to me. The next time I went to look at her Facebook account, it had been deactivated.
There was something about Leah Hewitt that told me she wasn’t your average student. She appeared to keep herself apart from the others, for a start, but that on its own wasn’t what had made me want to find her. There was something I saw in her eyes, a deeper level of emotion that disturbed me. Something which I knew I would have to deal with at some point. Maybe not then or in the immediate future following the funeral, but I knew she would ultimately come back into my life. I had never managed to find her and became so caught up in the aftermath of Darren’s suicide that, although I didn’t forget about her, I put her to one side and concentrated on my own child who very much needed me.
I pick up the feather. I had found it down the side of the passenger seat in Darren’s car a few weeks after his funeral. I had been hoovering the car when I noticed the multicoloured feather poking out from under the seat, between the seatbelt holder and centre console. When someone finds a feather, it’s supposed to be a sign that a loved one who has passed away has come to visit. In an unusually sentimental gesture, I had kept the feather and taken it indoors. It wasn’t until sometime later that the significance dawned on me.
I turn my attention to the student profile printout. At the beginning of the academic year, when the students return to college, staff are given temporary registers with a printout of each student’s details and a photograph. Once the first three weeks are complete and the students have enrolled, the temporary registers are replaced with permanent electronic ones. I remember thinking there must have been a reason why he had kept hers, but my brain had been fogged with grief.
I look at the black-and-white photocopy of Leah Hewitt’s face, studying each feature both separately and as a whole, looking for the slightest resemblance. Is it the eyes? The nose? The mouth? I can’t tell. The knot in my stomach tightens the longer I look at the young woman’s face underneath the words Hammerton College of Further Education.
Now the grief-laden fog is lifting, I can see the reasons he kept her profile emerging from the bleak and distorted corners of my mind, forming into the monster I’ve been hiding from these past two years.