‘Nathan Drinkwater. You told me at the reunion that Maria was Facebook friends with him too, remember? He was that boy who was totally obsessed with Maria, wasn’t he? Before she moved to Sharne Bay? I remember Matt Lewis’s cousin telling us about it at the time. Maybe it’s got something to do with him.’
‘But he’s…’ I trail off, unwilling to finish that sentence, my mind racing. When I told Sam at the reunion about Nathan Drinkwater being on Maria’s friend list, Sam said he’d never heard of him. How can he be bringing Nathan up now if he doesn’t know who Nathan is? I repeat it in my head again, trying to convince myself. Sam doesn’t know who Nathan Drinkwater is. Does he?
I close my eyes again but the relaxed feeling has gone. My mind claws around, trying to fit the pieces together, but they don’t seem to belong in the same jigsaw. Bridget’s reason for sending the Facebook messages is clear: she wanted me to feel at least a fraction of her unendurable pain. She’s been nurturing that pain for all these years, allowing it to grow, to curl its tendrils around all the other thoughts in her brain, choking them so that they withered and died, leaving only itself.
But Bridget didn’t kill Sophie, and I don’t think Tim did either. They weren’t there that night, I saw them leaving, despite the lure that was drawing Bridget: the promise of information about her dead daughter, and something else – a tangible piece of evidence. A necklace?
I think of Sophie at the reunion, laughing with the boys, telling them she knows all and sees all. And then later, in her panic about the Facebook messages, she told me there had been ‘all sorts’ going on at the leavers’ party. What did she know? What did she see?
I had assumed that the Nathan on the Facebook page was the real Nathan, that Bridget had tracked him down as she had done Sophie and me. But Bridget said Nathan had contacted her, not the other way around. And Nathan Drinkwater is dead. Anyone can be anyone on Facebook. It’s easy to hide behind a faceless page on the internet. A broken, dying mother can pose as her dead daughter to wreak revenge on the girls she blames for ruining her daughter’s life. But somebody was playing Bridget at her own game. Somebody else was posing as the boy who forced the Westons from their home, made them abandon their whole life to start again in a small town in Norfolk. Someone who knew that Nathan Drinkwater was the one person that whoever was posing as Maria wouldn’t be able to resist replying to.
We drive on in silence, broken only by occasional shifting and muttering from Henry on the back seat. I daren’t look at Sam lest my face betrays what I am thinking, so I turn to look out of the window. I try to look beyond my reflection, out into the darkness, but I can’t ignore my face, looking back at me in shadow, eyes wide. I can’t believe Sam can’t hear my heart pounding.
I should know better than anyone that things aren’t always what they seem. It’s like when someone tells a story about something that happened when you were there, and it’s not at all how you remember it. It might be they’re telling it a certain way for effect, to make people laugh, or to impress someone. But sometimes that’s simply how they remember it. For them, it’s the truth. That’s when it becomes hard for you to know whether what you remember is the truth, or whether it’s just your version of it.
I realise I’ve been trying to hold on to the idea of Sam as a decent person because he’s Henry’s father, but Sam has lied to me before, and lied well. Even after I found that text from Catherine on his phone he continued to lie, until it just wasn’t possible any more and he left me to be with her. All the lies, the betrayals, the many ways in which he hurt me crowd in on me, stifling me. The times he held me down and it became more than a game, the times he put his hands to my throat playing out a fantasy that wasn’t mine.
I wrap my arms around myself, although it’s warm in the car. I’ve spent so long sitting in darkness, lying not only to others but to myself too. But the door is open now. Just a crack, but it’s open. And the light is streaming in.
Chapter 37
2016
As Sam parks outside my flat, reversing into the tiniest of spaces, all I can think of is getting away from him. My mind is veering from one thing to another and I can’t think about what to do next, what I’m going to do about this strange new reality that I find myself facing. I concentrate on getting Henry into bed, on how that is going to feel, that moment when I lock the door behind me and we’re safe, and I can think.
As soon as the handbrake is on, I’m unbuckling my seatbelt and opening the door.
‘Thanks very much. I’ll just grab Henry and get him into bed, and we’ll speak soon, OK?’ My voice sounds high and tinny, completely unlike my normal voice.
‘It’s OK, I’ll bring him in. He’s so heavy when he’s asleep.’
‘No, it’s fine,’ I squeak. I clear my throat. ‘It’s fine,’ I repeat, lower and calmer. ‘I can manage.’
‘I know you can, but I’d like to help you.’
Before I can reply, Sam is out of the car and unstrapping Henry. He lifts him swiftly out of the seat. Henry’s eyes half-open and then close again, his head heavy on Sam’s shoulder. Sam shifts him onto one hip and heads up the garden path without speaking. I have no choice but to follow, rummaging in my bag for the key.
I open the door and stand aside to let Sam and Henry in. For a few wild seconds, I think about running, shouting for help – surely Sam wouldn’t hurt Henry – but it seems ridiculous and anyway, where would I go? I don’t know any of the neighbours. And as I look at Henry’s sleeping face over Sam’s back, I know that it was never really an option. Everything I thought I knew has shifted, like coming into your bedroom to find that someone has moved everything very slightly out of its normal place. I can’t leave Henry alone with Sam; I don’t know what he is capable of. I follow them in and close the front door behind me.
Sam goes straight into Henry’s room and puts him on the bed. Carefully he takes off his shoes and school uniform and eases him under the duvet dressed just in his Thomas the Tank Engine pants. Something about the way he does it makes me wonder if I’ve got this all wrong. Surely the person who knows that there’s no point putting pyjamas on our son because he’ll only wake in the night and take them off, can’t be the person who has done… I’m not even sure what it is he’s done. I can’t articulate it to myself, even inside my own head.
Sam comes out, leaving the door open a crack as we always do.
‘I think we need a drink after all that, don’t you?’
Before I’ve had a chance to answer, he heads straight down the hall to the kitchen and opens the fridge, taking a half-drunk bottle of white wine out of the door. I follow him into the room.
‘Look, Sam, I’m tired. Can we maybe do this another time?’ Just leave, please leave.
He takes two glasses from the top cupboard. I vow to completely reorganise the kitchen tomorrow if… if… my mind tries to finish that sentence but I close it down.
‘I don’t want a drink. Please, Sam, I just want to go to sleep. Let’s do this another time.’