It’s been deathly silent in the room since he went. Daniel hadn’t really noticed it before, but the silence he thought he experienced every night was actually far from it. When Teddy is here, his gentle breathing fills the room. The light sound of cotton on skin as he turns over in bed. The faint scratching as he catches an itch. And even when Teddy’s not here, there are sounds from outside. A fox scuttling across the lawn. The distant thrum of traffic. The solemn hoot of an owl. In this desolate, desperate winter, though, outside simply does not exist.
The sheer quiet of the silence means that Daniel can hear Teddy’s footsteps from further away than he usually would. Daniel can tell a lot from footsteps. That’s what sleeping in this sort of place does to you – it gives you an extraordinary skill set that no other child would have. Tonight, Teddy’s footsteps sound lonely, forlorn. They sound like the footsteps of a boy who’s given up.
A few seconds later, the door opens and Teddy closes it behind him gently. He pulls back the corner of his bed and climbs in, not even bothering to take off his clothes. Anyone else would presume this was because Teddy’s cold, but Daniel knows Teddy never sleeps in his clothes. Not even on the coldest of cold nights.
Daniel turns over to look at him, pulling his head back from the shaft of moonlight and allowing it to reflect off the whitewashed walls and cascade down on Teddy. When he sees him, Teddy is looking right back at him, his eyes sad, desperate and wet. Teddy doesn’t say a word, but Daniel can see the bruising already beginning to form on Teddy’s left cheek, the strong handprints and finger marks already visible in crimson red around his neck.
Daniel swallows. Before he even knows what he’s doing, he feels the rage roaring inside him, pushing at his throat to burst free. He’s on his feet, he flings the bedroom door open and he’s marching down the corridor, barefoot in only his pyjamas, no longer feeling the cold. The rage and adrenaline is fiery inside him, warming his taut growing muscles with energy.
He knows Mr Duggan will be in the lounge, where he always is, drinking a glass of whisky from the Mother Superior’s secret stash. She doesn’t drink herself – the supply is kept purely for Mr Duggan’s visits.
When he gets to the end of the corridor, down the stairs, across the hall and into the lounge, Daniel cranks the door handle down and flings the door back against the wall with a clattering sound. Mr Duggan is startled, and he turns around in his seat, beginning to stand but then caught off balance as Daniel throws himself at him.
Daniel hears the whisky glass land with a thud on the carpet, the ice cubes clattering against the inside of the tumbler as his fists pummel into the side of Mr Duggan’s head. The old man is gurgling, grunting some words that Daniel can’t quite make out. Daniel is crying, the fits and sobs pouring out of him as he unleashes years of fury and rage into Mr Duggan’s skull.
Eventually, the adrenaline begins to subside and he feels the searing pain in his knuckles and wrists as he becomes aware of the arms tugging at him from behind, willing him to let go.
He falls to the floor, barely registering the pain from his kneecaps as he collapses into a deep and guttural sob.
15
I look at Jessica, my mind consumed with anger and frustration. Not anger at her, but anger at whoever did whatever they’ve done to her. I asked her if she’d been abused, and she didn’t say no, couldn’t say no. All she said was that it wasn’t Claude. I’m glad, because if she hadn’t told me that, I’d be on top of Claude right now, caving his head in.
Jessica and I don’t say a word, but Claude’s clearly no idiot. He can see from her bloodshot eyes what’s been happening. He’s the sort of man who can tell just by looking at a person. Whatever these two have been through, it’s enough to build that sort of deep connection.
‘Okay, so your car is outside?’ he says eventually.
‘Yes, right opposite,’ I reply.
‘Come.’ He signals with his finger for us to follow him. We leave by the front of the farmhouse and walk past the car, a hundred yards or so further up the lane and around a hedged bend, where we stop at a large barn. It’s an enormous brick-built building, but it looks ancient. It has huge white wooden doors on the front and one smaller plain wooden door near the top of the building. It must’ve been a grain store or something, I figure.
Claude takes a bunch of keys from the pocket of his waistcoat and fumbles around with them for a second before unlocking the huge doors and swinging one open. The inside is fairly bare – it’s beamed, with bales of hay stacked to the left-and right-hand sides. To the rear is another similar set of doors which I assume lead out onto the fields behind. Sat proudly in the middle is a car. It looks like a late-eighties or early-nineties Citro?n. It’s not aged too badly, but even in this low light I can see some signs of rust and certainly plenty of dust.
‘Tonight, you will rest. We will bring your car in here, and tomorrow you take this car. Okay?’
I nod, although I’m still trying to process everything. Is he helping us run away? If so, Jessica must have told him everything. If that’s the case, why would he trust me, a complete stranger? Clearly, he wouldn’t; he’d trust Jess’s judgement. But surely he’d be a little more suspicious of me, I think. That only leaves the possibility that she hasn’t told him exactly what happened – just that she has to get away and needs his help. Would that be enough for him to just offer his car? I don’t know. All I know is it’s happening.
I turn to look at Jessica for some sort of approval or clarification, but she’s just standing, staring at the car.
‘What’s wrong?’ I ask.
‘Nothing.’ Her reply is terse but full of meaning.
‘I’ll go and fetch the car,’ I say, eventually.
My legs feel heavy on the ground, as though they’re full of lead, the half-bottle of red wine clouding my brain and somehow making everything seem far more positive as I make my way back down this strange French lane towards my car. It’s surreal. Absolutely surreal. None of it quite makes sense, and I can’t come to terms with any of my emotions. I haven’t cried; I haven’t yelled. I’m just numb. It’s almost as if my brain and my body don’t know how to react. It’s not a situation anyone ever expects to be in.
When I get to the car, I open it and climb inside, sitting for a moment and registering the familiarity of the car’s interior. It seems so disconnected from this alien world around me and everything back in England, yet it provides a sort of connection to it. I look over at the passenger seat, the seat that Lisa sat in so many times. The door handle she touched. The climate-control knob on her side of the car, always set five degrees lower than mine. In that moment, I realise just how glad I’m going to be when the morning comes and I can leave all this behind. I’ll be free of the car, free of any association with home.