Now Chloe stood at the gate of her parents’ house, hesitating. She had grown up here, in Fairwater in Cardiff, in a house her parents had always quietly – and sometimes not so quietly – been ashamed of. The semi-detached was a standard three-bedroom on an estate both Malcolm and Susan Griffiths had always regarded as beneath them. From early childhood, Chloe had been encouraged to believe her family was better than those of her peers at school, better than the neighbours; better, in fact, than anyone she came into contact with in her relatively sheltered life. Her parents were big on exam results – anything they could use as a means to confirm themselves more successful than the parents of the other children at Luke and Chloe’s school. It had all seemed sadly hypocritical considering how little real interest they had taken in their children.
Chloe had grown up knowing she was different, but only because her parents had made her so. Her clothes were old-fashioned and when the other kids in her class spoke about television programmes they watched and music they listened to, Chloe was rarely able to join in with their conversations. Her father believed television rotted the brain; she and her brother were occasionally allowed to watch a programme, but only if it was educational and had been vetted by both parents first. Pop music – or ‘popular’ music, as her mother insisted on calling it – was filled with expletives, debauchery and disrespect of women, so that was off limits too.
They had wondered why both their children had insisted on rebellion.
Chloe walked up the short front path that led to the front door and pushed the button for the bell without allowing time when she might talk herself out of it. Everything about the house brought a heavy pain to her chest. The front step on which she and Luke had sat side by side most afternoons after school when it wasn’t raining, watching the other children playing on the small patch of grass on the far side of the street and wishing they were allowed to go; the same dark curtains hanging at the front windows where she would stand and lose herself when she and Luke played hide-and-seek and it was her turn to disappear: the sound of the bell, flat and dull, that rang for deliveries and the gas man, but never for the friends Chloe would long so much to see.
As a younger child she had thought their lives were normal. Then Chloe grew a little older, started comprehensive school, and had realised she wasn’t living in a home but under a regime.
Chloe had wondered which of her parents would be home – whether either of them would be there – and which one of them would answer the door. She didn’t wait long to find out.
‘Mum.’
The word almost got stuck to her tongue. It had been so long since she had needed to use it, it sounded foreign as it left her lips.
Her mother said nothing. She looked so familiar, yet now she was this close to her Chloe could see how much older she had become, heavy lines framing her eyes and the skin at her jaw beginning to slacken. Her thick hair was piled high on her head in its usual way, pinned carefully in place with an array of slides and grips. The smell of baking wafted past her as she shifted uncomfortably in the doorway.
There was something behind her eyes, words she couldn’t bring herself to say. She kept them there, unspoken.
‘Dad home?’ Chloe asked when it became clear her mother wasn’t going to say anything.
The question was answered for her when Malcolm appeared at the end of the hallway; his face paled as though he’d seen a ghost. Chloe guessed that in many ways that was exactly what she must have become to them.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.
There had been a time when the hostility in his welcome and the curtness of his words might have offended or hurt Chloe, but they were way beyond that now.
‘I want to talk about Luke.’
Her father hurried along the hallway and pushed past his wife, his urgency almost violent. He gripped the side of the front door. ‘I told you not to come here again,’ he said, his voice shaking across the words. ‘Not until you’d found something else to talk about.’
Chloe opened her mouth to speak, changed her mind and said nothing. Her focus moved from her father to her mother. Why can’t we talk about him, she wanted to scream. He’s my brother, your son. Why shouldn’t we talk about him today, tomorrow? We should never stop talking about him.
Yet Chloe knew the words would be pointless. They had been there before, so many times; so much anger and bitterness; so many recriminations.
‘Mum…’ She looked at Susan pleadingly, knowing she was wasting her time. She couldn’t appeal to her mother’s softer side – as far as Chloe was aware, she didn’t have one. It had been there, once, in occasional appearances, but time had hardened it, eroding the soft edges that once might have existed.
This was the woman who had stood and watched on as her husband had beaten their son with a slipper. While Luke later sat locked in his bedroom, Chloe had cried to her mother in the kitchen, begging to know what her brother had done that had merited such punishment.
She would never forget her mother’s blank expression as she put Chloe’s dinner on the table in front of her and coldly said the words, ‘He shouldn’t have answered back.’
Chloe looked from her mother to her father and felt a burning flame of hatred race through her. These people had ruined her childhood – had ruined Luke’s childhood – yet here she was, standing on their doorstep and pleading with them.
It made her feel pathetic and humiliated all over again.
She might have cried, but in that moment her anger was stronger than her sadness.
‘I shouldn’t have come.’
‘No,’ her father said coolly.
Chloe reached into her pocket, her fingertips touching the cold metal of the house key.
She wondered whether her parents had ever thought to change the locks.
Chapter Twenty-Six
When he’d left the room, he had left Sarah lying on the floor. Her arms had deadened behind her, but at least she was able to breathe again. She had thought he was going to kill her, but she was still alive. He had left her mouth uncovered and, at first, she hadn’t made a sound. Then she had screamed and called for help. It hadn’t taken long for her throat to become raw with the effort and, even as she’d screamed, Sarah had realised the sound was going nowhere. It was merely bouncing from the walls, returning to her.
She had tried to get herself upright, but with her arms numbed and her legs still tied to the chair, it was impossible. All she had managed to do was end up on her side, but at least this had relieved the pressure from one of her arms.
He returned later. It might have been hours; it might have been days. Sarah had lost all concept of time. He pulled the chair upright, lifting her with it as though she was weightless. She saw a glint in the darkness and for a moment she thought he had brought a knife.