Page 69 of The Man Who Didn't Call
Hannah refused to sit at a table with me. People stared at my parents in the supermarket. Alex’s photo continued to appear in the local press. I went back to school, but within hours I knew I was finished there. People were whispering. Claire said I should have been done for manslaughter. Mandy was not talking to me at all, because I’d sent the police afterGreggsy’s cousin. Even some of the teachers couldn’t quite look me in the eye.
That night Mum and Dad sat me down and told me they were putting the house on the market. How would I feel about moving to Leicestershire? Mum had grown up in Leicestershire. ‘We could all do with a fresh start, couldn’t we?’ she asked. Her face was translucent with worry and exhaustion. ‘I’m sure we’d be able to find somewhere for you to carry on your A levels.’
Mum was a teacher. She knew that was impossible. It was only then that I realized quite how desperate she was.
I went upstairs and called Tommy, and flew to LA the very next day.
I went so that Alex’s family could grieve in peace, without the risk of ever having to run into me. I went so that my parents wouldn’t have to move halfway across the country, so they’d have a chance at starting over without the titanic shadow of their daughter looming over everything. I went to find sanctuary in a place where nobody would know what I’d done, where I wouldn’t be That Girl.
But most of all I went to LA to become the sort of woman I wished I had been the day I’d met Bradley. Strong, sure of myself, afraid of nobody. Never, ever,everafraid to say no.
Eddie and I were drawing close to Venice now, the boardwalk snaking past shops and stalls peddling cheap gifts and henna tattoos. Music boomed out of a speaker somewhere; homeless people slept under palm trees. I gave a couple of dollars to a man with a rucksack full of patches. Eddie watched me with a blank face. ‘I need to sit down,’ he said. ‘I need to eat something.’
We sat outside a bar, where we were the focus of a madwoman with a parrot and a roaming accordionist. Eddie hadno answers to the madwoman’s questions and just gazed blankly at the busker as he swayed around us.
‘I can take you to Abbot Kinney, if you like,’ I said. ‘It’s another street, nearby. More upmarket if this is too crazy for you.’
Reuben loved Abbot Kinney.
‘No, thanks,’ Eddie said. For a moment he looked like he might smile. ‘Since when was I upmarket?’
I shrugged, suddenly embarrassed. ‘I never really got to find out.’
He glanced sideways at me and I saw what might be a pocket of warmth. ‘I think we got a pretty good measure of each other.’
I love you, I thought. I love you, Eddie, and I don’t know what to do.
His muffin arrived. I imagined my life, stretching out ahead of me without Eddie David, and felt light-headed with panic. And then I imagined him, all those years ago, envisaging a life stretching out ahead of him without his sister.
He ate his muffin in silence.
‘My charity,’ I said eventually. ‘My charity was set up for Alex.’
‘I did wonder.’
‘For Alex and for Hannah.’ I picked at a hangnail. ‘Hannah has kids of her own now. I’ve seen pictures. I sent them presents every birthday at first, but in the end she sent a message through Mum asking me to stop. It kills Mum and Dad. They tried everything to bring us back together. They just thought she’d climb down, eventually. Perhaps she would have done if I was still in England . . . I don’t know. She was such a stubborn child. I guess that’s the sort of adult she became, too.’
Eddie looked down the beach. ‘You shouldn’t underestimate the impact that my mother will have had on her. Shenever stopped hating you. At times it’s the only thing that’s got her through.’
I tried not to imagine Eddie’s mother’s house, the walls holding old anger like nicotine stains. I tried not to imagine my sister there with Carole Wallace; the words they’d use; the tea they’d drink. Although, oddly, there was comfort to be found in that picture, too. In the possibility that my sister’s wholesale rejection of me could perhaps have been helped along by someone else.
‘Do you think that’s partly why?’ I asked, turning back to him. My desperation was palpable. ‘Do you think your mum might have been egging her on, all these years?’
Eddie shrugged. ‘I don’t know your sister very well. But I know my mother. I’d probably have reacted differently to you if I hadn’t been listening to Mum for nineteen years.’
He looked as if he might say something else, but then closed his mouth.
‘I’ve struggled to be anywhere near children since it happened,’ I said. ‘I refused childminding jobs, wouldn’t babysit, went on ward visits with Reuben only when there was no other option.’
I paused. ‘I even refused to have a baby with him. He made me go to therapy, but nothing would change my mind. When I saw a child – any child – I saw your sister. So I steer clear. It’s easier that way.’
Eddie ate the final piece of his muffin and rested his forehead in his hand. He said, ‘I wish you’d used your family name when we met. I wish you’d said, “I’m Sarah Harrington.”’
I yanked the hangnail off, leaving a soft strip of stinging pink. ‘I’m not reverting to Harrington, not even after the divorce. I don’t want to be Sarah Harrington ever again.’
Eddie was squashing the final crumbs from his plate onto a finger. ‘It would have saved us a lot of heartache.’
I nodded.
