Thursday 7th December 2023
Chrissy
Almost as soon as she gets back from the prison, Chrissy sees it.
She has spent the car journey on the phone to her sister, Tess, who has promised to call her mum – Chrissy cannot face it – and any other relatives Leo might, for whatever reason, have reached out to. Chrissy slams the car door and stands in front of her cottage, dreading walking inside to all the hopeful things she put in place for this moment. The bright blue DAB radio she positioned in the kitchen, aerial up and waiting, imagining them listening to Planet Rock together while steaks sizzled in the pan. The tabasco sauce she bought because he always had it with everything, and the pint glasses she lined up on the shelf – scratched from their pub days – because he said he’d been craving Coke Zero in a tall glass with loads of ice.
She feels like a new mum who’s had to leave her baby in the hospital. As she drags herself up the drive, a flap of white paper catches her eye. It’s taped to the frozen lid of her black wheelie bin. Not today, surely, not now. Heat builds in her cheeks as she stamps across the gravel towards it. The words are written in the usual red marker pen, but as she rips it off the bin like a giant plaster, she sees that this message has a different pronoun.
Keep him away from our village.
Chrissy lets out a cry of anger, kicking the bottom of the bin and then spinning around as if to confront the long-gone culprit. This is a sick joke to come home to. A sick premonition, or worse.
She marches into her cottage, blind now to all the welcome-
home paraphernalia. She goes to the drawer where all the other notes are kept, yanks it open and holds this one alongside them.
She’d gotten used to them, while they were just aimed at her. They had become a blur of unimaginative threats – nobody wants you here; have you no shame? – and she could convince herself they didn’t matter, could lump them in with the whispers in shops and the judgemental looks.
Except for the very first one, of course. The one she keeps folded up, out of sight – the anomaly in black. Her eye flits towards it in the shadows of the drawer, then she snaps her attention back to the latest addition, knowing she can’t hide or ignore it. If they’re starting on Leo, it’s different. Someone wished him gone and, inexplicably, he is.
She thinks of the email from Alice; the guard’s expression changing from indifference to suspicion; the text with no blue ticks, as if it had gone into a void. And this note waiting for her, perhaps, all that time. Dropping it into the drawer, she fumbles in her jacket pocket for her mobile.
And then she deflates. Realisation hits her stomach like a rock. She can’t call the police. Leo has broken the very first condition of his parole by not being at this address. How can she risk sending him back to jail when he might just be taking some time to get his head together?
Please, please, let that be all it is.
As if in reply, her home phone starts to ring. Chrissy stands paralysed, fearing it’s Probation Services, checking that Leo’s here. He’s gone out for a run, she could say. He’s taking a hot bath; wouldn’t you if you’d just got out of prison? She could make a thing of it, appeal to their human instincts. How long can she stall them, though, while she figures out where he’s really gone?
Her voice is thick when she finally answers: ‘Hello?’
There is silence on the other end.
‘Hello?’ she says again. ‘Can you hear me? Who’s there?’
She thinks she hears soft breathing down the line, but her own is so loud, her heartbeat thunderous. ‘Hello? Hello?’
A click, and the line goes dead. Chrissy hits the redial button, but a cheerfully robotic voice tells her the number was withheld. She stands next to the phone for a few more moments. The silence presses down, seeming unnatural, unkind, because this is the first day she isn’t supposed to be here alone.