Wall of Silence Page 3

  ‘Yes,’ we all say in answer to his question. He scribbles it down in his notepad, his fingers all trembly.

  ‘Your mum arrived five minutes after you got back from your walk?’ he asks. We all nod. ‘You say the walk took half an hour . . . and you came back to find your dad like this?’ he asks. We nod again, nodding monkeys like the ones we saw for sale when Mum and Dad took us to Koh Samui last year. I get a flash of Dad leaping about in the waves, the smell of frying insects, the taste of Mum’s cocktail she let me have a sip of one night.

  Things were so different then. Or maybe I told myself they were. Maybe they were all wrong then too.

  A man walks in. He isn’t wearing a police uniform like Adrian is, but he has ‘police’ written all over him. He’s in a dark suit with dandruff on the shoulders. He’s been checking out the scene, all serious like. I can tell from the way he looks around the house and out at the forest that he’s not from around here. He leans against the doorway, taking in each of our faces. I try to keep mine straight but my heart feels like it might thump so hard it’ll travel up my chest and out of my nostrils.

  ‘I’m Detective Crawford,’ he says, voice all soft. ‘I’m sorry this is happening to you guys. I have kids your age.’ I know what he’s trying to do. He’s trying to make some kind of connection with us, but lots of people have kids our age. Nobody’s had to live with what we have lately, though, have they? ‘Was there any sign of a weapon?’ he asks. ‘A knife? I see one is missing from the knife holder,’ he adds, peering towards the knife block by the cooker.

  We all hold our breath. Mum too. She looks so confused and there are clusters of pink on her chest like she gets when she’s nervous.

  Then this steely look appears in her eyes, the same look she had when she and Dad came to view this house six years ago, like ‘We really can’t afford this house but we’re going to bloody buy it even if we don’t know how.’

  ‘No sign of it,’ she says firmly. ‘Kids, did you see anything?’

  I want to just jump up and hug her. She has our backs even if she doesn’t know why.

  ‘No,’ I say.

  ‘No,’ the other two say.

  My heart soars.

  Mum did good. She knew what we needed her to do without us even saying it. Mum knows us more than anyone, though, doesn’t she? Like that time I broke my arm while riding my bike, but I was trying to make out it was okay because I didn’t want to ruin the family dinner Mum and Dad had spent ages planning for the anniversary of Joel’s death. Nobody else clocked on, not even Grandad, who’s a bit like Mum too, the way he notices when we’re down. But Mum knew, she just knew, and the way she just ploughed into action, taking me to hospital like the family dinner meant nothing to her when I knew it meant everything.

  ‘Can you think of anyone who might want to harm your father, your husband?’ the detective asks, looking at us, looking at Mum.

  ‘No one,’ Mum says. ‘As you probably know, he’s running to be a parish councillor and we have elections coming up, but I can’t imagine it has anything to do with that.’

  I hear familiar voices outside and I feel sick again.

  That’ll be Nan and Grandad. I peer out, see them talking to Andrea Cooper, who’s trying to peer into the kitchen at Dad.

  I nearly lose it at the thought of their sad wrinkled faces when they see Dad – their son – on the floor. But I have to hold it together, just like I did when I broke my arm.

  It’s something you get used to, hiding the bad stuff.

  Chapter Six

  Thursday 18th April, 2019

  5 p.m.

  Melissa sat in the ambulance with Patrick, the spatter of blue lights on the road and the high whine of the sirens filling her senses. She clutched on to his hand, telling him he’d be fine, that he was strong.

  An incessant bleeping suddenly sounded.

  ‘Move,’ the paramedic said, gently pushing her out of the way. He jumped into action, pumping at Patrick’s chest.

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ Melissa cried. ‘Is he dying?’

  ‘He’s lost a lot of blood,’ the paramedic explained between breaths.

  They went over a speed bump and Melissa gripped on to the side to keep steady. Patrick’s face was a deathly blue.

  Oh God, was she about to become a widow?

  How could she cope, her husband and her son dying in the space of eleven years?

  But then Patrick started breathing again.

  ‘Is he going to be okay?’ Melissa asked.

  ‘Sooner we get him to hospital, the better,’ the paramedic replied.

  When they got to the hospital, Patrick was rushed into the emergency room and it all became a blur of doctors shouting orders and nurses grabbing equipment.

  Melissa was aware of Patrick’s parents, Bill and Rosemary, turning up at some point, watching in horror as their son was worked on, Rosemary scrunching up tissues to her nose, her short grey hair awry. Bill tried his best to maintain his strong, calm demeanour but failed, stifling a sob as a nurse lifted Patrick’s shirt to reveal the stab wound, another nurse carefully examining the bloody gash on his head.

  ‘Oh God,’ Rosemary said, putting her hand to her mouth. ‘My boy, my perfect boy.’

  A nurse came over and ushered them out. Another steered them towards a family room, telling them they’d be updated as soon as there was any news.

  News. What kind of news? The bad kind?

  ‘What the hell happened?’ Bill asked as the nurse left the room and closed the door.

  ‘The kids found him like that,’ Melissa said. ‘It’s – it’s madness.’

  ‘Who would do that to him?’ Rosemary asked Melissa.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Melissa replied.

  Rosemary’s eyes snagged on Melissa’s T-shirt and the blood on there. She pursed her lips and turned away.

  They all fell silent, eyes on the small window in the room’s door. Melissa found her thoughts flitting between the two halves of her torn mind. First, the brutal fear she felt at the idea of Patrick dying. Then confusion over what on earth had happened. Melissa imagined the kids all sitting on her duck-egg-blue sofa, where she’d left them, as Jackie Shillingford, a family friend, looked after them. They’d been quiet, shocked . . . and hiding something deep inside them.

  But what?

  They’d all looked so relieved when Melissa told the detective she hadn’t seen the knife. She wasn’t even sure why she’d said it. She’d had to make a decision in a split second and it was all down to gut instinct. She was hoping one of the kids would just say something, anything, to make the disappearance of the knife appear completely normal. But they said nothing, Lewis staring at his fists in an anguished way, Lilly sobbing quietly into her hands, her immaculately applied mascara dribbling down her cheeks. Then Grace, blinking in shock. Melissa had wanted to grab them, shake them, ask them what the hell happened to the knife? But she was scared. What would that say about the kids, if they had hidden the knife? So instead, she’d lied, and that meant she was part of it now.

  Part of what, though? Part of bloody what?

  The fact was, only the kids could have hidden the knife. That meant they had a reason to hide it, a reason with possibilities that made her sick to her stomach. Either they were covering for someone who had done this to their dad . . . or worst of all, one of them had done it.

  She shook her head. No, how could she even think that? It simply wasn’t possible. Only that morning, they’d been laughing and joking. Patrick had taken a couple of days off work to be with the kids during Easter half term, giving his parents a break from their usual childcare duties when the kids were off school. They’d discussed whether the twins were old enough to be alone with Grace but had eventually come to the conclusion it wasn’t quite time yet, so they were dividing their time between their grandparents, and Patrick and Melissa whenever they could take days off.

  They had been planning a lazy day, according to Patrick. When she’d left them, P
atrick was joking about Lilly’s carefully sculpted ‘messy bun’ while Lewis slurped up his cereal, still in his PJs. Grace, as usual, had her face stuck in a book, oblivious to it all. What could have happened in just a few hours to tilt their world on its axis so completely it led to Patrick being critically injured by one of them?

  No, it had all been perfectly normal.

  So that left the possibility that the kids were covering for someone. But who? It was all so tame in Forest Grove. The worst that had happened recently was a break-in and, before that, the fire incident with Jacob Simms, but that was over a year ago!

  For the kids to be covering for someone, it had to be someone they knew. She should have just told the bloody police about the knife because surely it was better to tell the truth? Surely that was the best way to find the person who did this to Patrick?

  Oh, her darling Patrick! She started sobbing.

  Bill pulled her into a hug. They rarely hugged nowadays. There used to be hugs like this when Melissa had first come into the Byatts’ lives in her teenage years. Hugs that were all-encompassing, reassuring, secure in the storm of tragedy. Patrick once described his parents as like the warmth of a hollow tree protecting you from the rain.

  ‘He’ll be fine,’ Bill said. ‘He’s strong, he’s a Byatt. He’ll get through this.’

  ‘But what if he doesn’t?’ Melissa mumbled into Bill’s shirt. ‘What will I do without him?’

  Melissa had been with Patrick since she was fifteen. That was over twenty-five years of her life. She didn’t really know a life without him.

  ‘He will, you hear me?’ Bill said.

  Melissa nodded, closing her eyes for a moment. There was a distant familiarity to being in this waiting room for her, so many hours spent in this very same hospital with her first son, Joel, waiting for tests, watching as he was prodded and poked. When you’re the parent of a child with a degenerative disease, hospitals become your second home.

  ‘Doctor’s coming,’ Bill said. He stood in the middle of the room and faced the door, looking like he was ready for battle. He was a tall, robust man with a bald head and bushy eyebrows. He too was always so strong in the face of any challenge but Melissa could see the cracks in his tough exterior already, his usually immaculately buttoned-up shirt higgledy-piggledy, a smear of blood on his face from when he’d grabbed his son’s hand as he was loaded into the ambulance.

  The door opened and a doctor appeared. She was younger than Melissa, maybe late twenties, with perfectly straight red hair and a slim frame. Melissa could feel Bill bristle beside her and she imagined what he was thinking. That girl has been working on my son? But Melissa was reassured by the doctor’s age. All that learning she’d done would be fresh in her mind, like it had been for Melissa just after she qualified to be a physiotherapist four years ago.

  The doctor put her hand out. ‘I’m Dr Hudson. Shall we sit?’

  Melissa started shaking. Shall we sit was usually followed by bad news – she’d learnt that with Joel.

  Rosemary and Bill both sat down but Melissa remained standing. ‘I’d prefer to stand, if that’s okay?’

  The doctor nodded. ‘Of course. Though I hope you don’t mind if I sit, it’s been a long day.’ The doctor sat on the sofa, her blue eyes serious. ‘Patrick is currently in a stable condition.’

  They all let out a sigh of relief.

  ‘It was touch and go for a while,’ the doctor admitted. ‘The knife just missed a major artery. A few millimetres to the right, and he would have bled to death.’

  Rosemary put her hand to her mouth as Melissa’s head spun.

  ‘But he’s all patched up, right?’ Bill said, trying to keep his voice steady. ‘No more bleeding?’

  The doctor nodded. ‘Absolutely.’ She paused. ‘It’s actually Patrick’s head injury that’s worrying us the most. The scan we just did shows Patrick has sustained a traumatic brain injury.’

  Bill closed his eyes as Rosemary stifled a sob. Melissa put her hand to her heart, gulping in deep breaths.

  ‘Okay,’ Bill said, adopting his no-nonsense voice. ‘What does that mean for our boy?’

  ‘There are many possible scenarios,’ the doctor said. ‘If he—’

  ‘What I mean is, will he be brain-damaged?’ Bill cut in.

  Melissa could hear the fear in Bill’s voice. Patrick was a man who could complete the most complex sudoku puzzle in under an hour. A man who every pub quiz team wanted as a member. A man who flew through school, then university, landing a first-class degree in business studies. A man who was now on the verge of becoming the village’s parish councillor. For Bill and Rosemary, Patrick was a living, breathing example of the exemplary Byatt genes at work. The thought of their son being brain-damaged would be too unbearable for them to contemplate.

  I’d deal with it, though, Melissa thought to herself.

  As long as Patrick lived, she would deal with anything. Hadn’t she done the same for Joel?

  The doctor sighed. ‘What’s worrying us right now is that there’s a great deal of intracranial pressure on your son’s brain, so we feel the best course of action is to place Patrick in an induced coma.’

  Melissa frowned. ‘Coma?’

  The doctor looked at her and nodded. ‘An induced coma will allow us to protect the brain and give it time to heal. We’ll be able to monitor the swelling, and once that swelling reduces, gradually bring Patrick back out of the coma. He could fully recover from this.’ Rosemary closed her eyes, nodding to herself. ‘But there are also many unknowns. We can discuss those down the line.’

  ‘And his life?’ Melissa asked, leaning forward. ‘Is his life out of danger?’

  ‘Patrick is stable at the moment,’ the doctor replied, ‘but he’s still in a critical condition. An induced coma will greatly improve his chances of survival.’

  ‘Survival?’ Rosemary said, the slight tremble in her voice betraying her shock. ‘What are we talking here, percentage-wise?’

  ‘A high percentage of survival,’ the doctor said carefully. ‘But as I said, the trauma to the brain is substantial.’

  ‘So my boy could survive but be a vegetable all his life?’ Bill asked bluntly, fists curling. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

  Melissa took in a sharp breath.

  ‘What a thing to say, Bill!’ Rosemary chided him.

  Bill sighed, gliding his hand over his head, his shoulders slumping. ‘Sorry, love. I just need to know all the details, you know me.’

  ‘Just like our Patrick,’ Rosemary said.

  Bill smiled sadly, his dark brown eyes, so like Patrick’s, filling with tears.

  Rosemary grasped her husband’s hand as they looked into each other’s eyes. ‘He’ll get through this,’ Rosemary said. ‘We’ll make sure of it.’

  They were so good together. Melissa had seen it the moment she’d caught glimpses of them through the woods when they first arrived in Forest Grove twenty-six years ago, this golden couple with their golden children. No fist-dented walls for them, nor bloody tissues in the bathroom bin, she remembered thinking to herself. On the day of her and Patrick’s wedding, right in the forest when they were both just twenty, their first son, Joel, growing in her tummy, Melissa had made a promise to herself: she would do all she could to have a marriage like Rosemary and Bill’s.

  In sickness and in health, she thought.

  She felt a whirl of panic start to build inside her as she thought of losing Patrick. She clenched her fists, digging her nails into her skin to drive it away. She needed to keep her head.

  She turned to the doctor, gathering all her strength. ‘How long will Patrick be in a coma?’ she asked.

  ‘It could be anything from a few days to a few weeks,’ the doctor replied.

  ‘Weeks,’ Melissa whispered, contemplating all that time without Patrick. Then she thought of the kids and the secret they harboured. The battle she felt between the relief that she’d have time to find out what happened before their father woke and the fear
that Patrick would never wake made her head swim with confusion.

  ‘Have you any more questions?’ the doctor asked.

  Bill leaned forward, looking her in the eye. ‘What are your thoughts on the stab wound? Anything to suggest the type of attack this was?’

  It was the army sergeant in him coming out. He’d served as a soldier in the British Army for twenty years until he was injured in a bomb during the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the eighties. He then took up a new passion: dog breeding and showing, a hobby that led him to meeting Rosemary and now made them enough money to own the biggest house in Forest Grove.

  ‘Photos have been taken and will be given to the police forensic team,’ the doctor said, face very serious. ‘Any questions related to the crime should be directed to them, Mr Byatt.’

  Bill sank back against the sofa, peering out of the small window towards the spread of trees in the distance that marked out Forest Grove from the surrounding area. He clenched and unclenched his fists and Melissa could see the storm of rage swirling behind his eyes. That would be his focus now, finding out who did this to his son, and it made Melissa shiver – because what if the kids were involved in some way?

  ‘You can come and see Patrick now,’ the doctor said, standing.

  They all exchanged glances then followed her outside and down the corridor towards the Critical Care ward. The doctor used her security card to let them in and led them past a busy-looking nurses’ station. They strode by a shared ward with four beds in it, relatives surrounding some of the patients, who were hooked up to various life-saving machines, some conscious, others not. There was a young girl on one of the beds, just eighteen or so, and Melissa imagined Lilly or Grace lying there. The woman sitting by her bed looked up, catching Melissa’s eye, and Melissa could see the despair in her eyes.

  She hurried on until they got to the end ward. This was much like the first one, curtains drawn around two of the beds. The exposed beds across from them were home to an elderly woman and a large man in his fifties who seemed happy enough, reading a magazine.