Safe With Me

by K.L. Slater

Genres: Mystery; Crime Fiction; Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

Thirteen years ago someone did something very bad to Anna. Now it's her turn to get even. Anna lives a solitary existence, taking solace in order and routine. Her only friend is the lonely old lady next door. She doesn't like to let people to get too close - she knows how much damage they can do. Then one ordinary day, Anna witnesses a devastating road accident and recognises the driver as Carla, the woman who ruined her life all those years ago. Now it's Anna's chance to set things straight, but her revenge needs to be executed carefully.... First she needs to get to know Liam, the man injured in the accident. She needs to follow the police investigation. She needs to watch Carla from the shadows.... But as Anna's obsession with Carla escalates, her own secrets start to unravel. Is Carla really dangerous, or does Anna need to worry about someone far closer to home? A compelling, gripping psychological thriller, perfect for fans of The Girl on the Train and The Sister.

Release date: November 3, 2016

Publisher: Audible Studios

Print pages: 350

Sample

So, they’re tucked up in bed at last. You take a handful of matches and you light each one, watching the burn die to a powdery black dot.

The embers in the open fireplace are dying down but there’s still the white hot core, deep in the centre, still powerful enough to help you set things good and straight one final time.

‘Two squashy seat cushions piled on the floor, four squashy seat cushions piled on the floor.’ It’s fun to sing to the tune of ‘Ten Green Bottles’.

You push the chair right up next to them so the fabrics are touching. You carefully extract two balls of molten coal from the ashes with the tongs, carefully placing each one in the middle of the cushions. Now you sit back to watch them melting in, deep down. The glowing balls sink greedily into the soft foam, and the scorched fabric cover of the cushion shrinks back as if it’s trying to escape.

There is no noise and you enjoy the silence.

Entranced, you watch as the small flames start to dance, flicking their pretty, lethal tongues. The power amazes, terrifies and comforts you, all at once. You feel the layers of protection you have tried to coat yourself with over the years being stripped away. You needed them so you had a chance of getting through each day and drunken night but you are safe now. The flames will make it safe.

You have tried to tell them many times, of course, tried to ask for help. But they didn’t understand what you were trying to get through to them. And now the rawness of your fear, your sadness – it’s here for all to see in the sharpness of the thick, sulphured air.

You mustn’t cough. You don’t want to wake them, set the sillies screaming and crying. Leave them to their dreams, they will learn soon enough.

The flames grow larger, then fuse together. You know it’s a sign that they are silently promising to help you and yet, for a second, you actually consider changing your mind. You could stomp down the flames and shout for help. You could wake them up.

Then you hear it.

‘Let us do our work,’ the flames whisper. ‘Everything will be better in the morning.’

And that’s when you decide to finally walk away.

The small silver car coming the other way is moving far too fast, and as it takes the bend, the driver loses control and veers over on to the wrong side of the road.

Everything happens so quickly: there’s no time for it to slow down or to even mount the kerb.

There is a hard, muted thud as the car hits the motorbike in front of me. The rider flies up into the air, sort of half-turns and lands face down in the road. As the metal bends and twists it whines like an injured animal, and my hand flies to my face, trying in vain to stem the acrid stench of burning rubber that starts to fill my lungs.

My foot slams down on to the brake, and I jump out, leaving the driver’s door wide open and the car in the middle of the road. I stand there, swallowing down the sickly taste that floods my mouth.

Everything seems to freeze in time, and a silence descends. It has a deafening quality all of its own and, for a moment, I am lost in the empty roar that surrounds me.

Then the spell is broken as the door of the silver car opens and a woman of about forty, dressed in jeans and a short pink coat, staggers out and vomits onto the side of the road. She holds her hair away from her face as if it’s somehow important to keep it clean.

And it is in that split second that I recognise her.

There is no mistaking that face.

I remind myself to breathe. My throat feels tight and dry, and my heart squeezes in so hard on itself I can almost sense it hanging in my chest like a dried-out apricot stone.

Twelve years ago, when I got out of hospital, even though I had met her only briefly on just a couple of occasions, I spent every spare minute I had trying to trace her again.

I was so young, desperate and naïve back then. With nobody to help me I hit a complete brick wall: she had simply vanished into thin air.

Eventually I was forced to acknowledge I’d lost her. Then all I could do was pray that karma really did exist and that she’d get what was coming to her for what she did to us.

And now she is here, right in front of me. Ruining yet another life.

I watch as the silver-haired driver from the black Mercedes that stopped behind me shrugs off his expensive-looking jacket and drapes it around her shoulders. He comforts her with a protective arm, murmuring reassuring words into her ear.

Something about her draws people in, gives them the impression she is a decent person.

So ironic.

Knots of people start to appear, seemingly from nowhere.

I think about getting back in my car, leaving the scene. Part of me is pulling to get away from her, but, of course, that’s not going to happen.

I could never just let go of her again.

Amid the chaos my eyes are drawn to the long, broken shape lying in the road. Pieces of motorbike are scattered all around him like fragments of jagged chrome confetti.

I ignore the rapidly growing crowd on the other side of the street and crouch down beside him, feeling for a pulse. My hand shakes as I press his wrist gently and, for a moment, I think she’s done it again, because I can’t feel any movement at all under my fingers. No sign of life.

Then his eyes flicker, and I release my breath.

People pour out of the small, terraced houses lining Green Road, fingers pointing and mouths all frozen wide.

I look down at him again.

He is hanging on to life by a thread; I can sense it. If he slips away now, I will never be able to forgive myself.

That terrified young girl who didn’t know what to do for the best is long gone now.

Maybe, this time, I can make a difference.

The rider has landed face down on his left-hand side. A thick pool, like ruby molasses, blossoms out from the underside of his head.

I reach down to stroke his face but I don’t let go of his hand.

He looks a little older than me: early to mid-thirties, I’d say. His skin is smooth, lashes long and dark and twitching as if he is caught in a dream.

Over the other side of the road, where all the attention is, she is howling.

There is barely a scratch on her but then she was always so good at playing the victim, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

I try to stop staring in case I give myself away, but I’ve no need to worry – she’s oblivious to anyone but herself.

She hasn’t got a clue who I am or what she did to me all that time ago.

Granted, I look very different now. It’s been a long thirteen years; I’m much darker-haired and carry nearly four stones of extra weight. There is no trace of the naïve, slender girl who gave up her trust so easily.

See, people like her never really notice the insignificant people around them.

They go through life making their selfish decisions, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake, and never giving it a second thought.

Until it all comes back with a vengeance, that is.

Then they have to suck it up good.

I hear someone call: ‘The ambulance is on its way.’

There are hordes of people standing around now, rubbernecking.

Their eyes are trained on the motorbike rider but I don’t see much compassion, more a thinly disguised hunger for the gory details that might be revealed if they hang around long enough.

I move stiffly from my knees to my haunches and prepare to stand up, to walk away before the ambulance arrives.

I know I’ll be able to keep tabs on her now through the local newspaper reports about the accident, and I can identify myself later to the police as a witness.

A big part of me wants to stay but I learned a lot from my therapist. Like how to stand back from my thoughts and evaluate a situation calmly and logically so I make the best decision.

If I stay, I don’t think I can trust myself not to cause a scene. This time I need to make sure that every action, every step I take, is carefully planned and considered.

So that there are no mistakes.

I feel something brush over my hand and I glance down as the injured rider’s fingers close around mine.

His slate-blue eyes are bloodshot and wide open now but he seems oblivious to all the people standing around, as if he can’t see past my face.

A sharp intake of breath and he looks right at me.

‘Help me,’ he whispers.

I’ve worked for the Royal Mail for just over five years.

Six days a week, I set the alarm for four a.m., and I drive to the delivery office in good time for the start of my shift at five.

My first job is always to organise the mail into postcodes according to the addresses on my round. Then I bag it up and deliver it to the residents of the Clifton housing estate, a sprawling mass of 1950s grey concrete on the outskirts of Nottingham that once had the dubious privilege of being the largest housing estate in Europe.

It sounds simple, but delivering mail correctly and in a timely manner is far from easy, and it isn’t a menial task either. Most people place great value on their mail service.

For some of the other postal workers it’s just a job but my view is that it doesn’t take that much to make a real difference to people’s lives.

Mrs Gray on Beck Crescent has ulcerated legs, so I always put her bin out first thing on a Friday morning. This summer, I cut Mr Bagley’s lawn on my day off when his arthritis was playing up.

Now, when he catches me at the door he talks non-stop about his only son, who lives in Australia. I often feel like saying: ‘And where’s your precious son when the grass needs cutting and you need your prescription fetching?’

But, of course, I never do.

My colleagues at the delivery office are a good bunch really; they seem to know just to leave me alone and let me get on with my job.

People stopped trying to draw me in to their non-stop conversations about reality TV and Coronation Street a long time ago; although, I admit, by some kind of weird osmosis, I’d probably be able to tell you what’s happening in each and every one of those programmes they discuss.

Everything had been going perfectly well at work and then, out of the blue last week, the situation changed. The management team decided we were to have a reevaluation of the delivery rounds.

When it was my turn, Jim Crowe walked over to my counter.

‘You’re not getting finished until way past three, Anna,’ he said, consulting his clipboard. ‘We think that’s because the round might be too big for you.’

It was Jim who interviewed me after I’d applied for the position five years ago. I got myself so het up beforehand I caught the wrong bus and was a few minutes late arriving.

I remember how Jim repeated one or two of the questions when I got confused and told me to take my time when I forgot what it was I wanted to say.

He took a chance on me back then; he gave me a job. I suppose he’s always sort of looked out for me a bit ever since. It’s as if, on some level, he’s always understood that I sometimes find things difficult.

He didn’t know anything about what had happened to me before though; none of them did.

‘I get the round all done, don’t I?’ I replied.

‘With an hour or more overtime you do. But we can’t keep paying it, Anna. Overtime’s expensive, and I’ve got my orders to cut the rota.’

I watched as beads of sweat settled in the bald patches where Jim’s hair was beginning to recede. I kept quiet and waited for him to meet my eyes but he just kept flicking through the papers on his clipboard.

In the end, Jim agreed I could keep my round for the time being, providing I didn’t put in any overtime claims. Very gracious.

‘We’ll see how it goes,’ he said. ‘If you’re struggling to get finished then we might have to put you on another round, possibly the Huntsmoor. I’m sorry, Anna, it’s beyond my control this time.’

I shrugged my shoulders and sauntered off but, underneath, a blistering heat seethed deep into my bones. Nobody wanted the Huntsmoor round, which was precisely the reason they always covered it with agency staff.

The dreaded Huntsmoor; a sea of dirty concrete and boarded-up windows.

It was a miracle if postal workers could get past the banned-breed dogs straining at their leashes and the heckling, hooded youths who gathered outside the multi-occupancy council houses from dawn until dusk, whatever the weather.

It made my scalp crawl to think I could end up doing the Huntsmoor round if the management made big changes.

My job kept me on track, kept the days ticking on. It helped me escape the dark days, and I didn’t want to go back there.

I made my mind up there and then that I would hang on to my delivery round at any cost.

As it turns out, I needn’t have worried.

As of today, I have completed my round within my allocated time for exactly seven days and without the need to put in any overtime.

Now the management team have no excuse but to back off and leave me alone. They can go pick on someone else because I have found a way to manage.

Manage for now, anyway.

This morning, I finished bang on time and took the empty mailbag back to the office, making sure Jim saw me hang it up.

My customers depend on me and they don’t like change. They wouldn’t appreciate a new delivery person.

For starters, how would someone new guess that the Benson family of Buxton Crescent have all their internet shopping parcels delivered to number 86 across the road?

Who would tell the new delivery person that the immaculate Mr Staniforth, who commutes to Canary Wharf and is out of the house fourteen hours a day, likes his mail packaged together with a rubber band so it doesn’t fly all over the hallway?

It’s those kinds of details that count with people.

When I finished my shift this morning, I locked my bike up in the outdoor rack and set off back home in the car. I still wore my fluorescent jacket, and as it was still fairly mild for October I couldn’t help sweating quite a bit.

I remember feeling eager to get back home, where I could throw on my comfies and chill out with my cat, Albert, a hot chocolate and a recorded episode of Homes Under the Hammer.

That’s when I opened the car window a touch and turned the corner into Green Road.

It’s only now, looking back, I realise that every single minute of the last thirteen years has been perfectly aligned to that very moment – to bring her back to me.

Despite the fact I lost hope a long time ago that she would one day be made to pay for what she did, the truth was now crystal clear.

I was always meant to find her again.

In the morning, there is a cursory paragraph about the accident in the Nottingham Post.

Annoyingly, the driver of the car is not named; but, of course, I already know her real name. Before she changed it, that is.

I assume that’s what she did, anyway. Months spent trying to find her and hitting constant dead ends smacks of someone getting a new identity and disappearing. But any anonymity she might have had has gone for good now, thanks to the accident.

Overnight, I’ve given the situation a lot of thought, and I think the most important thing I need to do is stay in contact with the motorbike victim.

So long as I can do that, I can be sure of finding out the important information right away. I’ll have an indelible link to the driver so that she can’t escape, however hard she tries. Not now that the police are involved.

Before I left the scene yesterday, a community support officer took my details. She said the police will be in touch very soon to take my statement, which will be my chance to put key evidence forward as an eyewitness.

I cut out the article and lay it flat on the dining table before clearing away my breakfast dish and mug.

Outside, in the car, I’ve just belted up when I remember I haven’t checked the cooker. You can’t be too careful when it comes to electrical appliances. It is always best to be safe rather than sorry.

I unlock the kitchen door again and stick my head round but I see right away that I have turned off the cooker and put the smiley-face sticker over the switch.

I lock up again and set off for the hospital, mulling the newspaper article over in my mind.

They gave the motorbike driver’s full name, Liam Bradbury, stating he is in a stable condition, despite a head injury, and is currently receiving treatment at Nottingham’s Queen’s Medical Centre, known locally as the QMC.

This morning, when I rang the QMC, the receptionist sounded surprised when I told her I was the person who’d sat in the road and held Liam’s hand until the ambulance arrived. She had given me his ward number quite happily after that.

There is not much traffic on the road and it takes me just under fifteen minutes to get to the hospital.

I drive by tired retail parks peppered with retired couples ambling from their cars. Young women stride along the pavements, absorbed with talking on their phones and pushing their ignored, sticky toddlers towards town in gaudy buggies.

I park up and stop by a small, overpriced shop in the hospital foyer to pick up a small basket of fruit and then head towards the lift.

Up on Ward Eight, they buzz me straight in without asking who I am, which I have to say, rather makes a mockery of the security system.

I ask a nurse at the desk where Liam’s bed is.

‘Are you a relative?’ She peers at me over the counter. ‘It’s just that he’s resting now and you’re out of visiting hours.’

I explain who I am. ‘I just want to make sure he’s okay,’ I say.

I follow her down the ward to a small, private room at the end. It almost takes my breath away when I see him.

Even though he is bruised, dotted with narrow, plastic tubes and an oxygen mask that covers most of his face, I can’t help thinking he’s quite an attractive man. That full head of brown hair shot through with sun-lightened gold, even dull and matted, promises to shine.

And he looks like Danny. Which sounds odd: putting the words ‘brother’ and ‘attractive’ together, but Danny was a beautiful person, inside and out, and Liam’s square jaw and wide-set eyes makes me feel even more certain that this whole thing was meant to be.

I place the basket of fruit on a small table next to him.

‘He suffered blunt trauma to the head but they’ve got him fairly stable now,’ the nurse says, tugging the creases out of his bed covers. ‘But how his poor gran is going to cope once she gets him home, I don’t know.’

It occurs to me that he’s a bit old to be living with his gran, but I suppose the price of property these days prohibits lots of people from getting a foothold on the housing ladder so I shouldn’t judge.

I think about my own humble little terraced house. It is certainly nothing special but at least it’s all mine. Been mine since. . . well, for the last thirteen years anyhow.

I wish the nurse would just leave us alone so I can replay yesterday’s events in my mind.

Liam’s flaccid hand lies pale against the powder-blue of the hospital blanket, and his eyelids are perfectly still now, not flickering the way they had been in the road.

When the nurse steps outside to speak to someone, I get my chance. I reach for my bag and pull out my phone. It doesn’t take me long to get what I need, and it’s a good job, because, in no time at all, I hear the nurse shuffling around behind me again.

‘I suppose I’ve got to go now,’ I say.

‘Sorry, we have to treat everyone the same when it comes to visiting.’ She looks at me and her face softens a little. ‘Why don’t you come back later, around six? His gran will be here then and I’m sure she’ll be very keen to thank you for everything you did for him.’

I look down at Liam’s hand.

‘It’s no more than anyone else would have done,’ I say.

I walk back to the car in the cold, grey drizzle.

Usually, if I’m at a loose end, for whatever reason, I go for a walk around Colwick Park, which is just a stone’s throw away from where I live in Sneinton.

I like to sit watching the ducks bobbing around on one of the lakes; their lives seem so simple and unrushed. I used to take bread out on to the grassy bank most days but they’d all crowd in and go crazy for it, so I stopped doing that.

To keep things functioning properly, you have to keep a firm control. There’s nothing else for it.

Today it is far too cold and wet for visiting the park, so I drive back home to wait until the official hospital visiting time starts at six. Before going inside the house, I pop next door to Mrs Peat’s.

I tap at the small side window, and she looks up from her cross-stitch.

‘Everything alright, Mrs Peat?’ I call through the glass.

She smiles and nods, giving me a little wave with a fleshy hand.

We have a code: I tap on the window, and if she needs me to pop in she’ll beckon, and then I go round the back and let myself in with the spare key which is hidden under the rusty milk-bottle stand by the door.

Sometimes, I just go in anyway whether she needs me or not. I’ll often have a cup of tea with her to break the monotony of her day. I owe her that much.

‘I wish you’d call me Joan,’ she always scolds me, but I can’t do it. I have lived next door to her all my life and some things, well, they stay sacred, don’t they?

Mrs Peat will always be Mrs Peat in my eyes.

Between the two of us, me and her care assistant, Linda, we make sure she is well looked after. She isn’t any trouble really.

Her useless daughter, Janet-Mae, lives over fifty miles away and visits once a month if Mrs Peat is lucky. But I’m guessing she will be over fast enough, though, the day one of us finds her poor mother stiff as a board in her armchair and it’s time to sell the house.

Of course, I’ve never said as much.

When I get back home, Albert is sitting by the back door, waiting patiently. I always try to go straight home at the end of my shift so I can feed him at the same time each day. Albert seems to understand the value of routine.

People tend to think cats aren’t social animals but they’re wrong. Albert depends on me in every way. Naturally, I never let him go out at night; the thought of him wandering the streets is enough to stop me sleeping. I know how horrible people can be, and it’s not always strangers that will hurt your animals.

I close my eyes and squeeze the painful memories back inside the imaginary box at the back of my head, like my therapist taught me. Now is not the time for dwelling in the past.

After I’ve fed Albert, I flick through the other local newspapers I bought to see if I can find anything else about the accident. There are a couple of mentions, just one or two lines, nothing like the Nottingham Post did. I cut them out anyway and file them with the other report.

I open a new folder on my laptop and make the first entries, noting down the time of my visit to the hospital that morning and Liam’s condition. I make doubly sure to record the comments the nurse made about him living with his gran.

I’m not leaving anything to chance.

I put Albert out into the hallway so he won’t disturb me. I open up the photograph on my phone; it has turned out much better than I expected.

I’d snapped it in a hurry when the nurse popped outside the room, and I couldn’t even be sure the camera had focused properly. But the image is very clear and shows Liam lying pale and broken in his hospital bed, covered with tubes and monitoring pads.

I create a second file on my laptop and save the photo in there, once I’ve emailed it to myself.

It’s such a shame I didn’t think to take one of him as he lay injured in the road yesterday. I imagine Liam will probably be annoyed with me about that when he’s feeling better.

Things haven’t really turned out as I’d hoped or expected today.

I imagined getting to the hospital this morning and finding Liam sitting up in bed, ready to tell me everything the police have found out about the woman who mowed him down.

I look at the photo I took of him again and my heart feels heavy. He is still unconscious from the drugs they gave him.

He doesn’t even know I exist.

I listen to the clock ticking and Albert scratching at the sitting room door to be let in again.

I’m beginning to regret ringing in sick this morning. What if the management gets someone else to do my round and that person does a better job?

I should have gone in. I can’t risk them finding out the real reason I’m managing to get my round finished without putting in any overtime.

When I move from the table and sit down in the armchair, I glance down at the threadbare tweedy material where, for years, Mother’s own forearms rested.

There is an intermittent low hum from the refrigerator but otherwise the house is silent. The air hangs thick and heavy, seeming to wrap itself around me like a cloak dripping with unpleasant memories.

When we were kids, no one was allowed to sit in Mother’s chair. She knew if her cushion had been moved even an inch.

She liked things to stay just the way she left them, you see.

I close my eyes and feel the rough fabric pressing against the thin, pale skin of my wrists.

She can’t do anything about me sitting here now.

None of them can.

She always stayed in the middle room until after Anna had left for work.

It wasn’t necessary for Joan to sit by the window watching, though: listening was usually enough.

Their little side street was quiet. There weren’t many cars that actually used it, particularly very early in the morning when her neighbour went to work.

Today, Anna had broken her routine and had . . .