His Silence - Chapter 93

Eighteen months later

There’s a clang as the metal door at the end of the room opens. I sit up straight in my seat, heart pounding. I glance around the room, thinking of the last time I came to the prison, to see Harvey. In my head I can still picture the woman I saw that day, the woman with the baby, the one with the gold hoop earrings. It’s hard to believe that nearly two years have passed since then. There’s no one who fits her description here today. There are people sitting alone, hunched forward, nervous. Perhaps it’s their first time visiting a family member or a friend with no idea what to expect. I breathe in the stale air. 

At the end of the queue of people shuffling forward to their tables, I spot Mary. Her skin is waxy, her eyes are blood shot, and her once brown hair is now grey. I thought, when I applied to see her, she would refuse to see me. She edges closer towards me, the slight hint of a smile on her lips.

I sit back in my seat as she sits opposite me. Although she was seventy-five when I first met her, it did seem like she was a good ten years younger. I put it down to the fresh air she must’ve always been getting living by the sea. Now she looks twice her age.

‘Ah, Grace,’ she says, crossing her knees. ‘You know, I was very surprised when you wanted to see me.’ Her voice is croaky, like she's developing a cold. 

I resist the urge to bite my lip. ‘Would you mind calling me, Danielle, I’m not that person anymore. I’m not a part of your little game.’

Mary chuckles. ‘Oh, you may try and forget Raven House, Grace, but it’ll always be a part of you, whether you like it or not. You can’t alter that fact. So, why have you come to see me?’

Her eyes glide around the room. It’s like she’s thinking she can’t wait to be out of here. Surely part of her must’ve been curious as to how I’m doing, otherwise she wouldn’t have agreed to see me. The last time I saw her, was the day of her sentencing six months ago. As the judge had sent her down, she’d found me sitting in the public gallery, and kept her eyes fixed on mine as she’d been led away by guards, charged with the murders of my parents, and Noah. In my head I still hear the gasps of people sitting around me, as the sentence was given. It was at the last minute, a year earlier, when she’d changed her plea to not guilty.

‘I thought I’d just like to let you know, I’ve sold Raven House.’ I clasp my hands together and lean forward. ‘I’m not sure if you’re entirely aware, but Oliver left the house to me, shortly after our escape.’

Mary runs her tongue over her cracked lips. ‘Yes, I was aware he’d left the house to you. I thought that by encouraging you to come back, your presence would’ve made things better for him. He was so lost, so angry until you arrived.’ Even now she’s still trying to influence my thinking. Perhaps she's still thinking, deep down, she can persuade me to be a part of Oliver's life.

I frown at her. ‘You never encouraged me to come back to Raven House.’

She sighs. ‘No, but I asked Noah to pay your brother a visit in prison. I knew if one of us simply accosted you in the street, there’s no way you would’ve believed us, but if it came from your brother. Well, I was sure there was no way you could resist, coming back. But then your brother started spouting his innocence to you, now that I didn’t suspect to happen, after all the years I spent working on him. All those wasted years.’ She lets out a deep sigh. 

‘He’s stronger than you think,’ I say through gritted teeth. 'D'you know he's met someone now? Someone who he works with, they're thinking about moving in together.'

She smiles. ‘You may like to think you’re strong, Danielle, and that you’re ready to move on, but has it ever crossed your mind, that without my actions, all those years ago, you would never have been born? You’re as much my daughter, as you are your mother’s and Oliver’s. I made you.’

I stand up, banging my knees on the table. ‘When you go back to your cell I want you to think of me living a full life, you tried to break my friendship with Callum, but now that’s stronger than ever. I’ll never see Oliver again, I have a family, Emma and Michael are my parents and they always have been. I’m nowhere near broken. I want you to remember that. See that’s why I wanted to come and see you today.’

She nods and picks at her right eye. ‘Just so long as you remember that your existence is down to me. For as long as you live you’ll never be able to forget that.’

We’re done here. I don’t say anything. I leave her sitting there and sweep towards the exit. Even as I focus on the security as I leave the building, Mary’s last words echo inside my mind. Your existence is down to me. That might be right, but my life is what I make it. She doesn’t get to control that.

I step out into bright sunshine, squinting. I hurry down the front steps and across the car park, Callum’s waiting for me. He’s standing outside the car, scrolling through his phone.

‘Fancy the cinema?’ he asks, shoving his phone back into his pocket.

I raise an eyebrow. ‘The cinema, on a school night?’

He shrugs. ‘No time like the present.’

I lean in towards him and kiss him on the lips; he wraps his arm around me and I breathe in his Aventus cologne. For a moment I forget we’re standing outside the prison. Right now, it’s just me and him. That’s all that matters. The future is ours. 'I love you, you know that?'  

He grins at me. 'I always knew it,' he says, parting a strand of my hair away from my eye. 

I laugh. ‘C’mon then, so long as whatever we’re seeing has plenty of action and gore,’ I say, grinning.

‘Ah, I thought you’d like a soppy romance?’ he says.

‘C’mon, Callum, I’ve not changed that much,’ I say, laughing, slipping into the front seat.

The engine chugs into life and Jessie J’s Domino fills up the car as the radio bursts from the speakers.

Callum steers the car out of the car park and we drive onto the main road into the burnt orange sun set.

The End