His Silence : His Silence - Chapter Five by Jacob1395 |
I don’t know how I’ve managed to get through these last three weeks. I was expecting to receive another letter from Harvey, or from the prison, telling me my request had been rejected again, but nothing arrived. Every time I hear the letter flap ping, my heart lurches, making me feel the same way I did waiting for my GCSE results. There was always that tightness in my chest that plagued me for days, and the feeling like my brain was on fire when I tried to go to sleep. ‘Righto, I’m off,’ Emma says, pecking me on my cheek. She’s clutching her phone; it’s open on her horoscope app. She never goes out the front door without checking it. ‘What’s it saying for today?’ I ask, picking up my green tea and breathing in its fresh scent, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. ‘What?’ she says, staring at me, and then she glances at her phone. ‘Oh, well, let’s see, I might find it hard to take criticism today.’ She shuts her phone down and stands still, biting her lip. ‘Emma, you know all of this stuff is rubbish, don’t you?’ I say. ‘Yes, of course I do, anyway, I’ll see you later, sweetie,’ she says, slipping her phone in her pocket. The minute she gets in the car she’ll be checking her appearance in her mirror making sure there’s nothing people can criticise her on. ‘You’re back at five?’ I ask. ‘Of course, same as always.’ She frowns at me. I flick my gaze back to my computer screen. She’ll want to know why I asked that question now. ‘Michael’s going fishing at eleven, so at least you’ll have some peace and quiet then,’ Emma says. I smile. ‘Oh, Michael’s no bother, I’ll see you later.’ Emma has no idea Michael’s taken the day off work to come to the prison with me. I hate lying to her, but Michael’s right, if we were to tell her what we were doing she’d be annoyed with both of us. I breathe a sigh of relief when Emma’s car starts up on the driveway. She’s often said she can’t see how I can work from home, but I’d be miserable if I had to commute in and out of London every day. Emma works at a nail salon in Chelmsford, which isn’t too far away. I suppose I could consider searching for a job there in Chelmsford, certainly not at the nail salon, but even Emma complains about the traffic. Michael hurries down the stairs and pokes his head around the living room door. ‘You know I’m going to have to find something to do with myself after the prison,’ he says to me, stuffing his white shirt into his trousers. ‘Otherwise she won’t believe I’ve been fishing if I’m at home when she gets back.’ ‘D’you think she bought it though?’ I ask. I’m sure she thinks something’s up. He shrugs. ‘She didn’t mention anything to me last night, and if anything’s bothering Emma, she always waits until we’re both in bed. What time do you want to leave?’ The clock on my computer screen reads eight a.m. ‘Eleven? That’ll give us plenty of time to get there,’ I say. ‘Right, well I’m going to get on with some work in the garage. Try and keep calm and put the visit to the back of your mind.’ ‘Will do,’ I say. Like there’s anyway that’s going to be possible. Thoughts about the visit kept me awake all night, tossing and turning. I rub my eyes. Emma better not choose today of all days to pop back for lunch, or come back early, like she sometimes does, if it’s a quiet day. Facing my laptop, I open the Internet, type in my family’s name and press enter. Hundreds of results pop up. The article at the very top is from a couple of years ago, when it was the eighteenth anniversary. Mum and Dad’s faces beam back at me as I open the link. Mum’s curly black hair, I used to play with as a toddler, is clumped on her shoulders, exposing a glint of diamond in her ears. I’ve always thought Dad has the quality of a movie star about him, an old classic movie star like James Dean. Dad’s golden brown hair is swept to the right. It’s the way Dad glances at the camera, the steely look in his dark eyes. My knees jitter under the table. I don’t look like either of them. They’re so good looking and I’m not. Would they have been proud of me, of what I’ve achieved so far in life? Would they have pushed me to get a degree? I shake the thoughts out of my head and begin to read the article. Eighteen years ago today on the 4th August 2004, the shocking murders of the Cole family became a worldwide phenomenon. Only a handful of cases around the world have received the same level of publicity. John Cole (47) and Laura Cole (45) were butchered to death by their only son, Harvey, who also killed a family friend, Ian Jones (age unknown) who was living with them at the time in a rented house in Little Castle, Essex. Harvey confessed to killing them, but refused to tell the police why, and to this day the case still remains a mystery. Of course this has given rise to a number of conspiracy theories. What is even more shocking, is at the time, Harvey was only fourteen years old. Child murderers are extremely rare in this country, so there was no question about it that this case was going to be big. Countless investigators have tried to solve the case over the years, with no success, and what is even more puzzling, is there is very little trace of this family before the murders. It appears that before they arrived in Little Castle they didn’t exist. The most logical explanation is, for some reason, the family, and Ian, changed their names. But no one has ever come forward claiming to know the family. On the eighteenth anniversary we spoke to key witnesses, who lived in the area at the time, about what they can remember from that fateful day. Alice Whitlock, who has lived in the area all her life recalls, “I remember this strange family arriving, I think they must’ve arrived in the middle of the night, no one saw them arrive during the day. My husband used to always make a point of welcoming anyone new, particularly if they’d moved into a house on our street. The first we knew someone was living in the house was when we spotted a blue car outside. My husband baked a cake for them, and when he went up to the gate, they wouldn’t let him in, wouldn’t even talk to him when he tried to make his presence known. He was in a right mood about it at the time I can tell you, and thought then there must be something odd going on. Of course we never saw the children while they were there, that’s why we were so shocked to hear a fourteen-year-old boy had been arrested.” I stop reading. It’s weird hearing other people giving accounts of my family, thinking they know them. These people don’t know anything and yet they’re surmising what my family must’ve been like, it’s wrong. Shaking my head I glance at the bottom of the article. There’s a picture of the house where my family were killed. This is where we lived for three weeks. If only the walls of the house could talk. I let out a shaky breath. There’s a tall wrought iron gate at the foot of the drive, and the house is big. I read somewhere it was built in the seventeenth century. Why Ian chose this place to take my family to I have no idea. I’m pretty sure I read somewhere once the rent was cheap, and it sounds like they needed somewhere quick. Why did they need somewhere quick? What were they running from? I lean in closer, my heart racing. There’s a fountain before the front door, but it’s bare and dry, in fact I have no memory of there ever being water running in the fountain. There are big wide windows on the first and second floor. I picture myself as a six-year-old peering out of them. I must’ve been over the moon as a kid, living somewhere so big, with lots of garden space, although I have no recollection of ever playing outside. All I can picture is the kitchen, with its island table in the middle, red brick walls and the huge clock with Roman numerals, with the tinted gold frame. One thing that does stand out in my mind is that the curtains were always closed. Was that to prevent us looking out or someone else looking in? The last night we’d spent there, we’d had fish and chips in the living room in front of the television, as a treat for Harvey’s birthday. Some items of furniture still had white cloths thrown over them. Taking a sip of my green tea, I close the article and rub my knuckles. I can’t read anymore. The reason I’m in this mess is because of one decision my brother made. He did this; he made my life what it is now. I wipe my eyes. This is his fault. Pulling open my emails, I start to respond to the ones that flooded in over the weekend. It’s coming up to quarter to eleven when Michael reappears in the living room, wiping his hands on a piece of kitchen paper. ‘Are you ready?’ he asks. I sit back, thinking about the article I read earlier, my legs bouncing up and down under the table. I need to get this over with. ‘Yep, course. Let’s go,’ I say, picking myself up and switching off my laptop.
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