Wall of Silence by Buchanan Tracy

Author:Buchanan, Tracy [Buchanan, Tracy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Published: 2020-03-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Tuesday 23rd April, 2019

8.34 a.m.

Melissa walked with the twins to school the next day. Lewis had surprised Melissa by waking that morning and declaring that he wanted to return to school too. She wasn’t sure that was such a great idea – he seemed a bit subdued – but he’d been quite insistent. Grace hadn’t been so keen, though, so was being looked after by Bill while Rosemary stayed at the hospital with Patrick. Melissa was planning to go there too, straight after dropping the twins off. There had been no change in his condition, but she wanted to be there as much as she could in case there was.

Melissa took in a deep breath, trying to mentally prepare herself for the possibility of seeing other parents at the school gates. It had been a couple of years since she’d done the school run, with the twins now walking Grace to her primary school before heading into their own secondary school.

Melissa thought of the first time she’d ever done a school run with Joel, when he was five. He’d attended a specialist school ten miles away and a bus would pick him up and drop him off each day. But Patrick and she had insisted on taking him in for his first day. Melissa still remembered how confident Joel had pretended to be, using the special ramp to haul himself up into the car.

‘My boy is all grown up,’ Melissa had said to Patrick.

Her heart clenched at the memory of Joel, then at her husband’s absence now. She bit her lip to stop herself from crying as the school came into view. It was a sprawling modern building made of wood and exposed brick. It sat right on the edge of the south side of the forest, a short five-minute walk through the woods for the kids, though that five minutes often turned out to be longer as they messed about in the forest with their friends. Among the trees around the school were wooden picnic benches forming ‘forest classrooms’, the kids encouraged to learn outside whenever it was dry.

They drew closer to the wooden school gates, pupils wandering around among the pine trees in their gold-and-green uniforms. Some glanced over at Lilly, the handful of parents there smiling sympathetically at Melissa.

Melissa noticed Andrea Cooper talking urgently to her son, Carter, nearby. Carter was a tall skinny boy with gelled-back hair, white like his mother’s. Andrea grabbed her son’s arm, pulling him close to say something, but he shoved her away and walked off, laughing.

Melissa frowned as she took in Andrea’s wounded face. Carter was such an arse. Though Andrea irritated her, Melissa still felt sorry for her, having to deal with a son like that.

She thought back to what he might have said about her at the New Year’s Eve party . . . the same party where Maddy had been pictured glaring at Patrick. She peered over at Lilly to see she was linking arms with Maddy now, her friends gathering around her and hugging her while Lewis high-fived his friends nearby.

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