The Blame Game. C.J. Cooke

      A noise escapes my mouth. Every suspicion I’ve had has been correct, all my instincts ringing true. Someone was watching us. Someone wants us dead.

      ‘So, you’re completely sure,’ Vanessa asks me again. ‘No drugs purchased in Mexico. No reason for anyone to try and harm your family.’

      ‘This has nothing to do with drugs!’ I shout, the strength of my anger surprising everyone in the room, including me. ‘I told you! Someone was watching us at the beach hut and the next day a man crashed into our car. You say you’ve arrested him. Who paid him to crash into our car?’

      Superintendent Caliz leans back in his chair, laces his fingers together and barks something in Kriol.

      Vanessa processes whatever information he has shared before tilting her head to mine, her brow folded in confusion.

      ‘What is your husband’s name?’ she asks.

      ‘Michael,’ I say, confused. ‘Why?’

      ‘Michael Pengilly?’

      ‘Yes, Michael. Why? What has that got to do with the man who crashed into us?’

      My voice rises again in desperation. She repeats this to Superintendent Caliz, then listens intently as he replies in Kriol. The air is suddenly loud with suspicion and menace. I had expected to feel safe here but instead I feel in even more danger than I did at the hospital.

      Vanessa fixes me with a dark stare. She chooses her words carefully. ‘The van driver claims your husband paid him to crash into your car to kill you all and make it look like an accident.’

      Her words are like a black hole, sucking me into it cell by cell, until all that’s left of me is a scream.

       11

       Michael

      1st September 2017

      It’s a shock to the system to be in a car again, right after the crash. I break into a cold sweat as we move through the streets, pushing through crowds of people – donkeys, too, and I swear some guy had an orangutan back there – and then a flood of cars that veer all over the place. The driver tells me there are no road lanes in this town. Looks like there are barely any roads either, at least not of the tarmac variety, despite the fact that there appears to be a car-to-human ratio of eleven-to-one. Dust rises from the tyres, making it impossible to see or breathe. Like driving through a sandstorm. The driver smokes weed, has some funky music playing loudly. He tries to strike up a conversation, asks if I’m a medical student at the hospital. I say yes and try to conceal the lie in my voice.

      There’s a white phone charger trailing into the back seat over a couple of Coke cans. It’s a match for my phone. I say, ‘Can I use this?’

      ‘Yes, of course,’ he says. I plug in my phone and within minutes the screen flashes white. I scroll through my photographs, past videos taken by Reuben. I click on one of them and find it’s of the bookstore, pre-fire. The sight of it pierces me. His face appears large on the screen as he props the phone against the leg of a table, plucks a book off the shelf and then sits on the floor, cross-legged, filming himself reading. A pair of legs appears next to him after a few minutes. I watch as he glances up at whoever’s standing there, then goes back to reading. It must be a customer. She’s carrying a Sainsbury’s shopping bag. She steps over him, like he’s part of the furniture, then turns to him and snaps, ‘Why are you just sitting there in the middle of the floor? Can’t you see people are trying to get past?’

      Reuben lifts his head and stares at her blankly before returning to his book.

      ‘So rude,’ the woman says off-screen, and instantly I feel an old urge to shout, He’s not rude, he’s autistic! Helen and I once said we ought to have that emblazoned on T-shirts and wear them whenever we went out as a family. One day Saskia came home from school and said her teacher had said she was very artistic. Saskia was quick to correct the teacher. ‘I told her that doesn’t mean I’m rude and ignorant, Mummy. Artistic people are just as polite as neuro-typical people. Isn’t that right?’

      We had a laugh at that one.

      I scroll through his other videos, one of him playing Minecraft, another of him drawing. I know Reuben is an amazing boy. Despite society’s obsession with status, personas, the endless barrage of visual culture, we still place a ludicrous amount of trust in what we see. On the outside my boy isn’t normal, and that’s still a problem. Helen and I vowed a long time ago that we would fight for our children to feel at home in this dying, messed-up world, to find their place in it. We would protect them.

      And that’s precisely what I intend to do now.

      I scroll through my gallery to find the photographs I took of the letters. Helen doesn’t know I opened them, but she knows we were receiving them. Why hide them from me? Every year, a new letter. And always on the date of Luke’s death to make a point. As if I could ever forget.

      I took photographs of the letters in case she got rid of them. And I needed time to think about what the letters said, about why she didn’t tell me about them. There are many secrets in our marriage, but they pale in comparison to squirrelling away letters that contain so much threat. Helen’s forever accusing me of avoiding confrontation, and yet she was the one keeping these from me. Why? What has she got to hide?

      I start to panic when I can’t find the images. There are photos of Reuben wearing a snorkel mask for the first time, giving a big thumbs up. Pictures of Saskia pirouetting in her Trolls swimsuit, her face all lit up when she spotted the dolphins. I try to flick past them as fast as I can but something in my chest gives and I have to look away so as not to start sobbing.

      Finally, I pull up an image of one of the letters and zoom in on the cream page.

       Sir,

       We write again on behalf of our clients regarding the death of Luke Aucoin.

       Our records show that you signed for our previous letter. We request that you contact us immediately to avoid further consequences.

       Sincerely,

       K. Haden

      A wave of anger rolls over me as I read the words ‘further consequences’.

      ‘Where to, man?’ the taxi driver asks.

      ‘The airport,’ I tell him. ‘Make it quick.’

       12

       Michael

      16th June 1995

      It’s decided: we’ll spend the next three nights in Chamonix learning stuff like what to do in an avalanche (‘Duck?’ Theo offers), crevasse rescue (‘It’s called chucking a rope down there, mate,’ Luke says), and belay techniques, or in other words, we’ll be drinking our body weights in vodka and singing German folk songs, with some token ice pick swinging in between.

      This morning we’re joining a crowd of fifteen other climbers led by a mountain guide named Sebastian who is taking us up the Aiguilles Rouges for some mixed climbing techniques. This part of the Alps reminds me of Ben Nevis in Scotland, or the Lake District – a palette of earthy brown and velvety green, with gentle rises and pockets of snow in the nooks of distant peaks. Mountains stretch as far as the eye can see, no sign of human life anywhere. Just our little group swallowed up in the mountains.

      It’s a warm sunny day without much of a breeze, but Sebastian has us all geared up as if we’re approaching the summit – helmets, crampons, ice picks, the lot. Still, I get to watch the sun rise over