But she doesn’t wave back.
I’d already been preparing myself for a potentially frosty reception, and it seems it’s going to be just as bad as I thought. She looks even moodier than the last time I saw her, which is saying a lot. At least I won’t be home for long. A couple of weeks and I’ll be back on this train to Newcastle for my second term.
I can’t wait.
Slotting my ticket into the machine, the barriers fling open, and I step through to the other side. Mum walks towards me, her face still a picture of unhappiness, and I prepare myself for an awkward hello.
In the end, that’s what I get, but it’s even worse than I imagined.
‘Have you heard the news?’ Mum asks me, keeping her voice low even though I doubt any of the other passengers around us in this busy station would be able to hear us over the blaring platform announcements and squealing brakes from the arriving trains.
‘What news?’
‘They’ve found Rupert’s body.’
Now I understand why Mum looks so glum.
‘What? How?’
‘I don’t know. I just heard it on the radio on the way here. He hasn’t been identified yet, but the body was found in the same woods, so it has to be him, doesn’t it?’
I nod my head while trying to think of some way this doesn’t have to be bad news. But I’ve got nothing.
‘Come on,’ Mum says, heading for the station exit, and I follow quickly behind her, lugging my bag and wishing she would give me a hand with it. But I daren’t ask her.
Once outside in the fresh air, Mum doesn’t slow down and I’m practically jogging to keep up with her as we make it back to the car. It’s a relief to get my bag into the boot before I take my seat beside her in the front and prepare for an awkward drive home. But Mum doesn’t start the engine. Instead, she stares ahead through the windscreen and looks like she wants to ask me something.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask. ‘Let’s go.’
But Mum doesn’t move again.
‘Mum?’
‘The student that has gone missing in Newcastle. Was that you?’
Her question is a bold one, but she doesn’t turn to look at me after asking it. She keeps her eyes on the windscreen, almost as if she is too afraid to turn and face me.
‘What do you think?’ I reply, deliberately testing her.
‘I don’t know what to think anymore.’
Then it happens. Just like it did in my bedroom that night after we had returned home after burying Jimmy. Mum breaks down again. But this time, her sobs are even more forceful and pitiful, and it’s clear that her demonstration of emotion is something that has been building up inside her for a while. She doesn’t stop crying even when I put my hand on her shoulder and pull her into me.
As I feel her sobbing on my shoulder, I’m now fully aware of what it must have been like for Mum while I have been gone. I have been able to move on with my life in a new place surrounded by new people, but I guess for her, it has been much of the same. Now the news of Rupert’s body being found must have tipped her over the edge. Or maybe it’s my return. Whatever it is, she is clearly distraught, and I’m not sure what I can do to make things better.
‘Mum, it’s going to be alright,’ I say, though even I’m not convinced of that.
She continues to cry into my shoulder for a good few minutes before eventually composing herself enough to sit back up and wipe her red eyes with the sleeve of her sweater.
‘I’m going to hand myself in,’ she says after getting her breathing back under control.
‘Mum...’
‘I can’t do this anymore. I can’t live with this guilt.’
‘But I’m responsible for Rupert’s death, not you. You were just trying to protect me.’
‘It’s not just that.’
‘Then what?’
‘It’s you,’ she says, looking at me properly for the first time since we got in the car together. ‘It’s the guilt of you being my daughter.’
I imagine there aren’t many more devastating things to hear from your parent than that, and it takes me a few seconds to absorb the blow that her words have dealt me.
‘I know it’s not your fault how you turned out,’ she says. ‘You saw something as a child that you should never have seen. That’s on me, and I can’t change that. But I can change what happens going forward.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘No more innocent people have to get hurt.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about Rupert. I’m talking about the guy at your university. I’m talking about the next guy, whoever he may be. I can’t walk around free while you’re out there being the way you are. But I can’t bear to see you punished, so it will have to be me.’
‘Mum, I don’t know what-’
‘Save the lies,’ she says, cutting me off. ‘I can’t listen to them anymore. I don’t even want to see you anymore. I just want it all to be over.’
I don’t know what to say to that, so I say nothing. Instead, I watch as Mum turns on the engine and drives us out of the station car park, her hands gripping the wheel tightly and her foot a little too eager on the accelerator pedal for the speed limits on these roads.
I stare at her all the way home, devastated at what I have done to her. All my life, all she has ever done is try to protect me, and this is how I have repaid her.
It takes around twenty minutes for us to get back to our street, but the second we turn onto it, we both know something is wrong. The first warning is the row of police cars we see parked along the kerb. The second warning is the fact that their drivers are all standing outside our
