Don't Look Back Read online

  Don’t Look Back

  Ben Cheetham

  Copyright © 2018 by Ben Cheetham

  Ben Cheetham has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents act 1988.

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the author.

  Find out more about the author and his other books at

  bencheetham.com

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Thank You!

  Other Books by the Author

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  The words were finally flowing. Only a hundred or so more and Adam would hit his daily target. From beyond the study door came raised voices. Adam registered no reaction. When he was in the zone, the only voices he heard belonged to his characters. Feet thundered across the landing. The door flew open and two young boys charged into the room. That the boys were twins was obvious from their sandy curls, chestnut eyes, freckles and other matching features. People who didn’t know them had difficulty telling them apart, but to Adam the differences were as glaring as the similarities. Jacob’s hair was a shade lighter and his cheeks a fraction fuller than Henry’s. He was a pound or two heavier and a centimetre taller too. The greatest difference, though, was in their expressions. As usual, Jacob had a sparkle of mischief in his eyes and a cheeky grin on his lips. In contrast, Henry’s eyes were pulled together by a frown and his mouth was set in a serious line.

  “You’re not allowed,” said Henry, dragging at his brother’s arm.

  Jacob pushed him off. “Yes I am.”

  Adam raised his hands for quiet. “What have I told you boys about coming in here when I’m working?”

  Henry shot Jacob a See I told you look.

  “It’s six o’clock,” protested Jacob. “You said you’d be finished by six o’clock.”

  “No, I said I’d try to be finished by six,” corrected Adam. “Look, I’ve got...” he checked the word count, “eighty more words to write and then–”

  “Then you’ll play with us,” Jacob broke in.

  Smiling at his son’s puppyish eagerness, Adam nodded. He made a wafting motion. “Now go.”

  Jacob gave Henry a playful jab in the ribs and darted from the room.

  “You’re dead meat,” shouted Henry, chasing after him.

  Jacob laughed at the threat. He almost always came out on top in fights. Not just because he was bigger, but because Henry lost his temper easily. And the more he lost it, the more provokingly calm Jacob would become.

  Adam refocussed on the computer screen. His fingers moved over the keyboard, gathering speed as the exterior world once again became a far off place... The blade slid between her ribs. She fell onto the bed with a soft thump, blood spreading over her blouse like... Like what? Spilled wine? No. Too obvious. “Like... Like...” he murmured to himself. The door opened again. He turned sharply. “Right, I’m starting to get annoyed with you–” He broke off at the sight of his wife.

  Ella was wearing a knee-length black dress that hugged her hourglass curves. Her light brown hair was piled on her head, with a few tendrils framing her face and neck. Dark mascara outlined her large almond eyes. Her lips glistened with pink gloss. “How do I look?”

  “Gorgeous.” More than gorgeous, Adam realised. Beautiful. He’d always been attracted to Ella, but way back when they met at university he’d described her to his housemates as cute, a girl next door type. Sometime in the intervening years, he couldn’t pin down quite when, she’d graduated from cute to beautiful. It wasn’t simply that she’d shed her puppy fat or that her eyes had mellowed to a soft, almost caramel brown. The way he looked at her had changed. He no longer noticed the fine lines beneath her eyes or the slight crookedness of her teeth. She was like a painting he’d always enjoyed looking at, but whose true beauty had only become apparent once he learned to see past the imperfections. He smiled.

  “What’s so amusing?”

  “I spend half my life trying to avoid clichés, but I think I’m turning into one.”

  Ella smiled back. “It’s called getting old.”

  “Hey, I’m still young. Or at least youngish.”

  Ella fiddled with her dress’s plunging neckline. “You don’t think it’s too low-cut?”

  “I think I wholly disapprove of you looking so fantastic for a night out without me.”

  “Is it too much? I can change into–”

  Ella broke off as Adam rose and put his hands on her hips. She shuddered as he kissed her neck. “You smell good,” he murmured, running his hands down her thighs. He closed the door with his foot.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What do you think?” Adam began to slide her dress up to her waist.

  “The boys will hear.”

  “I’ll be quiet.”

  “But what if–”

  Adam silenced Ella with another kiss. He dropped back onto his chair, pulling her to straddle him. She chuckled. “You’re bad.”

  “Then you’d better punish me.”

  A car horn sounded. Ella peered over Adam’s shoulder out of the window. “It’s my taxi.”

  “Oh for fu–”

  Ella pressed a finger against his lips. “I’ll just have to punish you later.” She smoothed down her dress and hurried to check her lipstick in their bedroom mirror.

  “What time will you be back?”

  “I’m not sure. I shouldn’t be too late.” She grabbed a handbag, slipped her feet into high heels and tottered downstairs.

  Adam followed Ella to the hallway. Jacob and Henry came sprinting out of the living room and flung their arms around her legs. “Don’t go out, Mum,” said Henry. “We don’t like it when you go out.”

  “Yeah, Dad’s always grumpy when you go out,” Jacob added with an impish glance at Adam.

  Adam laughed. “Is there any wonder when I don’t get a moment’s peace?”

  Ella stooped to kiss her sons. Henry offered up a cheek. Jacob reeled away, wrinkling his nose. “Yuck! I hate that pink lipstick. It’s sticky.”

  Ella planted a kiss on Henry. With a flash of jealousy in his eyes, Jacob pulled his brother away from her lips.

  “Let go,” exclaimed Henry, trying to twist free. The twins staggered into the living room and fell onto the rug.
>
  “Play nicely, boys. I don’t want any tears while I’m gone,” Ella warned them. She looked at Adam with the same twinkle in her eyes that Jacob had inherited. “Have a good night.”

  Adam smiled at the gentle taunt. “You too.”

  “Will you wrestle with us, Dad?” the twins called out in unison.

  “I’m working.”

  Ella raised an eyebrow as if to say, You could have fooled me. “You know what, Adam, they’re eleven-years-old. In another year or two they won’t want to play with you. You should enjoy it while it lasts.”

  “You’re not the one getting beaten up on a daily basis.” Adam rubbed his lower back. “I’m still aching from yesterday’s wrestling match.”

  Ella puckered her lips in mock sympathy. “Aww, I think I was right. Daddy’s getting old.”

  Laughing, the twins crowed, “Daddy’s getting old, Daddy’s getting old.”

  The taxi beeped again. Ella gave Adam a quick peck. She opened a full-length frosted glass door that led to a small porch. She put on a long coat, buttoning it up against the chilly November evening as she stepped outside.

  “Don’t get too drunk,” said Adam.

  Ella flashed him a cheeky grin. “Would I?”

  She ducked into a black cab and waved. Adam waved back and turned to the twins who were rolling around in a red-faced tangle of limbs. He watched them uncertainly for a moment, then he returned to his study, telling himself, I’ll just finish the sentence I’m on. He read out loud, “Blood spreading over her blouse like... like an ink stain.” He shook his head. That wasn’t quite right either. He chewed thoughtfully on a fingernail, picturing the blood, its colour, the shapes it made as it pooled between the woman’s breasts. He flinched as a noise from downstairs burst into his consciousness – the slam of a door. It was followed an instant later by the crash of shattering glass. He jumped up and hurried onto the landing. “What’s going on down there? Are you boys alright?”

  “Dad.”

  The voice was so faint and tremulous that Adam couldn’t be sure which of the twins it belonged to. Peering worriedly over the bannister, he saw a gaping hole where the glass door had been. Broken glass was heaped inside the porch. A pair of bare feet was splayed out amongst the jagged shards. His heart pounding in his throat, Adam bounded downstairs. His eyes swelled in horror at the sight that confronted him. Henry was standing with his back against the front door, pale and rigid, his left hand pressed to his neck. Blood was seeping between his fingers, running down his wrist and dripping from his elbow onto the back of Jacob’s head. Jacob was facedown on the tiled floor, arms outstretched to either side with blood pooling around his wrists. One pool was small and glossily dark. The other was large and startlingly bright red. There was a faintly metallic butcher’s shop smell in the air.

  “Jacob!” cried Adam, dropping to his knees, heedless of the glass crunching beneath them. He scooped his son into his arms. Jacob’s eyes were closed. His head lolled like a broken doll’s. Blood oozed from a razor thin cut that stretched from his palm two or three centimetres up his left wrist. It spurted spasmodically from a cut twice as long on his right wrist. “Oh shit! Oh shit!” gasped Adam, his panicked eyes darting around for something to stem the bleeding. He snatched one of Ella’s satin scarves off a peg and wrapped it tightly around Jacob’s right wrist. Blood instantly soaked through it. He used another scarf on the other wrist. “Get a coat or something and press it to your neck,” he instructed Henry.

  Adam struggled to his feet, hugging Jacob to him. He grabbed a bunch of keys from a hook and fumbled one into the front door. Without closing the door behind himself, he ran the few paces between the house and where the car was parked in the street. Quickly and gently, he put Jacob into the front passenger seat. Henry clambered into the back. Adam stabbed the key into the ignition and started the engine. The car lurched forwards. There was a crunch as it clipped the rear bumper of the car parked in front. Jacob slumped forwards from the impact.

  “Shit,” Adam exclaimed again. He straightened Jacob up and tried to hold him in place while speeding along narrow streets of terraced houses.

  Jacob breathed a tiny moan and his eyelids flickered.

  “Hold on, son. We’re on our way to hospital. You’re going to be alright.” As if to convince himself, Adam repeated, “You’re going to be alright.”

  “I feel really dizzy,” Henry slurred.

  Looking in the rearview mirror, Adam saw that Henry’s eyes were drifting shut. “Keep your eyes open!”

  With what seemed a great effort, Henry parted his eyelids.

  Hammering the horn, Adam screeched onto a busy main road. A chorus of beeps sounded as he careered around a roundabout, passing a sign with a red square on it marked ‘H. A & E’. There had been plenty of times when the day-and-night blare of ambulance sirens had made Ella and him regret buying a house so close to a hospital, but at that moment it seemed like the best decision they’d ever made.

  Narrowly avoiding an oncoming bus, Adam swerved onto a road flanked by ‘Whipps Cross University Hospital’ signs. He raced towards a three-storey, redbrick Victorian building with tall arched windows. Squealing to a stop outside a modern glass-fronted extension, he sprang out and ran around to the passenger side. He lifted Jacob’s sickeningly limp body into his arms again. With Henry trailing behind, he dashed through automatic doors into the ‘Emergency + Urgent Care Centre’. A queue led to a bank of reception desks in the busy waiting area.

  “I need help!” shouted Adam. “My son’s bleeding to death.”

  A nurse emerged from a double door. She took one look at Jacob’s injuries and motioned for Adam to follow her. Beyond the door was a large room of blue-curtained cubicles. Adam laid Jacob on a trolley-bed.

  “I want to stay with my dad,” whimpered Henry as another nurse guided him to an adjoining cubicle.

  “I’m right here, Henry,” called out Adam.

  Adam reluctantly retreated from the bedside as, from out of nowhere, a dizzying array of medical staff clustered around Jacob. Working fast and calmly, they placed an oxygen mask over Jacob’s waxy face, hooked him up to a heart monitor and replaced the makeshift bandages with thick gauze pads.

  “Where are you taking him?” Adam asked as the bed was manoeuvred out of the cubicle.

  “Your son needs immediate surgery,” a nurse informed him.

  “Can I go with him?”

  “Yes, but first I need some information from you.”

  As Adam watched Jacob being swiftly wheeled away, the feeling that he was seeing his son for the last time struck him like a sledgehammer. In a daze, he answered the nurse’s rapid-fire questions about Jacob’s medical history.

  “Dad, Dad.”

  He turned towards Henry’s tremulous voice. A doctor was emptying a hypodermic into Henry’s neck close to a freshly swabbed small but deep looking cut. Adam hurried to his son’s side.

  “You need a couple of stitches,” the doctor told Henry. “And I need you to stay very still. Can you do that for me?”

  “Yes.”

  Adam took his son’s hand. “Don’t look at the needle, Henry. Look at me.”

  Henry grimaced but held still as the doctor sutured the wound.

  “Good boy. Almost finished,” said the doctor, cutting the thread and applying a bandage. To Adam, he added, “He’s been extremely lucky. A millimetre to the left and his jugular would have been perforated.”

  “Where’s Jacob?” asked Henry.

  “The doctors had to take him away to...” Anxiety clogged Adam’s voice.

  A pleading look filled Henry’s eyes. “I didn’t mean to hurt him, Dad.”

  “What happened?”

  “He hit me so I hit him back and made his lip bleed and he got really angry. I was scared so I ran into the porch and shut the door to keep him out but he ran into the glass.” Tears streamed down Henry’s cheeks. “It was an accident, Dad. Honest.”

  “Mr Piper.”

  Somet
hing about the voice made Adam’s stomach squeeze with dread. He turned to a grave-faced female doctor. “Yes?”

  “Could you come with me please?”

  “Why?”

  “It would be best if we speak in private.”

  Adam suddenly felt ice cold. Henry made a distressed sound as his dad moved away. “I’ll only be a minute,” Adam reassured him, looking to the doctor for confirmation of his words. The doctor gave him none.

  His legs trembling as if he’d run a marathon, Adam followed the doctor to a room where chairs were arranged around a coffee-table with a box of tissues on it. The doctor gestured for him to sit. Adam shook his head. “Just tell me.”

  “I’m very sorry to have to inform you, Mr Piper, that your son passed away before we could perform surgery.”

  Adam’s voice scraped out. “Are you sure?” He knew the question was needless. The doctor would hardly have said such a thing if she wasn’t sure.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  A storm of conflicting voices battered Adam’s mind. Is this really happening? Yes, Jacob’s gone. He’s never coming back. How can that be? Half-an-hour ago he was fine. It can be and it is. He’s dead. Dead. Dead...

  Adam stared at his bloodstained hands. They seemed to be getting smaller, as if they were floating away from him on an outgoing tide. The noises of his mind and the hospital were receding too, until all that remained was a silence like an ocean.

  Chapter 2

  Nine months later...

  Adam reread the unfinished sentence for what must have been the hundredth time that day. She fell onto the bed with a soft thump, blood spreading over her blouse like... He tried to picture the woman, but all he could see was Jacob sprawled amongst glass and blood. The image was like an impregnable wall. Day after day he hurled himself against it until he collapsed in a heap of frustration.

  He silenced the music blaring from his computer. He’d used to cherish the times when he had the house to himself and could work in peace and quiet. Since Jacob’s death he couldn’t bear to sit at the computer without music on loud enough to cover the absence of feet thundering around and voices arguing and laughing. He left his study, pausing on the landing to listen at a closed door. After a moment of frowning silence, he opened the door.