His Silence - Chapter 38

‘Hey, what’s wrong?’ Callum says, sitting on the bed beside me.

I wipe my eyes. ‘Oh, think I’m alright now, just had a mild panic attack.’

He stares at me with wide eyes. ‘A mild panic attack, you haven’t had one of them since we were at school. What caused it?’

‘Oliver . . . he did this sort of, weird exercise thing with me he said he was going to do. I . . . I could see myself back in the cupboard, the day Mum and Dad were killed. I was back there; I was physically in that space. It was so real.’ I clamp my hand to my forehead. I can’t let it get to me again. When I draw my hand away from my head I notice it’s shaking.

‘Hey, it’s OK. Nothing can hurt you, remember. You’re safe,’ he says.

‘Am I?’ I ask. ‘Perhaps you’re right; perhaps it wasn’t the right decision to come here. Do you think we should go home?’

A brief silence stretches between us.

‘That’s your decision,’ Callum says.

I stand up from the bed. ‘I’m fed up of everyone telling me this is my decision.’ I kick the bedside cabinet and hold my scrunched hands tight to the side of my head, so I can feel my knuckles pressing into my skin.

‘OK, OK.’ Callum holds out his hands. ‘Why don’t we sit tight for a couple of days? It’ll look a bit weird to our parents if we suddenly say we’re coming home, we’ll be faced with loads of questions about that, which we’ll have to try and find the answer to. Let’s try and see what we can find out first, OK. If we haven’t found anything worthwhile by the end of the week, we can make a decision then.’

I let out a steady breath and wipe my eyes. ‘Oliver did tell me how he first came to live here with my parents.’

‘Did he? Do you think he told you the truth?’ Callum asks.

‘I’m not sure, he said he’d had some sort of car accident and lost his wife. That’s how this whole thing started.’

‘Perhaps there’ll be a report about it online,’ he suggests.

‘Oh, he gave me the Wi-Fi code, don’t share this with anyone else though, he told me not to,’ I say. ‘Put your phone next to mine and I’ll share it with you.’

Callum shakes his head. ‘Phone’s still up in my room, will have to do it later. Quickly Google it now to see if you can find out anything about this accident.’

Opening Google on my phone, I try to think of the dates for when the car accident would’ve been. I was born in 2003; Harvey was born eight years earlier in 1995. So it would’ve either been in the late or mid-nineties. I type the decade, the local area and car accident into the search engine. I scroll down; nothing jumps out at me.

‘There’s nothing here,’ I say.

Callum shrugs. ‘Perhaps it wasn’t reported on back then, or the company archives didn’t hang onto it.’

‘I don’t know,’ I reply. ‘He got quite emotional about it though, so I’m inclined to believe it did happen.’

I tap my phone on my leg. What reason would Oliver have to lie to me about something like that?