Don’t Turn Around: A heart-stopping gripping domestic suspense

I swallow the lump in my throat. ‘If it hadn’t aired, I suspect we’d be having an entirely different conversation. I had to do something, Jen. I won’t let Meg go, not without a fight.’

Jen follows my gaze to the photo on the bookcase next to my desk. It was taken many summers ago on a beach in Cornwall and captures a treasured moment of completeness with all four members of the McCoy family. Sean has his arms around my neck while Meg was meant to be propped up on her dad’s knee but she’d decided to dive across the three of us just as the photo was taken. We’re all laughing at her, as was the girl behind the camera.

‘Do you want me to take another photo, Auntie Ruth?’ Jen had asked, eager to get things right.

My niece was only seven and it was her first holiday with us. She had refused to go away with her family to Spain that summer because there had been turbulence during the flight home the year before and she had become hysterical. The intention was to leave her behind with her grandmother, but I wouldn’t have trusted my mother-in-law, God rest her soul, to look after a goldfish, so I’d offered to take Jen with us. The two girls were thrilled, Sean less so.

Jen and I smile at the memories of that holiday and the ones that followed. There were times when it felt like we were a family of five, with Jen and Meg more like sisters. ‘I didn’t know how lucky we were back then,’ I whisper.

‘You can always make new memories with the twins,’ Jen offers.

My smile twists. ‘I know, but Geoff called it walking away. Why would I abandon Meg’s legacy when there are so many questions left unanswered? I have Lewis’s attention now. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.’

Jen doesn’t answer straight away. I can only assume that the threat of legal action continues to play on her mind. ‘Whatever happens, we can’t give up on the helpline,’ she says at last. ‘I won’t walk away either.’

My smile reaches my eyes. ‘And that is the right answer, Jennifer. We might not get as many calls as we’d like but every one we do receive is important. Did you see Alison’s call sheets from Friday? Gemma phoned. Ryan’s been bombarding her with messages.’

Gemma is a very unhappy young woman, and although our main role is simply to listen, all our volunteers have been trained to help our callers recognise a partner’s manipulative behaviours. In the last month, we’ve been working with Gemma on some strategies to end her relationship as painlessly as possible.

She still lives at home with her mum and whenever I’ve taken one of her calls, it feels like a second chance to say the things I should have said to Meg, if only I’d known to recognise the signs of abuse for what they were. There’s even an inflection in Gemma’s voice – a slushiness to her ‘s’ sounds – that helps me imagine it is my daughter, and I’m determined to win this one.

‘She hasn’t replied to him, has she?’ Jen asks hopefully.

‘No. But she has read them. Ryan won’t let her go unless it’s on his terms. He’s from the same mould as someone else we know and if Lewis wasn’t up in Newcastle, I could believe it was him, simply going by a new name,’ I say. It’s one of my worst fears: that Lewis will do to another poor girl what he did to Meg.

‘You don’t really think it’s him, do you?’ Jen gasps, her face draining of colour.

I want to shrug it off but her shock twists my insides. ‘If I’m honest, I think the same about most callers but Lewis isn’t unique.’ I bite my lip. ‘We have to keep the helpline going, Jen, although right now that might have to be on a shoestring. Geoff has persuaded our lovely clients to donate to Selina’s fundraiser so we’ll have to hold off asking them to put their hands in their pockets again so soon.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Jen tells me earnestly. ‘I know how to drive a hard bargain. I’ve already had the flyers we need for Fresher’s Week printed for next to nothing.’

Next to nothing is about all we have, but Jen doesn’t need to know how bad it is yet. ‘I knew I could count on you.’

When Jen grips the armrests, I’m expecting her to stand but she doesn’t move. I think I can guess what she’s too polite to say. ‘Sorry, I’d completely forgotten to apologise about the fiasco with the cleaner. I hope Charlie doesn’t mind us letting her go?’

Jen bats away the apology with her hand, although the frown doesn’t leave her face. ‘He was worried there might be a problem with her, that’s all.’

I shake my head. ‘No, if there was a problem, it was with me,’ I assure her. ‘I could hear her moving about upstairs and I got it into my head that it was Meg.’ I try to laugh as I blink away unexpected tears. ‘Not that I ever heard my daughter vacuuming.’

‘No, it was always Meg creating the mess.’

‘Not the worst ones,’ I mutter as I make a point of picking up Lewis’s letter, screwing it into a ball and throwing it at the bin. When I miss, I refuse to view it as a bad omen.

5 (#u83005bf5-6f3b-5604-af07-afed4b746c48)

Jen

The automatic lights that react to movement have switched themselves off in all but one section of the office above the helpline pods. I’ve been sitting here for over an hour but the only person I’ve spoken to since the helpline opened has been Charlie. It’s his turn to cook dinner and he wants me to pick up some sour cream on my way home. It’s chilli night.

With one ear trained on the silent phone, I look out of the window and watch the shadows lengthen. I always cover the Wednesday shift and it doesn’t bother me working alone. The office is secure enough, with electronic passes to control access to each floor, barriers on the ground level and security guards who replace the concierge staff on the front desk until the last person leaves. Tonight, that will be me when the helpline closes at eight, by which point the September sun will have set.

So if I’m not bothered, why does my stomach twist at the thought of leaving?

It’s the same reason I regret not telling Ruth about Lewis being back in Liverpool. We all need to be on our guard and I was going to warn her on Monday, but then she mentioned Geoff’s push for retirement. If he knew Lewis was back, he’d use it as another argument to ‘walk away’. Ruth’s made it clear she’s not going to do that, in which case, does she really need to be looking over her shoulder every time she steps out the door? It’s not like she’d bump into him on the way to work since she drives in with Geoff. My silence on the matter is saving her from unnecessary worry, I tell myself.

With a smile, I realise that was precisely what Charlie had been doing for me. I shouldn’t have been so angry with him. He knew how stressed I’d been over the relaunch.

My insides twist again. It’s the future of the helpline I should be worrying about. The spike in calls we were hoping for after last week’s publicity is yet to materialise – discounting all the put-down calls Gill had on Monday. As I wait in vain for the phone to ring and hope sinks, my thoughts return to Lewis.

At the moment, he knows more about me than I do about him and I need to redress that balance – to hell with Charlie’s mantra of live and let live. I turn from the window and retreat inside the cocoon of the helpline pod. It’s essentially one of two workstations that face each other with a privacy screen in the middle and two more on each side to prevent conversations from carrying. It’s not particularly effective at cancelling out noise when both pods are in use, but that hasn’t been a problem since we cut back to just one volunteer per shift.

Closing the call log on my screen, I open up Facebook and check to see if any of my friends list Lewis as one of theirs. There are only a handful of people I’ve remained in touch with who would have known him and I’m pleased, if not a little frustrated, that none have been gullible enough to reconnect with him, and that includes Charlie.

With no other choice, I set aside my dignity and send friend requests to Jay and Meathead. I haven’t seen either of them in years but, from their profile pictures, they don’t appear to have matured with age. I hope they don’t think I’m trying to hit on them but I’ll be more offended if they refuse my requests.

Next, I turn my attention to Google. My first search of Lewis Rimmer produces global results so I add Newcastle to the search bar, my body tensing as I press the enter key. The screen updates and halfway down the page a selection of photos appear. Most are close ups of men I don’t recognise and group photos too small to discern one face from another. The photo that raises my hackles is on the right-hand edge of the screen. I stab the cursor over Lewis’s face and a new page opens.

It’s an old student union press release heralding a twenty-year-old Lewis as their star rugby player, on track for a first class honours sports degree. In the post-match photo, his straw-blond hair is scraped back from his sweaty brow and his cheeks are ruddy. His steel-blue eyes are all the more piercing without the wire-rimmed glasses he used to wear. Unlike Charlie, Lewis made eyewear look seductive but I suppose contact lenses would be more practical for someone with such an active life.

I haven’t seen that face for ten years and I’m struck by how normal Lewis looks. It would be nice to think that remorse changed him for the better, but Ruth isn’t the only one who can imagine history repeating itself. More determined than ever, I return to my original search and change the city from Newcastle to Liverpool. There’s nothing new and that bothers me. If Lewis is freelancing as a personal trainer, why isn’t he advertising himself more prominently?

I’m wondering what he’s hiding when the phone rings, and I let out a yelp as if he’s caught me spying. The helpline doesn’t use caller display so I have no clue who is ringing and from where, which can be frustrating at times, but it’s a matter of trust. Ruth was very clear about how the helpline should operate and all volunteers are trained to listen and encourage, not to dictate how someone should live their life. We don’t record any information that the caller doesn’t want to give willingly.

As I pick up the phone, I hope it’s not going to be another put-down call. I want it to be someone who will make me work harder than ever to keep the helpline open, but there’s a part of me that would rather we weren’t needed. I wish there were more Charlies and fewer Lewises in the world.

‘You’re through to the Lean On Me helpline. How can I help?’

‘Jen, is that you?’ the girl says.

I recognise Gemma’s voice as quickly as she’s recognised mine. We’ve never met but during our previous calls, I’ve conjured an image of a young woman not dissimilar to Meg. Her gentle lisp is achingly familiar. ‘Hi, Gemma. How have you been?’ I ask as I bring the call log back up on screen.

Our information system isn’t particularly sophisticated but we do log every call; from the simple requests for information, the put-downs when the caller loses their nerve to speak, to the calls where we can and do make a difference in someone’s life. Some of those calls are straightforward, often young women in first relationships who want advice on how to dump boyfriends whose only crime is not meeting their expectations. And then there are the callers like Gemma, who are in toxic relationships but aren’t able to recognise or accept that they are being abused. Except we all thought Gemma had seen Ryan for what he was. When she broke up with him two weeks ago, I was hoping she wouldn’t need us any more.

‘I’ve been so busy at work lately and I’m exhausted,’ she says. ‘I could have gone to an Arctic Monkeys gig tonight but I’m giving it a miss.’

As she talks, I tap through the call sheets as quietly as I can. All our information is anonymised unless our callers need us to act on their behalf with other agencies, and only then will we create a case file. Gemma’s calls don’t fall under that category and haven’t been cross-referenced. Discounting the cluster of five put-down calls on Monday, there have been only seven calls since my last shift and I quickly dismiss the ones from previous callers who had seen Ruth on TV and wanted to thank us for our help, and another from a young man.

The two remaining sheets clearly relate to Gemma; one is the call Ruth mentioned Alison taking last Friday and the other is a call Gill took on Monday evening. The details in each are scant but the message is clear. Ryan wants back into Gemma’s life.

‘I should have given you the tickets,’ Gemma continues.

‘I’m more of a Harry Styles girl myself,’ I tell her.

Gemma laughs. ‘Eugh, I forgot you liked him. Well, if ever I get tickets for Harry, they’re yours,’ she says, making me smile. We don’t give out personal details to our callers beyond our first names, and any contact outside of the scope of the helpline, even to pick up concert tickets, wouldn’t be condoned, but despite these limitations, Gemma and I have formed a friendships of sorts.

‘So why didn’t you want to go to the gig?’ I ask. ‘Were you just tired or was there another reason?’

‘Did you know Ryan’s been messaging me?’