by Adam Croft
‘Yeah. Well, you know.’
‘You mean fucking each other.’
He doesn’t respond to this. ‘After a while she said she was going to get in contact with you directly. She thought maybe if she actually picked up the phone herself and sounded remorseful, you might be more willing to do something about it. And it worked. For a bit.’
‘That day at the restaurant,’ I say. ‘By then it had already been going on… how long?’
‘Three months.’
I stare open-mouthed at Chris. ‘Yet you both managed to sit there and not say a word? Jesus Christ, you even went up to the bar with James and left me sitting with Lauren. She was laughing and joking, and all along she knew she’d been screwing my husband for three months?’
‘It wasn’t like that. What choice did we have? Sit you both down and tell you?’
‘Don’t tell me you thought you were going to get away with this forever,’ I say.
‘No, of course not. I’d already put a stop to it by then. I told her we couldn’t do it any more. Did you not notice how she barely said a word to me all day, and when she did it was almost teasing?’
The realisation hits me like a breeze block to the face. ‘The game. She drew that question for me about your biggest, darkest secret and you wanted to go home.’
‘Yeah. By then she’d had a few glasses of wine and it was getting daft. She tried coming on to me in the kitchen, and then she tried pulling that little stunt. I don’t know whether she switched the cards or what, but I wasn’t impressed.’
We sit in silence for a minute or two as I try to digest what Chris is telling me. Both my husband and my sister have betrayed me. I’ve lost everything. But still, my brain resorts to trying to think through things logically. Maybe it’s a coping mechanism.
‘Hang on a second,’ I say, looking at him. ‘Why would the police believe any of this? Surely they’re not just going to accept an alibi from your own sister-in-law. What’s to say you hadn’t paid her off or forced her to give you an alibi?’
I know this isn’t the case, and I can tell Chris is telling me the truth about his relationship with Lauren, but the police’s actions don’t make any sense.
He closes his eyes and rocks his head. ‘Fuck’s sake, Megan, why do you have to ask questions like that?’
‘Because I want to know the answer,’ I say, knowing damn well I really don’t.
He takes a deep breath. ‘There were pictures. Lauren has this thing where she liked to take pictures of us having sex. I don’t know why. She just did.’
‘And she showed these pictures to the police?’
Chris nods.
‘Why the hell would you let her do that? Surely you knew she could use it as some sort of blackmail against you in the future?’
‘God, I don’t know. The first time I was just so turned on I would have let her put a fucking advert in the Sunday Times. After that, what was the point in refusing? She had the first lot anyway.’
‘Typical man,’ I say, totally not regretting my comment. ‘Is that it? You’ve told me everything?’
He sighs. ‘Yeah. I’ve told you everything.’
‘Does it feel better?’
‘No. Not really.’
‘Good,’ I say, standing up and throwing the remains of my cold tea into the sink. ‘In that case, you can get out of my house.’
Chris looks at me, stands, and heads towards the front door.
41
Megan
When Chris leaves, I head straight for the wine rack. I know alcohol’s probably not the answer, but right now there are no answers and alcohol will help blot out everything that’s going through my mind.
It sounds weird to say, but I really don’t know if Chris looked remorseful or not. Sure, he definitely tried to look remorseful, but I don’t know if that was just him putting on an act. He’s already proven himself to be good at that recently.
More to the point, I don’t know how I feel. Crushed. Broken. They’re all words I could use, but right now they have no meaning. The world has lost its flavour, been wiped of its colour.
I rummage around in the cutlery drawer for a corkscrew, but I can’t find one. I grab handfuls of the cutlery and throw them on the floor until I see the corkscrew hiding at the back. I jab it into the top of the bottle and twist, yanking the cork out and slopping wine over my hand. I lick it off, grab a glass from the cupboard and fill it almost to the top. I down the glass and refill it.
Within seconds my head starts to feel less muddled. I didn’t think alcohol took effect this quickly, but it might be different when you down an entire large glass of wine in one hit. I should try it more often.
Now I’m thinking more clearly, I feel more angry. Before I even realise what I’m doing, I pull my shoulder back and punch the kitchen door as hard as I can. It’s the only time I’ve been thankful for our cheap hollow-panelled doors, because my fist goes straight through into the cavity, leaving a nice hole as I pull my fist out, the sharp edges of the wood leaving white scrape marks along the back of my hand.
My head starts to buzz. I see bright lights, images, but none of them clear.
I take a couple of steps back — stagger, in fact — and try to catch my breath. I didn’t realise I’d been almost hyperventilating. I try to calm myself as I come to terms with my violent outburst. That’s not like me. I don’t get violent.
My head buzzes again, and I reach for the glass of wine. My knuckles brush the stem of the glass and I watch it wobble as I grasp for it. I miss, and the glass crashes to the floor, the deep red liquid pooling on the tiles.
The image makes my head buzz again. I watch as the wine changes form slightly. The tiles get smaller. I see water. I smell sun.
And suddenly it all starts coming back to me.
42
Megan
That day, the day that Riley Markham was killed, I’d been out. I remember now. I got home and put the washing machine on. It was on an hour’s cycle and bleeped to tell me it was finished just as Chris walked through the door. He got home just after five. I remember that, as it was earlier than I expected. So I must have got home about four o’clock.
Everything’s a horrible mixture of images, and I can’t make head nor tail of it. I get flashes in my mind, some of them real, some of them made-up. I see Chris coming home. The flashing police sirens. Riley’s lifeless body.
All the days seem to roll into one. I know I’d been walking. If I could remember exactly where I’d gone, I could try to make some sense of it all. I often walk down by the stream, but I don’t think I did that day. I would have remembered. And, in any case, if Chris had been walking down there to Lauren’s car at around half-past three and I got home around four o’clock, he was playing a very risky game. There was a good chance I would’ve seen them. But I didn’t. Did I?
My brain seems to have blanked out all sorts of things, but I would have remembered that. You don’t see your husband climbing into a car with your estranged sister when he’s meant to be out fishing and not remember it.
But what if my brain’s blanked that out too, as some sort of coping mechanism? Was it protecting me from what I already knew? When Chris told me about the affair with Lauren, I was stunned. Of course I was. But I shocked myself at how quickly I managed to compose myself and question him about it. Even now, I’m more numb than anything. I’ve not shed a tear. Is that normal? Is it just my mind’s way of trying to cope with things?
There’s lots more that doesn’t make sense. Just because Chris had been having an affair with Lauren, that doesn’t mean he didn’t kill Riley and Kai. They can’t pin down the exact minute that Riley was killed — just that it was before his body was found around half-past four, and after Chris saw him at half-past three. How do we know Chris was telling the truth about that? How do we know the witness wasn’t mistaken? Chris could have used that to his advantage, as it’d allow him to use the Lauren alibi. Sure, he’s ruined his marriage and my family by having
to admit to his infidelity, but who wouldn’t if it meant they got away with murder? My family was already ruined. And, if I’m honest, so was our marriage.
What if he paid the ‘witness’ to say that? I still don’t know who the witness was. Maybe it was a friend or associate of his. That’d be the perfect witness, wouldn’t it? A friend of his who is seemingly incriminating him with his witness testimony. Why would a friend do that, unless he was telling the truth? There is only one reason: because the real truth is far more sinister.
If the police don’t know exactly what time Riley died, what use are the photos in proving anything? Even with time stamps, how do they know categorically that Chris didn’t kill Riley before or after being with Lauren? It would take mere seconds to kill a small child.
I’m amazed at how quickly the police seemed to discount Chris in the face of all the evidence. There must be something they’re not telling me. Something he’s not telling me. But what sort of detail would he leave out? And why? He’s already admitted to sleeping with my sister on a regular basis. He admitted they took photos of themselves. He admitted he’d been lying and sneaking around. Why would he leave out more detail? What could be worse than that?
There must have been a terrible mistake. There must have been.
I can feel my anxiety growing again. Nothing makes any sense. None of it. Everything seemed to piece together perfectly in my mind. It made absolute sense that it was Chris, even if I didn’t want to believe it. Even if I had to convince myself that was the truth. I had to convince myself of it.
Why? Why?
Because deep down, if you look hard enough, if you want to see it, you’ll always find the truth.
I see it clearly now.
Riley’s blood-stained cap in our bin. The blood in the sink. It all pointed to someone in this house being the killer.
And that’s why I had to believe it was Chris.
Because otherwise…
43
The first time
The strong sun on my head beats me into a soporific state. It’s like a drug. A drug that I need. It gives me energy, but at the same time it takes me away to another place.
I walk aimlessly. When I’m in this state, I switch off. My mind goes elsewhere. This, though, is how I want to be. This is me at peace. This is where I’m comfortable. This is where I can stop fighting it, stop pretending to cope. Stop trying to live a normal life.
This is the only time all my senses open up. The sun feels stronger. The air smells fresher. The stones on the loose footpath poke and prod at my feet through the soles of my sandals.
I’m alive.
It’s a strange feeling, being both so incredibly energetic yet sedate and calm at the same time. I guess this is what being in a trance feels like. A tranquil euphoria.
When I feel like this, nothing registers. I’m here, in the moment, in the here and now. The previous seconds and minutes do not exist, and the near future will register only fleetingly. It gives me an extraordinary sense of freedom.
One chance.
But there’s an underlying current of emotion. It’s something I can sense, but not put my finger on. It’s negative. That’s all I can work out. Perhaps anger. Perhaps sadness. Perhaps hatred. Whatever it is, it’s the underlying emotion which compels me to come out here, urges me into this invigorating, calmative state. It’s the nucleus of what I am right now, the delicate explosive that’s wrapped in sunshine and calmness, lest it ignite and take everything else with it.
We had one chance.
Even trying to explain my thought process makes it both simpler and more complicated at the same time. Sometimes there are things which can’t be put into words.
Something flashes across the front of my mind. An image. A snapshot. A faint memory.
I ruined our one chance.
It’s like seeing a flash of lightning illuminate a room for a split second. It feels like a thousand volts searing through my body. It smells of anger. It reeks of regret, jealousy and agonising pain. It feels familiar, yet at the same time I don’t recognise it. It hurts. It fills me with pain. It makes me want to wail in agony.
I let him down.
Our one chance, and I failed him.
I can no longer feel the sun. The stones on the footpath turn to cotton wool. The air fills with sulphur and the stench of death.
The death of me.
I cross over the footbridge, feeling myself rise and fall as I do so, hearing my footsteps echo against the water underneath, but feeling no sensation through my feet. I walk a little further along the footpath and I see him in front of me. I vaguely recognise him from around the village. He looks happy. This is how my boy should have looked. Chris’s boy.
But I let him down.
I ruined our one chance.
We had one chance.
One chance.
He speaks to me, greets me. I say hello back. Then I watch. I observe. I notice the tiny, seemingly insignificant little things that only a parent could notice. And, for a moment, he’s mine. He’s the boy I was meant to give Chris. The son we never had. The family I failed.
I want to love him.
He gives me a look as though I’m mentally disturbed and tries to push past me. A switch flips inside me and before I know what’s happening I’ve put my arm around his waist and clamped my other across his mouth.
It’s instinctive. Animalistic.
I pull him to the floor behind the bushes and press my forearm to his neck. I can’t have him screaming. Not now.
There’s no way back.
No way back.
44
Megan
I find myself sitting in the middle of my kitchen floor in a cold sweat. I feel as though a torrent of memories has hit me all at once. I don’t know how to cope. I don’t even know what to think or believe anymore.
It’s like waking up from a dream, not quite knowing what’s real and what isn’t. When you wake up from a dream, you have the luxury of gradually realising you’re safe, becoming aware that what your mind just played out to you wasn’t real. This is the opposite of a dream. This is a nightmare. With every passing second comes the dawning realisation that the memories played out by my mind are far from fantasy.
It feels like watching a movie, seeing an actor playing me, looking on as she pins Riley Markham to the ground, his face turning red, then purple, then blue. Listening as his windpipe whistles and his fingers dig into her arms, desperately trying to get a purchase on the fabric.
Watching through her eyes.
It doesn’t play out like any other memory. It’s not like thinking back and trying to remember how things looked and felt. It’s a passive experience, watching on as the memory plays itself out. I can only see. I can’t feel. It has no emotion or feeling attached to it. It just is.
It’s so distant, so remote. Yet I know it’s me. There’s no mistaking it. I know instinctively that this happened. And suddenly it all starts to make sense.
The bloodstained baseball cap in the bin. The blood in the sink. The links to us. To this house. They were links to me.
I remember taking the cap out of our wheeliebin. I remember bagging it up and throwing it into the bin outside the post office.
I let him down.
I was right. I was seeing these things, thinking these thoughts as a coping mechanism. It was my brain’s way of making sense of things. But not because there weren’t answers. It was because I couldn’t acknowledge the answers. I wouldn’t let myself see it.
I press my face against the cold tiled floor and let out an animalistic groan. I never meant any of this. I’m not a killer. I couldn’t kill a child.
But I did. Twice.
This body did. This physical being did. Not me. Not real me.
I don’t know what real me is anymore. My life is unrecognisable. Everything has collapsed. Everything I knew to be true is gone. And it’s all because of me.
I let him down.
I see Riley’s face in t
he reflection of the floor tiles. His blue face looks longingly at me. There’s desperation in his glassy eyes. I hear the breath rush from his crushed windpipe, then back in. He looks at me and whispers, his voice pained and hurt.
Mummy.
I watch as the tear drops from my eyelids and splashes onto his porcelain face. He looks like he’s underwater, sinking further down, getting further away until I see the last flash of blue from his eyes.
I let him down.
Silently, I’d promised Chris a boy. He’d wanted a son so much.
We had one chance.
I blew our only chance. I let him down.
How could I ever be expected to bond with a daughter when I’d so desperately wanted to provide him with a son? I could see the look in his eyes when the sonographer said those words. I watched the hope build in the weeks and months afterwards, knowing that inside he was desperately praying she’d been wrong. And I saw that face again in the hospital when she was born. At what was meant to be the happiest moment in both our lives, all I could think was that I’d failed him. We’d been given one chance when we thought we had none, and I’d still managed to let him down.
All our friends have boys. I see young boys everywhere. Every time I see a young child out playing in the street or kicking a ball around the park, it’s boys I see. It’s as if their parents are teasing me, showing me that they’ve got the one thing we wanted. The one thing he wanted. The one thing I desperately wanted to provide for him.
Everyone else had been blessed. Every other family unit was complete. No others had the huge gaping hole I’d left in ours.
Chris always told me he didn’t mind. He told me he’d love our child unconditionally, regardless. But he didn’t need to tell me the truth. I could see it. He’s a good man. He didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve me.
I let out another cry as I feel an intense rage and anger burning inside me. A rage I can do nothing about. An anger directed only at myself.
