Platform Seven

by Louise Doughty

  It wasn’t love that set me free. It was dedication. It was PC Lockhart’s sense of duty, the one that made him look into the death of a young woman that nobody was asking him to look into. Until he did that, I was trapped, boundaried by the British Transport Police’s zone of responsibility and by my own ignorance and everybody else’s wrong assumptions about who I was and what had happened to me. Only when that young man refused to accept the official reason for my death could I move beyond that boundary.

  It was duty and diligence that released me. Matty wanted to possess me; I wanted to possess Andrew; both our desires were warped and wrong. Love lay in the calm passion PC Lockhart has for his job. Do what you need to do. Even bossy old Inspector Barker believes in duty, admires it in Lockhart. It is a hard lesson to learn, hard for all of us because it isn’t glamorous. It’s grey, and dull, often, and involves getting up in the morning and putting our shoes on and going out of the front door on our way to do what is right. No wonder we resist it. No wonder we would rather have sparkles.

  I am still absorbing this information when, summoned by my epiphany, PC Lockhart appears on the top landing and uses the back of his knuckles to rap lightly on the half-open door.

  Barker swivels in his chair, saying, ‘Come!’ in a tone of voice that implies annoyance although I can see his face and know he is more than grateful to be interrupted.

  Lockhart is holding a file. ‘Sir,’ he says as he comes in, ‘Thomas Warren, want to take a look?’

  Barker wrinkles his nose, ‘Not unless I need to.’

  ‘Right-o …’ Lockhart hesitates and I think, this is the moment, now the Warren file is ready for the Coroner and there are no more investigations on that matter to be done, when Lockhart might go one way or the other on me – after all, he has come up with nothing concrete yet.

  And then I remember how, just after I saw Andrew for the first time, in the cafe, the time when I thought he was a suicidal young man who might be my love – how I named him Caleb and whispered Caleb into the woman’s ear as she queued for her ticket and she turned and isn’t it worth a try – for if I can do nothing to avenge my own death, maybe I can do this? A single word, spoken with passion, that’s all it will take to put the thought in his head: he may not hear it, but he will feel it.

  I whisk up to Lockhart and, as he stands there facing Inspector Barker, the file in both hands, I concentrate as hard as I can and I think a name into his ear, his head, his brain.

  Leyla.

  Lockhart gives no sign that he has heard anything but there is a momentary pause, as if something has only just occurred to him. ‘Sir, about the other case. I’ve checked the PNC and I’ve spoken to Cambridgeshire Constabulary. Only one thing came up. That doctor, Matthew Goodison, the one who made that odd remark when I went to the hospital. Three years ago, they were called out to a place he was sharing with a Helen Lovegrove. Neighbour reported shouting and banging. The girlfriend comes to the door and swears she’s fine and nothing is wrong. When they get back, they record it as a no-crime domestic.’

  Barker looks at Lockhart with an expression that says, And …?

  ‘Well, I’ve pretty much drawn a blank on Lisa Evans but I’d like to try one last thing.’

  Inspector Barker wrinkles his nose and sniffs, and looks at PC Lockhart and thinks that although he loves his three grown-up daughters and his four grandchildren, he could imagine nothing that would have made him more proud than having a son like Lockhart, because even though he’s a skinny, brainy type who eats all those sugary foods when he shouldn’t, there’s something calm and dogged about him, and it’s a sort of bravery. It’s a quality that is easier to recognise than describe but it’s no less valuable for that. He folds his arms, high up on his chest, his report briefly forgotten, and stares challengingly at Lockhart, who stares back waiting for instruction. Inspector Barker sniffs, then dismisses the young PC with no more than a brief nod of assent.

  22

  Easter was not far off. School would break up next week. Our trip to Venice was booked for the summer half term. I held on to these three facts as if they were ropes made of creepers and I was dangling above a rainforest canyon.

  I just had to get to the end of term, I told myself. I was exhausted, that was all – Matty was right that I always got run down at the end of a school term and the spring term was the worst, after a long winter. Easter always felt late even when it was early: the grey of March, the April rains to come. I was on my hands and knees to the finishing line. And then there was Venice. We had both paid for our own flights and half the hotel each and they were non-refundable. I had been looking at images of Murano glass online, and it was as if there was a life waiting in the future, where Matty and I would be how we were at the beginning of our relationship, and we would live together in a house with the walls painted white and a beautiful twisted vase on top of a cabinet, in front of a mirror perhaps. It would have reds and purples and blues and reflect the light when the sun shone through the window. It would have a tiny flaw, an elongated bubble near its base, but nobody would know about the flaw apart from me.

  *

  ‘It’s not my fault if you’re so insecure.’ It was most nights, now.

  ‘Look, I get it, okay. You are an only child. You’re just not used to sharing, are you? Not your fault, but really, it’s something you ought to work on.’

  ‘Do you ever get tired of talking about yourself?’

  ‘You know what your problem is? You think too much.’

  *

  The weekend before Easter, on the Saturday, Matty rose out of bed and said, ‘I’m going for a run, I’ll be back in half an hour.’ Saturday breakfasts, Saturday sex: these were things of the past.

  Half an hour went by, an hour, two hours, three. We had been planning on going to the shops – we were going to look at some kitchenware in John Lewis. We had agreed we should go early to avoid the Saturday crowds. I didn’t know whether to go on my own, leave him a note, or whether the trip was off altogether. If I went on my own when he wanted to come along, it wouldn’t go down well. I showered and dressed. Of course I could go on my own, I thought – but I felt paralysed by indecision. He might be about to walk in the door any minute, after all. For a while, I waited for him to come back so we could breakfast together, then I ate a piece of toast. I Whatsapped him a couple of times but although the messages were received he didn’t read them. I didn’t know what to do.

  It was gone half past twelve when I heard his key in the door.

  I opted for the lightest of enquiries, standing there as he bent to unlace his trainers. ‘You took a while …’

  He straightened up and looked at me. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  I kept my tone light, kept smiling, even though smiling when you don’t mean it hurts the muscles of your face. ‘Nothing, it’s just, you said you’d be half an hour …’

  ‘You timing my runs now? Is it a problem for you how long I run for?’

  ‘No, of course not, you can run all day if you want, it’s just you said you’d be half an hour so I didn’t go out because I thought we were going to John Lewis when you got back. If you’d said you’d be nearly four hours then I would have gone on my own.’

  ‘It isn’t nearly four hours.’

  ‘You left at nine twenty and it’s nearly one o’clock.’

  ‘It wasn’t nine twenty, it was nearly ten, and it’s twelve forty, if you’re going to be a pedant about it, hardly one o’clock. We all know your sense of time isn’t exactly reliable, is it? Ask any of your friends. You told me that once, remember? It was a standing joke that you’re not the best of timekeepers. Ask any of them.’

  And so it began … as he threw his trainers at the shoe pile, where they bounced and lay on their sides.

  ‘Jesus, Lisa, you know I work really hard all week …’

  ‘I know you do.’

  ‘Really, really, do you know that? Because you don’t act like it. I work really hard all week and on a S
aturday morning when I want to shake things down a bit sometimes what I need is to go for a really long run, because sometimes the stress of it all really gets me down, and I didn’t realise I had to explain myself or justify myself for wanting to do that …’

  ‘You don’t …’

  ‘Well clearly I do.’

  ‘I’m just saying, if you’d let me know, or just texted me how long you’d be, I would have gone out and got on with my day. I’m just asking to be treated with consideration, Matthew.’

  ‘Oh, I’m inconsiderate now, am I? Funny, I don’t remember you complaining about how inconsiderate I was when I cooked dinner and washed up last night. Anyway, I never said how long I’d be.’

  ‘You did, you said …’

  ‘Oh God, here we go again, your overactive imagination.’

  ‘You said I’ll be half an hour.’

  ‘I never said that. I wouldn’t have said that because I didn’t know how long I’d be when I left, did I? I hadn’t decided what route I was taking yet so I never said that.’

  I never said that. It was one of Matthew’s favourite phrases.

  He stalked into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. He downed it in one go, slammed it down on the kitchen counter, wiped at his mouth fiercely with the back of one hand and turned to me, shaking his head. ‘Jeez, you know, Lisa, sometimes I wonder if I’m missing something. What was it we did last Sunday?’

  I turned, regretting I had said anything about his run, and deeply regretting I had not just gone out to the shops on my own. He crossed the kitchen and took hold of my upper arm.

  ‘No, go on, tell me, what was it we did?’

  ‘You know what we did …’ I looked at the floor, my tone weary.

  ‘Remind me. What was it?’

  ‘We went to see my parents, we went round in the morning.’

  ‘Yeah, right, and while you and your mum were in the garden, what were me and your dad doing?’

  ‘You were upstairs …’

  ‘Upstairs where, precisely?’

  It was always best to give him the answer he wanted straight away. ‘You were in the bathroom, you were looking at the cistern with Dad. You got your phone out and showed him that video on YouTube. You explained to him how next time he needs to fix anything and he’s not sure, you can look up how to fix anything on YouTube. He came downstairs all impressed because he didn’t know about all the things you could find out that way. He said it was much better than Googling because you got such good videos on almost anything. He’s going to try it next time anything breaks.’ If I had not felt so tired, I would have added, but you didn’t make all those videos yourself, Matthew, you just showed my dad how to find them.

  ‘Yes, right, and what did we do then?’

  ‘We took them to the carvery. You’d found one that did sticky toffee pudding.’

  ‘Yeah, and why had I gone to the trouble of finding a pub that did sticky toffee pudding?’

  I can’t stand this any more, I thought. I’m going insane. ‘Because last time we took them out, Mum was disappointed there was no sticky toffee pudding because it’s her favourite.’

  ‘Right.’ This was said with an air of finality, point proved. Matthew released my arm and let his head hang down, as if he was the beaten one, not me.

  Conciliation was always best, if I wanted it to stop. I lifted my hands and rested them gently on his shoulders. ‘I know you do a lot for my parents, I know. You’re very considerate towards them and I really appreciate it.’

  He made a huffing sound. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do.’

  He sighed again, shook his head.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry. I was waiting, I just got impatient, that’s all, I was looking forward to going to the shops with you. Have you eaten anything? I’ll make a sandwich.’ My voice became excessively bright and cheery. ‘You go and have your shower, you must be starving. We’ve got some ham and cheese, I can do a toastie if you like.’

  Normally, an apology would mollify him, for the time being at least, but the sparkle in my voice must have struck him as insincere. He took a step towards the bathroom, then stopped and said quietly, his back to me, ‘Lisa, don’t patronise me, I can’t take much more of this. I don’t have time for your self-sabotaging games.’

  For a moment I felt the usual panic, the knee-jerk desire to make all well, and then – completely unexpectedly – a well of rage rose up in me and I couldn’t help spitting one of his phrases – it flowed out of me smooth and clean: ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  He turned then and I saw from the look on his face that I had made a great mistake. The berating, the arguing, the telling me how wrong I was – it would not stop now until I was on the floor.

  *

  We got to bed at 3 a.m. that night. I only slept for a couple of hours. I got up for a bit in the middle of the night and tried to do some marking at the kitchen table but the words of my students swam before my eyes.

  All day Sunday, it continued. We followed each other from room to room, like household cats that are never allowed outdoors, taking it in turns to ambush each other. At one point, he told me that he was so desperate my behaviour was beginning to affect his work. A friend had said to him only recently that he was looking thin and drawn; people at work kept asking him if he was okay.

  ‘What friend?’ I couldn’t help falling for it.

  ‘A friend,’ he replied. ‘Aren’t I allowed to have friends?’

  Why could I not stop myself? ‘A male friend or a female friend?’

  ‘Oh, here we go …’

  ‘If you didn’t want me to ask then why did you just say a friend?’

  ‘Because she is a friend, what else am I supposed to call her?’

  ‘Which friend?’

  ‘You don’t know her. I do have friends you don’t know, you know. You don’t own me.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘None of your business, jeez, do I have to name all my friends to you now, what, bring their CVs home?’

  ‘How long have you known this friend? Is she a new friend or an old friend?’

  We were in the bedroom. He came round the side of the bed swiftly and I backed up against the wall. He put his face close to mine. ‘I tell you what sort of friend she is, she’s the sort of friend who takes an interest in my welfare. She’s the sort of friend who seems genuinely concerned about how unhappy I am right now and she’s not some self-obsessed Little Miss Only Child, she’s got four brothers, she knows it isn’t all about her.’ He lifted his hand and jabbed a forefinger into my chest bone, hard. ‘And no, before you ask, I don’t fancy her, she’s just a really nice, considerate person.’

  I wanted to hit him so badly. I wanted to feel the great wide swing of my arm, to hear the crack and slap as my hand met his face. I had never hit anyone in my life.

  And then it happened, out of nowhere, the thing I had been just thinking I wanted to do but would never do. My hand came from nowhere.

  There was a moment when his face moved sideways at the force of my slap and a series of expressions crossed it in quick succession: shock, anger, triumph. He pushed me down onto the bed with one smooth movement, one hand pressing down on my chest, and drew back the other hand, high up in the air. I let out a raw shriek and turned my face to one side, pressing it into the bed, closing my eyes, and even in that second of stark fear I was still present enough to think, do it, then I’ll know for sure, then at least this can be over, once and for all.

  Instead, he lowered his face, crouched over me, and spat, ‘You aren’t even worth the fucking trouble I’d get into, Lisa, because you know what, you’re a piece of shit!’

  *

  There is a kind of calm that comes later, after those scenes. It is a calm that should never be mistaken for a truce.

  Matty stormed out and was gone for the rest of that Sunday. After I had cried, I slept a little, then lay on the bed for a long time, thinking about my life and feeling sm
all and weak. Easter was coming. Could we hang on until Venice? Probably not. I hadn’t had a holiday since a week in Menorca with Rosaria two years ago. I had been counting the seconds. And the loss of the money on flights and the hotel was something I could ill afford. In my mind, Venice had been where Matty and I, away from home and from the stresses of our jobs, would recover what we had had before, the place where we would break down and apologise to each other and make everything right: canals and meals together, coloured glass. The thought that none of that was going to happen broke my heart.

  When Matty returned, later that evening, we ignored each other. I had been out for the Sunday papers and stayed in the bedroom, reading them. He sat at the kitchen table on his laptop. When I came out and said, quietly, ‘Shall I make some pasta?’ he rose, picked up his laptop and, without a word, went into the bedroom and closed the door.

  I made pasta with pesto – two helpings. I left his in the saucepan. I knew he would not speak to me for a couple of days now. There were only four more days left of term and at least after that I would be able to sleep and sleep. I only managed eight or ten twirls of fusilli, then pushed the plate away from me. I sat at the kitchen table for a long time. I just had to get to the end of term, then I’d have the time to think.

  *

  I didn’t sleep at all that night. I tossed and turned. Matthew lay beside me, sighing. Eventually, I rose and curled up on the sofa. It wasn’t a great place to try and sleep: it was too small for me to stretch my legs out and the spare blankets were folded up on the top shelf of the wardrobe in the bedroom so I had to use my winter coat instead. I lay awake thinking, I am a homeless person in my own home.

  As soon as I heard Matty stir in the morning, I got up and went to the bathroom. When I came out, he was in the kitchen, making two cups of tea. I was feeling an almost hallucinatory level of tiredness, so tired that everything around me seemed crystal clear. Matty was making tea, at least. It was a tiny concession but I would take whatever I could get.