by cass green
So now you really know who you are dealing with.
As I got closer to Casterbourne, I dragged my thoughts back to what I had done today. I had managed to achieve exactly what I had set out to do – convince Irene Copeland that her son had committed suicide and most definitely hadn’t been pushed off a cliff by my wife. I had to protect Anya. She was my number one priority. She had been carrying around this nightmare for fifteen years and she was finally free.
And yet. Something was nagging uncomfortably at me and I couldn’t quite place its bruised centre.
I decided I was going to tell her everything about today, but I was going to get the whole truth from her in the process. I had looked that woman in the eye and lied to her. I could see how it had broken her heart to hear that Michael had killed himself and, however many times I told myself that was a ‘better’ truth than that he had been a creepy stalker who fell to his death while in hot pursuit of an innocent young woman, it didn’t make me feel any better.
By the time I pulled into Casterbourne the rain was beginning to ease a little but my eyes were aching from the hard drive.
The house was quiet and unlit. I knew Anya wouldn’t be home for another couple of hours yet.
I couldn’t face cooking and, anyway, I felt disinclined to be the perfect house husband today. I felt like I had done enough.
So I opened a new bottle of wine and took a plate of toast and Marmite through to the sitting room, where I sat in the light from the telly and watched old episodes of Friends. I had seen them all before, many times, but the sugary antics in Central Perk seemed to soothe me and I let myself become numb and without thoughts.
When Anya came in, I was almost dozing. She hesitated at the doorway and I gazed through half-shut lids at her shape there, before forcing my eyes open and sitting upright.
‘You alright?’ she said. ‘What’s going on?’
Groaning at the ache in my neck, I stretched and then rubbed my face.
‘Shall I put the lights on?’ she said and I could hear the exhaustion in her voice.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Come sit over here.’
She laughed, surprising me with the bright harshness of the sound in the gloomy room. ‘You’re being weird, Ell. What’s going on? Has someone died?’
For some reason, this felt like precisely the wrong thing to say.
‘Well, Michael Copeland died,’ I said.
She turned to leave the room.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘come back. I want to talk.’
Anya hesitated for a moment and then came into the room. She sat down on the chair near the door; as far from me as she could. I had the horrible sensation then that she was a little afraid of me.
‘I went to Cambridge today..’
The effect was akin to an electric jolt, it seemed. Her whole body seemed to jerk and then she was hunched forward, hands around her knees, staring at me intently.
‘Why did you go there?’ she said, very carefully.
Her eyes looked large and scared in her pale face and she was wringing her hands together.
When did I start mistrusting her like this?
‘I went to see Michael Copeland’s mother,’ I said and her intake of breath was sharp.
‘Ell,’ she said quickly, ‘what the fuck were you thinking? What on earth for?’
I rubbed my hands across my face and let out a big sigh.
‘She wrote to you,’ I said and I picked up the letter that was next to me on the sofa. I threw it over to Anya, who fumbled and dropped it onto the rug, then scrambled to pick it up. She normally had brilliant hand–eye coordination and this sign of nerves added to my feeling of discomfort that I was being cruel.
I was just sick of being left outside, that was all.
She reached over and snapped on one of the lamps before opening the envelope and retrieving the letter.
‘You might like the dark, but I think lighting is important to an interrogation, don’t you?’ she said tightly.
I didn’t reply.
She finished the letter and then looked up at me, a little expectantly.
‘There’s something else in the envelope,’ I said and she frowned, before looking inside and then pulling out the piece of photo strip.
Her face was impassive as she looked down at it, then back up at me.
‘Why did you go to Cambridge?’ she said again, very quietly.
I got to my feet, suddenly unable to be still a moment longer.
‘Because that man is dead!’ I was shouting now. ‘We should have told the police. And you obviously knew this Liam better than you told me you did!’ I was becoming so het up that I wasn’t even speaking in grammatical sentences now. ‘I don’t think you’ve told me the whole story!’
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the piece of printer paper that was folded there. I had easily found the news story from the Cambridge newspaper that Irene had shown me.
I handed it to her.
‘And I have a strong feeling it has something to do with this.’
Can you imagine what it was like for a mother?
Seeing those small finger-shaped marks in the peanut butter and understanding what they meant?
It was hours later. Anya was tucked up in bed, exhausted after all the excitement then trauma of her party. All the other parents had left shortly after the ambulance took Dylan away. Patrick and I had almost finished clearing up all the mess from the party.
The sight of that little boy’s face – the terrible flushing of his skin and the terror in his eyes as his throat closed over – kept running through my mind. Thank God he got to the hospital in time. I can’t even bear to think about … if he hadn’t.
Anyway, I was desperate for a gin and tonic. The bottle of gin was in the larder, a space used as an overspill area for storage at the back of the kitchen. The peanut butter jar had been put precariously on a shelf near the door, not in its usual space.
But here’s the thing: because I was so worried about any possible contamination, I had locked the larder with the tiny key that we’d never had any reason to use before, just to prevent anyone prowling for any extra snacks that weren’t on the approved list.
At the time I’d almost laughed at my own paranoia about it all. In fact, I had been annoyed about the responsibility being foisted upon me, when Dylan wasn’t even a friend of my daughter’s. His and Lottie’s mother was a glamorous and rather flaky woman called Annabel, an actress with a tendency to dump her children on others, even with Dylan’s extra needs. I know that my daughter had registered these ungenerous thoughts, spoken aloud over a Pimm’s at a summer party. She missed nothing. So I must share some blame. That’s what I have always told myself.
The key was in a ceramic bowl on the kitchen surface. Only the three people who lived in the house knew about the key.
I called Patrick into the kitchen with an agonized sort of cry and he rushed in, believing I had hurt myself. In fact, he almost looked annoyed that I hadn’t. I suppose, after a horrible day, it felt like unnecessary drama for me to squawk like that.
I told him I had seen our daughter leave the room, apparently in a mild huff, then come back and plunge her hand into the crisps. I’d registered it as strange at the time, because she had complained that these allergy-free crisps weren’t as good as the Hula Hoops she had requested.
It was shortly after then that Dylan had his anaphylactic reaction. I told Patrick that we should have checked the bowl while cleaning up and he looked at me with an expression I had never seen before. It was horrible. Cold. Almost as though he hated me.
He said, ‘Julia, you can’t be suggesting what I think?’
I told him it was the only explanation. He didn’t seem to have another to offer, but simply said, ‘Shame on you, Julia. What a thing to say.’
He has always been that way about her. He refuses to accept things, you see.
Patrick’s sister Bridget – a no-nonsense bull of a woman – once said of my daughter that s
he was a ‘monster’ after some incident with her son when Anya was six. The look in her eyes when she said it was something I never wanted to see again. We decided to cut contact with her after that.
Sometimes I think about those words spoken by Bridget.
Look, you might judge me. But it is only by understanding my daughter – all the complex parts of her – that I can truly keep her safe.
ELLIOTT
Anya’s brow creased as she took the piece of paper from my hands, eyes flickering as she quickly scanned it. I think I saw the fleeting flare of shock but couldn’t be sure.
‘His mother kept this?’ she said.
I watched her carefully.
‘It was with Michael’s things,’ I said. Fear twisted through me about what was coming. But it wasn’t for what she might say. It was for what she might leave out.
‘Please don’t lie to me,’ I blurted, ‘not again.’
She began to knead her fist in under her ribs.
‘Can you get me some water?’ she said in a flat voice. ‘I feel a bit sick again.’
Silently, I left the room and poured water from the tap into a glass. My hand was shaking a little.
When I came back in, she was still wearing her coat. Staring down at the carpet, very still, her hands neatly folded in her lap, she looked entirely self-contained. Not for the first time, I had the dizzying sensation that, while I was familiar with the touch, smell, taste, sound, and sight of Anya, what was inside her mind was sometimes unknowable to me.
I turned on the other lamps and sat down opposite her in the chair.
Outside a car went past, rap pumping from the windows, then all we could hear was the hum of the freezer in the kitchen.
When I spoke, my voice seemed too loud for the room.
‘So this Liam. Tell me more about him.’
I was aware this wasn’t exactly the most important question right now but I felt the need to circle around whatever was contained in that cutting. Somehow, I knew Liam was central to all this and that she had been holding back before.
‘What do you want to know?’ she said and met my eyes. I worked hard to keep my expression neutral.
‘Don’t bullshit me,’ I said, quietly. ‘Just tell me all of it.’
‘God,’ she said with a heavy, drawn-out sigh. ‘It’s such a weird … horrible story. I honestly wanted to just forget that period of my life.’
She searched my face for a response but I stayed silent. I needed her to vomit this out in one go now. I was so tired of being in the dark.
‘I wasn’t lying when I said how I met Liam,’ she said, her fingers twiddling the silky tassel on the cushion next to her. ‘He sold me drugs at a club. I did a lot of drugs then, Ell, more than you think.’
When no response came, she continued.
‘We started hanging out a bit,’ she said. ‘To be honest, it was refreshing to be with someone who wasn’t in my college. You’ve no idea how cliquey and claustrophobic Cambridge can be. You hang out with the same crowd … hear the same sort of voices. Liam lived on an estate. I didn’t, then, know anyone who’d come from a council estate.’
She had the good grace to blush. I said nothing, but a snatch of ‘Common People’ by Pulp burst into my mind; the bit about everyone hating tourists. My brain tends to do this, throw out lyrics at inappropriate times, and I mentally swiped the reference away. Anya wasn’t like the spoiled princess in the song. At least, she wasn’t now.
She continued in a rush, ‘I know you think my childhood was one long run through a sunlit meadow, Ell, but there was always so much pressure to be … good. To be Mum and Dad’s golden girl.’ She grimaced and looked up at the ceiling. ‘I suppose Liam,’ she swallowed, ‘represented something wildly different. I don’t know.’
My impatience and hunger for more information, even if it was going to wound me, felt like a physical pressure in my guts now. But I’d sit here all night if needs be. She had to do it in her own time and I had to hear everything.
‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘after a while I suppose the novelty began to wear off a little. He was possessive, like I told you. I realized I was getting in too deep with him and began to get worried about how I was going to get out from under the relationship.’ She stopped again and stared down at her hands, resting on her thighs. She scrunched her hands into fists.
‘Things came to a head one evening when I finally went over to his house in … whatever that place was called.’
‘Waterbeach.’ She couldn’t really have forgotten. The cutting was right there. I felt myself drawing back against the chair.
‘Waterbeach, yeah,’ she said and looked down at her hands. ‘Anyway, he had some acid … I ended up taking it, even though I knew it was a bad idea. He took it too, which he didn’t always do, for obvious reasons.’
A deep sigh. A hard rub along her jaw line, eyes distant now.
‘We started arguing,’ she said. ‘I told him I wanted to end things and he got really aggressive about it. I ran out of the house and went to the station, before realizing there was ages before the train back to Cambridge. He followed me there.’
Her hands were now fluttery pale birds in her lap.
‘We started rowing again,’ she said, voice jerky. ‘Really viciously. Both of us were off our heads. We’d thought we were alone but this … woman suddenly appeared and asked me if I was okay. A middle-aged, black woman.’
‘Alice Adebayo …’ I murmured. Anya winced and closed her eyes momentarily before nodding.
‘Liam started shouting at her to piss off,’ she continued in barely a whisper, ‘said it was none of her business. But she didn’t seem to be cowed at all. She was threatening to call the police. I slunk back because I couldn’t cope with it all. I felt like my head was going to explode. The bell started clanging to announce that the crossing was closing and there was an announcement about a non-stopping train. All I could hear was Liam and that woman shouting at each other and I was feeling really sick and then …’ Anya started to cry, covering her face with her hands. ‘I don’t think I can do this …’ she said with a strangled sob.
‘You have to,’ I said in a low voice. ‘I need to know the truth. It’s the only way I can support you.’
She nodded miserably, eyes swimming. Taking in a shuddery breath, she carried on. ‘Then I heard the warning scream of a train that wasn’t stopping at the station. The fast train to London.’ Anya was almost hyperventilating now and I could feel my own eyes prickling at her distress. ‘That Alice woman was calling Liam all sorts and she even belted him with her handbag.’ She made a strange sound that was partway between a laugh and a sob. ‘And then he, he …’ she gasped, ‘he … shoved her, once, twice, and she fell. She fell onto the tracks.’
As she dissolved into sobs I went and sat next to her on the sofa. I took one of her hands, which was icy cold and clammy. She squeezed mine back so hard I could feel the imprint of her nails.
‘She was unconscious,’ she said through her tears. ‘We were both yelling about how to help her up and I even tried to reach down there, but Liam shouted that it was too late. And then, and then …’
‘The train came,’ I said quietly, closing my eyes.
I didn’t want to, God knew, but I could see it, see it all. The woman falling into the tracks and the panic of the moment as the scream of the train began to approach. The whoosh and suck of the air and the impact. The train slamming on brakes and slowing, slowing …
I shuddered at the mental pictures suddenly flooding through my mind. The force of that speeding train meeting a soft, human body. It was too terrible to imagine and I tried to jerk my mind’s eye away.
We sat without speaking for a few moments. I chafed her cold hands and she cried quietly, head bowed.
‘What happened next?’ I said finally.
Anya took her hands from mine and rooted in a pocket for a tissue. She gave her nose a loud blow before replying.
‘We ran,’ she said, and then looked up
at me, her face unreadable.
‘Why?’
A flash of irritation crossed her face, surprising me. ‘Why?’
I stared back at her, utterly nonplussed. She made an exasperated noise in her throat.
‘Look, we were tripping off our faces, and a woman had just been torn to bits by a train because of Liam. It was terrifying. I swear to God we were just demented with it all. So we ran.’
I still said nothing and this was, rightly, taken as a judgement.
‘I was fucking nineteen, Ell!’ she cried. ‘A kid! Anyway,’ she sniffed loudly, ‘I thought that once we had the stuff out of our systems that we would go to the police.’
‘But you didn’t.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘No,’ said Anya quietly, ‘we didn’t. It almost felt like a bad dream the next morning when I woke up in my bed in college. For a little while that morning I convinced myself it hadn’t happened. But then I saw it in the local paper.’
She paused, then said, ‘I didn’t think there was anything further that we could do.’
‘But, sweetheart,’ I said, exasperated. ‘Don’t you think that woman’s family would have wanted an explanation? They probably think she killed herself.’ I laughed, a harsher sound than I intended. ‘Guess they have something in common with Michael Copeland’s mother.’
Anya didn’t respond.
‘So,’ I said, unbelievably weary all of a sudden, ‘what happened to Liam then? Where is he now?’
Anya puffed out her cheeks. ‘He came to see me, a week or so after. He was in a proper state about what he’d done. Told me he was going away – for good. I didn’t ask where because I didn’t want to know.’
We sat quietly for another few moments, both lost in our thoughts.
‘How did Michael end up with that cutting, then?’ I said. ‘Did he know what had happened?’
Anya lowered her head and stared miserably at her feet. ‘I don’t know,’ she said in a tiny voice. ‘He didn’t say anything about that. I have no idea why he had the cutting. I don’t think Liam was very close to him, but maybe Liam kept it for some twisted reason.’
