‘I’m not sure what you’re basing that on, Ray, because I don’t think you’ve looked at me once since I got here.’
Ray, who had spent their entire conversation staring at his hands, looked up. ‘There. Now it’s official. You look great.’
‘You’re a wonderful liar.’
He smiled. It was a sturdy, genuine smile. She hadn’t seen one like it in some time. ‘I spoke to Bob about all the parole stuff.’
‘Yeah.’
He leaned forward on his elbows and lowered his voice. ‘It looks good, Ab.’
‘How good?’
‘You know Bob’s motto: hope for the best but expect the worst. But let’s just say he was … quietly optimistic. I might be coming home sooner than we thought.’
Regardless of Bob’s motto, Abby couldn’t wipe the smile off her face.
* * *
Belport was roughly twenty years behind the rest of the world, which meant a bank of payphones still stood in a neat row outside the post office.
Abby’s shift finished fifteen minutes after John Keddie left the store. Three minutes later, she pulled up outside the payphones and climbed out of a Honda (the Volvo had given up and died back in the early 2000s).
She had her mobile on her, and reception on the island wasn’t bad since they cut down all those trees on Harvill Hill to erect a signal tower, but she didn’t want this call traced.
She stepped out into the cold, fed change into one of the phones, and punched in the number John had given her.
‘Hello?’ John answered.
‘Tonight is no good,’ she said. ‘But we’re free right now.’
‘You and Eddie?’
‘Yes,’ she lied.
‘You have my address.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not there. Can you meet us?’
‘… Where?’
31
THE WIFE AND THE WIDOW
Any lower back pain Abby had felt when getting off her chair had apparently vanished. She moved lightning-quick for a woman her age. All Kate saw – before the knife cleaved a hot line through her skin – was a flash of grey hair and the glint of a scalpel blade.
Abby had gone for the throat. Her left hand had reached from behind and grabbed hold of Kate’s face, fingers splayed outwards like talons, while her right brought the knife up and under her chin. Instinctively, Kate had managed to bring her right arm up to block the blow, but it had caught the blade. Hot blood fell in ribbons from her forearm. She tried to scream but there was no air left in her body.
‘Motherfucker,’ Abby spat, struggling to keep Kate in her chair.
For a moment, Kate nearly allowed herself to slip into autopilot. The temptation to submit and roll over like a frightened puppy was strong. But that was the old Kate. That was the woman who hadn’t wanted to hear about the monsters under the bed, the woman who let the men in her life show her what to do and when to do it.
She had tried never to think about death, but the few times she had, she’d decided that when it came it should feel like an ellipsis: a gentle trailing off of a sentence. It should be a whisper of words, a padding of gentle footsteps. This, being killed by a deranged middle-aged woman, felt too sudden, too mad. This couldn’t be how it ended.
She thought about Mia, could almost see her face, almost hear her voice.
Mum? the voice said.
Yes, monkey?
Be a big girl.
Kate rocked hard in her chair and toppled backwards onto the tiles. She scrambled back, clasping at the wet blood seeping from the gash on her arm. Abby came towards her fast, the blade of her knife aimed directly outwards like a fencing sword. Her eyes were deep and lost, and mad. They seemed to say, Orpheus was torn to shreds by vicious, hungry beasts.
Kate pulled herself to her feet and reached blindly upwards, groping at the pots and pans that hung from the ladder like stalactites. Her hand found the handle of a saucepan. She yanked it down and tossed it at Abby, who covered her face with her elbow and braced for impact. She needn’t have bothered. Kate was a terrible shot. The saucepan whipped past her, shattering the door of the microwave.
Then, Abby was right in front of Kate, punching her in the chest, in the shoulder, in the belly. There was no pain – adrenalin had flooded her system – so it took her a few moments to understand what was happening. Abby wasn’t punching her. She was stabbing her. Thrusting in and out, in and out, so many times that Kate lost count.
The blade was only short, but soon Kate’s white shirt was covered in growing spots of red. She looked at her winter parka hanging on her chair. She wished she had kept it on. It wouldn’t have stopped the attack entirely but might have served as armour.
She felt foggy and clumsy, sluggish and terrified. Her instinct was to pull back, but there was nowhere to go. Her back was against the kitchen cabinets. So instead, she thrust herself forward, knocking Abby to one side and stumbling to the ground against the kitchen table. She grabbed hold of it, intending to hoist herself up, but instead collapsed it around herself, spilling the box of surgical gloves, glass eyes and a half-skinned rat onto the floor. The gloves fell somewhere to her left. The eyes hit the tiles with a soft crack and rolled beneath the fridge. The half-skinned and half-frozen corpse slapped down right between her legs.
She picked it up and flung it across the room. It struck Abby in the cheek – leaving a film of yellow-brown liquid there – and slopped back to the floor.
Kate moved to stand but her vision blurred. The dozen or so one-inch nicks on her chest began to flare with pain. She grunted, spun herself onto her stomach, and began crawling and clawing her way towards the hallway.
A heavy weight slammed against her back. Abby was on top of her now, straddling her, panting and crying. They were both crying. Kate felt the blade sink into her lower back, then her side, then her back again.
‘No,’ she managed to say. ‘Please.’
Hot urine spilled down Kate’s leg and her bowels let go.
At the top of the hallway, the front door swung open, letting in a rush of cold air from outside. It momentarily sharpened Kate’s senses, and she was able to crane her neck to look.
For a moment she thought, Fisher? Then she recognised Ed Gilpin’s pale-grey work shirt. Ed stared back at Kate in dumb disbelief, then looked at the woman on her back.
‘… Mum?’
‘Shut the door, Ed,’ she heard Abby say, before darkness engulfed her and she slipped away into unconsciousness. ‘Shut the damn
door,’ Abby said.
But Ed just stood staring at her from the top of the hall, one hand resting on the doorknob, the other dangling slackly by his side.
Over his shoulder, Abby could see clear across Milt Street. It was empty, but all it would take was a single car driving past at the wrong moment, and for the driver to glance inside.
The widow had fallen still beneath her, but she was still breathing in a laboured, raspy tone.
‘Ed, the door!’ Abby shouted again.
Ed’s hand fell loose from the knob and he went on standing there, staring.
Despite the fact his fight or flight response had apparently shut down, it was a good thing he was there, Abby thought. She wished he didn’t have to see this and wished harder that he didn’t have to see her like this, but she would need his help.
She had taken care of John Keddie quickly. He hadn’t seen it coming, and years of reading true crime and performing taxidermy had made her surprisingly efficient at the job. It had been messy, but quick. All she’d had to do when she was done was lean over him, slip his Prius into neutral and let it roll into the sea.
This was different. John’s widow coming over unannounced meant she had to improvise. When she was done – and please God let that be soon – she’d need help moving the body and scrubbing down the house.
But there was another reason she was glad Ed was here, although she would never admit it out loud: a deep, slightly twisted part of her thought it was good for him to see
this. This was the cost of keeping his secret. This was what sacrifice looked like.
‘Ed,’ Abby hissed, in the same tone she’d used on him as a boy when he was getting up to mischief. ‘Shut the fucking door right now and come help your mother.’
He flinched, then finally did as he was told. He took three small and cautious steps forward, leaning forward to look at the widow. ‘Is she…?
‘Not yet,’ Abby said. ‘You don’t need to be here for this part, but I’m going to need your help.’
The widow shuddered, spat up a mouthful of blood, then fell still again.
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ Ed said. ‘You killed John.’
‘Oh, come on, Ed, don’t give me that. You must have figured that out.’
‘I … I think I was afraid of the answer,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want you to … I didn’t want this.’
‘Well maybe if you hadn’t been lurking around his house like that she wouldn’t have made it here.’
‘But I didn’t want any of this,’ he said again.
‘Jesus, okay, Eddie, neither did I. But he was going to undo everything. He was going to undo the sacrifice your father made. The sacrifice we all made, for you. This is all because of you.’
‘No. Enough, Mum.’
‘Your dad is coming home, Eddie. This is nearly over. This is all nearly over.’
He took out his phone. ‘I’m calling Bobbi.’
‘Stop.’
He was crying now, which got Abby started again. Hot tears streaked down her face. She had to end this now. She lifted Kate Keddie’s head with her left hand and moved to drag the X-Acto knife over her throat.
One more time, she thought. One more sacrifice.
Big arms clasped around her, pulled her backwards, dragged her down the hall. She dropped the blade, struggling to break free of her son’s grip.
‘It’s all over,’ he said.
Abby, ragged and tired, fought once more against her son, then collapsed into his arms. Ed punched triple zero into his phone and made the call, but he didn’t let her go. He just held her there, rocking her back and forth, the way she had rocked him when he was a baby.
A few minutes later, she heard police sirens in the distance, getting closer and closer.
Abby looked at the widow. The woman’s fingers were twitching.
‘I think she’s
waking up.’
Consciousness drifted in around the edges of the black. Kate woke to sharp pain. Her lips were wet and tasted like blood. The air smelled like shit. She was lying in a shallow pool of her own blood in Abby Gilpin’s house, but she wasn’t dead.
‘Help,’ she managed to say.
‘Help is here,’ a voice said. It was Bobbi Eckman. She was kneeling over her.
‘I…’
‘Try not to speak,’ Eckman said. ‘The ambos are on their way. You’re going to be okay, Mrs Keddie. Kate. You’re safe now.’
32
THE WIFE
Abby sat in the same windowless room at Belport Police Station where, twenty-three years earlier, Ray had confessed to the murder of David Stemple. Bobbi was on her way in to talk to her. She would have a lot of questions, but for the first time in many years, all Abby had to do was tell the truth.
She would be going away then, for a long time, she reckoned. Ray would be getting out just as she was going in. The thought stirred a smile on her face.
Like ships passing in the night, she thought.
Beneath the crushing grief of what she’d lived through and the horror of what she’d done, there was something else, brewing on the horizon. A strange and forgotten sensation.
Relief.
She hoped, at least, that Ed was feeling it too.
33
THE WIDOW
Seventy-two hours after her attack, Kate was discharged from the hospital. She was full of stitches, swollen and sore, punched up like a pin cushion and emptied out, but she was awake, she was there, she was present, and she could finally go home.
Fisher and Pam had come to pick her up. They were due to catch the four pm ferry from Belport back to the mainland, but they arrived at Elk Harbour early, so Kate and Mia walked down to the beach.
Watching her daughter, Kate thought about what Abby had asked her on the night of the attack. Is there anything you wouldn’t do for your daughter?
There wasn’t. It would take a long time for Kate to admit it to herself, and even then, it would hurt like hell, but she understood Abby. She even empathised with her. If it meant protecting Mia, she would have cut down as many men as it took. Even John.
‘There but by the grace of God go I,’ she said.
Mia turned to her and said, ‘Huh?’
But Kate just took Mia’s hand and kept walking.
Kate thought about fresh starts, and pictured the clean white wall in the living room of the holiday house. It was still unclear how much Ed Gilpin really knew about his mother’s actions. If he truly had no idea about the murder, as he was claiming, then why had he covered over his name on the wall? He must have been scared when he heard about John’s murder, scared enough to send him into the house with a brush and a bucket of paint. That was the most likely scenario – and the one that took into account the actual evidence – but it wasn’t the most appealing one.
There was another option. Maybe John was the one who painted the wall, to make a clean slate for the future, for Mia, for Kate. Either way, if, in the end, Kate decided to keep the holiday house – and that was a big if – she decided she’d leave that wall blank.
Further up the beach, they came across a dead seagull on the shoreline. The tide was coming in, retrieving the bird for a sea burial. Further up the beach, live seagulls watched and waited.
Mia stood over the dead bird, studying it from a metre or so away. There was no apparent cause of death. As far as she could tell, it had suffered a mid-air heart attack and dropped out of the sky. Its beak was caked with dry sand. Its eyes were wide and startled.
‘It looks surprised,’ Mia said. Then, in a mock-English accent, gave the bird a voice. ‘I simply cannot believe I’m dead.’
The tide drifted in and reached the seagull’s wing. It lifted, then dropped, lifted, dropped, as if waving.
‘Do seagulls have nests?’ Mia asked.
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. I guess they just sort of hang around the sand dunes and huddle together for warmth at night.’
‘Will another seagull be waiting for this one to come home?’
‘I don’t know, monkey.’
‘Should we bury it?’
‘I think we should let the sea take it instead. That feels right, don’t you think?’
‘I guess,’ she said.
On their way back to Elk Harbour, Mia waded in the shallows with her shoes in her hands. Kate took off her sneakers and joined her. The water was icy, but the sky was blue.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
That old cliché about the difficult second album is absolutely true. While writing this book, I spent much of my time thinking it would expose me as the fraud I really am. What kept me going, again and again and again, was you. The reader.
Since publishing The Nowhere Child, I’ve met many of you in person and received emails from readers all over the world. I have been moved, warmed and inspired by your words. I even named Bobbi Eckman’s cat after a reader’s feline companion (thanks again, Mary Anne from Texas, please give Joe a scratch for me). So, this is a little note to say thank you, and to say, keep ’em coming.
While you’re here, I thought I’d talk a little about what went into building that twist. There are some major spoilers ahead, so if you’ve skipped to the Author’s Note before reading the book, turn back now.
Juggling multiple time lines in The Nowhere Child and making sure each twist and plot-point was revealed at the exact right moment was hard work. By design, I told a simple story in a complex way. So, with The Wife and The Widow, I set out to tell a simple story in a simpl
e way. I wanted the narrative to be clean and linear. Things did not turn out that way. You know what they say about the best-laid plans of mice and men, right?
Instead, I decided to build an elaborate time-jump twist into the narrative. Years ago, I was watching a particular episode of Lost in which a flashback is revealed to be a flashforward, and my mind was blown apart. I wanted to do something like that. I wanted to write something that would make the reader’s eyes bulge and send them back through the book in search of all the clues they missed. The trouble was, I had no idea how to do that.
I drove my publisher crazy by going back and forth with ideas. In one version, the dead body being investigated in Abby’s chapters turned out to be Kate (I have no idea how I would have pulled that off). In another version, Ray’s mum and John’s dad were swingers and half the book would take place in the ’70s (again, NO idea how I would have done that). Just as I was beginning to think the time-jump idea was impossible and I’d wasted months of my life trying to put together an unsolvable jigsaw puzzle, I was hit with a stroke of genius. A guiding voice from within whispered: if you want to solve this problem, you know what you have to do … ask your wife, stupid.
So, I asked my wife.
There’s a beautiful lake near our house where Summer and I walk the dog in the afternoons. On one of these walks, I unpacked all the different options, all my hopes and fears, everything I wanted to achieve. Sum was quiet for a few steps, and then said, ‘What if one of Abby’s kids was the killer and Kate’s husband used to be friends with them and years later Abby killed Kate’s husband to protect the secret.’
‘Hold on,’ I told her. ‘I need to write this down.’
With this key piece of information, the story flowed out. I belted out a draft. Martin Hughes (publisher) and Ruby Ashby-Orr (editor) helped me make it make sense, and then helped me make it good. The best ideas in this book came from them (and Summer). Come to think of it, I really didn’t do that much.
That’s it for me. If you enjoyed this book, reach out. If you have some constructive criticism, let me know. If you hated it, take that secret to your grave. You can contact me through my website (christian-white.com), find me on Twitter and Instagram, or email me direct at [email protected].
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