by John Marrs
‘We can’t find any proof that Charlotte and that man were friends or in any kind of relationship before their deaths,’ DS O’Connor informed me. ‘So that might come as a relief.’
‘Oh yes, it’s a huge relief.’ I made no attempt to disguise my sarcasm.
He took a sip from his mug of tea and glanced at my parents as if he expected us to be grateful for that small mercy. I hoped I was making him feel uncomfortable, because he could only retain eye contact with me for the briefest of moments. I remained poker-faced. It made no difference to me now whether Charlotte had been screwing that one man she died with or half of Northamptonshire.
We were sitting around the table in my parents’ dining room as DS O’Connor updated us. I thought I could smell booze on him; Dutch courage before facing the angry widower, I suppose.
Widower. Shit, that’s me. I’m a widower. From husband to widower in a heartbeat.
‘So how did they know each other?’ my father asked.
‘We’re still looking into it,’ he replied.
‘You don’t know?’ I said. ‘It’s your job to find this out and you are still “looking into it”? You’ve had almost three weeks. How much longer do you need?’
‘Let him continue, son.’ Dad gave the detective an apologetic look.
‘As you know, we’ve gone through Charlotte’s mobile phone and landline records and there’s not a single call registered to any numbers that aren’t explainable. We’ve also checked her email addresses and Skype calls, and again there’s nothing. She doesn’t seem to have FaceTimed, communicated on Internet message boards or via any other social media with anyone matching his description. We have spoken to her friends and nobody recalls her ever talking about another man. For all intents and purposes, they were complete strangers until the afternoon they met. The only thing of interest that shows up in her phone records is a number for End of the Line.’
‘What’s that?’ Dad asked.
‘It’s a helpline for people with emotional problems. Charlotte had made multiple calls over the last few weeks to a central number which diverts to the nearest branch.’
‘Why?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘How many are multiple calls?’
‘Almost a hundred.’
‘Jesus,’ I replied, and puffed out a breath. I really didn’t know my wife at all.
‘Then a week before her death, they suddenly stop.’
‘That doesn’t make sense,’ my mum said, and looked at me as if to ask how I could have not known about this when I’d lived with the woman.
‘The afternoon she died,’ I said, ‘she was walking towards the clifftops because she’d made up her mind to die with that man. Her hand looked like it was held to her ear. If she died with that phone, then how come it was found after she died in her car? And who was she calling?’
DS O’Connor gave a limp shrug. ‘She must have had two mobiles. The other man also looked like he was on a call.’
‘To End of the Line?’
‘Unless we can identify him or find his phone, we have no way of knowing.’
‘So let’s find out who they were speaking to at the helpline in the run-up to her death,’ Dad suggested. Johnny leaned against the sideboard and nodded his agreement.
‘It’s not as easy as that, I’m afraid.’ DS O’Connor pinched the top of his nose and closed his eyes. Maybe the buzz from the alcohol was wearing off. ‘End of the Line guarantees complete anonymity to its callers. They cannot see or trace anyone. They’re under no legal obligation to report a person who’s suicidal. Even if someone’s about to do what Charlotte did while speaking to them, they don’t have to call 999. Plus, she could’ve spoken to any of their volunteers across five counties. That’s several hundred people and we don’t have the resources to work on that. I’m sorry to say, if circumstances were different and Charlotte had been . . . unlawfully killed . . . then things would be different.’
‘But because it’s a suicide, it’s not taken as seriously,’ I suggested.
‘Honestly, Ryan, we are taking this very seriously. But the difference is there’s no reason for us to think a crime has been committed here. And unless whoever spoke to Charlotte and the other man comes forward, we’ll probably never know their reasons or learn the nature of their relationship.’
‘What about a moral obligation?’ asked Johnny. ‘Surely if they know why you want to talk to them, they’ll be willing to help us understand what happened?’
‘Then it’s up to them to volunteer that information.’
As the conversation continued and more roadblocks were thrown in our way, I became increasingly frustrated. It was like being behind the wheel of my own car but having someone drive it remotely.
‘There is something else,’ DS O’Connor added. ‘We’ve been approached by a news agency. We have a verbal agreement that they don’t normally report on suicides, but this is different as it was seemingly a pact between two strangers. They’ve had a tip-off and they believe it’s in the public interest to report on it.’
‘Tell them we don’t want to talk,’ I snapped. ‘It’s bad enough that our friends know, let alone the rest of the world.’
‘It might work in our favour though. It could help put names forward as to who the stranger might be.’
‘No,’ I replied adamantly, and slammed my hand down on the table.
‘Okay.’ DS O’Connor sighed and took a quick gulp of his tea. ‘I will pass your message on.’ He stood up to leave. ‘But we have no control over what they can and cannot write about. So you should prepare yourself, as there might be some interest in this story.’
He wasn’t wrong. Two days later and it had made the front of our weekly newspaper, page leads in four tabloids and a column in two broadsheets. Journalists raided Facebook for photographs of Charlotte and spoke to former workmates and acquaintances she had barely known. Stories were illustrated by tasteless graphics of the clifftop and the trajectory of their fall.
When journalists left me voicemail messages and texts urging me to talk to them, I turned off my phone. I could barely speak to the people around me, let alone strangers.
CHAPTER EIGHT
TWO MONTHS AFTER CHARLOTTE
I didn’t care about attending Charlotte’s funeral.
I didn’t need to say goodbye to her. I didn’t want to remember her fondly and I didn’t want to pay her my last respects. She deserved nothing from me. The only reason I agreed to attend the church ceremony and short journey to the crematorium was because I’d been guilt-tripped into it by my parents. If Charlotte didn’t want to celebrate her life, then why should I?
I was so muggy from swallowing two of Mum’s sleeping tablets and hungover from another beer binge the night before that I couldn’t focus on who was standing at the lectern, scrambling to find positive things to say about a woman who murdered her baby.
My eyes wandered around the church, which was decorated with vases of daffodils and posters advertising forthcoming Easter celebrations. But once they snapped towards the coffin as four pallbearers carried Charlotte in, they never left it. I ignored the order of service and didn’t join in with the hymns. I didn’t even bow my head in prayer.
Dad and Johnny flanked me and kept me steady for the moments when I was required to stand; and later they apologised to anyone who tried to converse with me as they guided me back towards the funeral car. I cared so little that I didn’t even try to avoid the reporters at the church gates, trying to engage anyone who made eye contact with them.
Once Charlotte’s body was released to me, I’d left it to my in-laws to organise her farewell. Choosing a funeral director, picking which clothes she would wear to go into the flames, what objects to throw into her coffin, what music should play as she was brought into the church, how many cars were required . . . She was their daughter so she was their problem. I told them through a third party that they could also keep her wedding ring. I had no use for my own, let alone hers.
Everything it signified was a lie. Charlotte had thought so little of me, and now the feeling was mutual. I just wanted it all to be over.
I did, however, want to go to the coroner’s court later that same week for Charlotte’s inquest. I allowed Johnny and my mum to accompany me. We sat two rows behind Charlotte’s parents, but neither family looked at each other, not even the briefest glance.
I didn’t know why I’d wanted to attend. Perhaps I didn’t think I’d suffered enough and needed to know how much more pain I could endure before I completely cracked.
I listened carefully as witness and character statements were read aloud, and I watched as the dashboard footage taken at the clifftop was shown. Eventually, the senior coroner, a plump, middle-aged woman with a soft face and sympathetic eyes, ruled the medical cause of her death as ‘multiple injuries’.
‘No shit,’ I mumbled to myself. I think Johnny might have heard me.
‘Before I record a verdict of suicide, I have to be positive of two things beyond a reasonable doubt,’ she continued. ‘That Mrs Smith caused the act which led to her death and that she did so with the intention of killing herself. I have to be sure on both accounts this is what happened – and I am. Mrs Smith went to the top of Birling Gap with an as-yet-unidentified man, then tragically died when she impacted with the rocks below. Therefore, in these circumstances, I record a conclusion of suicide.’
So there it was: in the space of three days, my wife had been cremated and it was on public record for all the world to see that she had killed herself. Perhaps now I could move on.
After eight weeks of living at my parents’ house, I felt a prevailing urge to be back inside my flat again. I needed to surround myself with familiar objects to help me feel like something close to my old self. I couldn’t allow Charlotte’s ghost to bully me out of my own home.
As I unlocked the front door, I hovered nervously in the doorway. There were faint traces of the air fresheners she preferred. Her raincoat hung shapelessly on a coat hook. We grinned under an arch made of roses in a wedding photograph gathering dust in its frame.
I’d spent almost a third of my life as an ‘us’ and suddenly I had to accept being an ‘I’ again. It hit me that the former life I’d loved so much was irrecoverable and I’d never be able to copy it with anyone else. Once the tears began, I couldn’t shut them off.
I wasn’t ready to return to our bedroom, so I chose to sleep in the box room. It was the only part of the flat that we hadn’t got around to decorating in our time there. We’d just about managed to wedge a single mattress and the tiniest of Ikea bedside cabinets inside. But it suited me fine for now. Next door was the nursery. I wasn’t ready to face that yet. While it remained as it was, in neutral shades of yellow and with soft toys scattered about, I could pretend Daniel was sleeping there. I didn’t want to let him go.
Days later, I printed out Charlotte’s mobile phone records. I’d believed DS O’Connor when he’d told us how frequently she’d called End of the Line, but I still wanted to see it with my own eyes. I scanned each column and most of the calls had been made in the morning or early afternoons when I was at work. Occasionally, she’d called evenings and weekends when we were both at home. I remembered her wandering into other rooms claiming to be catching up with friends, but now I knew that just metres away from me, she was actually telling a stranger that she wanted to die.
Some calls lasted seconds, others continued for more than an hour. For a moment, I let my anger dilute into pity.
Why couldn’t you tell me how much pain you were in?
I thought about Charlotte’s car and how, at some point, I’d have to sell it. In fact, there were a lot of things I needed to organise as my new normality began. But packing away her clothes, sifting through her documents, changing the name on the utility bills, closing her bank account, et cetera, would all have to wait.
And so would my job for now. The thought of walking into that perpetually cold lobby as if everything in my life was exactly the same as the last time I’d been there filled me with dread. My sympathetic doctor signed me off for another month, but he wouldn’t let me leave the surgery until he’d given me a handful of leaflets about coping with loss and the telephone numbers of grief counselling organisations. I scanned the advice given in one when I reached my car. ‘Try going away for a weekend somewhere that’s brand new to you, or take a long walk. Perhaps you might think about getting a pet.’ I laughed out loud.
Yes, doctor, I’m going to replace my dead wife with a hamster. Marvellous idea.
Johnny and the lads I played Sunday-league football with took turns to visit the flat and keep me occupied, but despite their best efforts, they rarely got much conversation from me. Johnny also insisted on dragging me out to our local pub, The Abington, and did his best to re-engage me with a world outside my cloudy little bubble. But I didn’t care for it. There was little I cared for anymore.
‘Mum and Dad are worried about you,’ Johnny began earnestly one evening. The bar was quiet and he was perched on the edge of a threadbare sofa, glancing at the floor and absent-mindedly fiddling with the drawstrings on his hoodie. ‘They’re scared you might . . . you know . . . do the same as Charlotte.’
‘What, kill myself for no reason? Hurl myself off a cliff and smash my head on rocks so my face is completely unrecognisable?’
I knew my reply was uncalled for. I’d be lying if I said the thought hadn’t crossed my mind. But it had only been fleeting. ‘What about you?’ I asked. ‘What do you think?’
‘I told them you’re not that selfish, that you know it’d destroy them if you did something like that.’ I nodded slowly. ‘It’d destroy me too,’ he added, and looked up at me with a deep concern in his eyes.
Johnny and I were close, but we’d rarely speak about matters of the heart. However, since Charlotte had died, he’d been my rock. He’d seen me at my very worst and at my most desperate. He’d sat with me as I cried my eyes out, he’d wiped drunken vomit from my face, and he’d used up all his holiday to spend time with me and offer me his strength.
‘If you hurt yourself, I’d never forgive myself, Ry,’ he continued. ‘Watching you go through hell has really affected me too. I need you to promise me that you won’t do anything daft.’
‘I promise.’
‘Good. And tell me you’ll think about what Dad suggested, like grief counselling or getting some medication from the doctor.’
‘Okay, I will.’ I had no intention of doing either. I only agreed to get him off my back. ‘I need a piss. You get another round in,’ I said, and patted him on the shoulder as I left the table.
As I made my way through the lounge area, I spotted a noticeboard covered with business cards for taxi firms and flyers for pub quizzes and a beer festival. Among them was a leaflet for End of the Line. I removed the pin and slipped it into my pocket. Later, after Johnny dropped me off at the flat, I stared at the leaflet in my hand. We listen, not judge, it said in blue writing.
The only way I could understand what the helpline had offered Charlotte that I couldn’t was to call them. Tentatively, I reached for my phone and dialled. Within five rings it was answered.
‘Good evening, you’ve reached the End of the Line helpline, this is Kevin speaking. May I ask your name?’
I had no idea what to say to him.
‘Take all the time you need,’ Kevin continued after a short silence.
‘Ryan,’ I said. ‘My name is Ryan.’
‘Hi there, Ryan, and how are you feeling this evening?’
I don’t know if it was actually Kevin’s voice or the four pints of real ale floating through my bloodstream, but he sounded so warm and compassionate. I wondered why he’d chosen to stay up until late in the night to talk to people he didn’t know. Maybe, like me, there was a huge gap in his life.
‘I’m okay,’ I replied.
‘That’s good to hear. Is there a reason that brought you to call us tonight?’
‘My wife . .
.’ I began, but I struggled to complete the sentence.
‘Your wife,’ he repeated. ‘Did something happen to your wife?’
‘She . . . died. A couple of months ago.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, Ryan. Would you like to tell me about her?’
I racked my brains to think up any reason other than suicide as to how she might’ve died, as I didn’t want him to judge me. But the alcohol slowed me down and I couldn’t think of one that quickly. So I told him the truth and how I swung from missing Charlotte with every fibre of my being to never wanting to think about her again.
‘That’s completely natural to go through a wide range of emotions,’ Kevin explained. ‘Do you want to talk me through some of what you’ve been feeling?’
I sat on the floor of my living room, telling a stranger things even my family didn’t know about how I felt. And while he didn’t offer any miracle solutions, at least he didn’t suggest I took a long walk or bought a pet. Instead, our conversation gave me more of an insight into why Charlotte might have found End of the Line’s volunteers easy to talk to.
But it had yet to explain why she’d needed to call them more than a hundred times.
CHAPTER NINE
FOUR MONTHS AFTER CHARLOTTE
The police eventually returned Charlotte’s mobile phone, iPad and laptop after the inquest. They were contained in clear, sealed plastic bags with evidence and case numbers written on stickers with a black marker pen. That’s all she was to people who didn’t know her: a case identified by two letters and seven digits.
Her electronics had been thoroughly examined by a digital forensic team, but nothing of note or concern had been discovered. And, frustratingly, there was still no link to the man she’d died with. Despite the media attention their story had generated, he’d yet to be identified by the public and his body still hadn’t washed ashore.
