by Will Carver
And she convinced Gail to drag Abe’s body into his flat and wait there. She couldn’t call the police because she would end up in prison, and then she would have to give birth there.
‘And then they’ll take the baby away from you and put it into care. Or worse, back with his father.’
It all happened in a moment, and the young mother-to-be was confused and she couldn’t believe what she had done, and she also couldn’t remember it because it spiralled so quickly as her rage grew out of control.
Before she knew it, Gail’s hands were around Abe’s ankles and Mrs May was saying, ‘Quickly, dear, we don’t have a lot of time.’
TWO
Not everyone who ever lived at The Beresford was running away from something or somewhere. Or somebody.
And not everyone had to kill or be killed.
Aubrey Downes was sensible. Methodical. A little boring, perhaps. She came from a family of well-intended tedium. Her father worked in the insurance industry. In fact, he ran his own company. A company that made him proud. A company he devoted a lot of time to. Yet he always made time for his family.
When he died, from obesity-related heart failure, his funeral was attended by his wife, his two children and the people who had worked for him. Almost one hundred people, who realised upon his death that they never really knew anything about John Downes and, worse still, found they didn’t actually care about that fact.
The company continued to thrive. They all kept their jobs. And the remaining Downes family members reaped the benefits. John Downes knew a thing or two about insurance, so not only did he leave his family with a profitable business, there was a lump-sum payout that would ensure they never had to struggle.
Aubrey was not running away. She missed her father, of course, but life was simple. Her brother would take over the business once he had graduated, and was old enough and qualified enough to do so. Aubrey already fit the bill but wanted to go for something on her own.
With the money she had in her bank, she could have stayed in the centre of any major city in a high-end hotel room for a year. But Aubrey was cautious. And that would not teach her anything about living alone, would it? It would be frivolous and superficial. Two words that nobody would use about Aubrey Downes when they eulogised her life.
She had scoured the internet and stumbled upon a place that was ludicrously reasonable yet also befitting her current lifestyle. It seemed too good to be true, but she had done her due diligence and everything seemed above board.
Aubrey Downes was leaving the family home to pursue her own interests. To make something of herself. If it didn’t work out, there was always the option to fall into a position in the business her father had built from nothing. But she was confident that she could follow in his footsteps rather than ride on his coattails. It was important for her to do so. Her brother did not share the same entrepreneurial spirit.
He stood next to his mother as they waved Aubrey off into her bright, new future. A brave new world. She watched them in her rearview mirror as they walked back into the light of the house, shoulder to shoulder, her brother with his arm around their mother, comforting her.
They were not extraordinary people. They were not cut-throat or malicious. They were safe and secure, and planned within an inch of their lives so as to avoid any opportunity for spontaneity.
Aubrey was flying against that. But safely.
She left her family but she wasn’t racing away.
Not everyone who ever lived at The Beresford was running from something or somewhere. Or somebody.
Aubrey Downes was not everyone.
And not everyone had to kill or be killed.
Aubrey Downes did.
THREE
‘I told him he had to leave.’
Mrs May was talking to herself. She sounded disturbed.
‘He could have got out.’ She was shaking her head.
There was no time to lament. No time for reproof. Somebody was at the door, and Mrs May was the only one who could answer it. She had to greet her new tenant.
Aubrey Downes was wearing a tan coat that stretched down to her slender ankles. Her rectangular glasses sat flawlessly on the triangles of her cheekbones and, just below the left rim, she had a perfectly placed mole that her father had always referred to as a ‘beauty spot’. Slung over her right shoulder was a laptop bag and in her left hand was her mobile phone. She looked as though she was arriving for a job interview.
‘Hello. I’m looking for a Mrs May.’ There was no hint of an accent that could place her.
‘As far as I know there is only one Mrs May and I am her. You must be Aubrey.’
The new tenant seemed perfectly polite.
So had Abe Schwartz when he first arrived.
Mrs May looked Aubrey up and down as subtly as she could muster, though her mind kept wandering to Abe; what he could have been and the image of him with part of her vase protruding from his retina.
Audrey was somehow plain but striking. It was probably the red hair. She was pretty but not beautiful. There was a confidence in the way she carried herself but an awkwardness that almost betrayed it. She was mysterious but not in the way that made you want to get to know her.
Mrs May could not make her out. She seemed out of place. But not lost.
Gail was so clearly damaged, arriving in the middle of the night. And Sythe smacked of desperation from the offset.
‘Well, come in, dear, you’ll catch a cold out there.’ The old lady turned on the charm.
‘Thank you. I do have some things in the car, but I can collect after getting in to the apartment?’
‘Yes. Yes. Of course. We used to have a lovely lad here who would have helped you with your boxes, but he’s gone now. Currently just myself and another lady at the moment. And she’s … pregnant.’ She mouthed the last word like it was dirty, rather than sensitive information.
‘It’s no trouble at all. I can manage.’
‘You do seem like the independent type.’ The old lady smiled, and Aubrey took it as a compliment – that she was projecting the correct image.
They walked upstairs together, and Mrs May gave Aubrey the keys to Blair’s old apartment. She explained that there were two keys for the flat, one for the front door, another for the store room out at the front of the house, and a couple of other keys – for what, she couldn’t remember. Then she left her new tenant to look around and plug in her laptop. But not before pointing in the direction of the garden and her beloved library, which was now a crime scene.
The old lady ran down the stairs like a woman half her age. She looked over her shoulder once at Aubrey’s place before scooting across the foyer to Abe’s.
Gail was a mess.
‘What the hell are we going to do?’ She gazed at Mrs May, lost.
‘I’d say you’re going to have to get rid of the body.’
‘What? What are you talking about? Get rid of the body? And how am I supposed to do that?’
Mrs May wanted to say, Well, Abe used to chop them up and soak them in a concentrated lye solution.
But then she would have to explain how she knew that, how she knows everything that goes on in The Beresford.
She couldn’t do that.
She wasn’t allowed.
It wasn’t in her contract.
FOUR
The Mays had no mortgage and, by the time Mr May finally passed, their savings had dwindled by half as they crossed off places and buildings and experiences from his list. The doctors had suggested there were a matter of weeks left, but Mrs May managed to get another year out of the old boy.
He had always wanted to see the Mona Lisa in real life. They did it. He said it was a lot smaller than he’d imagined. He’d never set foot in Africa. So they did that, too. A full safari trip was too much, with everything they needed to tick off the list, but they managed a walk with lions. Mrs May still remembers her husband’s face when the park ranger told him to lean into the wild animal as it walked past h
im to show that he was not afraid. He tried to be so brave, even through his frailty.
They ate alligator and kangaroo. They drank at a club Oscar Wilde had attended and slept in a hotel that Princess Diana frequented. They lived more in that final year than most do in sixty.
And when he finally passed, she was prepared. Emotionally and financially. It wasn’t a relief to see him move on but there was a peace that came with it, a peace that would never have materialised had he been taken as abruptly as she had thought he might in the beginning.
Mr May had died in his favourite chair after finishing a book he had always wanted to read but hadn’t particularly enjoyed. His body was taken away, and Mrs May was left alone in the quiet of their home, not knowing what would happen next.
She poured herself a glass of red wine and sat on the sofa, staring at her husband’s empty chair. He would never sit on that again. On the coffee table was his cup that he would never drink from again. Next to that was the local newspaper, folded in half at the property section. She couldn’t understand why, as Mr May always skipped that part.
She gulped down half the wine and picked up the paper.
There it was.
She put in an offer and bought The Beresford without knowing why. It was the right paper on the right page at the right moment.
She would live in one part and rent the rest out. And she would not have to spend the remainder of her days looking at chairs her husband would never sit in again, or sleep in the room they had shared for decades, or pick up the shoes he would never leave on the front step rather than putting in the shoe rack right next to the door.
That would be everyday hell.
It didn’t take the old lady too long to realise that life at The Beresford was not normal. It was different, and that is what she wanted, of course, but she began to notice things that were happening. That life had a strange way of repeating itself. As did death.
It dawned on Mrs May that having that final year with her husband meant that anything after was going to be everyday hell. A living hell.
Mrs May had chosen Hell.
And there was nothing she could do to change that.
FIVE
Every time it seemed that Gail wavered, Mrs May pulled on the right string to reel her back in. Just a dollop of fear at losing her child and the old lady was sure that she could make Gail do anything. But her patience was wearing thin.
‘How would I even know where to start with getting rid of … this.’ She pointed at Abe’s sad corpse.
‘Oh, Google it, Gail.’
‘What? Look up how to get rid of a dead body? Are you insane?’
‘Or try common sense. Cut it up. Crush it up. Burn it. Ditch it. I don’t care. Just get it out of my building.’
Then there was an argument that wasn’t really an argument, it was both women venting their frustrations towards one another. Gail wanted to know why she had to do it on her own, and Mrs May told her that it was nothing to do with her because she had not killed anybody – accidentally or otherwise. Besides, the old lady was going to keep quiet about the whole situation, and that was more help than she needed to give.
She did help Gail pull Abe’s dead body into the bathroom.
‘Whatever you’re going to do, do it in here. It’s going to be easier for us to clean it up afterwards. I’m happy to help you with that. I’m an accessory now, anyway, aren’t I?’
Gail was so confused. Why was the old lady helping her? Why wouldn’t she let Gail call the police? But why would Gail risk going to jail? Would it even matter that it was an accident? She had lashed out at her husband a few times in self-defence, and there were occasions when this would make him back off and go to sleep on the sofa. There were also times when it made him plough into her harder. They could use that in court. Say she was aggressive. Suggest she had a temper.
Everything came down to the baby. The unborn, unformed foetus inside of her. She could tell herself that what she was doing was selfless; she was protecting her child. If she ended up in jail and the baby was taken away from her to be with its father, it was ultimately going to be worse off. If he got drunk and hit his wife, what was going to stop him from getting drunk and hitting his child? Gail could be locked up until the kid was eighteen. It would grow up hating her, resenting her.
She couldn’t have that.
So Gail did what Mrs May wanted and she used her common sense. She looked around Abe’s flat – mostly books and films and wine – she found the tin he kept his weed in that she’d seen him use in the garden. After twenty minutes of acquainting herself with Abe’s possessions, she found the things she thought she would need.
The scissors were useless, and she threw them across the room in agitation. But she soon found her groove. Talking to her baby as she went. ‘I’m doing this for you. I’m saving you from him,’ she chanted as the teeth of the saw cut through Abe’s flesh and bone.
She tried to pull the piece of vase from his eye, but it wouldn’t budge, so she cut out his eye with a sharp knife instead. Telling her little embryo that everything was going to be okay.
It took her hours, and not once did Mrs May check up on her to see how things were going. Gail placed all the pieces she had hacked off into separate bin liners. She rolled them up and taped around them with masking tape, hoping it would contain any blood but also prevent the smell from seeping out.
All the bags were different shapes and sizes. She wasn’t a carpenter or an experienced murderer. She did the best with what she had. All the while telling that doomed zygote inside her womb, ‘This isn’t me. This is not who I am.’
It wasn’t Abe either. Reliable Abe.
And it wasn’t Sythe. Poor, tormented artist.
When you scroll through the terms and conditions or you sign a contract without reading and comprehending every word, there’s a good chance that you don’t really understand the deal that you have made or with whom you have made that deal.
WHAT DO YOU WANT?
Parenting is tough. Your friends who had kids before you tried to explain this. On those Sundays where you slept in until midday after drinking and eating anything you wanted the night before. After you went another month without using your gym membership. After you wasted all the wonderful time and expendable income you frittered away on things you never wore or used.
They told you what it was like once you had to care for a small human and keep it alive.
And you thought they were exaggerating. Or being dramatic.
Then you had a child of your own and realised they were right and you wasted all that time you had before. All the opportunity to chase the things you wanted.
But you didn’t know what you wanted then.
You thought you wanted children.
You know how awful the world is. You know it’s unsafe. War and disease are met with a shrug of the shoulders or a roll of the eyes when they should be devastating. Real-life bullying is now accompanied by cyberbullying. Everyone feels awful and anxious and they don’t know why.
You brought a child into it anyway.
And your friends tell you about the terrible twos. You don’t believe it.
The gut-wrenching fear and dislocation of their first day at school. You don’t believe it.
How much the child you are doing your best for will make you feel like you are the worst person in the world. How they will become unmanageable in their teen years. You don’t know how a parent could call their own offspring a ‘little shit’. You will feel like a failure. Yet you won’t give up.
Eventually, they will leave. And that thing that has terrorised you for two decades will suddenly leave a great hole in your life.
What do you do now?
What do you want?
Mr Conroy, what do you want?
I want my daughter to thrive. To be the person she wants. To be respectful. To keep the Lord in her heart. To not forget her mother.
And Mrs Conroy?
You do the best you can fo
r somebody else, every day. Their existence proves to you that there must be a God. You hope that you are doing the right thing. You’ve made hard decisions and you have disciplined where needed, even when it has hurt you. A lot has hurt you.
Then they leave. And it hurts you.
You put everything into them, and now you must find out who you are again.
I want something that is mine, something for myself.
Something bigger than being a mother.
I want a message from God.
SIX
The people who lived at The Beresford did not belong. They had that in common. The kind of people who wanted to sit in the centre of the circle but existed on the side of a square. They were outside. They floated on the periphery.
They weren’t outcasts. They hadn’t been banished. They weren’t weird. They just didn’t quite fit.
Something wasn’t tessellating with them and the world. They weren’t living up to their parents’ expectations or their own view of what life should be. Gail knew that a marriage should not come with a physically abusive husband. Abe wanted to use his technology on the Sabbath, and, while he was there, he didn’t feel the need for a Sabbath. That segregated him from his family. Blair was a secular girl in a devout world, and Sythe was a boring narcissist.
Each of them, and those before, were trying to run from their own personal hell. The Beresford was their escape.
Their halfway house.
Their waiting room.
Their Purgatory.
Aubrey was different. She was solid. She came from good stock. Hard-working and devoted parents. Her father hadn’t adhered to the healthiest of lifestyles and he worked more hours than was ideal, but that did not detract from his loyalty to his family or the time he spent with them.
There was no abuse. She was disciplined, but it was appropriate. She was not neglected in favour of her younger brother. There was always encouragement. Aubrey became the woman she wanted to be. Strong, striking and independent. She was eased towards a position in the family business, but there were no hard feelings when she decided to go at things alone.
