by Holly Seddon
She smiles, she can’t help herself. ‘You’re such a good man,’ she says as he turns to leave.
*
Marianne goes downstairs, nervous to see how Daisy reacts. But when she gets into the kitchen diner, Daisy is smiling and crunching cereal.
‘Coffee?’ Noah asks, sunnily.
‘Yes, thanks.’
‘I get nightmares too,’ Daisy says. Marianne frowns, unsure how to reply.
‘I explained that you got scared and got in with me,’ Noah says.
‘I do that sometimes,’ chirrups Daisy. ‘I didn’t know grown-ups did, though.’
Marianne stays for the coffee, despite running low on time, and the three of them compare their days ahead.
‘I’m playing with knives and fire in the woods,’ Daisy says and Marianne stares at her in shock.
‘Forest school,’ Noah says, smiling. ‘And you’re not playing with knives or fire, Dais, I read the letter. You get to build a campfire and cut sticks.’ He looks at Marianne but addresses Daisy. ‘And you’ll be supervised the whole time, young lady.’
Daisy shrugs. ‘What are you doing today, Marianne?’
‘Well, I’m going to be teaching lots of smelly teenagers today,’ she says. ‘But I don’t get to take them into the forest, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh,’ Daisy says, as if genuinely sad. ‘Poor them.’
Noah smiles. ‘And does no one care what Daddy’s doing?’
Daddy. The last ‘Daddy’ Marianne shared breakfast with was her own, decades ago. Daisy shrugs. ‘You already told me and it was boring.’ The little girl tries to stifle a smile, enjoying the laughter of adults, and lists Noah’s day’s tasks on her fingers. ‘You’re taking me to school, then you have a boring meeting and are going to the gym.’
‘Something like that,’ Noah says as Marianne notices the time.
‘Shit, sugar, sorry. I really should go.’
By the time she inches on to the Edgware Road, Marianne should have been taking the register for her tutor group. If there was anywhere to park along this jammed artery, perhaps she could pull over and get on the tube. She brings up her mental map of London. No, it wouldn’t work anyway, she’d only get as far as Liverpool Street before having to squeeze onto a bus bulging with irritated commuters. And that would take even longer, all told. Whatever way she looks at it, she’s running unforgivably late.
She feels a rising tide of claustrophobia and opens her window, jumping in surprise when a moped whines past and nearly clips her mirror.
Swallowing her fear, Marianne calls the school in a flurry of apologies. ‘I think I have food poisoning,’ she says. ‘I’ve tried to make it in but I’m going to have to go home.’
Noah isn’t working from home today, Daisy said so; he has a meeting then the gym. The idea of all that space, the quiet safety of his house, appeals more than anything. It’s yet more imposition after a dicey start, though. Fuck it. She calls, chewing her lip while she waits for him to pick up. If it’s a no, she’ll just go for a drive, clear her head. She’s certainly not going to go back to her flat, not yet.
‘Hey, you.’
‘Have you left for your meeting yet?’
He pauses. ‘Not yet, why?’
‘I was running so late that I called in sick but I don’t fancy going back to the gassy flat just yet. Would you mind if I came to yours?’
‘Of course not. I’ll try to cancel my meeting, it’s just been tricky to get a time in the diary with …’
‘No, don’t change your plans,’ she shouts into the hands-free speaker, a little louder than she intended. ‘I’ve got work to do anyway and then I’ll clear off before Daisy gets back.’
‘Oh. OK, if you’re sure?’
‘Definitely.’
‘There’s a key for the cleaners under the middle pot on the deck, you can let yourself in the back.’
*
The house is silent and still as she opens up. The wooden shutters are open horizontally so a delicate, warm light covers the scene. The breakfast things are already cleared and there’s not a crumb on the side. He’s such a good adult. She puts on a coffee and slips off her shoes. Upstairs, the bed is made with hospital corners, cushions piled just so. Driven by an old memory, she pulls one of Noah’s gym hoodies from a hanger but hesitates. The intimacy of wearing another person’s clothes is acute, and an intrusion if it’s unwanted. Are they at this stage yet? Maybe she can help nudge them into the next stage. She tugs it on like a cocoon. The sleeves need three rolls just to reveal her hands.
No one knows I’m here. She closes her eyes and basks in the fleeting flicker of relief.
Downstairs, she slides the patio doors open and takes her coffee outside, feeling the dappled sun on her face through the cherry blossom tree. The walls rise up all around, boxing her away from prying eyes, CCTV or however else someone might track her down. This is a place she can be calm in, take stock in and hopefully, hopefully, work out what this mess really involves so she can claw her way out of it.
Sam
Noah Simpson left his house after his girlfriend, a little girl swinging on his arm. As he hoisted her up into his ostentatious car, the pictures from that computer in Surrey flashed up on my closed eyelids like after-images, burnt there by a bright and unwanted light. I wonder how many years, if ever, it will take to wash my brain clean again. Was I ever really clean?
I need to stop ricocheting off down memory lane but something about her boyfriend has set off a sense of déjà vu. Something about the shoulders. The way he carries himself. But also just the sheer size and confidence of him. I’ve seen him before, in some other place, but I can’t be sure when. It’s there, the memory, just out of my sight. Yes, I’ve definitely seen him before.
I will need to be careful if he’s in her corner. He’s taller than me, with muscles on muscles. His brow was furrowed, thinking of the day ahead, thinking of his car, maybe the bills he has to pay. I wonder if he’s thinking of Marianne. I wonder how much he will miss her. I wonder what he would do to protect her.
I can’t place where I’ve seen him before and it’s unsettling, seeing ghosts and unsure where they’ve come from. The problem is that I have had so many lives now, so many different personas, they’re all starting to blend into each other. I ache for a time I can just be me and lock these ghosts up for good.
I wait ten minutes then circle back. I’ve just pulled my own change of clothes from the back seat when Marianne Heywood’s tiny joke car curls back into the cul-de-sac and shakes to a stop on the drive.
Does her boyfriend know she’s here? I watch as she looks around furtively and then reaches over the garden gate to let herself inside.
A man walking his frantic spaniel nods to me as he wrestles his dog past my car. I smile broadly then settle back down to wait. This could be interesting.
Marianne
Her laptop is dying. Marianne left her charger at school and over an hour of unsuccessful internet searches has burnt through nearly all of her battery.
She’d wondered if Andrew Mackintosh’s Scottish name hinted at a university lecturer or family friend of Greg’s, but there were no connections. David Ross sounds similarly Scottish but there’s still no obvious link either; no alumni from the same years, no colleague with that name, nothing. She stares again at David Ross’s Facebook profile picture, clicks on it for the hundredth time but it only tells her the same unhelpful information: it was taken five years ago and the children are his sons. So what?
Pavel Bourean remains a mystery. Unlike the David Rosses and Andrew Mackintoshes, of whom there are thousands, there is no one called Pavel Bourean anywhere. It’s as if he never existed. Or it’s a fake name. God, it’s obviously just a fake name.
She snaps the screen closed to save what little energy is left and then pulls Greg’s dusty laptop from the holdall, where she’d packed it in haste last night. It seems shameful, infecting Noah’s clean family home with the rotten DNA of Greg’s netherworld. She opens
the screen up reluctantly. There’s even less charge on here and she didn’t think to bring his cable. Fuck.
She’d rather not rip through all her phone battery too, but perhaps Noah has a lead that fits one of the computers.
Marianne is pretty sure he won’t mind her using his things – he’s made his house available to her after all – but there’s something clandestine about climbing upstairs and into his office. She’s only seen this room once before on an awkward tour after her first night here. It was hard to take in anything about his space after seeing the spare room/home gym next door, filled with the carefully archived possessions of his late wife, Louise.
Both rooms are in the converted loft, the office almost empty but for the desk and filing cabinet. It’s a far cry from her own loft with its damaged gas flues and piles of junk. There is an iMac on the desk here, which is no help cable-wise. She was sure she’d seen Noah using a laptop downstairs at one point, but it’s not here so he must have taken it with him.
The desk has a small leather portfolio on it and she flicks through, trying to care. She’s been a bad girlfriend, paying almost no attention to the details of his life outside of their relationship. Lured mostly by the shared shorthand of grief and how attractive he is, and then swept up in the buds of romance and dreams of the future. She should make more of an effort – he deserves it.
She looks through the portfolio again, with more care. It’s very Noah, neat and fancy. A proposal for a craft beer shop, some artists’ renderings of luxury apartments, plans for a shared workspace in Clapham, some kind of electric-scooter sharing scheme Marianne remembers Noah giving her the spiel for a few months back.
‘I have a car, thanks,’ she’d laughed.
‘Gas-guzzling relics cost a bomb, cost the Earth,’ he’d said, with the exaggerated demeanour of a lay preacher. ‘You should sell that little motor and hop on a Buzz.’
‘A Buzz?’
‘Good name, eh?’
She’d pointed to the huge chunk of Range Rover out on his drive and raised her eyebrows.
‘I can’t get Daisy on the back of a scooter now, can I?’
She closes the portfolio and heads back downstairs, resolving to ask more about his work. About the gym, about Daisy. About everything that isn’t death.
*
With no other option, she switches to Googling on her phone. With Rosie Parsons, she found out about the nurse’s death via news articles. As much as she hopes to find everyone else on the list alive and laughing at what a big joke this all is, she steels her nerve and starts typing.
Marianne searches ‘David Ross’ and clicks to the news section. Nothing. Then ‘David Ross dead’. Nope. Good. It’s still possible to cling on to coincidence, she thinks, as she types the same search but with Andrew Mackintosh.
The results flood the screen.
Fuck. Not good. Not good at all.
She breathes in slowly and looks again.
Surrey man found dead of CO poisoning.
There are a slew of stories, all highlighting the risks of carbon monoxide. Like the Andrew Mackintosh on her list, this one also lives in Godalming and is exactly the right age. This must be him. According to a local newspaper website, until a few years ago he was an anaesthetist at a children’s hospital in London. And judging by some of the comments yet to be scraped off by moderators, he’d been ousted from his job after being caught in a child pornography sting.
A paedophile. A dead paedophile. Her stomach clenches.
So Andrew Mackintosh was a paedophile who worked in a children’s hospital and Rosie Parsons was a children’s nurse whose patient died. What does that make the others on the list? Surely Greg can’t have thought she was somehow connected? But if Greg stumbled upon a child abuse ring and was trying to unravel it, that could explain his anger in the last few months of his life. Perhaps he wanted Jenna to help him build a case. It could explain what he was doing on the dark web too, maybe tracking images of a trafficked child being exploited. It could explain why someone wanted to shut him up.
By threatening me?
The pieces feel like they’re coming together, but Marianne doesn’t like the picture they make one bit. In fact, she preferred it when it seemed too ludicrous to be anything but a hoax. This latest idea seems almost plausible.
A shadow of a thought passes over her. Was Bluebell a child?
She types: Andrew Mackintosh + Bluebell.
Nothing comes up.
Could Bluebell have been the child that Rosie Parsons fatally neglected?
Rosie Parsons + Bluebell.
Nothing.
David Ross + Bluebell.
Several results.
She scrolls, and clicks.
Bluebell is not a child. The Bluebell is a hotel out in the Surrey countryside forty minutes from where Andrew Mackintosh lived. And David Ross is its manager.
Sam
Andrew Mackintosh had long given up hiding who he was. It was all there on the screen, on printouts under the bed, and spooled around the carefully labelled film stacks archived from the dark ages. It was there in his eyes the first time I saw him, so black I’d had to look away.
With some of my targets – the ones who still care, the ones still under cover – they’ll do anything to prevent exposure. Sometimes, you’re even giving them something they’ve longed for and haven’t had the courage to enact. Rosie Parsons was one of those. She took those pills without blinking. Took the water I handed her. Swallowed.
Mackintosh wouldn’t have done that. He’d already lost face to such a degree that most people would seek an end. But not him, he was content to limp along for years, scratching out a shitty little existence, free to indulge himself unseen.
A man like that would have fought back if I’d taken the same route that I did with the nurse. I could have overpowered him, I’m certain, but that’s messy and untidy. It leaves breadcrumbs for police and arouses suspicion. A man like that deserves to die a pathetic, hollow death, barely moving the needle of public interest.
I’m still unsure what part in all this Marianne Heywood has played. The longer it takes to end this, the harder it is to quell those questions. There’s something out of alignment, something blurred in the corner of my eye. The questions are getting harder to ignore.
The target bursts out of the house looking ashen and grey, slamming the door behind her. She unlocks her car, throws her big leather bag into the boot and practically falls into the driving seat. No furtive glances around now, certainly no looks my way, she just wants to go. I stay upright in my seat, wait for her car to disappear around the bend and then follow slowly behind.
Marianne
Richmond sits on the throne between Inner London and Surrey, knitting two expensive enclaves together. A rich vein of rich people. It’s not a place Marianne would have chosen to live, preferring the texture of Hackney, but she certainly felt safer hiding in Noah’s suburban sanctum than she did at home. She can see herself growing comfortable here, if she comes through all of this intact.
Now she’s out in the open, a huge swollen sky over her. She imagines her little car from above with a target painted on its roof, as she flies over the suspended road that surges from the city and out towards the countryside.
The Bluebell’s website was very basic. A few ‘arty’ pictures of four-poster beds and what could well have been stock images of countryside. Some text boasting a ‘boutique hotel experience amongst rolling hills far away from the stress of modern life’. There was no way to book online and the phone number for reservations rang out.
In lieu of any other thread to pull on, and too anxious to risk turning to the police, driving out to see the Bluebell seems to make sense. Maybe Greg tried the police route and it got him killed. Maybe it got Marianne in someone’s cross hairs. Maybe someone in the police is involved in this ring. It happens.
Or maybe she’s way off the mark and David Ross can explain. Either way, moving feels better than just sitting and waiting f
or the axe to fall.
The engine whines as she presses the pedal to the floor. It’s been so long since she drove an unfamiliar route that Marianne swerves as she tries to find the sat-nav shoved somewhere in her chaotic glove box. She holds up a hand in apology and glances in her rear-view mirror, the car behind pulling back warily.
As they all slow for traffic lights, she types in the address and jams the sat-nav into its holster, waiting for the route to come to life.
The hotel itself isn’t in a town or village, it seems to be burrowed in the middle of green nowhere a few miles from a village called Godstone. Ordinarily, the history teacher inside of her would burst forward, wondering about the significance of the name, wanting to know if it was formed from the old English ‘goda’, meaning farm, or the word ‘god’. Today, all she wants to know is how far it is and why someone there appears on the same deadly list as her.
She taps the accelerator as the lights turn green.
*
The M25 is jammed up so the sat-nav has her peel away at Leatherhead. From there, she worms her way onto increasingly thin A-roads. It’s so quiet out here. People putter along in no rush and the fields are dotted with disinterested animals. It reminds her of her country childhood.
She glances at the time, 11.29 a.m. She should be wrapping up her Year 9 class and heading to the coffee pot but instead she’s here, driving along a road she’s never taken before, miles from home. No one knows she is here. She feels simultaneously in extreme risk and far safer than she was in the city. Greg would make a quip about Schrödinger’s cat, were he here. Fuck, I wish you were here. But what the hell were you involved in?
She grips the steering wheel more tightly and blinks away a shock of tears.
Sam
The creep of familiarity rolls up my spine. This is not the kind of route you’d end up taking by accident if you lived and worked in London.
I drop back. I know where she’s going and there’s no need to be seen.
