by Ann Troup
Perhaps, that was where it all really began for Charlie. That single moment when he had realised that the only person in the world who truly trusted him had been Rachel, a geeky ten-year-old kid.
The adult Rachel watched him warily; a muscle in his jaw was tensing. A bad sign that meant he was in a place where no one else was invited. It was difficult for her to remember a time when she hadn’t felt some form of love for him. An image of Charlie’s smile was one of her oldest memories. Charlie had never brushed her off, never told her to go away, never told her to be quiet and stop pestering. Back then, he was like a big brother, fourteen years her senior and awe inspiringly estimable in her eyes. When Delia was working in the house, Charlie could often be found in the garden, hacking at the undergrowth in a vain attempt to abate its creeping bid for dominance. Then in later years, when he had begun working for Roy, and had started to bring the lascivious Patsy with him to The Limes, he had always, without fail spared time to say something nice to her. What a pitiful little kid she must have been, grateful for such meagre crumbs.
Frances had been the one with the real crush, but Charlie either hadn’t seen the looks she gave him, or hadn’t noticed the efforts she made. Frances had even tried to emulate Patsy, by plastering on makeup and cutting off her skirts, until Valerie had slapped her face and called her a slut. She had backed off then, and had treated Charlie with condescending contempt ever since. His conviction, for the murder he didn’t commit, had made her day.
Rachel knew he wasn’t responsible. She had been the first one into the hall that day, having raced away from Stella, up the drive and into the house, panting for breath, cheeks like rosy apples from the chill winter air. The hall had been strangely silent as if time was holding its breath as she had hung her scarf and coat on the hallstand. Only when she turned towards the kitchen, had her mouth sagged open and her feet turned to lead. Patsy was lying on the floor, a crumpled, bloody heap. A blood streaked bubble popping on her lipstick slick mouth as she died.
Rachel had been transfixed, even when Charlie had strolled into the hall from the kitchen, immediately issuing a guttural, almost primeval cry at the sight of his broken wife. He had thrown himself down onto the floor next to Patsy, instinctively pulling the knife from her chest, staring inanely while a pool of blood crept silently, still warm, towards his knees. Rachel couldn’t remember how many minutes the old grandfather clock had marked before Stella walked through the door and something other than death had begun to happen, it had felt like an aeon.
Charlie maintained that he had walked in to the back of the house having come from the park, using the small gate that gave the residents of The Limes private access. However, there were no witnesses. The prosecution postulated that Charlie could have been in the house for any amount of time, no one else was in, so no one could corroborate his story. No one except Rachel, but her evidence was inadmissible and at best purely circumstantial. Ten-year-old children were not reliable witnesses. However, Rachel knew Charlie hadn’t stabbed Patsy, she had heard him cry, it echoed in her memory like the sound of nails being dragged slowly down a blackboard. However, most of all it was the recollection of the hollow devastation in his eyes that assured her of his innocence.
If she told him now, told him the true reason she had walked away from him and Amy, she would see that look again. Not just the shadow of it that reflected back at her when he looked at her face and sought out the truth in her eyes, but a full-blown re-creation of the moment his world had fallen apart.
In Rachel’s memory Patsy had been a magical creature, the only person that she ever remembered in colour. On the rare occasions, she ever allowed herself to look back at her childhood, everyone else either appeared in black and white, or materialised as a faded, jaded representation of their younger selves. The seventies had been like that, dull, and leached of colour. However, Patsy, she had been vibrant and alive, like a bird of paradise among a flock of less luminous creatures. When she was in a room, she had the effect of magnifying everyone else’s idiosyncrasies. Stella became smaller and dowdier in her presence; Valerie became pinched and bitter, even more like an indignant bird of prey than was usual. Frances’s arrogance rose even higher than normal and Roy puffed himself up like the peacock he was. Rachel just became more insignificant in Patsy’s presence, the spare in a cuckoo’s nest. Only Charlie didn’t change. Charlie never changed.
Charlie wasn’t thinking about Patsy anymore, or Stella, he was thinking about Rachel. ‘So come on then tell me why you really left? Now we’re here and its confession time, you can tell me everything. You owe me that at least.’
However, Rachel’s thoughts were still consumed with the memory of Patsy, lying on the hall floor like road kill. She tried to speak, but the prickling had started in her head again making her brain feel like an over shaken coke.
When the seizure had abated, and Rachel lay once again in a deep sleep, Charlie rifled through her bag, found her medication and saw that the days dose had been taken, then he looked in her purse and found a card with the name and contact number of her neurologist, and made the call.
Jeffrey Parnell, consultant neurologist, Rachel’ doctor for the past nineteen years, was deeply concerned that Rachel’s epilepsy had intensified so dramatically. He needed to see her, soon. Could Charlie bring her back to London as soon as possible? It seemed that Charlie didn’t have a choice; there wasn’t anyone else who could take her.
By the time Rachel woke up, groggy and hung over from the overactive neurotransmissions that seemed determined to destabilize her brain, Charlie had packed her bag, paid her bill and he was waiting, keys in hand, to drive her back to London. She couldn’t have been more relieved if she’d tried, even if she did have to go with him.
The drive to London was silent and strained. Charlie wasn’t saying much and Rachel spent the journey with her head resting against the window watching the overhead lights blur and streak across the evening sky as they sped past.
Charlie thought she was resting, and figured it was better just to keep his thoughts to himself. He didn’t want to trigger off another fit, not in the van. He had debated phoning Delia, to tell her he wasn’t going to be around that night, but two things stopped him. If Delia knew he was with Rachel, she would probably blow a gasket and the last thing he wanted to have to deal with was his mother having a stroke. Besides, at fifty-two years of age it was hardly necessary to call his mother and check in. The second was Amy.
He glanced at Rachel, and tried to work out what on earth had induced him to get involved again. Any other man would have just walked away, given her a piece of his mind and disappeared, but not him. What kind of mug was he? He must be some kind of masochist, going back for more. She was the woman who had just about broken him, but she was also the woman who had given him the most precious thing he had. Amy. Grown up and looking far too much like Rachel than was good for his mental health, and still thinking that her mother was dead, because that’s what he’d found easiest to let her believe.
Not that anyone had ever stated it as a fact; it had been something she had assumed. There was a vague memory of her asking Delia about it. Amy would have been about five, just started school and she had asked outright if her mummy was dead. Some snot nosed kid in her class had said that if she didn’t have a mum it must be because her mum had died. Delia had heard these innocent words and had looked at him, raising her eyebrows as if that unknown kid had presented them with the perfect solution. Then she had soberly lied and told Amy that, yes, her mummy was dead. Charlie had never had the guts to disabuse her of the notion, his mother had been right; it had been an easy solution at the time.
He knew for a fact that over the years Amy had excused his lack of meaningful relationships, his need for solitude and his moody silences as chronic grief. That was Amy; she could always take something dark and weave it into a bright shiny ideal just by deciding it was the way things should be. Charlie wished he found it so easy to put such a spin on life. The r
omantic fantasy that Amy had manifested had satisfied her enough that she hadn’t pressed Charlie for details about Rachel; she didn’t want to cause him pain.
If only she knew, was his wry thought. Charlie had never been able to bring himself to shatter Amy’s illusion’s, a decision, which he was only just beginning to realise, had been a big, big mistake.
There had been other women over the years, he wasn’t a monk! He had never taken any of them home, didn’t want Amy to meet them, and didn’t want them involved with her. So all he had managed was to establish a number of brief liaisons that had fizzled out quicker than a damp match would. He could honestly say that, overall it didn’t bother him. It wasn’t as if his track record with women would stand up to scrutiny. Something of the kiss of death followed him where partners were concerned. Not that Rachel was dead, far from it, though there had been times over the years that he wished she were. How much simpler it would have been to just grieve her loss in the same way he had grieved for Patsy, but from behind the bars of a different kind of prison. Then again, his relationship with Patsy had been much simpler. She had been another one, a woman that didn’t really want him as he was, but at least Patsy hadn’t wanted to save him from himself like most women. Why did they always want to save him, when the only thing he had ever needed saving from had been them? Rachel was the only one who had ever been happy with him just the way he was, or so he had thought, and that was why hers had been the biggest betrayal of them all. He almost laughed. Any chance that anyone had of saving him was so far in the past you’d need the TARDIS to get to it. Perhaps what those women had always said would prove to be true after all. He would die a lonely old man.
If Amy ever found out about Rachel, he was certain of it.
Rachel pretended to sleep, trying desperately to relax so that she would look more convincing. Anything to avoid having to talk to him. All she wanted to do was to get back to the flat, Lila’s flat. Then she could shut the past out again and go back to the half-life where she had hidden safely for years. An impossible feat now that the biggest part of her past was sitting right next to her, about to invade the only sanctuary she had. What would he make of her existence? Maybe he would be shocked to see the way she lived, as a wistful ghost haunting another woman’s life.
Nothing in the flat had been changed since the day Lila had died. Not a thing. Even the dust just seemed to re-circulate and settle back, exactly where it has come from. Lila’s clothes still hung in the wardrobe, her perfume still sat on the dressing table, her rings were still on the mantelpiece, all as if she had just stepped out of the room. The furniture was exactly as Lila had placed it, still hiding the bald spots on the rugs and covering the stains. Rachel had preserved it all. Like a cleaner, more sanitary Miss Havisham, she had conserved Lila’s existence in an eternal tableau of old comfort. There was no bitterness in her desire to maintain Lila’s home intact, just a need to hang onto something old, familiar, and warm. Lila’s flat was a home in the way that The Limes never could be. Lila had been happy in her home and Rachel relentlessly tried to preserve that happiness, constantly hoping that the essence of it would magically transfer itself to her, like a blanket of peace.
The flat was her bolt hole, her sanity. To someone else, to Charlie for instance, it would look precisely the opposite. Hard evidence of her instability. Proof of her inability to cope with real life. Would anybody else understand that if you could force time to stand still and preserve a perfect moment of tranquillity that you could step in and out of that place at will?
Lila (or strictly speaking Lilian) Porter had been the polar opposite of her brother. Where William had been dull, she had been a bright beacon of life. Where he had been mean spirited, she was generous to a fault. Where William resented, Lila embraced. In Lila’s company, everyone felt alive. Even Valerie had grudgingly liked her, until Lila had died and had left all her worldly goods to Rachel. After that Valerie hadn’t liked anyone much.
Frances had needled Rachel to sell the flat, it was London real estate, worth a small fortune, which would be life changing in the right hands. However, Rachel had measured her wealth differently and had hung on to the flat even though her decision had been one of the issues that had permanently damaged the family ties. The other issue she still couldn’t and wouldn’t, talk about.
Delia tried Charlie’s mobile number and listened to the dull uninspiring voice on the message service for the umpteenth time. There was no point in leaving yet another message; he clearly hadn’t picked up the last three. Why the bloody hell did people bother having mobile phones if they were always going to leave the bloody things switched off! In frustration, she slammed her own phone hard on the table, dislodging the battery cover in the process and sending it, skipping over the tabletop and onto the floor. ‘Sod it!’ she hissed, bending stiffly to retrieve it, fiddling with it to reattach it to the body of the phone. A horrible feeling was hatching in her belly, an instinct that something was wrong. Charlie was incommunicado and Rachel was back on the scene, adding two and two together was coming up with nothing other than four, no matter how she tried to make it five. If she was right, and he was with Rachel, they might well have another dead body on their hands by the time she caught up with him. She was too old for all this!
By the time Ratcliffe reached the hospital, Frances had lost consciousness again. According to her doctor she hadn’t said anything of note during the short time that she had been lucid and their only conversation had been with Peter Haines, Frances’s rather urbane yet supercilious husband, whose main concern had been that his good name was being linked with something as tawdry as murder. He was adamant that he didn’t know where Stella had gone, but had reluctantly agreed to supply a photo of her, though he couldn’t guarantee a recent one. He had only conceded to that request, because Ratcliffe told him that his wife’s purge of The Limes had been so meticulous that they had failed to turn up even the remotest clue as to Stella’s whereabouts, or her intentions. Even with a photograph and the help of the press, they were clutching at straws. If a person wanted to disappear, it wasn’t particularly difficult to make a thorough job of it.
Thwarted by Frances’ insentient state, Ratcliffe called it a day. However, as he headed home something preyed on his mind, nudging at his consciousness in the same way that a slowly dripping tap eroded sleep. Visions of Rachel kept floating across his field of thought, superimposed on the memory of Delia’s overstuffed living room. God knows why. By three o’clock in the morning, he had it, a connection. The photograph on Delia’s mantelpiece was the spitting image of Rachel, and for some reason he couldn’t fathom, it really bugged him.
Surprisingly there was a parking space outside the flat, instinctively Charlie reversed in and switched of the engine, only afterwards thinking that he should just drop her and drive away. Just the same as all those times, long ago, he had stood on this very pavement, looking up at her windows his courage failing him and forcing him to leave things well alone.
‘Are you going to come in?’ she asked fervently hoping that he wouldn’t.
He didn’t even bother to reply, just got out of the van and followed her up the steps into the building. Inside the flat he stayed silent, as the stale essence of Lila wrapped itself around him like a ghost; assaulting his senses and pulling him forcibly back in time.
In resistance he thought of Amy, how she would love this place, see it as a giant dressing up box where she could pretend she was someone else entirely. She had always told him that her fantasy would be to travel back in time. It seemed that her mother had achieved it.
Rachel hovered in the kitchen doorway, clearly reluctant to allow him further into her domain. ‘I can do coffee if you don’t mind it black.’
Charlie glanced around, glimpsing her existence, finding it wanting. ‘OK’.
He followed her into the kitchen and sat at the table under the window, keeping her in his line of sight, but maintaining a safe distance from her, while he watched her fumble with the
kettle. ‘So, what do you do with yourself then, are you working?’
She poured water in the cups and shook her head. ‘No.’
‘What then?’ He demanded as she put them into saucers, and put them all on a tray, just to bring them the few yards to the table. Just like her mother would have done, anything to keep up appearances.
She put the tray down, immediately silencing the rattling china that had been so effectively serenading her anxiety. ‘I read a lot, walk, and watch the world go by. Time passes, I don’t notice it much.’
He picked up a cup, its dainty fragility incongruous in his calloused hand. It almost made him smile. ‘I half expected to find Stella here.’
Rachel hovered, reluctant to pick up her own cup in case it started jangling in its saucer again. She gave a wry smile and shook her head, ‘she wouldn’t come here, because Lila scared her. Too much life for Stella.’
That a woman long dead, yet still so tangibly present, had the ability to dismay the living in such an assiduous way scared him a little too. ‘You know that Amy thinks you’re dead? She thinks that our relationship is sad and romantic and that I’m tortured by unrequited love and grief.’ He laughed, the sound of it full of scorn. ‘I’ve never had the heart to put her straight.’
The acid in his tone caused her to dig her fingernails into her palms. ‘I suppose it’s better for her to think that she was left by someone who didn’t choose to go.’ She said quietly, hating herself for the lie.
Charlie couldn’t help it. The bitterness of what Rachel had done had been burning a hole in his gut for years. ‘Better than knowing that your own mother dumped you without a word? Yeah, I’d say so. Anything would be better than that.’
