gratitude so strong, it feels almost like love.
He shows me into the kitchen. It’s a mess: washing up piled on the counter and in the sink, empty takeaway cartons spilling out of the bin. I wonder if he’s depressed. I stand in the doorway; he leans against the counter opposite me, his arms folded across his chest.
“What can I do for you?” he asks. His face is arranged into a perfectly neutral expression, his therapist face. It makes me want to pinch him, just to make him smile.
“I have to tell you . . .” I start, and then I stop because I can’t just plunge straight into it, I need a preamble. So I change tack. “I wanted to apologize,” I say, “for what happened. Last time.”
“That’s OK,” he says. “Don’t worry about that. If you need to talk to someone, I can refer you to someone else, but I can’t—”
“Please, Kamal.”
“Megan, I can’t counsel you any longer.”
“I know. I know that. But I can’t start over with someone else. I can’t. We got so far. We were so close. I just have to tell you. Just once. And then I’ll be gone, I promise. I won’t ever bother you again.”
He cocks his head to one side. He doesn’t believe me, I can tell. He thinks that if he lets me back in now, he’ll never be rid of me.
“Hear me out, please. This isn’t going to go on forever, I just need someone to listen.”
“Your husband?” he asks, and I shake my head.
“I can’t—I can’t tell him. Not after all this time. He wouldn’t . . . He wouldn’t be able to see me as me any longer. I’d be someone else to him. He wouldn’t know how to forgive me. Please, Kamal. If I don’t spit out the poison, I feel like I’ll never sleep. As a friend, not a therapist, please listen.”
His shoulders drop a little as he turns away, and I think it’s over. My heart sinks. Then he opens a cupboard and pulls out two tumblers.
“As a friend, then. Would you like some wine?”
He shows me into the living room. Dimly lit by standing lamps, it has the same air of domestic neglect as the kitchen. We sit down on opposite sides of a glass table piled high with papers, magazines and takeaway menus. My hands are locked around my glass. I take a sip. It’s red but cold, dusty. I swallow, take another sip. He’s waiting for me to start, but it’s hard, harder than I thought it was going to be. I’ve kept this secret for so long—a decade, more than a third of my life. It’s not that easy, letting go of it. I just know that I have to start talking. If I don’t do it now, I might never have the courage to say the words out loud, I might lose them altogether, they might stick in my throat and choke me in my sleep.
“After I left Ipswich, I moved in with Mac, into his cottage outside Holkham at the end of the lane. I told you that, didn’t I? It was very isolated, a couple of miles to the nearest neighbour, a couple more to the nearest shops. At the beginning, we had lots of parties, there were always a few people crashed out in the living room or sleeping in the hammock outside in the summer. But we got tired of that, and Mac fell out with everyone eventually, so people stopped coming, and it was the two of us. Days used to go by and we wouldn’t see anyone. We’d do our grocery shopping at the petrol station. It’s odd, thinking back on it, but I needed it then, after everything—after Ipswich and all those men, all the things I did. I liked it, just Mac and me and the old railway tracks and the grass and the dunes and the restless grey sea.”
Kamal tilts his head to one side, gives me half a smile. I feel my insides flip. “It sounds nice. But do you think you are romanticizing? ‘The restless grey sea’?”
“Never mind that,” I say, waving him away. “And no, in any case. Have you been to north Norfolk? It’s not the Adriatic. It is restless and relentlessly grey.”
He holds his hands up, smiling. “OK.”
I feel instantly better, the tension leaching out of my neck and shoulders. I take another sip of the wine; it tastes less bitter now.
“I was happy with Mac. I know it doesn’t sound like the sort of place I’d like, the sort of life I’d like, but then, after Ben’s death and everything that came after, it was. Mac saved me. He took me in, he loved me, he kept me safe. And he wasn’t boring. And to be perfectly honest, we were taking a lot of drugs, and it’s difficult to get bored when you’re off your face all the time. I was happy. I was really happy.”
Kamal nods. “I understand, although I’m not sure that sounds like a very real kind of happiness,” he says. “Not the sort of happiness that can endure, that can sustain you.”
I laugh. “I was seventeen. I was with a man who excited me, who adored me. I’d got away from my parents, away from the house where everything, everything, reminded me of my dead brother. I didn’t need it to endure or sustain. I just needed it for right then.”
“So what happened?”
It seems as though the room gets darker then. Here we are, at the thing I never say.
“I got pregnant.”
He nods, waiting for me to go on. Part of me wants him to stop me, to ask more questions, but he doesn’t, he just waits. It gets darker still.
“It was too late when I realized to . . . to get rid of it. Of her. It’s what I would have done, had I not been so stupid, so oblivious. The truth is that she wasn’t wanted, by either of us.”
Kamal gets to his feet, goes to the kitchen and comes back with a sheet of kitchen roll for me to wipe my eyes. He hands it to me and sits down. It’s a while before I go on. Kamal sits, just as he used to in our sessions, his eyes on mine, his hands folded in his lap, patient, immobile. It must take the most incredible self-control, that stillness, that passivity; it must be exhausting.
My legs are trembling, my knee jerking as though on a puppeteer’s string. I get to my feet to stop it. I walk to the kitchen door and back again, scratching the palms of my hands.
“We were both so stupid,” I tell him. “We didn’t really even acknowledge what was happening, we just carried on. I didn’t go to see a doctor, I didn’t eat the right things or take supplements, I didn’t do any of the things you’re supposed to. We just carried on living our lives. We didn’t even acknowledge that anything had changed. I got fatter and slower and more tired, we both got irritable and fought all the time, but nothing really changed until she came.”
He lets me cry. While I do so, he moves to the chair nearest mine and sits down at my side so that his knees are almost touching my thigh. He leans forward. He doesn’t touch me, but our bodies are close, I can smell his scent, clean in this dirty room, sharp and astringent.
My voice is a whisper, it doesn’t feel right to say these words out loud. “I had her at home,” I say. “It was stupid, but I had this thing about hospitals at the time, because the last time I’d been in one was when Ben was killed. Plus I hadn’t been for any of the scans. I’d been smoking, drinking a bit, I couldn’t face the lectures. I couldn’t face any of it. I think . . . right up until the end, it just didn’t seem like it was real, like it was actually going to happen.
“Mac had this friend who was a nurse, or who’d done some nursing training or something. She came round, and it was OK. It wasn’t so bad. I mean, it was horrible, of course, painful and frightening, but . . . then there she was. She was very small. I don’t remember exactly what her weight was. That’s terrible, isn’t it?” Kamal doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t move. “She was lovely. She had dark eyes and blond hair. She didn’t cry a lot, she slept well, right from the very beginning. She was good. She was a good girl.” I have to stop there for a moment. “I expected everything to be so hard, but it wasn’t.”
It’s darker still, I’m sure of it, but I look up and Kamal is there, his eyes on mine, his expression soft. He’s listening. He wants me to tell him. My mouth is dry, so I take another sip of wine. It hurts to swallow. “We called her Elizabeth. Libby.” It feels so strange, saying her name out loud after such a long time. “Libby,” I say again, enjoying the feel of her name in my mouth. I want to say it over and over. Kamal
reaches out at last and takes my hand in his, his thumb against my wrist, on my pulse.
“One day we had a fight, Mac and I. I don’t remember what it was about. We did that every now and again—little arguments that blew up into big ones, nothing physical, nothing bad like that, but we’d scream at each other and I’d threaten to leave, or he’d just walk out and I wouldn’t see him for a couple of days.
“It was the first time it had happened since she was born—the first time he’d just gone off and left me. She was just a few months old. The roof was leaking. I remember that: the sound of water dripping into buckets in the kitchen. It was freezing cold, the wind driving off the sea; it had been raining for days. I lit a fire in the living room, but it kept going out. I was so tired. I was drinking just to warm up, but it wasn’t working, so I decided to get into the bath. I took Libby in with me, put her on my chest, her head just under my chin.”
The room gets darker and darker until I’m there again, lying in the water, her body pressing against mine, a candle flickering just behind my head. I can hear it guttering, smell the wax, feel the chill of the air around my neck and shoulders. I’m heavy, my body sinking into the warmth. I’m exhausted. And then suddenly the candle is out and I’m cold. Really cold, my teeth chattering in my head, my whole body shaking. The house feels like it’s shaking, too, the wind screaming, tearing at the slates on the roof.
“I fell asleep,” I say, and then I can’t say any more, because I can feel her again, no longer on my chest, her body wedged between my arm and the edge of the tub, her face in the water. We were both so cold.
For a moment, neither of us move. I can hardly bear to look at him, but when I do, he doesn’t recoil from me. He doesn’t say a word. He puts his arm around my shoulder and pulls me to him, my face against his chest. I breathe him in and I wait to feel different, to feel lighter, to feel better or worse now that there is another living soul who knows. I feel relieved, I think, because I know from his reaction that I have done the right thing. He isn’t angry with me, he doesn’t think I’m a monster. I am safe here, completely safe with him.
I don’t know how long I stay there in his arms, but when I come back to myself, my phone is ringing. I don’t answer it, but a moment later it beeps to alert me that there’s a text. It’s from Scott. Where are you? And seconds after that, the phone starts ringing again. This time it’s Tara. Disentangling myself from Kamal’s embrace, I answer.
“Megan, I don’t know what you’re up to, but you need to call Scott. He’s rung here four times. I told him you’d nipped out to the offie to get some wine, but I don’t think he believed me. He says you’re not picking up your phone.” She sounds pissed off, and I know I should appease her, but I don’t have the energy.
“OK,” I say. “Thanks. I’ll ring him now.”
“Megan—” she says, but I end the call before I can hear another word.
It’s after ten. I’ve been here for more than two hours. I turn off my phone and turn to face Kamal.
“I don’t want to go home,” I say.
He nods, but he doesn’t invite me to stay. Instead he says, “You can come back, if you like. Another time.”
I step forward, closing the gap between our bodies, stand on tiptoe and kiss his lips. He doesn’t pull away from me.
RACHEL
• • •
SATURDAY, AUGUST 3, 2013
MORNING
I dreamed last night that I was in the woods, walking by myself. It was dusk, or dawn, I’m not quite sure, but there was someone else there with me. I couldn’t see them, I just knew they were there, gaining on me. I didn’t want to be seen, I wanted to run away, but I couldn’t, my limbs were too heavy, and when I tried to cry out I made no sound at all.
When I wake, white light slips through the slats on the blind. The rain is finally gone, its work done. The room is warm; it smells terrible, rank and sour—I’ve barely left it since Thursday. Outside, I can hear the vacuum purr and whine. Cathy is cleaning. She’ll be going out later; when she does I can venture out. I’m not sure what I will do, I can’t seem to right myself. One more day of drinking, perhaps, and then I’ll get myself straight tomorrow.
My phone buzzes briefly, telling me its battery is dying. I pick it up to plug it into the charger and I notice that I have two missed calls from last night. I dial into voice mail. I have one message.
“Rachel, hi. It’s Mum. Listen, I’m coming down to London tomorrow. Saturday. I’ve got a spot of shopping to do. Could we meet up for a coffee or something? Darling, it’s not a good time for you to come and stay now. There’s . . . well, I’ve got a new friend, and you know how it is in the early stages.” She titters. “Anyway, I’m very happy to give you a loan to tide you over for a couple of weeks. We’ll talk about it tomorrow. OK, darling. Bye.”
I’m going to have to be straight with her, tell her exactly how bad things are. That is not a conversation I want to have stone-cold sober. I haul myself out of bed: I can go down to the shops now and just have a couple of glasses before I go out. Take the edge off. I look at my phone again, check the missed calls. Only one is from my mother—the other is from Scott. A message left at quarter to one in the morning. I sit there, with the phone in my hand, debating whether to call him back. Not now, too early. Perhaps later? After one glass, though, not two.
I plug the phone in to charge, pull the blind up and open the window, then go to the bathroom and run a cold shower. I scrub my skin and wash my hair and try to quieten the voice in my head that tells me it’s an odd thing to do, less than forty-eight hours after your wife’s body has been discovered, to ring another woman in the middle of the night.
EVENING
The earth is still drying out, but the sun is almost breaking through thick white cloud. I bought myself one of those little bottles of wine—just one. I shouldn’t, but lunch with my mother would test the willpower of a lifelong teetotaller. Still, she’s promised to transfer £300 into my bank account, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.
I didn’t admit how bad things were. I didn’t tell her I’ve been out of work for months, or that I was fired (she thinks her money is tiding me over until my unemployment check arrives). I didn’t tell her how bad things had got on the drinking front, and she didn’t notice. Cathy did. When I saw her on my way out this morning, she gave me a look and said, “Oh for God’s sake. Already?” I have no idea how she does that, but she always knows. Even if I’ve only had half a glass, she takes one look at me and she knows.
“I can tell from your eyes,” she says, but when I check myself in the mirror I look exactly the same. Her patience is running out, her sympathy, too. I have to stop. Only not today. I can’t today. It’s too hard today.
I should have been prepared for it, should have expected it, but somehow I didn’t. I got onto the train and she was everywhere, her face beaming from every newspaper: beautiful, blond, happy Megan, looking right into the camera, right at me.
Someone has left behind their copy of the Times, so I read their report. The formal identification came last night, the postmortem is today. A police spokesman is quoted saying that “Mrs. Hipwell’s cause of death may be difficult to establish because her body has been outside for some time, and has been submerged in water for several days, at least.” It’s horrible to think about, with her picture right in front of me. What she looked like then, what she looks like now.
There’s a brief mention of Kamal, his arrest and release, and a statement from Detective Inspector Gaskill, saying that they are “pursuing a number of leads,” which I imagine means they are clueless. I close the newspaper and put it on the floor at my feet. I can’t bear to look at her any longer. I don’t want to read those hopeless, empty words.
I lean my head against the window. Soon we’ll pass number twenty-three. I glance over, just for a moment, but we’re too far away on this side of the track to really see anything. I keep thinking about the day I saw Kamal, about the way he kissed her, about
how angry I was and how I wanted to confront her. What would have happened if I had done? What would have happened if I’d gone round then, banged on the door and asked her what the hell she thought she was up to? Would she still be out there, on her terrace?
I close my eyes. At Northcote, someone gets on and sits down in the seat next to me. I don’t open my eyes to look, but it strikes me as odd, because the train is half empty. The hairs are standing up on the back of my neck. I can smell aftershave under cigarette smoke and I know that I’ve smelled that scent before.
“Hello.”
I look round and recognize the man with the red hair, the one from the station, from that Saturday. He’s smiling at me, offering his hand to shake. I’m so surprised that I take it. His palm feels hard and calloused.
“You remember me?”
“Yes,” I say, shaking my head as I’m saying it. “Yes, a few weeks ago, at the station.”
He’s nodding and smiling. “I was a bit wasted,” he says, then laughs. “Think you were, too, weren’t you, love?”
He’s younger than I’d realized, maybe late twenties. He has a nice face, not good-looking, just nice. Open, a wide smile. His accent’s Cockney, or Estuary, something like that. He’s looking at me as though he knows something about me, as though he’s teasing me, as though we have an in joke. We don’t. I look away from him. I ought to say something, ask him, What did you see?
“You doing OK?” he asks.
“Yes, I’m fine.” I’m looking out of the window again, but I can feel his eyes on me and I have the oddest urge to turn towards him, to smell the smoke on his clothes and his breath. I like the smell of cigarette smoke. Tom smoked when we first met. I used to have the odd one with him, when we were out drinking or after sex. It’s erotic to me, that smell; it reminds me of being happy. I graze my teeth over my lower lip, wondering for a moment what he would do if I turned to face him and kissed his mouth. I feel his body move. He’s leaning forward, bending down, he picks up the newspaper at my feet.
“Awful, innit? Poor girl. It’s weird, ’cos we were there that night. It was that night, wasn’t it? That she went missing?”
It’s like he’s read my mind, and it stuns me. I whip round to look at him. I want to see the expression in his eyes. “I’m sorry?”
“That night when I met you on the train. That was the night that girl went missing, the one they just found. And they’re saying the last time anyone saw her was outside the station. I keep thinking, you know, that I might’ve seen her. Don’t remember, though. I was wasted.” He shrugs. “You don’t remember anything, do you?”
It’s strange, the way I feel when he says this. I can’t remember ever feeling like this before. I can’t reply because my mind has gone somewhere else entirely, and it’s not the words he’s saying, it’s the aftershave. Under the smoke, that scent—fresh, lemony, aromatic—evokes a memory of sitting on the train next to him, just like I am now, only we’re going the other way and someone is laughing really loudly. He’s got his hand on my arm, he’s asking if I want to go for a drink, but suddenly something is wrong. I feel frightened, confused. Someone is trying to hit me. I can see the fist coming and I duck down, my hands up to protect my head. I’m not on the train any longer, I’m in the street. I can hear laughter again, or shouting. I’m on the steps, I’m on the pavement, it’s so confusing, my heart is racing. I don’t want to be anywhere near this man. I want to get away from him.
I scramble to my feet, saying “Excuse me” loudly so the other people in the carriage will hear, but there’s hardly anyone in here and no one looks around. The man looks up at me, surprised, and moves his legs to one side to let me past.
“Sorry, love,” he says. “Didn’t mean to upset you.”
I walk away from him as fast as I can, but the train jolts and sways and I almost lose my balance. I grab on to a seat back to stop myself from falling. People are staring at me. I hurry through to the next carriage and all the way through to the one after that; I just keep going until I get to the end of the train. I feel breathless and afraid. I can’t explain it, I can’t remember what happened, but I can feel it, the fear and confusion. I sit down, facing in the direction I have just come from so that I’ll be able to see him if he comes after me.
Pressing my palms into my eye sockets, I concentrate. I’m trying to get it back, to see what I just saw. I curse myself for drinking. If only my head was straight . . . but there it is. It’s dark, and there’s a man walking away from me. A woman walking away from me? A woman, wearing a blue dress. It’s Anna.
Blood is throbbing in my head, my heart pounding. I don’t know whether what I’m seeing, feeling, is real or not, imagination or memory. I squeeze my eyes tightly shut and try to feel it again, to see it again, but it’s gone.
ANNA
• • •
SATURDAY, AUGUST 3, 2013
EVENING
Tom is meeting some of his army buddies for a drink and Evie’s down for her nap. I’m sitting in the kitchen, doors and windows closed despite the heat. The rain of the past week has stopped at last; now it’s stiflingly close.
I’m bored. I can’t think of anything to do. I fancy going shopping, spending a bit of money on myself, but it’s hopeless with Evie. She gets irritable and I get stressed. So I’m just hanging round the house. I can’t watch television or look at a newspaper. I don’t want to read about it, I don’t want to see Megan’s face, I don’t want to think about it.
How can I not think about it when we’re here, just four doors away?
I rang around to see if anyone was up for a playdate, but everyone’s got plans. I even called my sister, but of course you’ve got to book her at least a week in advance. In any case, she said she was too hungover to spend time with Evie. I felt a horrible pang of envy then, a longing for Saturdays spent lying on the sofa with the newspapers and a hazy memory of leaving the club the night before.
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