I Thought I Knew You

by Penny Hancock

  ‘Right . . .’

  Pete sighs. ‘And she’s invited Saffie over this evening.’

  ‘Ah.’ I drop my bag on the hall floor. Take off my coat.

  ‘I know. I’m sorry, honey – I knew it would be difficult for you. But the way Freya was, it was a question of not having her or Thea at all or having all of them – and, weighing it up, I decided you’d prefer to have all of them.’ He waits. ‘Than none?’ he says nervously.

  ‘I don’t know that I’m ready to see Saffie,’ I tell him. ‘It’s not just what she’s done to us. It’s . . . I was so cruel, telling her they’d found a body when I met her on the riverbank. I feel ashamed.’

  ‘Holly. We’ve all said and done things we regret over the last few days. But we’re the adults, remember?’ Pete takes hold of my shoulders gently. ‘If Saffie’s happy to come here, then we should welcome her. We should show we’re willing to forgive. To help heal the trauma she’s been through. And to help Freya at the same time.’

  I pull back from him, look into his face, which is so full of concern, of love. ‘You’re right, Pete. I know you’re right.’

  ‘So I’ll ring Jules? Say Freya’s invited Saffie round and you’re OK with it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, OK. But I need that wine.’

  I push open the sitting-room door. The girls flood over to me, let me hug them, kiss their hair. It’s like having a little part of me that’s been dormant brought back to life. Feeling their thin arms round me, hearing their excitable voices, telling me about the latest episode of something they’ve been watching. I haven’t realized just how much I’ve missed them. They follow me into the kitchen, where Pete’s lit a candle and stuck it in a wine bottle. He hands me a big glass of red wine. He’s made a huge bowl of salad and decorated it with edible flowers.

  ‘You’re such a whiz in the kitchen,’ I say.

  ‘It was our idea,’ says Freya.

  ‘Mine, actually,’ corrects Thea. ‘I picked the violas from Mum’s window box before we came.’

  ‘It’s lovely,’ I say. ‘Such a beautiful sight to come home to.’

  ‘I’m putting it on Instagram,’ says Freya.

  Some part of me is able to remember what contentment felt like. This domestic scene, the wine, the voices, the smell of dough warming in the oven. Another part feels like it’s carrying a weight, so heavy I can barely stand. None of us will ever feel completely at home here without Saul, is the truth.

  *

  There’s a knock on the door then, interrupting the gloomy direction my thoughts have threatened to take.

  ‘I’m grateful for this.’ Jules stands in the doorway.

  Saffie pushes past and greets Freya and Thea.

  ‘Come in, Jules,’ I say, half-heartedly.

  ‘Thanks, Holl, but I have stuff to sort.’ She starts to walk away, then turns back, hesitates a moment. ‘I assume there’s still no news?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Holly.’

  We look at each other, unable to speak for a few moments.

  Then she says, ‘I do recognize what a big gesture this is. You inviting Saffie round under the circumstances. But it’ll be good for Saffie to spend time here with Freya, and Thea. For her to get back to normal. Thank you.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I say at last. ‘It’s good for me to have the house full. To have young people around again.’

  ‘There was one other thing I wanted to talk to you about this morning,’ she says.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘About Rowan’s part in everything that’s happened.’

  I don’t want to talk about Rowan. But Jules’s face is full of something – anguish, pleading. I step outside, into a fractious wind, pulling the front door to behind me. We stand on my little paved path. I hug my cardigan around myself.

  ‘If Rowan hadn’t pushed Saffie so hard to stay for extra “revision” classes,’ Jules says, ‘the meetings with Harry might not have happened. In a way, everything can be traced back to Rowan having unrealistic expectations of our daughter. D’you remember? I told you he watched that ridiculous show Child Genius and had Saffie in mind for it. But I can forgive Ro for that. He was doing that in good faith. He didn’t know he was pushing her into the clutches of a paedophile, poor man. If he’d only known, he would have been the first to have gone to the police, as you can imagine . . . But . . . look, I love Rowan. You know that, Holly, better than anyone. In spite of everything. In fact, only you ever understood that when he used to flare up, he couldn’t help it; it was the flip side of his sunny one. You always accepted that about him. Which I appreciate.’

  I can’t bring myself to reply to this. His figure looming over me in the kitchen comes back to me. The smell of his breath. The terror that he was going to rape me. Even as I think about him, the bruise on the back of my head starts to throb.

  ‘But his behaviour around this whole thing,’ Jules says, ‘his threat that he’d beat up Saul, which I wish I’d never relayed to you. His reaction frightened me. If Rowan had killed Saul – and I was convinced, when I heard they had found a body up in the Fens, that he had – I would have left him in an instant.’

  ‘You believe Rowan might have killed Saul?’ I don’t know if it’s the way the street lamp casts a weird tangerine colour on Jules’s face or what she’s just told me, but the world seems to tilt and I have to clutch the door frame. Rowan might have threatened to ‘beat the living daylights’ out of my son, but I never took it quite that literally. Jules clearly did, though. And although she says she’d have left Rowan in an instant, there’s something in her voice that belies the certainty of her words, something that suggests she’s trying to persuade herself as much as me.

  ‘There were clues that he’d been to that area,’ Jules goes on. ‘But now I know the body wasn’t Saul’s, I don’t know what to think anymore. What I do know is his reaction to Saffie’s allegation was extremely violent. I don’t know whether I can stay with him. What would you do in my shoes?’ Jules persists. ‘You know me better than anyone.’

  Jules is asking me whether she should leave Rowan. I want to say, ‘Of course you should leave him. Get out now! You actually believe he killed my son? Run, Jules!’

  A hard, cold rain has begun. I’m freezing and I want to go inside. I can’t speak. I can’t put my thoughts into a coherent pattern that will form a sentence. Instead, I lift Jules’s hand and place it on the wound on the back of my head.

  ‘Feel that.’

  Jules places her hand on the swelling and the rough scab that has covered the large gash. I wince at her touch, the bruise still tender.

  ‘That happened right here,’ I say, gesturing towards my door. ‘After the Auction of Promises at the Baptist Chapel. After you’d gone.’

  I don’t need to say any more.

  Jules looks at me in the way she used to, when she knew exactly what I meant. And she understands. Because even after everything, there’s a part of both me and Jules that knows each other inside out.

  *

  Back indoors, the girls – Freya, Thea and Saffie – are sitting on the sofa, leaning against each other, watching some inane sitcom. Again I have that sense, like a distant memory, that things can feel all right. The rain on the roof, the wood burner alight, the wind swishing through the trees outside, rattling the slates on the roof. Pete is in the kitchen, getting the meal ready. His clattering about makes a reassuring background noise. Then the rain turns to hail, smattering against the windows as if someone were chucking handfuls of gravel at them. I squeeze onto the sofa between Freya and Thea, and Thea rests her head on my shoulder. I put my arms round them. For a little while, I try to imagine this is my family, to ignore the great aching gap in it left by Saul.

  The sitcom the girls are watching involves lawyers making a mess of their caseload. And suddenly a scene takes me out of myself.

  ‘Oh my goodness,’ I cry, as the camera pans over the very building where Archie used to work. ‘There!
See that – that’s where Archie’s chambers were. Lincoln’s Inn.’

  ‘You never told us,’ Freya says, looking up at me, ‘what Saul’s dad was like. I want to know.’

  ‘He was a defence lawyer.’ The old pride I always felt saying these words edges into my voice in spite of myself. I haven’t examined how I feel since Philippa revealed her relationship with Archie. It’s been pushed to the back of my mind by everything else. And now’s not the time. ‘He had chambers in Lincoln’s Inn – there, look. They’re showing it again. Stone Buildings, it was called.’

  The girls want to know all about Saul’s birth father. Although Saul’s absence nags and tears, a physical pain in my chest, I want to talk about him, about his dad. Besides, the conversation is soothing, a distraction of sorts. There’s something about the presence of young people that softens the harsh lines of the adult world. Their noise, their chatter is a comfort. We forget the sitcom, let it burble on in the background as we talk.

  ‘Lincoln’s Inn Fields looks so nice,’ says Freya. ‘So pretty. Much prettier than the country around here.’

  ‘It’s not countryside anymore. It’s right in the middle of London. But you’re right. Lincoln’s Inn itself is beautiful. Those buildings they’re showing, and those gardens and little alleyways all lead off the busy streets outside. It’s where lawyers have their offices; they call them chambers. It’s tucked away from the traffic and all the hustle and bustle of the surrounding streets. You can stand on Holborn, or in Covent Garden even, and never know that those gardens, cloisters and the chapel are just a few metres away. It’s like a secret world within the city. I’ll take you there one day.’

  Saffie has been completely silent since she came in, but now she speaks. ‘Did you just say there’s a chapel? In the middle of Lincoln’s Inn?’

  ‘There is,’ I say. ‘It’s beautiful. You can walk underneath, because it’s built over an arched undercroft. I used to take Saul – and you, actually, Saffie – when you were little. Saul used to like the names on the gravestones in the floor. The barristers and the benchers with the “s”s like “f”s. “Barrifter,” he would say. And he used to laugh at the “Hatch-keeper and Washpot”.’

  Freya and Thea giggle.

  ‘Is it the chapel Saul’s dad haunts?’ Saffie says.

  I stare at her.

  ‘Archie’s buried in East Finchley Cemetery. Not in Lincoln’s Inn. There are no burials there anymore.’

  ‘I know,’ Saffie says. ‘But Saul told me his dad haunts Lincoln’s Inn Chapel. There was one night, when we were young, he told me his dad wanted to be among the other lawyers who were buried there, so his ghost had gone to haunt it. He scared me! But he said it wasn’t scary. He said his dad was there and he liked it.’

  I look at this girl with her childish face, no longer thick with make-up, her wide eyes, her round cheeks. Suddenly – momentarily – she doesn’t look any different to when she was tiny. I think of the days in London when she would stay over with us, how I liked it that since Saul didn’t have a sister, he had her. And I remember the pair of them staying up sometimes, talking, how sweet I found it that they had things in common, in spite of the age difference.

  One day, I know I’ll be thankful I still have Saffie. And I wonder, after all, whether I should perhaps have persuaded Jules to come in this evening, too. Whether forgiving is less arduous than carrying the weight of a grudge around with you day after day.

  Saffie continues, ‘I was only about eight, and Saul was eleven. It was when you were still in your London house, Holly. We were talking, me and Saul, about where we’d like to be buried. I asked if he’d like it to be the same place as his dad. He said no. He said he didn’t know why his dad was buried in East Finchley Cemetery. He said it was really big and unfriendly with all those thousands of gravestones.’

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘But there wasn’t really a choice.’

  I don’t explain to her how I was in no state at the time to argue with the advice I was given. That neither Archie nor I had made plans for what to do if either of us died. That I was doing what I was told. And that East Finchley Cemetery was the default burial ground for anyone in that part of London.

  ‘He said he wished his dad was in Lincoln’s Inn Chapel. Protected from the rain, under the arches. And he thought his dad’s ghost would have gone there to talk to the other dead lawyers. He said he wished he could go there, to be close to him, but he didn’t want to upset you, Holly. So he never told you . . . and . . .’

  ‘Go on,’ I say.

  ‘The other thing Saul said he loved’ – Saffie looks at me – ‘is that the pews in the chapel above had little doors. He said they were like little rooms that you can lock and hide in.’

  ‘Ha! Saul always loved little hideaways,’ I say.

  ‘After dark, he said you could lie down in those pews on the prayer cushions and lock the little door and no one would know you were there.’

  ‘He said that?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Saffie. ‘He always wanted to go there. Where he could be close to his dad’s ghost.’

  24

  JULES

  The storm was right overhead as Jules drove home after dropping Saffie at Holly’s, the windscreen almost opaque. She had to lean forward, peer through the glass to see the road, her headlights only making the white sheets of rain in front of her more dazzling.

  The rough wound on Holly’s scalp had impressed itself onto the tips of Jules’s fingers. She couldn’t shake off the imprint it had left, couldn’t bear to imagine what Rowan had done to Holly that night after the Auction of Promises, before he had come in, drunk, and with that air about him that he’d had one of his red mists.

  She drove back across the fen, pulled up in her driveway and hurried through the wind that was now blowing almost horizontally, and let herself in to the house. Rowan wasn’t there, and she wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or disappointed. Because she knew now she was going to confront him.

  She tried to distract herself in the kitchen. She rummaged in the fridge to see if there was anything to eat, then gave up. She wasn’t hungry, anyway. Instead, she poured herself a gin and tonic, and sat watching some sitcom about lawyers without taking any of it in. The rain battered against the windows, the skylights in the kitchen rattling under its impact. She didn’t know what time it was when Rowan did finally appear, slamming the front door, taking off his boots, brushing rain off his coat. She didn’t think. She stood up, went into the hallway and stood in front of her husband.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘Is Saff OK?’

  His hair glistened with raindrops; his face was chafed and red from the cold.

  The words came out before she had time to pause, or to plan them.

  ‘Saff is as OK as she’ll ever be,’ she said. ‘After everything that man has done to her. But you, you total bastard! You did that to Holly! You assaulted her in her own home.’ She hit Rowan on the chest. He gripped her wrists, but she wriggled out of his clutches and beat him again harder, pummelling his shoulders, his arms.

  ‘I don’t know you anymore, Rowan,’ she screamed. ‘You are not the man I thought you were. You are violent. You can’t control your feelings. After everything I’ve gone through with you.’

  ‘Whoa! Hang on.’

  ‘I will not hang on. I can’t live with a man who attacks a woman for no reason. I can’t live with a man who attacks a woman full stop.’

  ‘Jules, come on. You’re stressed after everything that’s happened.’

  ‘Holly showed me,’ Jules said. ‘Holly showed me what you did to her.’

  She was trembling. Then she quietened, steadied her voice and said, ‘And where did you go? That morning? The morning Saul vanished? Did you do something to him too? Did you kill Saul?’

  Jules was crying suddenly, but she didn’t care. The gash on Holly’s head continued to haunt her. The thought of Rowan attacking her friend, pushing her over, knocking her down or hitting her head so hard she was l
eft with that gash. What else was he capable of?

  ‘I know you went beyond Ely into the Fens. I know you got petrol out near Downham Market. I know you lied about where you were that morning. Did you kill Saul? Did you? You may as well tell me now because you’ve already gone too far, Rowan. Then we’ll tell the police.’

  Rowan left the room. For a second, Jules was aware of how very isolated this house was, out on the Fens, away from the village. And in this weather, no one came down here. Another gust of wind hit the side of the house, blowing over one of the wheelie bins outside, which went crashing over the decking. If Rowan was to turn violent with her, no one would hear. No one would know. She had never been afraid of him before. Even when he’d flipped, she knew she could calm him, that he was always gentle with her. But witnessing the wound he’d inflicted on Holly put him in another category.

  Rowan was gone for several minutes and Jules slumped down on the sofa. She had done it. Confronted him with her worst fear.

  Rowan, when he came back into the room, did so slowly, and placed a business card on the coffee table in front of her. On it was written, Hypnotherapist, works with all conditions, including alcoholism, smoking, anger management. Applecroft, Downham Market.

  Jules stared at it for some time.

  ‘What is this, Rowan? Why are you showing me this?’

  ‘When I heard about the rape,’ he said, ‘I did feel murderous. And it scared me how much I wanted to beat up Saul. I had to deal with my feelings, so I booked an appointment with this hypnotherapist I’d seen on the internet. In Downham Market. The appointment was that Monday morning. I didn’t want to tell you. It would’ve meant telling you I felt out of control. So I thought if I drove Saffie to school – which I’d decided to do anyway – I could go on there after dropping her and you wouldn’t know.’

  ‘So?’