Part of the Silence

by Debbie Howells

  “For the second time,” I tell him unnecessarily, hoping the “babe” means he’s in a better mood than when I last saw him. But my head is still full of what’s happening to Jen. “Where’ve you been, Rick?” I perch on the edge of the armchair opposite.

  He pulls himself up so he’s sitting on the sofa. “Sennen,” he says briefly. “How about you?” He looks at me suspiciously. “Where’ve you been?”

  “For a walk.”

  He stares at me for a moment; then he laughs, but not a friendly laugh. “Yeah, right, Charlotte. I got back last night. I waited up. Where were you?”

  “With a friend.” Then I clam up, because I don’t like his tone of voice.

  “Yeah. Like you have friends.” He says it softly, folding his arms, watching me.

  “If you must know, I was at Jen’s. I’m doing something useful, Rick, like you’re always nagging me to do. She can’t manage on her own, so I’m helping her—just until she’s better.”

  “Nice try,” he says sarcastically.

  But I can’t be bothered to explain further. “You know what, Rick? It’s none of your fucking business.” I turn round, then storm upstairs.

  “You always do that, don’t you?” I hear him shout after me. “Yeah, Charlotte. Run away. Like it solves everything.”

  * * *

  Much later that afternoon, after Rick’s gone out again, my cell buzzes. It’s Abbie Rose.

  “Hello?” I walk across to the window, where the signal is stronger.

  “Charlotte? It’s DC Abbie Rose. Are you at home?”

  “Yes.” Too late, I’m wishing I’d said no. I see enough of her at Jen’s. I don’t really want her coming here.

  “I’m on my way home. I wasn’t sure if you were going back to Evie’s tonight.”

  I hesitate, thinking of Rick. “I’m not sure. Do you think she’ll be okay on her own?”

  “I wondered if I could stop by briefly. We could talk about it then. It won’t take long.”

  I give in to what seems inevitable. “All right, Detective Constable. I’ll be here.”

  When she arrives five minutes later, my heart sinks further. What I’d really like to be doing is uncorking one of the bottles in the fridge, then drinking it by the open window, watching the sea, forgetting about Jen and Rick, letting today wash away into a distant memory.

  Abbie Rose clearly has other ideas.

  “Come in, Detective Constable.” I stand back to let her in, then close the door and walk over to the sofa. “Would you like to sit down?”

  “Thank you. I’ve arranged for PC Sara Evans to stay with Evie tonight. I thought you could do with a night off.”

  Resentment rises in me. I’d been dreading the idea of going back to Jessamine Cottage again, but I don’t like people making decisions for me. “Whatever.” Then I add, “As long as she’s okay.”

  “She’ll be fine.” Abbie Rose frowns. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about Tamsyn.” I raise my eyebrows. “I didn’t ask you earlier. Did you know her?”

  “No, I didn’t.” I pause. “I’ve never heard of her. I told the police who came to the field where she was found everything I know.”

  Abbie Rose looks thoughtful. “We’ve been looking back into the Leah Danning case. Does the name Xander Pascoe mean anything to you?”

  As she speaks, bile rises in my throat, and a whole chunk of the past that I thought I’d buried for good comes flooding back.

  “He went to my school,” I say evasively, intentionally keeping my voice cool. “He wasn’t really my kind of guy.” It isn’t a lie. For a while I thought he was, but he proved otherwise.

  “Can you tell me anything about him?”

  I wonder if she notices my hesitation. I shake my head. “I’m not sure I can.”

  Abbie Rose frowns slightly. “You said he was at your school. Can you remember who he used to hang out with? Or anything at all about him?”

  “I didn’t really know him.” What’s she expecting me to say? Even when you spend a lot of time with someone, how well do you ever know them? “My friends were mostly in the same year as me. He was older. You know what it’s like at that age.”

  Maybe my answer is too fast. Even without looking at her, I can feel Abbie Rose’s eyes fixed on me. I wait for the next question. She’s thinking, taking her time.

  “You see . . .” She pauses again. When she looks at me, it’s clear she doesn’t believe me. “You were friends with Casey Danning, weren’t you?”

  “Yes.” Uneasily, I wonder where she’s going with this.

  “Casey and Xander were an item for a while. It’s been confirmed by several people who knew them at the time. I would have thought that being her friend, you would have known that, too.”

  “Of course I knew.” I try to shrug it off. “But I didn’t have anything to do with Xander. He was Casey’s boyfriend, not mine. We’d fallen out by the time she hooked up with him. You asked me if I could tell you anything about him. I can’t.” It’s all true. I watch her lips tighten as she thinks.

  “Let me reword my question,” she says at last, looking directly at me. “How about this, Charlotte? What exactly do you know about Xander Pascoe?”

  I feel my breath taken away as I stare at her.

  Do you have any idea, Abbie Rose, what you’re asking?

  29

  Why did she have to come here? I thought this was about Jen. Not Leah Danning and Xander Pascoe and Tamsyn. Can’t she see that none of them have anything to do with this?

  Should I lie? Is this one of those instances where it’s better for everyone if the truth doesn’t come out? Abbie Rose is still watching me. She knows I’m holding back. I haven’t lied to her. Not yet. But now I have to. I have no choice.

  “If you want to know, Xander Pascoe was bad news for anyone and everyone he got involved with. He had his own Cornish mafia, for want of a better way of describing it. Everyone knew that if you wanted something done, Xander could take care of it for you—as long as you had money, of course. If you crossed him, you had to watch your back. The teachers hated him. He was a perfect example of how you didn’t need exam results if you had a sharp brain and an eye for business.”

  “So why the secrecy?”

  “I don’t think you’ll find many people who are prepared to spill the beans on Xander Pascoe,” I say cautiously. “People were frightened of him. It was years ago, I know, but I’d still be wary about crossing him. But also, I suppose, I feel a loyalty to Casey.” I shrug. “Xander treated her really badly. She got dragged into everything he was involved in. And she’d already been through so much.”

  “So why are you protecting him?”

  “I’m really not.” My voice is unintentionally heated at her comment. Then I get a grip on myself. “You can’t talk about Xander at that time without Casey being involved in some way, too, just by association. It’s how it was. It’s difficult to tell you anything about Xander without making Casey look bad. In all honesty, there’s nothing good to say about him. He screwed everyone over. And I don’t really want to dredge up the past.”

  Abbie Rose doesn’t say anything. What I’ve told her is true. There’s no reason why she shouldn’t believe me, but for some reason, I know this wasn’t the answer she was looking for.

  “When did you last see Xander?” she asks eventually.

  I shrug. “Years ago. I couldn’t say how many.”

  “Would you have any idea if Jen knew him? Assuming you’d tell me.”

  There it is. On the table between us. Her suspicion about my lack of honesty and my reticence to tell her what I know.

  “Honestly? I don’t think she did. Pretty little rich girls with expensive clothes and long, flowing hair really weren’t Xander’s type.” Again, it’s the truth—and I don’t mean to sound bitter, but it’s out before I can stop myself.

  Abbie Rose looks interested. “Oh? What was Xander’s type, exactly?”

  I shrug. “Casey was.... She and Jen couldn’t
have been more different. They knew each other only because they were in the same year at school, not because they were friends. Then Casey’s mother asked Jen to babysit. You can imagine how that made Casey feel. I mean, her own mother, for Christ’s sake . . . Sorry, Detective Constable. Like I said, I can’t really tell you any more than that.”

  It seems to satisfy her, but only for now. I know she’ll have more questions. It’s a kind of dance, her questions and my answers, both of us tiptoeing around each other. It can’t go on. I glance pointedly at my watch, hoping she’ll take the hint.

  * * *

  As soon as I close the front door behind her, I walk through to the kitchen. Knowing I don’t have to drive this evening, I fetch a glass and the bottle of white rioja from the fridge, take them outside, pulling a fur throw from the back of one of the armchairs as I pass.

  It’s dusk. My mind is elsewhere as I make for the wooden table across the yard, where I sit, looking out over the bay. After wrapping the throw around me, I pour the wine, drink the first glass quickly, then the second more slowly, while I go back over the day’s events: Rick coming home, clearly still unhappy with me; the mention of Xander Pascoe; the memories of the past dredged up.

  Abbie Rose is good, but even so, this is challenging her. She’s not like other police officers I’ve come in contact with. She’s intuitive, seems to know instinctively what to ask.

  I wonder if she’s asked Jen the same questions. Even if she has, there’s a fundamental problem with everything Jen says right now. Poor Jen, with her memory shattered into a million pieces, most of them scattered out of reach. Last night proved that her answers, however convincing they seem, are meaningless. She’s unreliable. Without proof, no one can believe a word she says.

  By the time I’ve drunk most of the bottle, it’s almost dark. There’s still no sign of Rick. He’s probably drinking beer somewhere, reliving the day’s waves with some of his friends. I’m glad. Today’s events have unsettled me. I have always thought Rick and I are uncomplicated about drinking and sex, which is fine by me. I’ve no desire to share anything more with him, yet there’s something he’s not happy about. I’m sure of it.

  Pulling the throw closer around me, I shiver, but I’m not ready to go inside. It’s too beautiful out here, the last of the sunlight fading into the horizon as the first of the stars become visible overhead. It takes a bottle of wine and all of this—the vastness of the dark sky, the sound of waves crashing against the layers of purple-hued slate below, the sense of solitude—for my mind to become still at last.

  Then I think of Casey. How she let the sea carry her away from all her troubles. How easy it would be to do that right here, in the bay below. If you picked the right time of year, a big enough storm, the right swell, it would be so easy. It’s possible to reach the waves without anyone seeing you. No houses overlook the narrow footpath through the gorse bushes that leads down to the rocks below. If you were desperate enough, if you didn’t want anyone ever to find you, a hair’s breadth separates you from the might of the elements, the width of the fragile boundary between life and death.

  My thoughts are interrupted by the sound of a car swinging round too fast on the gravel drive. Rick, I’m thinking irritably, the stupid fucker, before realizing it’s too powerful to be his car, which means he’s probably drunk and some of his friends have brought him back.

  Reluctantly getting up, I’m wishing they hadn’t and had just left him to sleep it off in one of their camper vans. Then, as I start walking back across the grass toward the house, I hear the crunch of footsteps, and before me a figure comes into sight. It’s silhouetted against the light from inside the house. Sudden panic flickers inside me. It’s taller, broader than Rick. Just for once, I dearly wish it was him. As I watch, from his stance, the way he’s walking toward me, I know exactly who he is.

  CASEY

  2001 . . .

  It was the start of a time I remember little of. And when it was over, nothing would ever be the same.

  Life had lessons for me, things only cruelty can teach you—that or loss. I learned how simple it was. How you gave people what they wanted. You didn’t confront them, didn’t challenge them. That way they left you alone.

  “She’s upset about Leah,” my mother kept saying.

  “You mustn’t be surprised if you have feelings of anger,” the doctor told me. “When something like this happens, it’s usual to feel angry and upset. And however illogical, guilty, too.”

  I hung my head, nodded now and then, enough so they knew I was listening.

  I even said, “But I do. Feel so guilty.” It was true. Guilt hung over me, its heaviness clogging up my lungs, suffocating me, just not for the reasons they imagined, but I couldn’t tell them about the scenes I’d given life to on my bedroom wall. I gave them only what I knew was an acceptable response. Glancing at my mother, my lip wobbling.

  “If you ever need someone to talk to,” the doctor was saying, “we can arrange it for you.”

  I nodded, but my sight had blurred, and I was trying to focus. The doctor seemed to have two faces. The friendly, understanding one, and another, more menacing one, which, in the silences, snarled over the desk at me.

  Did everyone have two faces? The one they liked you to see and the one that came out when they dropped their guard and showed what they were really like? As the friendly face looked at me again, I shrank in my chair. I knew the menacing, snarling part of her was there; it was just hiding.

  Your best face, I thought distractedly as I sat there, hunched forward slightly, clasping my hands, was it the kindest, nicest part of you or the most honest? Because honest was sometimes the worst thing a person could be. If right now I told that doctor how empty I felt, how for years I’d thought about my family dying grisly, pain-filled deaths, how close I’d come to killing myself, they’d take me away.

  It was too hot in there. Behind the doctor, I could see a window clamped shut. Without thinking, I rolled up my sleeves.

  * * *

  After, they said I’d done it on purpose. “A subconscious cry for help” was what everyone called it. All those fucking shrinks, and that was the best they came up with. I hadn’t concealed it all this time to let some crummy, two-faced doctor find out.

  “Why?” I’d always remember my mother’s cry, a wail of resentment that made me wince, that said, “How can you do this to me? After everything with Leah? Me, me, me.” Not “Why have you suffered? Why didn’t you tell me? Tell someone? Anyone?”

  Even the doctor couldn’t explain. Another worse than useless adult letting me down, when I craved an explanation for the cavernous darkness in me that only pain could fill.

  “It can be a way of coping with intense emotions or relationship problems. Has this started since you lost your sister?”

  I nodded, the bullshit answer, because it fitted. Simpler for my mother, the doctor. I’d lost the plot when I lost my sister. Nice and tidy and logical, to keep everyone happy. Stop them from digging deeper.

  “I’ll arrange for you to talk to someone. It might be good if you all went. As a family. But you can discuss that.” The doctor looked at me, both of her faces blurring into one momentarily, before the snarling face lunged toward me again, snakelike, spitting venom at me.

  “Stupid little cunt. Waste of space. The wrong sister died, didn’t she? It should have been you, but you know that, don’t you . . . ?”

  I shrank back in my chair. Even the doctor could see how worthless I was. It was the night I came closest. Came just a whisper from that last, deeper slice of the blade. It seemed the only way. To cut harder, drawing more blood, so that it spewed onto my bed, taking my life force with it. Only my mother knocking on my bedroom door stopped me.

  2002 . . .

  I learned a lot in therapy. About people’s expectations and how there’s only room in society for normal people. No one mentioned that there was any number of recipes for fruitcake. What I didn’t learn about was myself—why I wasn’t
happy and why dark thoughts plagued me—but I hadn’t expected to. And by now, it was part of who I was.

  Just as I’d learned to keep everyone off my back, I learned, too, that a long spell in therapy gave you special dispensation to behave however the fuck you wanted to.

  “Charley Harrison made me do it. It wasn’t my fault.” That was what I told my mother when she was called in to talk to the principal at my school.

  I was in trouble again, but I really didn’t care. My mother didn’t say anything, not straightaway, but it was written all over her face. It wouldn’t have mattered what I said. She didn’t believe her own goddamned daughter. Just because Charley was an A star student who, in the eyes of teachers and parents, could do no wrong, it was always someone else’s fault. I loved that about Charley, how brilliance somehow made her irreproachable.

  And I wasn’t lying. It was Charley Harrison’s idea to write the dumb poem on the dumb whiteboard. Only at the last minute she chickened out, and someone had to save the moment. Who gave a fuck about school, anyway? She and I knew where we were headed in life. Up, up, and out of there.

  It was Charley who told me that life doesn’t just happen. You had to grab it by the balls. After years of rain, Charley was the first ray of sun in my world.

  “If you want to see science in action,” she whispered to me during a biology class, “look at all the losers, who’ll get dull jobs and die early . . . of boredom. Natural selection!” She winked. “If you settle for mediocrity, you get what you deserve.”

  Right from the start, I liked her philosophy, her optimism, and I tried it on for size, enjoyed how invincible it made me feel. We were different, she told me. Her eyes gleamed, and as I listened to her, I could believe every word. Like me, she saw the world differently, but unlike me, she’d played it smarter.

  When you’ve faced death and come out the other side, there’s nothing left to fear. I became a rebel rather than a victim. It was what I most loved about Charley—her wild streak, when we were at our most reckless.