It’s a good joke, I think. But there was nothing funny about my situation. Just like the visitor to Ireland I had no choice; I had to start from where I was. Or rather from where I had put myself.
It wasn’t going to be easy.
I put on the pair of spectacles, fitted with plain glass and slightly tinted, that I was carrying in my jacket pocket. They were probably the only thing about me that matched the two photographs Sonia had of me in any way.
As the train began to slow down, I walked out into the corridor and positioned myself by a door. I didn’t open the window before the train had stopped, but pressed my face close to the glass and peered along the platform.
Sonia was standing by the buffet, just as she’d said she would. She was unmistakeable, exactly like the photographs she had sent me: fair, a tad on the plump side, not unattractive, but clearly as unsure of herself as her emails had always indicated.
Her whole body language spoke volumes of anxiety. She was staring at the train, her eyes following it, sweeping the windows. She was looking for me. She was eager to see me. She was excited, I thought, as well as being so clearly anxious.
I felt much the same, but I had far more reason than Sonia to be ill at ease.
If only I wasn’t so damned shy and insecure, I wouldn’t have delved into fantasy land and got myself into this mess.
The train jerked to a halt. I’d arrived. I tried to gulp back my uncertainties. I was here. What could the worst result be? I supposed it was that she would realise I wasn’t at all how I had presented myself and she wouldn’t want to see me again. I wondered if I should try to continue the charade, on this first meeting anyway, but that would surely only make things worse.
I steeled myself. There was a click as the train’s doors were unlocked. I opened the window and prepared to lean out to reach the handle outside and open the door.
We had pulled to a halt, with me standing on the train almost opposite the buffet. Sonia was just yards away, directly facing me.
I leaned forward out of the window and grasped the handle in my fingers.
I couldn’t stop staring at her. Suddenly, she caught my eye. She frowned. Puzzled, I suppose. I wasn’t sure if she would recognise me at all. I looked so different from my picture. I’d thought about warning her, at least, about the absence of facial hair and the colour of the hair on my head. Both of those were, after all, easy to explain, but it had seemed like opening the floodgates. If I was honest about anything, the rest of it would have to come tumbling out. So I’d said nothing.
And now, there she was before me. She was wearing a cream jacket, grey, tailored trousers and little, black, ankle boots, with straps and shiny buckles. I took it all in in a flash. I wondered if she had taken as long to decide what to wear as I had. I suspected that she had.
I thought she looked lovely. She had a classic timelessness about her. She wasn’t like one of these modern women I couldn’t cope with. I was sure of it. She really was the one I had been looking for. I began to smile. I couldn’t help myself. Surely, this was meant to be. I could sort it, couldn’t I? I could make this work. I had an inventive enough brain, that was for sure.
Sonia’s frown deepened. Her face tightened. She shook her head slightly. Then she looked away and continued to stare up and down the train.
She hadn’t recognised me. She’d appeared to think she had, for a moment, then decided it couldn’t be me. That was what I’d been afraid of. All the doubts and fears overwhelmed me again.
‘Come on mate, you’re blocking the door.’
The cry from behind came as a shock, jerking me back to the reality of the moment. I opened the door and began to step forward, one foot poised above the step. Sonia’s eyes swept along the train again. She paused her gaze once more, just for a second, as she saw me and then moved on.
I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it.
I turned around and squeezed myself past the man behind me, pushing him to one side.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ I muttered, aware of the heat rising in my neck. I was blushing on top of everything else.
There were other people in the corridor waiting to disembark. Probably only three or four people in all, but it felt like a massive, threatening crowd to me.
‘Sorry, sorry, wrong station,’ I said.
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ grumbled the man I had pushed out of the way.
I forced a passage through the rest of them.
‘Ouch,’ cried a young woman upon whose foot I trod heavily. ‘Be careful.’
Once back in the carriage, I headed for where I had been sitting before. For a few seconds, I remained standing by my seat, back from the window, but positioned so that I could see out quite clearly. Sonia, I hoped, would be unable to see me. I watched her step forward and begin to walk along the platform yet again, peering in the windows. I turned my head and stepped further back.
This was terrible. I had made a complete fool of myself before I’d even met her. What had I been thinking of? Why couldn’t I have been honest with her? Or as honest as I can ever be. What was wrong with the real me? I wasn’t that bad, was I? No worse than a lot of others, surely.
Was this train never going to move, I wondered? By then, I just wanted to get away from this ridiculous situation. And from Sonia, I suppose. Yet I had so wanted to be with her, to be with the right person. I’d been sure, too, that Sonia was the right person.
I sank back into my seat, hopefully out of her sight line. There was a lurch as the train finally began to move. I craned my neck for one last glimpse of her. There she was, standing quite still, at the far end of the platform, near the engine, just staring at the train moving slowly forwards.
I was sitting by the window on the platform side. I had an excellent final view of her as the carriage, in which I was travelling, passed by her
She still looked puzzled and what else? Disappointed? Hurt?
I had no idea whether she could see me or not. But I knew she was thinking about me, as I was about her.
I’d let her down so badly, before I’d even met her. What had I been thinking about? I always let people down. I’d been a disappointment all my life. To almost everyone with whom I’d crossed paths, but I’d never meant to let Sonia down. I really hadn’t.
I just could not face her. There was to be no new chapter of my life, no soulmate with whom to share everything. I was incapable of sharing anything. I had always been unable to share.
The newspaper I’d been reading or pretending to read really, before the train pulled into Bath, was still on the table where I’d left it. I picked it up and held it up in front of my face, so that nobody could see the tears coursing down my cheeks.
By the time I eventually reached my home railway station, I had at least managed to stop blubbing and pull myself together. I still felt sorry for myself, but I had every right to, didn’t I?
I walked home slowly, keeping my head down. I really didn’t want to have eye contact with anyone and I certainly didn’t want to be recognised by anyone and have to speak to them.
It was after dark by then and I kept away from the street lights.
As soon as I got indoors, I fetched my laptop and switched on. There were two emails from Sonia.
The first said simply: ‘Where were you?’
The second was a little longer.
‘I thought I saw you when the train, the one you told me you’d be on, pulled into the station,’ she wrote. ‘Then I thought it probably wasn’t you, only someone wearing glasses like yours. I waited for the next train, just in case. Then I realised I was probably making a fool of myself. You had my mobile phone number. You could have called if something had gone wrong. Even if you’d merely changed your mind, you could have called. Now I realise how significant it was that you somehow never had a phone number you could give me.
‘I don’t know why you have done what you have done, after all that we said to each other, or at least after what I said to you. I opened my heart to
you. I thought we already meant something special to each other.
‘Were you just playing a game with me? I feel so stupid. What you did today was cruel. Please tell me, what is going on?’
I wrote a reply straight away, making no reference to whether or not I’d been on the train. She could think what she liked about that.
‘Dear Sonia, I am sorry if I have hurt you and I am sorry that I could not meet you as arranged today. But I’m afraid the truth is that whatever there was between us is now over, albeit before it really began. Not only could I not meet you today, I cannot ever meet you. I hope you will find someone who is worthy of you. I am not. You may not think it now, but you have had a lucky escape. Saul.’
I was crying again as I pushed the send button. It was a sparse, blunt message. I felt I had no choice. Whatever Sonia might think, I am not a cruel or callous man. Really, I am not. I am a mixed-up wreckage of a man, that’s all. That is the reason why I couldn’t have a proper relationship with Sonia, nor even meet her. It wasn’t anything to do with her. She seemed perfect. It was down to me being me, the me I have had to learn to live with.
I sat looking at my computer screen. There was a ping within just a few minutes of my emailing Sonia. Up popped another message from her.
‘How could you do this?’ she asked. ‘How could you behave like this? You haven’t even given me any sort of explanation. Couldn’t we at least talk on the phone? You have my number. Call me.’
I switched off the laptop, fetched a bottle of whisky and a pint glass from the kitchen cupboard and took them both with me into the bathroom, where I ran myself a very hot bath.
I climbed in straight away, without adjusting the temperature, even though the water was almost burning and turned my skin an angry red. I didn’t care. After a while, the sensation became quite pleasant. I poured the best part of half a pint of whisky into my glass, topped it up with cold water from the bath tap, lay back, and tried to relax. I hoped the whisky, combined with the restorative powers of the bath, would make it possible for me to forget the horrors of the day and move on to dealing with the rest of my life.
Today was over. Sonia was over. I would never call her and I would never email her again.
She knew me only as Saul. I hadn’t told her my full name. She had no idea where I lived, although she may have thought she did. She had no phone number or address for me and the email address I’d used throughout our correspondence would never be used again.
I wouldn’t even look at it. I would cancel it, that’s what I would do. Then her emails would bounce back to her.
That would be kindest, because it would surely make clear to her that there was no hope, that I had disappeared from her life for ever. Like I always do.
EIGHT
Willis took PC Claire Brown with him to interview the second Mrs Terry Cooke, at the unkempt, council house she shared with her husband and their three young children. As Vogel had hoped, the woman was taken totally by surprise. She seemed rather alarmed.
‘It’s just routine, Mrs Cooke,’ Willis told her. ‘I’m sure you know by now that Mr Cooke’s daughter has been found dead?’
Willis turned the remark into a question, although he was pretty sure of the answer.
‘Yes, of course,’ replied Susan Cooke. ‘My Terry called me almost as soon as he knew the worst. Terrible. Terrible. But I can’t help you, I don’t know nothing about what happened. She was murdered, wasn’t she? Well, how would I be able to tell you anything? I barely knew the girl. Her mother didn’t like Terry bringing her here, bloody snob she is. Thinks folk who live in a council house are beneath her. Well, she’s only got her place because she took all my Terry’s money when he left her. He don’t like living in a council house neither. Blames me for how we live. He certainly wouldn’t bring that girl to this place, not his little princess.’
She paused, waving a hand wearily at the small, front garden, which was a brown desert growing only the odd stinging nettle, an old bedstead, a rusting bicycle and a pile of bulging, black, plastic, rubbish bags. She touched a fading bruise on her left cheek.
‘Anyway, they didn’t ever meet here,’ she continued with a forlorn little sigh. ‘They used to go out. My Terry and the girl. He never wants to spend any more time here than he has to. Not nowadays. That’s just how it is. So I don’t know …’
Willis brought the avalanche of words to a halt with a raised hand. Susan Cooke was still standing in her own doorway. The two police officers remained outside.
‘Please Mrs Cooke,’ he remonstrated. ‘Can we come in and talk about this indoors?’
Susan Cooke didn’t look too sure at all. She pushed a strand of lank, peroxide hair back from her forehead. Willis noticed how dark the roots were. He hated that sort of thing. This was a woman who might once have been pretty, but now, he thought, her pale face merely reflected the damage wreaked by a lifetime of disappointment.
Willis glanced pointedly up and down the street, as if looking for curious neighbours or twitching curtains.
‘Yes of course, come in,’ said Susan Cooke finally, holding the door wide open. She led the two officers past a kitchen, where dirty dishes overflowed the sink, and into a grubby, ill-furnished sitting room. Every available space seemed to be covered with something: newspapers, magazines, beer bottles, dirty cups and glasses, abandoned coats and scarves, assorted children’s toys, a broken railway carriage, a teddy bear with one arm, a grimy looking Game Boy and a toy mobile phone.
The woman began to clear a space on the sofa big enough for two. It was several seconds before Brown and Willis were able to sit down.
Willis did so with some distaste and, only with the greatest effort, avoided trying to brush clean the seat of the sofa, with one of the tissues from the small packet he always kept in his pocket.
Willis did not know what a far cry this slovenly home was from the two Vogel had visited on this case so far, that of the first Mrs Cooke and of her second husband’s mistress, Daisy Wilkins. He did know this was his idea of hell.
Susan Cooke seemed to read his mind.
‘It’s the children,’ she said, as if that explained everything. ‘The ’ouse is too small, you see. Three came along almost straight away. The first before we were married, then the other two. Twins. Never been twins in either of our families, but we ’ad ’em. The council won’t give us a bigger one. It’s got three bedrooms, they say, and that’s enough. But the third one’s a box and you can’t swing a cat in this room. We’ll never be able to afford our own place, not on his wages. With what he gives that ex of ’is too and I can’t work, not with they three. He gets that mad about us living like this. I can’t cope, that’s the trouble. It’s me nerves you see.’
She finally stopped talking.
Her glance strayed to the table alongside the chair she was sitting on. Willis followed her gaze. A small bottle of pills stood next to a glass of water. Prozac, or something similar, guessed Willis. Happy pills. A powerful tranquilizer of some sort, for sure. He watched the woman stare longingly at the little bottle, as if fighting a battle within. Finally, it became clear that the battle had been lost.
‘You’ll have to excuse me, I need to take my medication.’
With a trembling hand she reached for the little bottle of pills, extracted two, took a sip of water and swallowed. Her eyes closed, as if already in anticipation of relief.
‘How old are your children?’ asked PC Brown gently. She was one of the older women constables and of the old school, having left the force to bring up her own children and then returned. Her quiet manner and the note of sympathy she injected into her voice whenever appropriate, often made her invaluable in a situation like this. Willis had chosen her deliberately from the women officers who had been available.
‘The eldest’s eight and the twins are seven,’ Susan Cooke replied. ‘They’re all at school now, thank God. It’s the only rest I get. We’ve got no space, that’s the problem …’
Claire Brown mad
e one of her sympathetic noises.
Susan Cooke waved an arm desolately at the small, cluttered room, which Willis suspected hadn’t seen a duster or a vacuum cleaner in months.
Suddenly she sat up straight.
‘I’m forgetting my manners,’ she said. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
Willis tried not to let the sheer horror of the prospect show on his face.
‘No, thank you, we have to be as quick as we can when we’re on an inquiry as serious as this,’ he said politely.
PC Brown quickly acquiesced.
‘Not for me,’ she said. ‘But thank you so much for the offer.’
She smiled kindly at Susan Cooke, who managed a small, tired smile back.
Willis had had enough. He decided the time for prevarication was over.
‘So Mrs Cooke, we need to ask you some questions about your husband’s whereabouts over the last few days …’ he began.
‘You mean last night?’ the woman queried sharply, interrupting him.
It seemed Prozac, and the other prescription drugs Willis reckoned she was taking, hadn’t completely numbed her senses.
‘Not entirely,’ he said. ‘Let’s start with the past week or so. Do you know when your husband last saw his daughter?’
Susan Cooke didn’t answer at once. She seemed to be thinking.
‘It must have been a couple of weekends back,’ she said eventually.
‘That’s almost three weeks ago,’ said Willis. ‘Did he usually see Melanie that infrequently?’
‘Well, he was supposed to be seeing her last Sunday. He usually saw her every other Sunday, at least. Or used to, anyway. They were going to the pictures, then for a burger. But she cancelled, said she couldn’t make it.’
‘Do you know why?’ interjected PC Brown.
Mrs Cooke shrugged.
‘Well, she’s that age, isn’t she? Tricky. Claimed she was having a bad period. They do that you know, these girls from split homes. Reckon their dads will be too embarrassed to ask any questions. He didn’t believe her, though, my Terry. And later on he found out by chance that she’d spent the afternoon with one of her mates.’
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