by A J Waines
I plumped up the pillows so they’d feel fresh for Karen that night and tidied up the bedspread. Simple, normal, familiar actions to ground me. I put the lamp on beside her bed and glanced down into the suitcase Mark had been hovering over when I’d caught him.
It looked full of baby clothes; that’s all. I lifted out a pink sleepsuit, a pullover, a pair of leggings. They had all been well worn, the colours fading, the surface slightly pilled through many turns in a washing machine.
A batch of baby clothes – nothing could be more innocent – and yet, there was something that struck me as not quite right. It was then, I noticed. The label on the vest I was holding read 9-12 months. I picked up a coat with a hood, which read: 12-18 months. Mel struck me as a fairly small child, not surprising, given she’d been so ill – these items were bigger yet they had been worn.
I heard a footstep and snapped round. Karen was standing right behind me.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m sorry – they looked…so soft and cute…’
‘You’re not getting broody now, are you, Alice Flemming?’
I laughed. ‘No – I…’
‘She’s going to grow, you know,’ she said, taking the coat from my hand and folding it. ‘I’ve been stocking up. Kids go through things at such a rate – it costs a fortune.’
She was absolutely right, of course, but Karen had never been the sort to buy second-hand clothes. I remembered her making fun of me once, when I’d turned up to a party in a Laura Ashley dress I’d found in a charity shop.
Karen must have changed a lot since then.
There was so much I didn’t know about her.
Over supper we both acted like the body upstairs wasn’t there. It was the only way to get through it. With continuing brutal weather, no signal and the car refusing to start, we couldn’t get the message through by any other means. There were no police on their way. We asked each other superficial questions about life after University, killing time until we were tired enough to go to bed.
I didn’t refer to the period straight after we graduated, when we’d spent a couple of days – just the two of us – at her parent’s place in Bristol.
I could tell instantly from the size and interior of their huge property that they were rolling in money. Karen’s father owned a record label and was fiercely ambitious. I’m sure Karen learnt how to win people over from him.
He had a way of making you think you’d made a decision of your own, when in fact you’d only gone along with one of his – just like she did.
Her mother, too, was a high-flier; a senior editor for an antiques magazine, if I recall correctly. She oozed grace and allure, chatting with me and asking my opinion as if I was a trusted friend. I could see where Karen got her ability to make people feel special.
That stay hadn’t worked out too well. She was seeing Roland at the time – he was a mechanic and her parents didn’t approve. It only dawned on me some time later that I’d been brought in purely to cover for her. The two of us would stroll down to the harbour and then Roland would turn up – Oh, what a coincidence! – and she’d ask me to disappear for a few hours, but not tell her parents about it once we got back. I’d had nothing better to do at the time; I ate ice creams, went to a couple of art-house films at the quayside and got through a novel. With hindsight, I could see she’d used me. The memory brought back uncomfortable reminders of the old me – the one who was too eager to please and didn’t expect any better. I didn’t want to dwell on either of those unpalatable aspects of myself.
‘In the year after Leeds, what happened then?’ I asked. ‘You didn’t jet straight off to America?’
She pushed the rest of her cauliflower to the edge of her plate. I’d barely touched mine.
‘I stayed in Bristol with my parents for a while. I needed to make some money. I’d spent everything my parents had given me to tide me over at Leeds.’
‘So, you got a job?’
‘I worked in a lab for a few months for a pharmaceutical company, researching metabolic diseases. My father suggested it. I loathed everything about it – setting the alarm, getting on the bus every morning, meetings, rules. Within about six weeks it had driven me mad.’
Wasn’t that what life was like once you stopped being a student? Didn’t people in the real world have to set their alarm, live to other peoples’ schedules and work within corporate systems? Didn’t you just knuckle down and grin and bear it?
‘You left?’
‘I couldn’t do it anymore. It was making me ill. I couldn’t breathe.’
‘And your parents let you swan off to America to be an au pair – just like that?’
I knew they’d ploughed lots of money into Karen’s education. They clearly expected great things for her future.
‘They made a hell of a fuss,’ she said, casting her eyes upwards, ‘as you can imagine. They wanted better for their brainy daughter, but they didn’t understand. I just wanted time to let my hair down and live a little.’
‘And you were an au pair, letting your hair down for, what…nearly five years?’
She laughed, her mouth full. ‘You disapprove.’
‘I’m just surprised that’s all. You seemed so motivated at University. I always saw you as go-getting and, well, a bit ruthless, to be honest…’
‘Life in LA was so easy,’ she said. ‘I was living way above my means in a rich family home. I realised I didn’t have to climb a career ladder to be happy – there were easier ways to earn money.’ She smiled as she said it, but her words didn’t ring true. I knew more than ever now that she was hiding something from me.
I winced as I turned my head.
‘Headache again?’ she asked.
I put my hand out. ‘Honestly – there’s nothing wrong with me. An intruder is dead at the end of my bed – I think that’s enough to give anyone a funny turn.’
‘Yeah, you’re right,’ she conceded.
At bedtime, Karen wound some wire she’d found in one of the drawers around the arm of the kitchen window, so it couldn’t be opened. All the other ground-floor windows were too small for anyone over about six years old to get through.
We went upstairs. There was nothing else for it. The police wouldn’t be coming until the morning, so Karen brought a clean white sheet from the attic room and we covered the body with it. It was the best we could do to afford him some dignity.
‘Sofa or top room?’ suggested Karen.
My preference would have been to sleep on the floor in Karen’s room, but there wasn’t space. Karen helped me change the sheets in Jodie and Mark’s room and, reluctantly, I took a deep breath and settled down in there, hoping they wouldn’t come back.
I had to take another sleeping tablet or else I wouldn’t have slept at all. I had no option, but I wasn’t pleased with myself. I could picture Dr Winslow’s face.
‘Absolute last resort,’ he’d said. ‘These are to be used once in a blue moon, okay?’
During the night I had vivid dreams of wandering around the house. I floated like a ghost in and out of every room. I started in the top bedroom, opening the drawers and cupboards, finding odd things – like a pair of wire-cutters and a box of lollipops. Did they belong to the cottage or to Mark and Jodie? At one point I had visions of leaning over the dead man, peeling the sheet away from his face, and then backing away because of the smell; putrid offal with a sickly sweet overtone. After that, I was in the sitting room trailing my fingers over the books in the bookcase. I remember it being cold. A cruel, gnawing cold that ate into my bones. I looked down and my bare feet were buried in snow.
The next thing I knew I was in the kitchen. Karen was slapping my face.
It was 3am and I was holding a knife.
Chapter 21
I wasn’t dreaming anymore. Karen really was slapping my face and I really did have a knife in my hand, holding it in front of me like a sword. I dropped it as soon as I realised what it was, then I flopped into Karen’s arms.
‘What are you doing down here?’ she hissed. She put the frying pan she’d been wielding on the floor. ‘I heard a noise. It’s the middle of the night.’
It was hard to focus; the table, the fridge, the floor all seemed to be covered in a grey fog. ‘I’m not sure – I’m a bit confused.’ I knew my words were slurring one into the next; the sleeping tablet tugging me towards oblivion.
‘Alice – you had a carving knife in your hand.’ She was leading me towards the stairs.
‘Did I? I don’t remember.’
She must have taken me back to the attic room and put me to bed. I didn’t remember a thing.
Karen was on her own when I went down for breakfast.
‘Where’s Mel?’ I asked.
‘Still asleep.’ It was early. I hadn’t heard a peep out of her.
Karen poured me a cup of coffee and handed me a plate with two slices of toast. She stood over me waiting to see what I had to say; whether I’d remember last night.
‘I’ve…I’ve never done that before,’ I said, my voice small, dropping away.
‘What do you remember?’ she sat down, leaning forward, her chin cupped in her hand.
‘Not much. I think I was wandering about the place; going into different rooms.’
‘Did you take a sleeping tablet last night?’
‘Yes.’ I didn’t look at her.
‘You had a knife, Alice. You were holding it up when I came towards you. I was scared.’
I didn’t believe her at first. ‘I can’t have...’ Then the picture crystallised inside my mind. She was telling the truth; I remembered the blade clattering onto the flagstones. ‘What was I doing with a carving knife…?’
‘You’d been outside,’ she said.
‘Had I?’
‘The back door was open. You were frozen.’
‘Like I said – nothing like this has ever happened before. I can’t understand it.’
Karen spread a layer of thick strawberry jam on her toast. For a second it looked congealed and obscene.
‘My brother used to sleepwalk,’ she said, getting straight to the point. ‘The GP put it down to his sleeping tablets, because he only started doing it once he was taking them. They swapped him to a different type.’ She licked her lips. ‘Perhaps you should try that.’
I was shaking, not sure if it was from the cold or the shock. I wrapped my hands tightly around my waist.
‘Yes, yes, perhaps I should…’ I said in a half-whisper. I put the toast to one side; I couldn’t cope with anything solid just now.
‘You hear of people attacking their nearest and dearest in their sleep, sometimes,’ she said. ‘Even killing them – when they’re actually sleepwalking. I remember a case when we were at Uni. A bloke stabbed his mother-in-law and the defence tried to claim it was diminished responsibility. He was sent down, though – the jury didn’t believe a word of it.’
‘Oh, God – don’t say that,’ I burst out. I wasn’t sure what she was implying. ‘You don’t think I…’
There was a silence and Karen didn’t close up the yawning gap fast enough. I got up, my chair scraping across the floor like nails on a blackboard. ‘It can’t have been me,’ I cried. ‘I wouldn’t do anything like that.’
‘Look – we’d better try the police again,’ said Karen. ‘I can’t stand this much longer.’
She picked up her phone and went to find her boots in the hall. ‘Wait…’ I said. ‘I’m really terrified.’
‘I know – we both are.’
‘No – what I mean is…wait…I need to...’
I left her at the bottom of the stairs and went up to the landing outside my bedroom, my hand on the doorknob. I held it there, feeling the sweat build up for half a minute, before I dared turn it. I knew the smell would be getting worse by now. I squeezed my eyes shut and stepped inside. And came straight back out again. I heaved and ran for the bathroom, but nothing came up.
I had to do this. I had to go back in.
I took a deep breath and hurried back inside. Karen had left a window open – or maybe it wasn’t Karen, maybe it had been me, last night – I couldn’t be sure anymore. My sense of reality was buckling at the edges.
It was a bizarre scene, like a shot from a television crime drama. I had to know if it was possible. I had to double check.
I made myself think it through, starting with the intruder creeping up the stairs and coming into my room. Could he have tripped on the rug? I glanced at the sheet covering him. I’d have to move it to be certain.
I lifted it away from his body, using two outstretched fingers, squeezing my nostrils together with the other hand. I gazed down at his boots. Did he look like he’d slipped? The rag rug was rumpled under his legs, but maybe that had happened when he fell.
I looked at his head. There was definitely a wound on the top near the crown. Karen’s theory about him hitting his head on the bedstead was plausible, surely. I scrutinised both of the iron balls on the frame at the foot of the bed. I couldn’t tell if there was any blood on them; in any case, it would have dried by now. I didn’t want to touch them. We’d already touched enough.
I thought about the police. Was Karen really calling them as I carried out my amateur re-enactment? I turned to the door. She was standing on the threshold with her phone in her hand, waiting.
‘I’m trying to work out if I could have killed him,’ I said, my voice breaking.
‘You’d had a sleeping tablet then, too, hadn’t you?’
I nodded, not looking at her.
‘You think you might have hit him with something and not realised?’
I dissolved into tears, dropping my head. ‘I don’t know. After last night…’
Karen side-stepped the body and gave me a brief hug. I looked around the room; there was nothing there I could have used to hit him – the washstand was too heavy, the lamps were built into the wall. The weapon must have come from somewhere else.
Then I realised the flaw in our thinking.
‘If I had hit him – why wasn’t the weapon right here, when we found him?’ I ducked down to check under the bed, then ran my eye under the cupboards. Nothing had rolled underneath, out of sight. I stood up straight. ‘Unless, I got rid of it – or hid it, or…’
Karen made a smacking sound with her lips and didn’t contradict me.
‘What about the police?’ I said.
Karen looked down at her phone. She’d already put her boots on, ready to go outside to get a signal. ‘What do you want me to do?’
I couldn’t think straight. I might have done something outrageous, unthinkable, without even knowing it – but equally, I might not have done it. My fingerprints would be on a weapon, my DNA would give me away. Forensic techniques were ingenious, these days, once the police got here they’d tear the place apart.
Karen was offering me a choice.
‘I need time…to think,’ I said.
I didn’t have anything concrete to go on – nothing but an all-consuming panic and dread whirling into a tornado inside my head. I could see the blue light flashing in my mind’s eye, police officers pulling me away, feel the snap of the handcuffs around my wrists.
Karen was still waiting, holding up her phone.
‘Don’t call them,’ I said, my words barely audible. I knew it was wrong; against everything I believed in and had been brought up to abide by. But terror was billowing inside me over what I might have done. I couldn’t see straight, never mind think straight. I cupped my forehead. ‘Just until I can think it through.’
‘Okay.’ She lowered the phone. ‘I won’t – for now.’
‘Really? You’ll do that for me?’ I rushed over and clung to her, but she pulled away.
‘Let’s just agree it was a complete accident and he fell,’ she said. ‘Don’t beat yourself up about it. It’s over with.’
‘It’s not really, though – is it? What if…it was me? That means…’
I couldn’t bring myself to put int
o words what it would mean.
She tugged at my sleeve. ‘Let’s go down to the kitchen – away from him.’
We sat at the table and I waited for her to speak. To do the Karen-thing and take control. All I could hear was my breath coming in and out in tiny snatches.
‘Right,’ she said, finally. ‘If anyone comes back – Jodie and Mark or that man of yours – they’ll know straight away from the smell that something’s badly wrong. We can’t avoid it any longer.’
I gaped at her, waiting for her to make everything right again.
‘Let me think.’ She stared at the grain of the wood in the rustic table, her finger trailing over her upper lip. ‘Okay – I know what we should do. The main thing is to stay calm and be rational.’
I said nothing.
‘This random stranger, Charlie whatever, broke in,’ she went on, ‘and there was a freak accident. It serves him right. No one is going to come looking for him. The damage has been done. He’s dead. It’s over. Let’s clear him away before the others get back – then we can think about what to do next.’
‘Clear him away?’ It sounded so heartless, so callous.
‘Alice,’ she snapped, ‘there are two outcomes at the moment – either we tell the police or Mark and Jodie come back and all hell breaks loose – which one do you want?’
I couldn’t remember what had happened on the night he died. I couldn’t remember last night either, but I knew I’d been sleepwalking, because I’d been found with a knife in my hand. If I’d killed the intruder, the police were going to work it all out. What kind of a defence would I have?
The alternative was that Karen was going to help me. Together, we could make it all go away. It wasn’t right, but it was what I wanted more than anything. I’d only just started living my life after twenty-seven years. I wasn’t a bad person. In my right mind, I’d never dream of hurting anyone. I couldn’t lose everything now.
‘Okay,’ I whispered.
I’d have to pull myself together and go along with whatever her plan was.
