The Murder of Graham Catton

by Katie Lowe

  It was a lie. Another one. I’ve only ever passed through the same three rooms since the ‘renovations’ began. She showed me just enough to make me believe; enough to make my mind fill in the gaps.

  I step inside, and see the words scrawled above, in too-familiar red paint.

  I KNOW WHAT YOU DID.

  My heart shudders. The draught blows through, and drops. I hear footsteps, again, further down the hall. A door creaks open and shut.

  I cling to the wall, the moss sticky, cold on my palm. I follow the bloody words: YOU CAN’T HIDE, and LIAR LIAR. As I press by the last, edging around a half-dismantled hospital bed, the paint smears on my shirt. It’s still wet.

  I hear a roar of tyres on the gravel, outside, and I freeze. It’s either the police – or it’s her. But if it’s her, then the footsteps I’m hearing must belong to someone else.

  Sweetheart, Graham whispers, a shiver running through me.

  A car door slams shut – only one. There’s no echo of conversation, though it’s possible the rain’s drowned it out. But I don’t think it’s them. Somehow, I know it. It’s Darcy, or whoever she really is. I squeeze the screwdriver in my palm.

  ‘Hannah?’ she calls from the hallway. ‘Where are you?’ There’s a darkness in her tone, an appalling satisfaction.

  Light sweeps through a door, swaying open at the end of the hall. There’s a single word painted on the wall there.

  RUN.

  ‘Hannah?’ she calls again from the hall. ‘It’s me. I’m here. It’s going to be OK.’ Her voice is a sing-song: a tease and a threat.

  The rain blisters overhead, dripping through the cracks. I feel it sliding down my neck, an icy chill.

  There are two doors at the end of the corridor. One half-open, one shut. I try to pre-empt her pre-empting me: she’ll assume I’ve gone through the open door. The path of least resistance, the simplest explanation. I push the closed door. It sticks for a moment, and then gives.

  I see her curls first, hanging over the edge of the bath that stands in the centre of the room on broken legs.

  I see her appalling stillness, her hand hand hanging limp over the rim.

  Memories, imaginings collide: I feel my knees give way beneath me. I feel the pieces fit together, a puzzle finally unlocked. I realize who this woman is – Darcy Burke, but not; nor, now, a delusion – and why she’s here.

  I feel myself careering backwards, a hand in my hair.

  And then everything turns black.

  59

  London, 2008

  My palm is slick around the cross-hatched handle, the blade cool where it nips against my thigh. I will the trembling to stop. I try to breathe. I count the beats, the thudding rhythm of my heart.

  ‘Put the knife down, Hannah,’ I hear him say. It feels as though we’re miles apart, the words faint and fading.

  I blink, and he’s in front of me, jacket still slung over his arm. The cuffs swing, restlessly, as the air blows through the vent. He looks towards the bedroom, where Evie’s pretending to sleep; then back, again, to me.

  ‘Please,’ he says, though I know he isn’t asking. I know, too, the meaning of the look he gives: the threat cocooned inside. He doesn’t need to say another word. There’s a dull ring on the countertop, where the steel blade meets the stone.

  ‘Come here,’ he says. His arms outstretched, eyes kind. ‘I’m sorry. Come here.’ I don’t believe him. I know it’s a lie. He’s done this before. ‘Come here, Hannah,’ he says, again. And I do what I always do.

  I step towards him.

  He pulls me in. And he rocks me. Tenderly. He hums the song in my ear, the one he’d sung on the day we moved in. I fall back into that moment, when I’d loved him. When we didn’t see what we’d eventually become, though some part of me, I think, had always sensed it: the flash of his temper at the passing cyclist that day. The way he was all want, all craving, in a way that I mistook for love.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, my default response, again.

  ‘It’s OK. Come on. You’re having a bad day. It’ll be OK.’

  He leads me into the bathroom. He lowers the toilet lid, and sits me down.

  I don’t trust this. I can’t. It isn’t him. It might’ve been, once – but this version of him left me long ago.

  I hear the crackle of water filling the tub. I smell juniper, apricot, geranium. None of it quite enough to drown out another, familiar smell: another woman’s perfume on his skin.

  It’s too much. I am panicked, electric with fear. He turns, and I flinch. I see disappointment cross over his face. He masks it, almost instantly.

  ‘Stand up,’ he says, and I do.

  He winds his arms around my waist, his hands damp, hot from the water, the steam. He tips his head to the ceiling. ‘Arms.’ I raise them, and he peels off my stained T-shirt. I feel an intimate, terrible shame.

  He drops the T-shirt on the floor. He examines me, slowly. His eyes skip past a faded bruise on my shoulder, the mark of his finger and thumb. He crouches, and peels down my leggings, his knuckles tracing the lines of my thigh. He kisses my stomach, the scarred, stretched-out flesh of it. My body responds involuntarily. I feel the faint kick of wanting: a betrayal.

  He stands, and gestures to the bath. I climb in. The water burns my feet and calves, but I don’t show it. I smile as he looks on.

  ‘Relax,’ he says. ‘I’ll be back in a minute. I’ll get you some wine.’

  He hates it when I drink. I know this. He knows I know this. And he knows I’m too afraid to question why.

  He’s playing a part, all graciousness and deference, like a butler, a waiter at a smart hotel. He bows as he closes the door.

  I’ve never been more scared of him than I am now.

  In the scalding water, still, I’m cold; it’s a chill with fingers in my blood. I listen carefully for sounds: for the tread of footsteps on the boards outside. He turned left, away from me, towards the front door, towards the kitchen and the lounge. This, at least, is a relief. Evie’s bedroom, next to ours, is on the right.

  I try to make my trembling stop, my muscles stiffening, toes pressed against the walls of the tub. It only makes it worse.

  I hear the footsteps coming back. But they don’t stop. They carry on.

  He’s never hurt her; never would. Would he?

  The silence swallows everything. All I hear is my own shallow breath.

  Water spills over the rim as I drag myself to my feet. I reach for a towel, and slip. I feel as though my limbs are not my own. And then, the door opens, and he’s there, a glass of red wine in his hand.

  He stares at me, naked, hideously exposed. ‘Sit back down, Hannah.’

  I don’t move.

  He says it again. I am pinned in place, frozen. I am so unimaginably afraid. ‘Hannah.’

  I lower myself back into the water. I grip the sides of the tub with both hands.

  He closes the door, and his shoes click, muted, on the tiles. As he walks towards me, I see him, truly, for the first time in years: I take in the sunken lines of his face, his eyes ringed greyish underneath; the first soft salt-and-pepper flecks in his stubble and his hair.

  ‘’Til death do us part,’ our vows had said. ‘In sickness and in health.’

  He settles on the edge of the bath, and hands me the wine, plucking a toy from the water: a pirate who’s lost his hat. ‘This isn’t really in keeping with the mood here, is it?’

  I say nothing. I can’t speak.

  ‘Drink up.’ I take a sip, the red wine tart on my tongue. ‘We can’t keep going on like this, can we?’ There’s a sadness in his eyes that’s real: a kind of grief. ‘It’s not fair on anyone. Least of all Evie.’ He stops. The silence rings in my skull. ‘Can we?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We probably should’ve … You know. Had this conversation before.’ He runs his tongue along his teeth, mouth closed. ‘It’s my fault. I know I’m not easy to be with, and I’m sorry for that.’

  I know what he w
ants me to say, here. I feel my cue in the air: to tell him it’s not only him, but me, too. To absolve him of guilt. But I can’t. Some small, hard piece of the old me remains, buried beyond his reach. I won’t tell him this isn’t his fault. I’m scared of this man, who may kill me. But still, I won’t give him that.

  He tenses. His jaw sets rigid. A vein creeps into view on his neck. ‘You can have the house.’ His voice is clipped, now, and cruel. ‘I imagine you’ll need it.’

  I sit up. ‘I don’t want—’

  He places a hand squarely on my chest, and pushes me back. It creeps up, towards my throat, and I know what he’s doing: the same as he always does. A slow depression, a thing he knows I could fight; he takes pleasure in knowing I won’t. He’s so good at this – so skilled – that I have a nerve there, now, residually pinched. It’s a reminder of him, even when he’s not around.

  He lets go. I gasp for breath. ‘I’m trying to make this easy, Hannah. For all of us. You won’t get custody of Evie, but I want to make sure you’re provided for. At least until you’re back on your feet.’

  I feel a sob rising. It fills my throat. I can’t breathe. ‘You can’t. She’s my daughter. I—’

  He laughs, and it’s devastating. He’s mocking me. He knows this is a fight he can’t lose. ‘Hannah, do you realize how I looked today?’

  ‘I don’t—’

  ‘Do you realize how I looked?’ He doesn’t raise his voice. He never does. But his tone sharpens to a point, and I wilt.

  I shake my head.

  He waits.

  ‘No,’ I say, at last.

  ‘Drink your wine.’

  I stare at the glass, the stem trembling between my fingers. I take a sip. I taste a bitterness. A sediment that clings to my lips; a residue on the sides of the glass.

  ‘I looked like a fucking idiot. I looked like a father who doesn’t know how to look after his child. Who doesn’t know what his wife is up to, at work or at home.’

  The thought turns solid, a cool recognition. My husband has poisoned my drink.

  He’s waiting for me to speak. ‘Graham, please, you didn’t—’

  ‘Don’t tell me I’m wrong, Hannah. Don’t you dare. Because you weren’t there. I saw those people looking at me. That poor family, after what you put them through, staring at me as though it was all my fault. When all I’ve ever done is try to—’

  I slip out of myself for a moment.

  And then, I return. The bathwater rises and falls around me.

  ‘—and over-prescribed medications, and God knows what else. Darren has covered for you, over and over again, out of loyalty to me—’

  The pieces click into place. I see Darren handing the prescription to Graham, before he slandered me in court. Before the two of them twisted the story to fit.

  Hannah Catton, the unreliable doctor, with a store of stolen medications to hand. She’s reckless. Stupid. She mixes a couple – several, in her confused state – with alcohol, and takes a bath, where she drifts off, and drowns in her sleep.

  ‘OK,’ I say. ‘OK.’ I raise the glass to my lips, but don’t swallow. Still, the bitterness sticks to my gums. He stares at me. ‘I’m sorry. I … You’re right.’ A sob escapes me. A real one. I can’t say the words without feeling the grief they contain. ‘You should have custody. I can’t give her what she needs, and you can. So … you can take her. I won’t fight it.’

  He says nothing. I see him deflate, just a little. He’d expected more.

  I can’t tell if he’s disappointed, or relieved.

  ‘I just …’ I hear my voice slur, and my chest constricts. I’m not faking it. Whatever’s in this glass, it’s strong. ‘I’m really tired. Do you mind if I just lie here for a bit?’

  He doesn’t speak. He thought he wanted me to die in this bathtub. But some piece of him, now, is unsure; some small part of him that still cares. That still sees me as his wife; as the mother of his child.

  I close my eyes. I feel a pull, as though my chest is sinking. I am slipping. I need him to believe my act, before it becomes something real.

  I hear the side of the bathtub creak. He stands, and gently takes the glass from my hand. I let my hand drop, lifelessly, down. I think of Lucie’s pale, blue hand doing the same. He picks it up and rests it on my stomach. He’s as tender with me as he is with Evie, when he tucks her in. I feel sleep coming for me, tugging at my jaw, my skull. The water rises over my chin, my lips.

  My husband kisses me on the head, and I fall further. ‘I love you,’ he whispers. I feel myself turn weightless. A deep, thick blackness covers me, like a blanket. He pulls away, and lets me go. ‘Goodnight, sweetheart.’

  60

  I grip the sides of the bath; the room is revolving. I watch his hand pull the door in slow motion, the click of it a ricochet in my skull.

  I think he’s gone. But I can’t be sure.

  I am tumbling, every blink seeming to last half a minute. My pulse is slow, arrhythmic thumps. I’m awake, and then I’m not.

  I need to get out of this water. But I can’t let him hear me move. I lift myself, heavily. I almost stand. But my palm slides along the rim of the tub, and I can’t make it stop.

  My skull meets the corner of the cabinet. I don’t feel the hit: I only hear the crackle of bone. I feel the rush of white surround me, a soft glitter of stars, and then, there’s nothing: only a vast and dreamless sleep.

  61

  Derbyshire, 2018

  ‘Wake up, Hannah.’ The words are disembodied, drifting somewhere behind. My eyes are weighted shut. ‘Wake up.’ I feel myself slowly returning: sensation creeping back into my limbs. I feel the cold stone floor beneath me. I smell the rot and the decay. I remember where I am, and what I saw, before it all went dark.

  ‘Oh, wake up, you stupid bitch.’ The kick to my stomach winds me. I’m gasping as I open my eyes, half-blinded by tears.

  It’s her. She’s no longer putting on the voice I’d come to know as Darcy’s. Now, she’s wholly herself: Sophie, the girl I met, once, in over large sunglasses, in the gardens of the Buyon clinic, when she’d asked me to treat her sister, Lucie. She’d seen right through me, then: all ego, all hubris, desperate to be told I was good.

  Then, I’d let her sister go. And she’d bled out in a hotel bathtub.

  Evie, I think, trying to focus; trying to see my daughter, in the tub behind. She isn’t moving. She’s so terribly pale; so still.

  ‘There we go. Much better.’ Sophie smiles, moving close to my face. I see the familiar yellowed stain on her bottom teeth, her hair soaked through and slicked back. ‘Sit up.’

  My head pounds, an ache that echoes through my teeth.

  I drag myself up to sitting. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, automatically. ‘Sophie, I’m sorry. About your sister – about Lucie—’

  ‘Don’t you dare say her name. Don’t you fucking dare. If you’d done your job, none of this would be happening. This whole thing is your fault.’

  My pulse rockets. There’s a frenzy in her voice, a stark violence I don’t know how to calm.

  ‘Did you know I found the body?’ Her voice is small now, child-like. It’s as though all the control she’s exercised, for the last few weeks, as ‘Darcy’, has been lifted: a release of tension that’s electric and unpredictable. ‘She cut her wrists in the bath, and I found her. Did you know that?’

  ‘I’m so sorry—’

  ‘Shut up. You took my sister away from me. She was mine. And you took her away.’ Her voice catches, a swell of tears held back. ‘I loved her. More than anything.’

  I think of what Lucie said, on that final day. ‘She hurts me. She makes me do things I don’t want to do. When I’m with her, I don’t know what’s real.’

  ‘And they didn’t see it. That farce of a tribunal. After everything – all the evidence – they still didn’t think you’d done anything wrong. Even though you took away the person I loved most in the world.’ She crouches down beside me. I’m splayed out like a doll, m
y legs flat on the cold stone floor, back slumped against the wall. My head pounds, the room whirling vertiginously. ‘An eye for an eye, Hannah. You know what that means, don’t you?’

  She taps the screwdriver against the floor. Tap. Tap. Tap.

  She tips her head back. I see Evie’s curls hanging from the tub. I catch the smell of her shampoo, the strawberry breath of her hair.

  ‘Poor Evie,’ she says. ‘Just like her mum. A few compliments from a pretty boy and she’s anyone’s. You really should’ve raised her better.’ She reaches into her pocket and pulls out my phone – my old phone. ‘While I’m giving you free advice – change your passwords when you lose your phone.’ She types something; places the phone on the ground between us, and extends a hand. ‘Yours.’

  I can’t move. I can’t make sense of what’s happening.

  ‘Now, Hannah. Or I’m filling that bath with her blood while you’re still around to see it.’

  I feel myself break open. I realize what she’s doing. An eye for an eye.

  ‘Please,’ I say, desperately. ‘Please. Sophie, please – I’ll give you whatever you want.’

  She shrugs. ‘This is what I want.’ She’s matter-of-fact about it. ‘I want you to hurt. Like I did. Like you should’ve, when your husband died. Because you didn’t, did you?’

  I know I can’t argue. But still, I beg. ‘Please. I’m so sorry. Please.’

  ‘Give me the fucking phone, Hannah. These hysterics are boring. And pointless, frankly. I mean, look. She’s already dead.’

  I hear the moan that escapes me; feel another crack of pain as she grabs my cheeks and slams my head into the wall. She roots through my pocket, and teases out my phone. She looks at the background, a photo of Dan, and Evie, and me, all smiles.

  ‘Aww. Cute.’ She crouches in front of me again, and lays the two phones side by side. One by one – methodically, with a terrifying calm – she jams the screwdriver through each of the screens. I watch their faces distort and disappear.