by S. E. Lynes
‘Are you OK?’ the teacher called after me. ‘Lady with the red towel, are you OK?’
I ignored her and hobbled for the exit. I had to get into the cold air. Outside, it was dark. The woman who’d smiled at me was standing in front of the main entrance, drinking water from a proper sports bottle, one hand on her hip. She too was still in her kit and looked as red as I imagined I must be. Nearer purple, if I’m honest, and that made me warm to her even more.
‘Jan’s tough,’ she said. ‘But it’s a great workout.’
‘Wear-out, more like. I feel like I’ve been kicked in the hoo-hoo.’
She laughed. ‘It does hurt at first. I’ve been coming for six weeks. Should have seen me week one – I was crimson.’
I wondered what colour she thought she was now, but she prattled on as if she’d read my mind.
‘I mean, I’m crimson now obviously, but it’ll go down quicker. Six weeks ago I looked like an aubergine and I was still red the next day. Seemed like it anyway. Was it Bette Davis that said ageing’s not for wimps?’
‘I don’t know. Sounds about right, though.’
She held out her water to me. ‘Do you want some of this? If you don’t mind germs.’
I accepted it gratefully and took a sip, even though I could’ve downed the whole lot. ‘Ta. I’ll remember water for next week.’
She smiled. ‘You did really well, though.’
Kind of her to lie.
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I really want to get fit.’
‘Me too. Important, isn’t it, as we get older?’
We stood there chatting. And what can I say about that, other than it was lovely, really lovely? My God.
Blue Eyes is looking at me with concern, and I realise I’m in floods. ‘Do you want to take a break?’
I shake my head, take the tissues she’s holding out to me.
‘I just can’t believe what happened to her, you know? I mean, I can. I know I have to face it, but she was just so nice… no edge to her, y’know?’
Blue Eyes waits while I compose myself enough to carry on. I sip some of the water, wipe my eyes and take a few deep breaths.
Once I’m calm enough to speak, I tell her things I know she knows already, like the fact that the woman’s name was Anne-Marie Golightly. Most people round our way will know that; it was in the Weekly News and the nationals. It will have been on the television, though I never watch the news on telly anymore. She was from Liverpool. To me, she was… she was just, you know, a lovely person. She had two kids, both grown up now, and referred to her husband as his lordship, which she said with real affection and it made me smile.
And she asked me questions too, which felt new, somehow. I told her Kieron was at art college and I didn’t moan about Katie and her strops, just said she wanted to be a make-up artist and that she was currently a YouTuber and left it at that.
At a certain point, we both sighed.
She looked around her. ‘Bloody hell, there’s only three cars left. We must have been here an hour!’
I laughed, followed her eyes to the sky-blue Mondeo, my rusty red Twingo and a bright yellow, very expensive-looking sports car. ‘I’ve lost all track of time. Too busy gassing.’
I shake my head and smile at the memory.
Amanda is looking at me like she’s trying to solve a puzzle. ‘That must have felt good,’ is all she says.
‘It did,’ I reply. ‘Have you ever done that? Met someone and just chatted away like you’ve known them for years? It’s such a good feeling, isn’t it?’
‘It is. Simpatico is the term. I think it’s from the Spanish but I’d have to check. It describes the feeling of mutual understanding, getting along with another person. Do you think it felt particularly good just then?’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Well, you were feeling distant from Lisa.’
‘Oh, yes, I suppose so.’
‘Do you think you can tell me what happened after that?’
I nod, even though I can’t, not really. I can only tell her what I remember. I remember that the leisure centre lights flashed and went out. I remember that a second later, the manager came out, locked the main doors and strolled over to the sky-blue Mondeo, whistling. I wondered if he’d seen us, whether the lesser-spotted menopausal woman is more visible in a pair. Apparently not.
‘His lordship will be wondering where I am,’ Anne-Marie said.
I wondered if Mark had even noticed I wasn’t back yet.
She looked over at the car park and pointed her key, and to my surprise, the yellow sports car cheeped and flashed, at which point she returned her eyes to mine and gave me an enormous grin, really cheeky, like a kid’s.
‘Bloody hell,’ I said. ‘I’d never have put you in that! I thought you were on the bus.’
‘That’s my husband’s menopause you’re looking at. Daffodil-yellow Audi TT. Takes me ten minutes to get out of the bucket seat. Do you want a lift?’
‘No, love. I mean, I’d love one, just to get a ride in one of them things, but that’s my rustbucket over the other side. Ta, though. See you next week for some more torture.’
‘Torture, aye. You’re not wrong. Night, then.’
‘Night. Nice to meet you.’
‘You too,’ she called over her shoulder, one arm up in the air by way of a last wave.
I watched her walk over to her car. For some reason, there was a tight sensation under my skin. Mind how you go, I almost called after her but didn’t. I felt weird, really weird. I walked over to my own car and got in. I drove off before she’d even started the engine. I know now why she didn’t, obviously.
Blue Eyes scrutinises me. ‘And that’s all you remember?’
‘Honestly,’ I say, ‘I’m telling the truth. I don’t remember getting into the car. Hers, I mean. I think I’d remember if I’d got into another woman’s car, especially a sporty one like that, but at the same time, I know I could have forgotten. I know I could have said yes to that lift, got into that car and…’ I shudder. ‘I forget things all the time, walk into a room with no idea what I’ve come in for. I know that the mind is capable of anything so if there’s my DNA in her car, I don’t know how it got there but I’ll accept that it did. It’s as if someone else did it, do you know what I mean? Like it’s me, but another me, someone I can see as separate to myself. The woman that used to be Rachel Ryder. Or that other woman, the one who doesn’t know who she is anymore.’
I think therefore I am. I’m pink therefore I’m Spam. I think I must have got into her car. Therefore I did get in it. I did. I got in that car and I… Oh God. God help me.
36
Rachel
Blue Eyes hands me the umpteenth tissue. That’s her job, I suppose, to wring these tearful confessions from criminals. Criminals like me. I will have a profile, I imagine, like any serial killer. Serial killer. How ridiculous it sounds, even in my head. It isn’t something from life, from any life I can identify with, least of all my own. My life is almost defined by how normal it is. And that was all I wanted: to be normal, to be boring, two kids, a house, enough money to afford what I need, some of what I want, friends. Love. If you’ve got love, you’re rich, that’s what I think.
‘So you believe you left Anne-Marie at the door of the leisure centre?’ Amanda asks me again, and once I’ve got myself under control, I tell her yes, and that I can’t remember anything about the drive home, but that when I did get back, the kitchen smelled of stale cigarettes yet again. I could hear the television blaring from the lounge, but as usual no one had shouted hello at the sound of the front door.
‘And how did you feel?’
‘I felt good,’ I say. ‘I felt pretty happy apart from the smell.’
It’s the truth. That’s all that bothered me. I popped my rucksack on the stairs. I went into the kitchen. I wasn’t crying, I wasn’t shaking, I wasn’t upset in any way. At the sink, I drank a tall glass of cold water and it felt good, better than any bar of chocolate, bett
er than wine, as if the taste of it was clearer somehow, like I was alive, or more alive, or something. But then yes, the smell of stale smoke got to me. I looked over the worktops for signs of an ashtray. Nothing. I looked in the kitchen bin. I did more than look. I dug around in the rubbish. And sure enough, hidden inside a yoghurt pot under a crisp packet that had been stuffed inside, were two fag butts. The bugger. That’d be him and bloody weeping willow Ingrid, I thought. And then I wondered if it was her when Mark’s clothes smelled too, if what I’d thought was just the pub was in fact him going to meet her rather than Roy. The idea didn’t bother me as much as it should have done. I was numb to it.
And don’t ask me why I did this next thing – maybe because I was thinking I would confront him later – but I took the dog ends out, put them in one of the bread bags I keep back to save on using new plastic bags, went through the side door to the garage and stuffed it in the drawer where I’d found Mark’s knife months earlier. I couldn’t face asking him about them now. I was tired. I’d had my first good day in a long time.
‘So that was it?’ Amanda asks. ‘Your only concern was the cigarette ends?’
I think back, really think. ‘No. There was something else. I rummaged to the back of the drawer. There were some charger cables, an adaptor plug, a packet of paper napkins, but the knife wasn’t in there – and now I think about that, I’m thinking, why would I check? What was in my subconscious that would make me do that? I tried to think when I’d last seen it. I thought I remembered putting it back in its sleeve and into the cutlery drawer… ages ago. I hadn’t taken it with me on my walkabouts. I hadn’t dared. I was sure I’d seen it in there the other day. Almost sure. I went back into the kitchen and straight to the drawer.’
‘And did you find it?’
‘No. There was only the potato peeler, serving spoons, salad tongs. A chopping knife, a meat knife, a cheese knife with the curly end, you know? The hunting knife wasn’t there.’
‘And how did you feel?’
‘Nothing. Other than a bit bamboozled. I should have worried. I mean, I should have panicked. But at that point, don’t forget, I had no idea what had happened to poor Anne-Marie, I only knew that meeting her had, for a few precious minutes, made me almost happy.’
On the Friday morning, I didn’t check the iPad. I didn’t know why at the time, but now I think that maybe a tiny chink of light had entered my world and that tiny chink had been enough to let me almost forget my routine. I even shared a joke with Katie, something about Dave and what an arse he is, how I’d put rat poison in his tea one day, and it seems to me, remembering, that Mark even smiled at me that morning, and I at him.
By the time I set off to see Dad, I felt almost cheerful. The September sun was on my face and I’m sure I caught the first fresh smells of autumn. It had been a couple of weeks since I’d last stolen a packet of sweets or a can of pop or anything at all. I walked. I breathed the air, took it into my lungs. I didn’t know if I could see a future, but maybe I could sense one, just out of reach. Whatever, for that brief period, I felt more all right than I had in a long while.
At the home, Dad was agitated, as per. The weather was warm that day and he couldn’t be doing with the heat.
‘Linda, love,’ he wheezed at me no sooner than my foot was in the door of his room. ‘Where the bloody hell have you been?’ Linda was my mother. Who’s dead, as I think I said. And I know I was used to him saying it, but whatever fleeting good mood I’d felt on the way here evaporated.
‘It’s not…’ I began, but then I thought, what’s the point? I wasn’t his daughter, not anymore. I hadn’t been his daughter for a year or two. I was his wife, my mother. Linda. I was standing in front of him like an old photograph of the woman he used to love, the woman he loved so much that as a child I used to wonder sometimes whether he even saw me. For crying out loud, I thought. Even now, when he does see me, it isn’t even me. He was like Katie, full of false logic. Lunacy of age, lunacy of youth – in both cases you had to humour their nonsense while looking after them as best you could. I was middle-aged, in the middle of ages, stuck between the demands of both as many women were – like Lisa was, between her girls and her own very difficult mother. So many women were on this train, trying their best to keep steaming forward, too many passengers, engines failing.
Dad fidgeted in his chair. ‘They’re stealing all my stuff, Linda, and you’re off gallivanting.’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t gone long, though, was I, and I’m here now.’ I opened the little cupboard by his bed, had a quick shufti inside and shut it again, for show. ‘It’s all right, whoever took your stuff has put it back. Nothing to worry about.’
That seemed to appease him. I sat down beside him on the visiting chair next to the commode. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Rubbish,’ he said. ‘Absolutely rubbish.’
‘Oh dear, I’m sorry to hear that.’ And I was. Desperately. But what could I do besides sit with him and listen? ‘What’s the matter?’
And off he went. A litany of misdemeanours, funny looks and petty theft. The whole place run by witches and harridans, whatever a harridan is, the TV lounge a gangsters’ hall of fame, if you were to believe half of it, which I didn’t. I let him get it out of his system, made soothing noises as best I could. The care assistant brought him a cup of pond water by the looks of it and some flaccid Rich Tea biscuits, which seemed to calm him down a bit. Don’t mind me spitting feathers in the corner, I thought but didn’t say.
‘All right, love?’ she said to Dad, and, ‘Let it cool, love, yeah?’ and, ‘I’ll pop your biccies here for you, love, all right?’
I didn’t like the way she spoke to him, as if he was stupid as well as deaf when he’s neither. I could see she was near the end of her shift, probably thinking she still had to get to the supermarket before she went home, that she’d do spaghetti bolognese for tea or something like that and how she couldn’t wait to change into her jogging bottoms and take her bra off. I felt her tiredness in my bones as if it were mine and, mostly, I forgave her.
‘Soft in the head, her,’ Dad said when she’d gone.
I chuckled to myself. Must save that one for Lisa, I thought. It would give her a right laugh.
And then I thought about suffocating him with a pillow and how I might go about it, whether my empathy was so strong that it was telling me that this was what he wanted now, and that if I did it, I’d feel that blessed relief too. I could get away with it. Not like the nurse had taken any notice of me, was it? Had she even registered my presence in the room? If I smothered him, would she remember I’d been here? Was my name even now fading from the visitors’ book as if written in invisible ink?
On the way home, just approaching our road, I summoned up the courage and called Lisa. She didn’t answer, but a minute later she called back.
‘Sorry.’ She sounded breathless. ‘I was just in the supermarket getting supplies. Our Jodi goes back tomorrow.’
‘Of course.’ My throat closed. I ducked into a space between two houses and pressed my forehead to the brick wall.
‘We’re getting pizza and I’ve got a couple of bottles in.’ She faltered. ‘Nothing too grand, like.’
‘Has it got to September already?’ I knew very well it had. I had counted every hour, every day, every week, every month; the year nearly upon me.
She hesitated. ‘Why, when did you think it was? I thought you’d…’
‘No, I… I mean I’ve just lost track of time, that’s all, you know what it’s like.’ I attempted a laugh but it choked on the way up. ‘That’s lovely anyway,’ I managed, my voice wobbling all over. ‘Pizza with your girls. They’ll love that.’ The tears were rolling by then but I put my hand over the phone so she wouldn’t hear me.
Lisa was silent for a minute. ‘Are you OK, Rach?’ Her voice was quiet down the line. ‘Where are you?’
‘I’m just walking back from seeing Dad.’
‘I thought you were staying ther
e for the evening?’
‘Well, I changed my mind.’
Another painful silence while she dug around for something to say. ‘Are you sure you’re OK? I’ve got loads of pizza. The girls’d love to see you – it’s been ages. Why don’t you come?’
‘Don’t be daft,’ I managed. ‘You enjoy your girls while they’re here. I’m fine, honestly.’
‘You sure? Please come. I’ve hardly seen you all summer, and Mark said…’ She tailed off.
‘Mark said what? When did you speak to Mark?’
‘No, I… I mean, I saw him… in Church Street. Only in passing, like. He said you’re barely at home anymore. Just want you to be careful that’s all.’
She’d hesitated over where she’d seen Mark. Had he told her I’d spoken to that Jo and that I wouldn’t call the police number a couple of months back? It sounded like she’d seen him recently. I wondered if I’d get home to find an ambulance waiting, a swift needle, kind men with soft voices asking me to come with them. Mark had promised he’d never do that again.
‘Don’t you worry about me,’ I said, deliberately misinterpreting her concern. ‘I’m the invisible woman, remember?’
She didn’t laugh.
‘Rach,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Mark’s worried about you. I’m worried about you. Your Katie’s worried about you. Seriously, if not tonight, how about tomorrow night? Come on, why don’t—’
‘I’m working tomorrow. Double shift, I’ll be knackered. Listen, I’ll leave you to it, love. Got to go. We’ll catch up good and proper next week, all right?’
‘All right, love.’ She sounded defeated. I knew I was putting up a wall but I couldn’t help it. ‘I’ll be here twiddling my thumbs, day or night, here or not here as you need. You’d be doing me a favour, to be honest.’
‘Must dash. Give my love to the girls.’ I couldn’t stand it a second longer. I rang off without waiting for her to say goodbye and tried unsuccessfully to suppress the long wail that left me. I dug in my bag, found the tissues I’d started carrying in case of nosebleeds. I took one out, unfolded it and pressed it against my face. On the road, traffic hummed, close, closer, fading, gone. Footsteps sounded on the pavement. I hunched myself over, small as I could. The steps amplified, snatches of conversation got louder along with them… but I was thinking if I got the red one then it’d go with them sandals… quieter… you know them ones I got in the sale with the gold buckles… The footsteps ebbed. A moment, two, the yawn-like sigh of another passing car.
