Exquisite

by Sarah Stovell

  The girls moaned about my absence for a bit, then did as I’d suggested.

  I took off my apron, slung my coat over my shoulders and went back to the hall to the policemen.

  Their car was parked on the driveway beside the house. One of them opened the door for me and I climbed inside.

  As the officers put on their seat belts, I looked up at Gus’s bedroom window and saw him there, watching. He shook his head. I’d lost his sympathy long ago.

  I was in a corner now, I knew that. There was nothing I could do to stop this, or erase whatever evidence they had. All I could be was obedient, charming and lovely. I would get myself off with fame, beauty and kindness. I’d make it impossible for me to be guilty.

  At the station, they told me I was entitled to a solicitor. I said no. Innocent people could defend themselves, I thought.

  They led me to an interview room. I wondered if this was where Alice had come, that day she’d been cautioned for stalking. Had she sat in this chair, talked about me and sobbed?

  I looked at each officer in turn, confident but deferential. That was the way to be. Confident in my innocence, but always polite and cooperative.

  ‘Can you tell us where you were at 10:30 am on Thursday, 10th December?’

  I thought about it for a while, then took a deep breath and retold the story I’d told Alice at the hospital.

  The officer nodded. He said, ‘Alice has informed us that her assailant was you.’

  I gasped. ‘I can’t believe it. I can’t believe she would do that.’

  He went on. ‘We have seen the evidence she sent you – the traced phone calls that you claimed she had made to your home when she was “stalking” as you called it. But the calls go back to your own phone number. Why is that?’

  ‘I have explained this to Alice before. I don’t know how this happened. All I can think is that my children must have got hold of my mobile phone that night and phoned us.’

  ‘Five times until 2 am?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘Let me put something to you, Mrs Luxton. And listen carefully. You were feeling stalked by Alice Dark. You claimed that she pursued you and sent you messages, and then moved to Grasmere to be near you, but you had done nothing to encourage this at all. You then claimed that she made five silent phone calls to your home phone number and threats against your husband. All of this, based on the evidence we saw, looked like the truth. So we hauled Alice into the station and we cautioned her. Alice then went away and thought about this, because she believed she was innocent and wanted a way of proving it. So being a savvy young lady, she paid to have old emails and texts retrieved from her iPad and for a private detective to trace the phone calls. The phone calls went back to your number, and the messages from you are asking her to live in Grasmere so the two of you can be together…’

  ‘I…’

  ‘And then Alice, feeling angry with you and wanting revenge, sent all these things to your husband. Your husband raised the issue of your previously having had a stalker who killed himself. He also said he was going to leave you. So the two of you are selling your house and you’ve told your daughters. You, Mrs Luxton, have been feeling very upset about all this, about having your cover blown. And so you went round to Alice’s house and the sight of her getting ready to leave Grasmere – the sight of her, moving on with her life, unharmed by you, despite everything – made you so furious you couldn’t help yourself. You laid into her.’

  ‘No…’

  ‘And then you were frightened. You were frightened you might have killed her and knew what that would mean, so you wanted to keep one step ahead. You phoned an ambulance and concocted a story about how you had witnessed a young man go to Alice’s flat and come away with blood on his hands, and you decided the best thing to do was present yourself as someone who cared about Alice, someone who really cared deeply about her, despite everything. So you took a deep breath and you went with her to the hospital and sat by her bedside until the police came and her memory came back. And then you lost your nerve and you scarpered. Is that right?’

  ‘I’m sorry. You’ve made a mistake.’

  The other officer reached under the table and brought out a Tesco carrier bag, which he put down in front of me. I thought for a minute they were my boots, the ones I’d dumped in the hospital car park. But they weren’t. They were Alice’s trainers.

  ‘What can you tell me about these?’

  ‘I have never seen them before.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Then what were they doing in your wardrobe, Mrs Luxton?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘We found them in your wardrobe when we searched your home yesterday. You were out, but your husband was in and he gave us access. We found these trainers – the very trainers that Alice said yesterday had disappeared – in your wardrobe.’

  ‘I don’t know how they got there.’

  ‘You don’t think that, perhaps, after you’d kicked Alice in the head and fractured her skull, you thought you’d better change your shoes before the police got there, and so you took the first pair you could find?’

  ‘No.’ I was losing this now. I knew it. I began to cry. ‘I don’t know why Alice would do this,’ I said. ‘The girl is evil, she is truly evil. I have nothing I can defend myself with because she has covered all her tracks and all I can do is speak the truth and hope you will believe me.’

  The officer looked unimpressed. ‘You can save that for court, Mrs Luxton.’

  25

  Alice

  I was waiting for my taxi to the station. I still looked a wreck, but better than I’d done before. My tooth had been fixed and the swelling around my eyes and lips had gone, but the bruising was there, large and purple. I looked like a woman who’d been in a fight, and it was oddly humiliating, to go out in public like this.

  But still. I was here. I was alive. Actually, I thought, I was more than alive. I was great.

  That morning in hospital, I’d unpacked my bag and taken out the collection of Bo’s novels. I’d started tearing them up, but it was a long process and, once the destructive, therapeutic element had worn off, it was also incredibly boring, so I just threw them in the recycling instead. They’d made a loud thud as they hit the bottom of the bin. A satisfying sound. Like Bo’s head against a wall.

  Yesterday, they’d arrested and charged her, and released her on bail. Now, I just had to wait for the trial.

  ‘Oh, she’ll get herself a good defence lawyer,’ the detective said, ‘you can be sure of that, but the evidence is irrefutable. She’ll be going down for this.’

  I’d nodded. It didn’t give me the feeling of satisfaction I’d been expecting.

  I was calm now, barely a shred of anger left in me. Wrung out, perhaps. No energy left to feel anything at all. And Bo … Well, Bo was mad. There was nothing, really, to feel good about.

  Except that I was getting away from her. I was walking away now, open-eyed and in charge. I’d seen Bo Luxton for what she was – cruel, manipulative and deeply sad – and I would never go back there again.

  ‘Don’t pity her,’ Anna warned. ‘She doesn’t need pity.’ And I knew now she was right. It didn’t matter what made Bo like this, the fact was she was like it, and she was bad, and I needed to get away.

  The taxi pulled up in front of me. I picked up my bag and stepped inside

  Her Majesty’s Prison for Women

  Yorkshire

  I am being released soon, back into the world of big skies and mountains and seas. I have been sick for outside, for the world beyond these gates, for fresh air and the smell of autumn fires.

  And for my girls.

  My girls don’t visit me here. They think I’m ill, and that I’ve gone away to be made well, which isn’t far from the truth. I write to them every week. Sometimes, they write back, and their letters arrive in plain white envelopes, addressed in Gus’s black scrawl. They tell me about school, their friends, ne
w sweets they’ve tried. Often, they say they miss me, but overall they’re upbeat. They tell me nothing bad, though I’m sure bad things have happened in the time I’ve been gone.

  They’re still living in Grasmere with Gus. He bought a cottage in the village centre, probably to make the school run easier. I’ve given it some thought and know I can’t go back there. There, I am known. Gus said he’d keep it secret, for the girls’ sake, but it was in the local paper and I am bound to be a point of intrigue.

  Instead, I’ve decided to go to London. I can be anonymous there. Perhaps I’ll change my name, write more books, be new and unknown and brilliant. Just like Alice.

  Alice. I looked her up on the internet last week, just to see what she was up to. She’s having a book published: Exquisite. I’ve ordered it from Amazon. It’s about me. I suppose that was inevitable, but I have my own story too.

  I will track her down. We need to put this right.

  Part Five

  JUSTICE

  1

  Alice

  They charged her with causing ABH and said the trial would be at a Crown Court, where sentences were more severe than if she’d only appeared before magistrates. The backlog at the Crown Court was a year long. She wouldn’t be tried before next Christmas. They gave her bail, on condition that she didn’t come near me.

  I had no choice but to try and put it out of my mind and move forwards with my life. I went to stay with Jake and started my MA. There were sixteen people in my group, plus three tutors and an occasional visiting editor. All of them thought I was onto something with my book. I had to submit a chapter every week and the whole class would read it in advance and then discuss it at the workshop, pulling it apart, criticising it, offering their suggestions for improvement. There was a buzz about it, a feeling of excitement; and always that unanswered question lingering in the air: ‘Is this a true story? Did it happen to you?’

  I didn’t tell anyone about Bo. I didn’t speak about her at all, but always she was there, a wound in my heart and mind. I had no idea how long it would take to heal. I suspected it could be a lifetime, that Bo wasn’t something that could just be put in the past and forgotten, but that she’d become part of the furnishings of my mind, forever affecting the way I moved in the world.

  Perhaps, in time, it would be good.

  On the last day of term, one of the younger men from the course asked me to join him for lunch. His name was Max; he was writing a children’s book. In a different time, a different life, I would have found him attractive, but not now. I didn’t think I’d ever find anyone attractive again. Only Jake was safe at the moment. Dear, lovely Jake, who’d offered me a space on his floor and then let me stay when his housemate moved out. Dear Jake, the man who would never go anywhere in life but who had a good, rich and generous heart. For me now, that was all that could ever matter.

  Max took me to the café in the basement of the library. It was always quiet – only staff and research students ever went there, and filled it with an atmosphere of scholarly calm that made me feel like an imposter. I wasn’t an academic or even very clever. I was just writing a thriller.

  Max sat opposite me. He said, ‘I really admire your book.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘It’s a brave subject.’

  I shrugged.

  He went on: ‘There’s a rawness to it that makes me think this happened to you.’

  I kept my tone casual. ‘I think everyone’s work is influenced by things that happened to them.’

  He nodded. Then he said, ‘Would you like to come for dinner with me one evening? I’d love to talk more to you.’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, and smiled. ‘I’m off the market.’

  He eyed me quizzically, ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Not forever, surely?’

  I wiped my lips with my napkin. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Forever.’

  No one was going to come near me. I was barricading my heart against mutiny. Never again would anyone break me with curse, or fist, or threat of love.

  For a year, I wrote the book and rewrote the book until I could write it no more. I sent it out to literary agents. There was rejection – they told us on the MA to expect it – but there was also interest and I was taken on by someone who wanted to sell it to publishers.

  She sold it.

  2

  Bo

  Christmas. The trial was approaching and everything lay in ruins: my marriage, my home, my children, my career. After it happened, word had been leaked to the press, and then of course it flew round the book trade: Bo Luxton had been arrested and charged with causing ABH. She’d framed an innocent young woman. Also, she’d cheated on her husband with a lesbian.

  It was all out there, the whole sordid story of my private life, and there was nothing I could do to fix it.

  Vanessa’s final email was brisk and cold. ‘Dear Bo, It gives me no pleasure to say that, in the light of recent events, the publisher has decided to postpone your forthcoming novel, Stalked, until further notice. I also think it would be wise for you to find someone else to represent you in future. Wishing you all the best, Vanessa.’

  Everyone was distancing themselves from me. Everyone. Not a single London publisher was going to print my most magnificent and powerful novel yet. They were running from me, the woman facing trial for violence.

  I’d never known how important a clear name was. And my name was sullied now, forever, and wouldn’t die with me. It would go down in the literary history books, the biographies. I could see it already: ‘For years, Bo Luxton had a carefully constructed image in which she presented herself to the world as someone who cherished her private life above all else. She kept herself apart from the more glamorous side of the publishing world and devoted her time to teaching and her family. She gave the impression that she was a great mentor, one who sought out emerging talent and brought it into the light. However, behind this angelic mask lurked an altogether darker being, one who was capable of great acts of mental cruelty and even violence.’

  I closed my eyes at the thought of it, of people – the world, the future – thinking badly of me. It made my stomach sway and swell until I thought I might be sick. I could not be remembered like this. I just couldn’t.

  For the first time, I felt completely helpless.

  The girls didn’t live with me now. Two days after the arrest, Gus sat opposite me in the kitchen, looked straight at me and said, ‘I am going to apply for full custody.’

  I said, ‘You can’t.’

  ‘I can. I always thought you were a great mother, Bo. It was the one thing I felt sure of, despite everything else. I’ve always been suspicious of you and hated how secretive you are, but I had faith that you could look after the girls, that you were the mother I wanted my children to have. But now…’ He let his voice trail off and held out his hands as if admitting defeat or helplessness ‘…I don’t know who you are. You beat a woman and fractured her skull. I can’t let you look after my children. Not now, not after this.’

  ‘What are you trying to do to me, Gus?’

  ‘I’m not trying to do anything to you. I am thinking only of what’s best for the children and how to keep them safe.’

  ‘You know I would never hurt them.’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t know that. How can I know that?’

  ‘I’m their mother. You can’t take them away from me.’

  ‘It’s for the judge to decide.’

  I hated the way he did this. He was always so calm when it came to important discussions. As soon as anything became heated, he walked away and ended it.

  I said, ‘I won’t let you take them away from me, Gus. I’m getting custody.’

  ‘Unless a miracle happens for you, you’re on the brink of going to prison, Bo. I think it’s unlikely the judge will rule in your favour on this one.’

  Oh, the smugness. The bloody arrogance and smugness of him. But he was right. I didn’t want to
go to court over it, to be humiliated in public and lose my girls.

  I let him take them.

  I hired a top barrister. He said I had two options: I could plead not guilty and try to get off; or I could plead guilty and present a defence, or at least some mitigating circumstances. I decided to go for guilty. The evidence against me was overwhelming and it was more honourable to admit the guilt. My reputation could be restored if I presented myself as vulnerable, desperate, broken…

  The mitigating circumstances were love and chaos. I’d made a dreadful mistake that had almost cost me my family. I was heartbroken and I was also still deeply in love with Alice but had to pretend I wasn’t to save us – me, my husband and my girls. But then Gus told me he was going to leave, so my family was going to fall apart anyway, and I wanted to try again with Alice, the love I’d had to sacrifice before. She rejected me, and all the stress and heartache of the previous months came out. For a minute I lost control. Then I realised what I’d done and called an ambulance.

  I wasn’t bad. Just deeply distressed. I was hardly responsible.

  The weekend before the trial, the girls came to stay with me. On Saturday, we played Uno and did some baking, then I made a flask of hot chocolate and we all wrapped ourselves up in hats and gloves and carried the sledge over the fells to Helvellyn, where fresh snow had fallen in the night.

  We stayed there for hours, striding up the lower slopes of the fell and then sliding back down it, the white faces of the mountains holding us inside the scene.

  I watched them, and memorised it.