“She was twenty eight when she disappeared. She worked as a banker. She loved it. She lived in the city, on her own, since Elizabeth moved out. She had a wonderful life.” He hung his head, heavy under the pressure of recollection. “She was a happy, beautiful girl.” His voice broke as he said the final words, trembling and stuttering as he brought his hand up to his eyes. Elizabeth couldn’t tell if he was crying, or if it was just beads of sweat on his face. She took her hand out from underneath and rested it on top of his. She wanted to reassure him in the same way that he had her. She looked to Jack Fraser.
“She was happy, Jack. She had a great life. Until our mother died everything was normal. No problems, no issues. At least, nothing we knew of.”
“Boyfriend?”
“I don’t think so. She dated a bit, but nobody serious.” He looked for a little longer than she was comfortable with, waiting patiently for validation. “Honestly, we were close. She would have told me.”
“OK,” he said, knowing the next part wasn’t going to be easy. “When your Mum died. What happened?” She stared at him part blankly and part with anger. He could see that same cold shiny exterior that he had brushed against at the mortuary and in the service station.
“She was strangled. I told you already.” She could feel her father’s hand tighten under her own, his knuckles clenching into an open fist.
“I know, but you need to elaborate. Who found her?”
Elizabeth was stroking her father’s hand again, softly brushing away the pain of reminiscence. She was strong for him, just as she had been for the last four years.
“Rebecca found her. She had been dead for hours. They called an ambulance and tried to do CPR.” She could feel his hands tightening more, and she rubbed her hands up his forearms too, in a desperate bid to soothe it all away and hush his pain from the stark rehashing of death in front of them. “It was the neighbours who went round. That’s how the police got called. Rebecca. She didn’t take it well.”
“What do you mean? Surely none of you took it well?”
“She became hysterical. She wouldn’t open her door. She was terrified, like whoever had done it was still out there. She kept calling me and saying that we had to leave together. That we had to run away. I was married. It was .....” she paused, “.... it was difficult.”
“And then?”
Elizabeth took a deep, bolstering breath. “On the day she disappeared I went to her house. She looked like she hadn’t slept. Her face,” she said, as she closed her eyes, remembering the eyes that had met hers as Rebecca had opened the door, “it was like, like she hadn’t slept ever since. Her skin was grey. Big black bags under her eyes.” Elizabeth was more animated now, her own hands skirting about in front of her, her own face a model for what she had seen. “She kept screaming at me that we had to go, that we weren’t safe. She was grabbing me, scratching. I shouted at her.” Jack sat listening, waiting for her words to find a way out. “I said she was crazy, and that she should get herself together. I hit her. She was grappling at me, you know like a crazy person.” Her words were frail now under the shame of her actions. The act of remembrance was breaking her: her voice, her strength, her conviction. Her steely exterior was melting under the heat of the past, and the old, softer Elizabeth, the one that had lived through this tormented past was the one sat before him now. “I left her there. I left her. She was yelling at me to come back. ‘Betty! Betty!’ I ignored her. I couldn’t take it.”
“That was the last time you saw her?” Jack probed. Elizabeth nodded, and looked to her father with a face that begged forgiveness. Edward had been silent throughout, listening intently as she re-lived their final moments together, watching her every animated move. It had been so long, she couldn’t remember if he had even heard this story before or not. She wiped her fingers across her cheeks, brushing away her tears. Jack fumbled in his pocket and found a tissue, and handed it to her.
“Thank you.” She took it, wiping her eyes, and then blowing her nose. He gave her time for convalescence, a complementary moment to get herself together. She looked up at him and gave him the smallest of nods, but it was clarification enough that they should continue.
“OK, what about these things? The things she left? These were her clues. She left them for you. I need you to help me. She thinks it’s you that can piece this together. What do you recognise?” Jack pointed at the small plastic bags that sat before them. He had been looking at the bags for over a week now and here he was, asking a complete stranger who hadn’t seen her sister in years, to find the clues. He thought that maybe it was him who was crazy.
Elizabeth looked down, picking up each bag one by one, reviewing the contents. She had composed herself again. Her defences were back up, her strength restored. “The photographs are of us. It’s Christmas. We were kids. She is grabbing me because I was messing around and Daddy was trying to take a photograph. We are all here.” She put the bag down and picked up the bus ticket. “This is from the next morning after she went missing. The bus station is about ten miles away, at a guess, from where the car was found. The clothes, the shoes. They belonged to our mother. The key and cigarettes, well, I have no idea.” Jack nodded in recognition of her efforts. She was trying so hard, but maybe she wasn’t going to be the magical missing jigsaw piece that he had hoped she would be.
“Mr. Jackson. Anything to add?” Edward turned to Jack Fraser, looking at him, and in turn looking at the bags of evidence.
“Nothing. How are we supposed to make out anything from this jumble of items? None of it makes any sense.” He cleared his throat. “Detective, sadly my wife was murdered, and my daughter could not accept or cope with this. Just like Elizabeth told you, she was not acting in her right mind. Then she disappeared.” He picked up the letters from the newspaper, sealed tightly in plastic bags and marked with today’s date. “And now she has come back, leaving equally crazy letters like this. Her actions don’t make sense because she didn’t make any sense.”
“Daddy?” Elizabeth pleaded. “Don’t speak of her like that.”
“I’m sorry. But it is true Elizabeth. She has killed herself, and involved us in it in this mysterious way because she was unwell.” He looked at Jack. “My daughter needed help detective, which we would have readily given her. This is just simply,” he considered his words, “another tragedy. I want only now to bury her, and try to rebuild our lives. Again.” Jack Fraser stood up to meet Edward Jackson, the giant of a man who had stood up before him, slowly making his case and providing his explanation.
“Well, I think we are done here,” Jack said. “I’m sorry that I have had to ask you both to rake over all of this difficult history again today. I hope that you both understand.” Edward picked up his jacket and folded it over his arm as Jack Fraser ushered them out of the interview room. They remained silent as he led them back through the double doors that led into the hot and stuffy reception, filled with the stench of stale sweat and coffee and the same whirring sound of the inefficient fan. “I’ll be in touch if there is anything else we need.”
As Elizabeth and her father stepped out into the car park, she couldn’t help but feel that something, some issue, was left uncovered. She thought back to the letter, no longer in her physical possession, but indelibly imprinted on her mind. She thought of how certain Rebecca had been that she would understand her when she wrote those letters and left them for her to find. Had so much changed in the last four years that she couldn’t understand her own sister anymore? She didn’t want to let her down again. She wasn’t ready to walk out on her yet. Not this time.
“Elizabeth, let me drive you back home. Don’t take the train.”
“Daddy, I’ll be fine. I just don’t want to go back yet. I need to clear my head.”
“Do it back in Haven, with Graham. You’ll be better there.” It sounded plausible, but she didn’t want to take this feeling back there. She had gone to Haven to move past those times that she had let her sister down. She wasn’t
about to take that feeling back to that cottage. To her cottage, and her world.
“I’ll be fine.” She held his upper arms with her hands, and stretched up on tip toes to kiss his cheek. “I’ve missed you Daddy. I’m glad you came today.” She almost thought she saw a small tear leave the corner of his eye, trickle gently between the soft lines that framed his eyes before falling to the ground like a drip from a tap that can no longer hold on. He kissed her forehead, and got into his large slate-grey Jaguar XJ saloon. She didn’t know when he’d got it, but it was new.
As she watched him drive away, she didn’t know what her plan was. She just knew that she wasn’t ready to leave. It was Rebecca who had brought her here, and until she knew why, she couldn’t imagine leaving her behind again.
Nineteen
“Betty! Betty!” she cried out, desperately, her voice breaking in pain. The door slammed shut in front of her as Elizabeth fired herself through it. She was through with this shit. How dare she act like this, Elizabeth thought to herself as she charged down the front steps of the old Victorian house. She was my mother too.
Grabbing her mobile phone from her jacket pocket, she tapped through the names, desperately looking for ‘Graham’. She waited. ‘BRING, BRING. BRING, BRING’. He didn’t answer. Standing on the street corner, she could just make out Rebecca still staring through the window, her hands pressed up against it like a forlorn abandoned puppy. She couldn’t take it anymore. She needed her sister to support her, not drive her crazy with desperate ramblings about running away and how it wasn’t safe here anymore. She needed her sister, but she didn’t need this.
As she wandered through the streets, making her way slowly to the apartment that she shared with Graham, the light started to fail. She thought about Rebecca, alone in her house, terrified that the bogeyman was coming to get her. Elizabeth thought about all the times that Rebecca had sat on the edge of her bed at night as a child, holding her hands because she was scared. It was easy to convince yourself, in a house that was big enough for five families, that somewhere in a dark corner of one of the many unused rooms something lurked, waiting for its chance to strike. She was convinced that it would creep up the stairs one night, the only sound its nails or tail scratching along the floorboards as it dragged itself towards her room. Rebecca had held her hands and tucked her in. She had given Elizabeth her own torch that she promised had a special kind of light that if you shone anywhere near a monster, yes, any kind of monster, that it would vanish, leaving nothing but a small cloud of dust trailing past the light beam. She had even shown her the dust trails that were left behind as they thrust the light towards the corner of the old library, where nobody ever went except for Daddy, one night when they had crept downstairs so that Rebecca could prove that she wasn’t lying. Standing now in the cold before her own front door she considered going back a few times to Rebecca’s apartment, twice before even beginning to retrace her steps. But each time she told herself that it wasn’t helping, that she would snap out of it. She had no idea that this would be the last time that she would see her.
Graham was home as she walked through the door, her hair frizzy from the first drops of early spring rain that had started to fall minutes before she arrived home. She was late, but she hadn’t realised.
“Oh thank God!” he said, visibly breathing a sigh of relief. Everybody was on high alert. He ran over towards her, but her rebuttal was instant.
“Don’t Graham. I’m fine. I can’t take anymore tonight.” She threw her jacket onto the hallway table. “I need a drink.” They were all spooked. She figured it was impossible for somebody in your family to be strangled and for things to be back to normal only a few days later, but tonight, just for now, she needed at least the pretence of normality. A glass of wine and a sensible conversation would help. She wanted to talk about Rebecca.
He handed her a glass of chilled wine and a towel, and as the chill of the sharply acidic golden fluid hit the back of her throat it reached her head immediately. She remembered then that she hadn’t eaten all day.
“Graham, Rebecca’s a mess. I don’t know what to do to help. I walked out on her tonight, I couldn’t take it.” She rubbed the towel roughly through her hair, beads of fresh water dripping onto the solid oak floor. She took another glug of wine, as Graham sat down in front of her on the top of the low glass table. He took the empty glass from her, and placed it down next to him, the reverberations ringing their way up through the stem and finally out through the bowl of the glass. He took her hands into his own. It wasn’t like when her father held her hands, with his giant cushiony palms. Graham’s hands were softer, and gentler, but no less comforting. They were the hands that she loved.
“You can’t solve all of this on your own. It’s not possible.” He moved his face in closer to hers. Her face had looked colder to him the past few days. He could see the strain written all over it and whilst he looked calm on the outside, his mind was scrambled with thought, desperately trying to find a way to help her. “Your family have to try and pull together. It’s not fair to leave it all to you, just because you are holding it together.” She knew he was right, in theory at least. In practice, however, it just wasn’t working like that.
“Who, Graham? Who is going to help me? My sister has gone crazy and Daddy,” she paused, “well he has his own issues. He can’t be holding the rest of us together.”
“Me, Elizabeth. I’m the person who will help you. But you have to let me help you. I don’t know what it is exactly that you want or need.” He stroked the side of her face, rubbing his thumb back and forth on her cheek. “You just have to ask me, and I’m there.” For a moment the icy front that had covered her face for the last few days broke, and the softer, warmer smile that he loved so much slipped through.
“I don’t know what to ask you. What do I ask you if I don’t know what it is to ask for?” She ran her fingers through her damp hair, and took in the deepest most healing breath that she could muster. “Daddy is barely answering the ‘phone or talking to anyone, and Rebecca appears to have completely lost the plot.”
“What happened tonight?”
She took in another big breath, a breath of courage and strength. “She was scratching at me and grabbing me. Desperately. Like a mental person, Graham. Telling me that we have to go away, that we have to run away. That it’s not safe.” He shook his head in disbelief. This was not the Rebecca he knew, who was usually so together. Rebecca was the one that Elizabeth looked to for support and approval. It was Rebecca that had given Graham the first endorsement when they started dating. They had sat there in the restaurant eating peppered steak and fries, the only thing served on the menu in the French style restaurant, as she had fired question after question at him. Not in an accusatory or investigative sort of way; she had been perfectly friendly and genuinely interested to get to know him. When they left, and Rebecca waved her goodbyes from the taxi window, Elizabeth told him how Rebecca had described him as a ‘keeper’. ‘A keeper with a hot arse! Don’t let that one slip through the net’.
“What does she think is so unsafe?”
“She just keeps saying ‘it’s not safe, it’s not safe’. Because we don’t know how it happened. Well, why somebody would do that.” Elizabeth knew her words were wrong as soon as she had said them, yet she still couldn’t bring herself to say out loud that her mother had been strangled. That her mother had been murdered.
“I’ll go and see her tomorrow, OK? You need a break too. Let me take some of the load”. He moved himself onto the settee, and he snuggled in next to her. He draped his arm over her shoulders and pulled her in close to him. He was used to being the fixer. He always knew what to do. It was his role. It was difficult to suddenly have no solution to hand. “Let me run you a bath?” She nodded. It was the best thing that he had said since she’d arrived home.
As she slipped into the water, it cascaded over her body like a waterfall flowing over the rocks. Her body was tense and hard like marble and every
thing about her felt tight and uncomfortable. As she slipped under the water, letting the water first wash over the arms, then her breasts, and around her shoulders and neck, she could feel the day temporarily start to dissipate into the water. She let her head slip under the water, and as she took a breath in and the water poured into her ears, muffling the sounds from outside, she held her breath and glided into the water completely. All she could hear were the muffled sounds of the pipes clanging underneath the bath and the occasional drips into the water, which sounded much more powerful and louder than it would have outside of her small underwater world. For as long as she could hold her breath, she would stay here, sheltered from the outside and protected from the problems. The water was perfectly warm, enough to turn her skin pink, but without burning her. She rubbed her hands up over her submerged face, massaging her palms softly over her cheeks. Graham knocked the door, uncharacteristically for him and unnecessarily so. It was proof of how out of sorts she was. The woman in the bath looked and sounded like his wife, but was not like the woman that he had married six months before. He sat on the edge of the bath, the bubbles soaking the seat of his trousers. It was hot in the bathroom, the small windowless room in their otherwise expansive apartment.
“Better?” She nodded, and again the softer smile filled her face. “It’s raining outside, properly now. Belting it down. When you finish, we’ll sit by the windows and watch the city, glass of wine, the best company.” He opened his arms out as if to advertise himself to her. He was the best company. He was all the company she ever wanted. She just wasn’t sure whether she wanted any company at all at that moment. He stood up, as they both heard the telephone ring in the background. Elizabeth sat upright too, the water splashing out of the tub and sending a waterfall of bubbles and foam splashing to the ground. There was an immediate return of the feeling of tension, and what was once the innocent ring of the telephone had now become something much more sinister, the unknown reason and possible unthinkable reason for the call lurking quietly on the other end of the phone. The telephone had become the unwanted key to bad news. She couldn’t hear the words on the other end of the call, but by the time Graham was walking back towards the bathroom she was already out of the bath and wrapping herself in a towel. She could see his face, the same face that she had seen only days before, the face which was wracked with guilt for the crime that he was about to commit.
Escaping Life Page 13
