It’s 9.25 when I give up. My teeth are chattering and it’s so cold that even blinking has started to hurt. As I hurry back to Andy’s car, I hear every snap from the woods; every whisper from the undergrowth. I tell myself it’s the wind, but even my thoughts are frozen solid.
I fumble with the fob for the car, stumbling not only to hold it but also to press the button to unlock the doors. I can hardly get a grip on the handle and pulling on the door sends scorpion stings shooting through my fingers. I practically throw myself into the driver’s seat, before hooking the door closed and then putting the fans onto full heat and power. My skin is so numb that I can’t be sure whether the clash of temperatures is a good or bad thing. I hold my fingers in front of the vents, willing them to come back to life.
You know where.
I’m still sure this is where I was supposed to be – and yet I was here alone. Or I felt alone. The woods provide enough places for someone to hide. It’s not as if this is the only place to park, either. The trails lead out to other roads, some that are on maps, some that aren’t.
What I can’t figure out is why someone wanted me here.
The answer comes as my phone starts to ring. It’s Jane – and I can tell from the quiver as she says my name that something is wrong.
‘What is it?’ I say.
‘It’s David,’ she replies. ‘He’s here.’
Forty-Two
Nobody answers when I press Jane’s doorbell. It took me until I was halfway here to remember that Ben’s off at his conference. I wonder why she called me and not him – although it’s largely irrelevant if he’s now hours away.
I press the bell again, before knocking on the window next to the door. The curtains are open, giving me a clear view of the living room. With the angle, I can see through the door to the hall and the steps on which David and I sat when we first met. It’s amazing how much can happen in a short period of time. Three years to change our fortunes for good.
How can he be alive?
How?
I call Jane’s phone. There’s a brief pause and then I hear a tinny-sounding ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ from inside. We were always such big Oasis fans, even though their best stuff was out while we were still in primary school. We were far too middle-class to really understand what Liam was singing about – but that didn’t stop us belting out ‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’ like the rebels we definitely weren’t.
I try the bell again and it’s only then do I notice the door is slightly open. There is barely a gap between the door and the frame – and a gentle push from the inside would close it. I already have a foot on the doorstep when I stop and realise it’s as if it was left open for me. I feel like the person in a horror movie who knows something is wrong and yet charges in anyway.
‘Hello…?’
My voice echoes into the house and rattles around before curving back without response.
‘Jane…?’
Nothing.
I step forward, nudging the door open with my elbow.
‘Ben…?’
I’ve only managed a few steps into the hall when I hear a scuffling from behind. I start to turn but it’s already too late. Something slams into my neck, like a snake’s fangs. My head starts to spin and it’s as if my body is no longer my own. I think I hear a crackling and my last thought is that something’s burning. After that, there is only darkness.
* * *
The world is swimming as my eyelids flutter open. I can smell something burning as I roll onto to my side and explode in a series of hacking coughs. It takes me a few seconds to realise that I’m on the floor of Jane’s living room. The carpet is short and bristles into my cheek as I roll onto my back. I see her sofa, as well as the candles, the abstract prints and books she hasn’t read.
I try to gain some sort of momentum to push myself up. My arms ache and my head is whirling, while my neck burns.
It’s only as I peer across the room a second time that I notice Jane. She’s laid on her side, one arm splayed, the other cocked under her head. Her eyes are closed and she isn’t moving.
‘Jane?’
She remains still and unresponsive.
‘Jane?’
I pull myself up using the sofa and the fog at the edge of my thoughts starts to clear. I stumble across to Jane and crouch next to her, fearing the worst. David wanted me somewhere else because he always planned to be here.
She moans as I gently rock her shoulder and then her eyelids start to flutter. I squeeze her hand as she rolls onto her back and then blinks her eyes open to take me in. She rubs her head with her free hand and squints.
‘What happened?’ she asks with a croak.
‘I don’t know. I—’
I stop because Jane’s eyes have widened. When I check behind me, there’s nobody there.
‘What?’ I add.
‘Your hair…’ she says.
I push myself up and drift across to the mirror in the corner, now able to see why Jane was so shocked. My hair has been butchered off.
Forty-Three
THE WHY
Two years, one month ago
Andy places the juices on the table between Jane and me. He smiles kindly and says: ‘On the house.’
‘You don’t have to,’ I reply, even though I feel Jane tense momentarily at my side. Never look a gift horse in the mouth and all that. It’s been three weeks since what happened with David. His body hasn’t been found and everyone still believes he’s simply disappeared. It’s at the stage where all the people I know – and many I don’t – are giving me those closed-lip smiles with the are-you-OK? head-tilts. I play along, allowing myself to stare longingly out of windows. I also do a lot more sighing than I ever did before. I should probably miss him for real… except that I don’t. Other people were right about him and I was wrong. I don’t miss his lies and I don’t miss second-guessing everything he ever said.
‘It’s my pleasure,’ Andy says. He hovers at our side for a moment before turning and heading back to the counter. Jane waits until he’s out of earshot before speaking again.
‘Have you heard from the police?’ she asks.
‘Not really. They said they’ll be in contact if anything happens. I think they’re keeping an eye on David’s bank accounts, that sort of thing.’
I allow myself another sigh, although there is some truth to this exhalation. We’re a couple of weeks away from Christmas and Andy’s got some sort of festive playlist on the go. On its own, it wouldn’t be so bad – but these songs are in every advert break; in every store and on all radio stations. After a while, it makes a person want to rip their own ears off.
Jane slurps at her sympathy juice and then glances towards Andy, before looking back to me: ‘What happens next?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve been trying to find out how long someone can stay missing before, well…’
I tail off because mentioning that he might be dead doesn’t seem like something someone in my situation would want to bring up.
‘I don’t know what to do with his things,’ I add. ‘They’re still in his drawers and the wardrobe. A windscreen company came out and fixed the glass in his car – but it’s still parked outside. Nobody seems to know what I should do with it all. He could be back tomorrow…’
I’m becoming used to following up sentences like this with a lingering stare at a blank patch of wall. This time I settle on the Christmas wreath that Andy has pinned to the wall next to the toilets. There is tinsel around each of the windows and a small fake tree near the door. My mind wanders to wondering whether he put it all up himself.
Jane reaches across and squeezes my shoulder for reassurance. This has gone on for far too long for me to ever tell her I don’t like it.
‘It’s good to see you out,’ she says. ‘But how are you actually doing?’
I’m not sure why but, from nowhere, the truth slips out: ‘I miscarried.’
The pressure of keeping everything else to myself has finally beco
me too much, as if my brain only has space for a certain amount of secrets. I’m keeping back so much that this one has to be spoken.
There is silence, though I can feel Jane staring at me. Seconds pass as she searches for the words: ‘You were pregnant…?’ she asks.
‘I wasn’t far gone. Maybe a few weeks.’
‘Is that why David, um…’
She tails off and it takes me a few seconds to realise she was going to say ‘disappeared’.
‘I don’t know why he left,’ I say.
‘Did you tell the police?’
I shake my head: ‘Only you and him.’
She has another sip of her drink and we watch as a group in Santa hats enter the shop. It’s a mix of men and women, probably on a lunchbreak from work. The woman at the front knows Andy by name and sets about ordering as the rest sit near the Christmas tree. I don’t know any of them, though one of the women catches my eye and seemingly recognises me. I wonder how long it’ll be before people forget who I am.
‘It’s the not knowing, isn’t it?’ Jane says. Her voice is a murmur now, hard to hear over the music and voices. ‘If David said he was leaving, at least you’d know. If he was, um…’ she presses in slightly closer and this time actually whispers ‘dead’ with such reverence that it’s as if saying the word might make it true. ‘I’m not saying he is,’ she adds. ‘But it would be something final, wouldn’t it?’
‘I know what you mean…’
‘Are you sure there wasn’t a trigger for it all?’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. An argument? Was he upset about the pregnancy? Or something else?’
I shake my head.
‘How’s your mum?’ Jane asks.
‘She blames me and says I must have done something to make him leave.’
I suppose there’s a degree of irony to the fact that, of everyone, my mother is the person who is right.
Jane shuffles back, unsure what to say. She has almost finished her drink, so I slide mine across the table towards her. ‘Not in the mood,’ I say.
We sit quietly for a moment as the volume increases from the group next to the door. I sense a couple of them sneaking sideways glances towards me, before my phone beeps to distract me. It’s an email and, as I skim through it, Jane glances in the other direction in the way people do when they’re too polite to ask what’s going on.
One thing I never could have expected is that David’s apparent disappearance has brought about what can only be called sympathy business. There is a fitness circuit of conferences and health expos that is an industry in itself. People become almost too famous for things like personal training and end up giving talks about the subject, instead of actually doing it. I’ve never understood how someone could get to that lucrative point – but this email is asking if I’d be interested in hosting a session at an upcoming expo for up to 500 people. It’s the third similar offer I’ve had this week. I’m also swamped with potential clients wanting personal training sessions.
What an irony that, even now, David is finding a way to support my career.
‘Word’s gone around,’ I say to Jane as I put my phone away.
‘What do you mean?’ she asks.
‘People keep offering me work. I’ve never been so in demand.’
‘Wow… at least something good is coming of this, I suppose. Not that it’s a good thing, I mean…’
We’re interrupted by Andy returning to the table to collect Jane’s empty glass.
‘Would you like anything else?’ he asks, talking to me.
‘I think I’m all right,’ I reply.
‘Just say if I can help.’
He lingers at the table for a couple of seconds too long and then heads back to the counter. I wonder if Jane is going to comment on it because she must have noticed it as well.
‘What about you?’ I ask, wanting to change the subject.
‘What about me?’ Jane replies.
‘All we do is talk about me…’
She snorts a little: ‘Ben’s not been himself for the past month or so – but he has busy periods at work, so I suppose it’s that.’ She pauses for a moment and then adds: ‘You should come over one evening soon. Or we’ll go out somewhere?’
‘We’ll figure something out,’ I reply, which everyone knows is code for, ‘not now’.
Jane finishes my drink and starts shuffling with her bag. ‘I have to get going,’ she says.
She asks if I need anything and then we do the usual goodbye hug before she heads off.
I continue sitting and it’s less than a minute until Andy appears at the table.
‘Are you sure you don’t want anything else?’ he asks.
‘I’ve got to head off,’ I reply.
He glances to the door and then focuses on me. Ever since I first started coming here, there’s been something of a buzz between us. Always unspoken, but undoubtedly there. Like two magnets at opposite ends of a table that are far enough away not to be pulled together.
‘I’m sorry to hear about what happened with your husband,’ Andy says.
‘Thanks.’
‘If there’s anything I can do, you know where I am.’
He waits for a few seconds, but I’m not sure what to say. Not yet, anyway. Not properly.
‘See you around,’ I say.
‘I hope so.’
Forty-Four
THE NOW
My hair is jagged and short, like a child who’s found a pair of scissors for the first time. There’s no style – it’s been slashed into sharp angles and, for the first time I can remember, is cropped enough that my ears are on show. I stare at myself in the mirror but it doesn’t look like me. I have to touch my face and my hair to know that it’s really me and that there isn’t some sort of trickery. There is still a sharp pain on the side of my neck close to my scar and, when I half turn, there are two small red dots imprinted into my skin.
‘In here,’ Jane calls.
I turn from the mirror to see that she’s no longer in the living room and then I follow her voice into the kitchen, where my chopped hair is on the floor.
‘I don’t know what happened,’ I say as I stare.
‘Is Norah OK?’ I ask.
There’s a dawning second where Jane’s eyes widen and then, without a word, she skips past me and bounds up the stairs. I should follow and yet I’m transfixed by the hair on the floor. It’s not even necessarily how ridiculous I now look, it’s that this feels like an invasion. I can’t quite process what’s happened.
There is the sound of more footsteps on the stairs and then Jane reappears. She peers down to the hair and then back to me.
‘Norah’s fine,’ she says. ‘She’s asleep. I rolled her over to make sure she’s unharmed – but she is untouched…’
She scans across me and there’s an obvious implication that I’m not. I still feel a little unsteady.
‘What happened?’ I ask, partly to myself, partly to her.
Jane shifts onto one of the dining chairs: ‘I heard noises outside,’ she says. ‘I went to the window and there was someone at the end of the drive. It looked so much like David that I didn’t know what to do at first. We stared at each other and then I went to the front door. By the time I’d opened it, he’d gone.’
‘What time?’
‘Nine o’clock or so? I texted you not long afterwards.’
‘I came straight here.’
It took around twenty minutes to drive along the country roads from Little Bush Woods. If David sent me there for nine, it gave him a good head start here.
‘I thought I heard noises at the back,’ Jane says. ‘I went to the door and the next thing I know, you’re here.’ She stops and then adds: ‘How did you get in?’
‘The front door wasn’t locked. Not enough that anyone could see from a distance – but enough that it could be pushed open. I came in and then… I don’t know. I heard a noise, but then I woke up in your living room. I think someon
e stabbed something into my neck. I sort of remember shaking, but I’m not sure.’
I touch the spot on my neck without thinking, then I fill a glass with water and drink it down.
‘Let’s see,’ Jane says, and I tilt my head to the side as she peers closely at it like a mother with a child’s scabbed knee. ‘What do you think it was?’ she asks.
‘I don’t know. Maybe a stun gun? Something like that?’
‘Have I got them?’ She steps away and tilts her head back so I can see her neck.
There are a pair of similar dimples in the same place on her neck – but they are already fading, with the redness disappearing back to the regular colour of her skin.
‘Sort of,’ I say.
‘Could it be David?’
Jane has finally asked the question specifically. He’s dead – and yet I saw him, too. Someone’s been texting me. I can hardly tell her that I rolled his body into a lake. She thinks he disappeared.
‘Why would he do this?’ I say, trying to think of something better.
‘I don’t know.’ She pauses for a second, glances away momentarily and then adds: ‘I suppose I was never quite sure why he left. Did you have an argument? Did something happen between you…?’
She reaches inside her top and scratches her shoulder. It’s something done so absent-mindedly that I almost miss it. The mole she was supposed to have removed is still there. Jane catches herself scratching, but, by then, it’s already too late.
‘One of the surgeons was off,’ she says. ‘Some sort of miscommunication. I’ve got to go back.’
I’m not sure precisely why, but it’s as if a switch has been flicked. It’s not even the fact she still has the mole, it’s more the way she phrased her questions about David. We’ve talked about reasons for him leaving before. I’ve always said I didn’t know – because that’s all I have. This time, she was pushing the points specifically.
Close to You (ARC) Page 23
