Twisted River

by Siobhan MacDonald

  “From your wallet. I borrowed it and had it photoshopped,” she answered blithely. She was calmly sipping wine.

  Stunned now, Mannix stared at the photograph, trying to gather his thoughts.

  “So you see, Grace knows all about Fergus and Izzy. I’ve told her all about them.”

  Mannix stared at her in horror.

  “Grace has always wanted a brother or sister. But a brother and a sister both?” Standing up, Joanne moved in bare feet across the wooden floor and looked up at him.

  “Don’t you see? Don’t you see how perfect this could be?”

  His heart was racing. He found it hard to think. She smelled of lilies and red wine. He was in uncharted territory now. Without a compass. He was going to need to draw on all his reserves to get through this.

  “Sit down,” he said gently to her. “Sit down, Joanne, and let me finish what I have to say.”

  “Okay, Mannix, I’m listening . . .” She slurred a little. He glanced around the kitchen. There in the recycling pile next to the rubbish bin he saw an empty wine bottle. He realized then that she’d been drinking before he’d called. And quite a bit.

  He was going to have to be creative. This excuse would have to fly. He was coming to the alarming realization that this woman wasn’t stable. Joanne Collins was a fantasist. Flexing his mental muscles, he made a few minor adjustments to his story, a few meaningful tweaks, before attempting to speak.

  She was looking at him now, her eyes dreamy and pupils large. She was drunk.

  “My kids mean everything to me,” Mannix began. “Just as Grace means everything to you.”

  She nodded and started caressing his cheek. He thought it best to let her.

  “Even if I left Kate, she’d never let me have the kids. You don’t know Kate, but she’s one determined woman. You know the way it is here in Ireland. No matter what, the women always get the kids. I couldn’t live without my kids.”

  “But we could be so good together, Mannix. Our own little family. You, me, Grace, Fergus, and Izzy. A perfect family.”

  He tried not to show his alarm, his fear. “I know that, Joanne,” he said. “And maybe if things had been different, who knows? Maybe if we’d met earlier, but it’s all ifs, buts, and maybes.”

  “Really, Mannix? Do we really have to settle for this? Skulking around my basement flat in Pery Square. Is that all that we are meant to have? There can be no more for us?”

  “Joanne, what I came here to say, and I know that this is hard, but for your sake and my sake and most of all for Grace’s sake, is that there can be no more ‘us.’”

  “You are kidding. You are kidding me, Mannix. But we can go back to the way we were before, right?”

  “No, Joanne. I don’t think so. I really don’t. I know it’s hard. It breaks my heart too. But it’s the right thing to do.”

  “How can it be the right thing to do, for God’s sake? How can breaking up be the right thing to do? I love you, Mannix. Don’t you get that? I bloody love you and, God help her, so does Grace.”

  Jesus. This was hell. He felt like a rabbit in the headlights. How had he become embroiled in something so perverse?

  “I have to go, Joanne.”

  Mannix removed her hand from his arm. Her red nails had been digging into him.

  “Okay, okay, okay. Please, please, let’s just go back to the way we were. I’m sorry I ruined it all. I’m sorry about the cake . . .”

  She was sobbing now. Her eyes looked wild, mascara running down her cheeks.

  “I’ve got to go, Joanne.”

  He stood up from the table.

  “Okay, go, then, you fucking bastard. You fucking heartless bastard. Fuck off home to your cold and frigid wife and your cold and frigid life! She doesn’t deserve you. I deserve you. Grace deserves you. Go on, then . . .” And wielding her wineglass, she flung the contents at him, dousing him in the scarlet liquid.

  Mannix wiped the splatters from his face.

  “I’m sorry, Joanne. I really am.”

  But she ran at him, pummeling his back. Mannix made it to the basement door, his shirt soaked in red wine. Walking up the steps she was still screaming after him.

  “It was only a fucking cake. It was only a stupid fucking birthday cake!”

  • • •

  “Kate, put the diary way. I’ve got something to tell you.”

  She looked at Mannix. “What is it? You don’t think it’s Oscar Harvey? You don’t think that he’s the one who killed his wife?”

  “Forget about Oscar Harvey and listen. You’re in danger, Kate. I’m sorry but there isn’t any other way to say it.”

  “What are you talking about?” Kate looked alarmed.

  “Look, Kate, this is going to be hard,” he said, “and you’re not going to like it, but it’s important that you listen. And after I’ve told you, you’re going to be really mad with me. In fact, you may very well hate me . . .” Mannix paused for breath. “You’re okay now,” he continued, “but we need to act before anyone else gets hurt. And just so you know . . .” He felt a sudden lump swell in his throat and a wave of remorse rolled over him as he saw her stricken face. He never imagined telling her like this but he was cornered. “I want to say how sorry I am. I never meant for any of this to happen. God help me, Kate, I’m so very, very sorry . . .” He swallowed hard.

  “Stop it, Mannix. You’re scaring me now. Tell me what it is. Just tell me.”

  He started slowly. “Well, remember last March, how I went on that training course to Boston?”

  She nodded silently.

  “And you and I—well, not to put too fine a point on it, but we weren’t getting on . . .”

  There was a flicker of recognition in her eyes, followed by a flicker of something else. He watched her tense.

  “Yes?”

  “Well, there was this woman on the plane. This woman and her daughter . . .”

  Kate’s eyes narrowed but she didn’t move.

  “It was a nightmare flight, plane all over the shop, cabin crew in their seats, drinks flying everywhere . . .” he exaggerated. “And this woman, well—she was pretty scared, so I did my best to chat and distract her. I suppose I felt sorry for her. I suppose I imagined if it was you and Izzy. This woman’s daughter was sick and she was treating her to a trip to Disney World.”

  Still, Kate didn’t move. Not a muscle.

  Mannix’s heart was pounding and he could no longer look at Kate. Instead, he stared at a photograph on the Harveys’ bedroom wall—a framed photograph of the giant rollers at Big Sur. He wished he could be there now. Anywhere but here.

  “I suppose it was coincidence really,” he said, trying to keep his train of thought. “You see, Joanne and Grace, well, they ended up in the same hotel as mine on their stopover.”

  “Joanne and Grace . . .” Kate repeated. She had gone quite pale.

  “Yes. Grace is Joanne’s eight-year-old daughter. They live in Limerick.”

  “I see,” said Kate, her face set in grim lines.

  “It wasn’t meant to happen,” he blurted out. “I really want for you to believe that, Kate. I’m just not that type of guy . . .”

  Confused, Kate blinked a few times, and then the significance of what he was saying began to dawn on her, her eyes registering disbelief. She opened her mouth to say something but shut it again. Her eyes narrowed and pierced through him.

  “What type of guy are you talking about, Mannix? Just what exactly did you do?”

  Kate was going to force him to walk the plank, to actually say it.

  Here goes.

  “I slept with her, Kate. I’m really sorry but I slept with that woman.”

  He was unprepared for the force of her surprise. Clutching her hand to her mouth, Kate heaved as if she were going to vomit, and with her other hand she pushed herse
lf off the bed. She ran for the en suite bathroom. He listened as she dry-retched and heaved. Tempted to go and check if she was all right, he opted for the safety of the bedroom.

  Moments later, she appeared. She stood in the doorway to the en suite, squeezing a tissue.

  “Just once?”

  “Are you okay? You look awful,” he asked her gently.

  “Just once, was it just the once?” She ignored him.

  “No,” he replied.

  “I see,” she said. She bit down on her bottom lip.

  “Sit down, Kate.”

  Like a ghost, she made for the far side of the bed and perched herself on the edge, knees and arms crossed in a protective body hug.

  “Do you love her?”

  “God, no! No, of course I don’t love her. It was only sex, Kate. I love you.”

  She looked at him now, her lip curling, with a look he’d never seen before. It was a mixture of loathing and disgust.

  “I know you can’t see that now, Kate. But it’s true.”

  “So you’re having an affair, is that what this is about? You’re telling me that you’re having an affair?”

  “I’m afraid it’s a bit more than that, Kate. It’s a whole lot more serious than that.”

  He had her frozen attention now.

  “We had a thing, yes. But it’s over. At least, I thought it was—up until a week or so ago. I told her it was over a long time back. But she wouldn’t let it go. I tried to tell you back then. I was going to tell you but for some reason it didn’t happen. I didn’t know what she was going to do, Kate. I had no idea what she was capable of. I never knew she was unbalanced. That she was a fantasist, a crazy, crazy fantasist.”

  “I don’t know if I can listen to any more of this . . .” Kate had clutched her ears, blocking what he was trying to tell her. Her eyes were closed.

  Mannix got up and walked around to the other side of the bed.

  “Believe me, Kate, I wouldn’t tell you any of this”—he prized her hands from her ears—“but you really need to know. I wish I could have spared you all this pain. But it’s out of my hands now. I don’t have a choice.”

  “You selfish, selfish prick.” Kate didn’t shout but she looked at him so blackly he wished she’d screamed her head off. “Where do you get off doing this to me? After all the years I’ve stood by you. I had my bloody chances too, you know.”

  “I’m sure you did, Kate, and you can be mad at me all you like later, but for now you’ve got to listen.”

  “Tell me, then, tell me how I’m in danger.” Her voice was measured.

  “Well, I saw this woman a few times in her flat and sometimes her daughter would be there. I think she got the wrong end of the stick because somehow I think she thought I was going to leave you. She had some mad idea in her head that I would be a father to her child. That in some crazy, twisted version of happy families, that they would come to live with me and Izzy and Fergus . . .”

  “And me? What was to happen to me? Where was I in all of your new lovely modern family?” Kate asked, dripping with sarcasm.

  Mannix thought back. For three whole weeks there had been no contact. He’d satisfied himself that Joanne had resigned herself to the fact that their affair was over. Perhaps she already had a new man. Yet Spike had no reported sightings of her in the nightclub. Still, he was happy that the texts had ceased. He’d found himself relaxing into the delicious routine of mundane family life. Then, out of the blue, they started coming again, this time more bizarre in tone. Apocryphal.

  “Well, that’s just it, Kate. I told her that I couldn’t leave you. The thing was that I was trying to get her off my back, so I said that if I ever left you’d never let me see the kids. That I could never do that. I thought that it would work. Joanne knew how much I love Izzy and Fergus. And it seemed to work, at least for a while, but then she started texting me again. At first, I didn’t take too much notice but then they started to creep me out. I thought she was only trying to scare me into meeting her again. But this past week, the texts got weirder and weirder.”

  “What texts are these?” asked Kate. “So that’s why you’ve been glued to your phone ever since we arrived?”

  “Yes. I could see what Joanne was driving at all the time, but I really thought that she was bluffing. She’d seemed like a normal down-to-earth woman before. There was never any indication of . . . of . . . what she was about to do. As I say, she’d never before spoken like that when I was seeing her.”

  Kate flinched.

  Mannix was aware that in trying to explain the gravity of the situation, he was hurting Kate even more. But the time for sensitivity had passed. Kate would soon realize that herself. There was too much at stake now. Mannix pulled his mobile phone from his pocket.

  There had been the initial rash of apologetic texts seeking another meeting, Joanne saying she was sorry she had gone so far. She’d never attempted the immediacy of an actual mobile call. Mannix had been relieved about that. Of course, she realized now that she was being selfish. Of course Mannix couldn’t give his kids up. Joanne would explain to Grace. He’d be their secret. He’d deleted all of these initial texts.

  Mannix knew that what he was about to do might seem cruel. But he also knew that it was necessary. Slowly he walked around to Kate’s side of the bed and handed her the phone.

  “Forgive me, Kate, but I think the only way to explain it is for you to read Joanne’s texts.”

  Kate took the mobile with a shaking hand.

  “‘Before you, there were others,’” read Kate aloud. “‘But I know now that what we had was real. We will have all that and more again.’”

  “‘Trust in me and I will find a way,’” she continued. “Jesus, her texts have all the charm of those tacky fridge magnets.”

  “I know,” said Mannix awkwardly. “Read on.” He sat with her as she opened and closed the texts.

  “‘We will win the fight and love will be our trophy.’ This tripe is making me sick . . .” sneered Kate.

  “‘I have tried loving you from afar and now I know it isn’t possible. There is a way. And I will find it. Your Joanne.’”

  Kate’s tone was mocking as she struggled through the texts and as the texts turned vicious, she delivered them more slowly. “‘Your wife is a BITCH. I see now what you mean. Your life must be hell, my love. Be patient. Our day will come.’”

  Mannix’s felt like a reprobate as Kate was forced to read this drivel.

  “‘Very soon now, we will all be together. Stay strong for me and keep the faith.’”

  She was whispering now.

  “‘I see what you mean. It’s lovely here in the park. I love the boardwalk as does Grace. Clancy Strand will suit us very well. Your Joanne.’”

  Kate fell silent as she scanned the next text. It was sent on Saturday. Their first full day in New York. The Harveys’ first full day in Limerick.

  “‘I saw the inside of your house today. Grace will love it too. Don’t worry, your BITCH wife doesn’t have a clue. Not long now, my love. Your Joanne.’”

  And for the first time as Kate read aloud Mannix heard fear in her voice. He wondered if she’d seen ahead.

  “She was in our house?” Kate looked at Mannix. “That woman was in our home?” Kate’s eyes flashed with fear and anger. “On Saturday? This was sent last Saturday, so how did she get in?” Kate stopped and thought a moment. Something had occurred to her. “The meter reader? The person who came to read the gas that we don’t have?”

  “I don’t know, Kate. Really, I don’t. But I’m guessing that it’s possible . . .”

  Kate resumed reading aloud.

  “‘You may find it hard at first to see the meaning in my method. But in time, you too will see it was the only way. I know you long to be with us. Your Joanne.’ This is freaky stuff, Mannix. I don’t know what you�
�ve got yourself mixed up in but this woman writes from another planet.”

  There were only two more texts to go. Mannix knew that. One sent yesterday. One today. The ones that had made his blood run cold.

  “‘I must be brave. I know what I must do. It is the only way and it is within my grasp.’”

  Kate looked up at Mannix as she read. Then slowly she read the last one. It was a moment or so before she read it aloud.

  “‘It’s done. It will be hard for Izzy and Fergus at first. But they will come to love me. I am a good mother. It will be hard for you too, for a few days. I need to give you space now. I know that. But after the funeral, I will come. Grace and I are busy packing. Your Joanne.’”

  Kate dropped the mobile as if it were a burning coal.

  “Does this mean . . . was she the one who . . . ?”

  Kate remained unable to utter the terrifying words.

  It had taken Mannix a few confused and foggy seconds to arrive at the same unthinkable conclusion. But Kate had got there in a heartbeat. And the more Mannix thought about it, the more this sick conclusion was the only one that made any sense.

  “I don’t know, Kate.” Mannix shrugged. “But so help me God, I think so. I think that she’s the person who killed Hazel Harvey. It certainly looks like she’s the one.”

  “Mistaking her for me . . .” Kate whispered.

  For a few moments Mannix let the idea sink in.

  Then, “That is what it’s looking like, isn’t it?” he said, forcing the point home. “Joanne had no idea that we were away. And Kate, I hate to tell you this, but Joanne had a photograph of you. Think about it—you and Hazel are both small and blond. Alike, I suppose, to someone who doesn’t know you . . .”

  Kate’s face had drained of all color as she stared at Mannix.

  “Where the hell did this psycho get a photograph of me?” she whispered.

  “I think she took it from my wallet. You know that one we got taken in a studio last Christmas?”

  Kate looked at Mannix as if he’d just crawled out from underneath a rock.

  “So this floozy that you’ve been shagging, this nutcase that you invited into all our lives, she mistook Hazel Harvey for me and bashed her head in with a garden spade? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”