Partridge spoke into the receiver again, relaying my assent. Then he showed me the door. ‘Ray Carter’ll see you right,’ he promised. ‘Good man, Ray.’
But I knew all he was really doing was getting rid of me.
By then, however, I didn’t mind very much. The tight feeling in my chest was quite extreme and I just wanted to lie down and go to sleep. I was suddenly quite glad that I didn’t have to rush off to Penzance or Exeter, or anywhere at all.
I left the station and set off up the hill towards Rose Cottage. The climb seemed steeper than ever before. I was wheezing by the time I reached the cottage and it wasn’t until I was standing outside the now dark-blue front door that I remembered I didn’t have a key.
For a moment or two I dithered miserably. Then I recalled that Carl climbed over the wall of the cottage next door into our backyard when we had locked ourselves out once, and we had never got around to fixing the dodgy kitchen window.
The next-door cottage had access into its own small garden through a little gate at the front and a narrow alleyway between the two houses. I had my hand on the gate, ready to open it, before I thought that I had better not do so without knocking on the front door first. In any case, although I vaguely remembered Carl vaulting over the wall easily enough, I didn’t think I could manage it without a ladder or something similar.
Our neighbour Mrs Jackson’s wide smile of welcome turned into an expression of surprised uncertainty when she saw me standing there. ‘Suzanne!’ she exclaimed, her eyes widening and her mouth remaining slackly open as if I had grown antennae.
I smiled weakly.
Her face softened. She was a kind woman, Mrs Jackson, albeit prone to verbal diarrhoea. ‘Oh, come in, come in,’ she urged. I allowed myself to be ushered into her cosy kitchen.
I could see that she didn’t know quite what to say next, very unusual for Mrs Jackson. Seeking, perhaps, words of reassurance what she eventually came up with was: ‘Oh my God, Suzanne, you look terrible.’
‘I expect I do. I’ve had pneumonia,’ I told her flatly.
‘I know, my dear, I’ve heard all about it and what he did to you, I can’t believe it you know, not your lovely Carl, just can’t believe it, and him a murderer too, and his own daughter . . .’
I couldn’t believe it either. It seemed the whole town knew about the allegations against Carl and had done so long before I did. I summoned up the energy to interrupt Mrs Jackson’s babbling. ‘Manslaughter,’ I said.
‘Pardon?’ Mrs Jackson looked startled again. It was an expression that somehow suited her plump-cheeked face rather well.
‘Manslaughter,’ I repeated. ‘He’s wanted in the States on a manslaughter charge. As far as I know . . .’
I was aware of my last few words tailing off pathetically.
They were quite enough to set Mrs J. off again: ‘No, of course, you wouldn’t know. Nice young girl like you, you’d never live with a murderer. I said the same to Mr Nichols in the butcher’s, only yesterday I said. “Fancy an innocent young girl like her taken in by a man like that,” I said. And him not even using his own name, pretending to be somebody else. Defies belief it does . . .’
Suddenly I realised that I couldn’t take any more of this. ‘Mrs Jackson,’ I interrupted surprisingly firmly. ‘I’m afraid I’m locked out of the house. I wondered if I could borrow your ladder and climb over the garden wall.’
‘Of course you can, my dear. Still haven’t fixed that kitchen window, aye?’ She didn’t wait for me to respond. ‘Good thing, apparently. The police have been, I expect you know that, but they had a key.’
They would have used Carl’s key, I assumed. I should have thought of that when I was in the police station, I reflected. I turned my attention back to the present.
Mrs Jackson was still talking. ‘Anyway, m’dear, ’course you can go in over my wall, but first I want you to sit down with me and have a nice cup of tea. Goodness knows you look as if you could do with one. Then tell me all about it. Helps to talk, you know, that’s what they say . . .’
The very idea filled me with almost as much horror as had any of the events of the last week. ‘I’m sorry Mrs J.,’ I interrupted quickly. ‘I really do feel lousy. I just want to get indoors and go to bed, please.’
She nodded understandingly, the kind of woman whose gravestone would bear the legend ‘she meant well’, I had often thought, and it would be absolutely the truth. She did mean well, excruciatingly so. ‘Of course, my dear.’
She found the ladder and together we propped it against the dividing wall, which was about seven foot high. Mrs Jackson expressed concern about my ability to climb up it safely, and, to be honest, I felt so weak that I wasn’t too sure myself. I managed OK, though, and at the top I hung on with my hands and arms, dangled my feet and legs down the other side, and dropped the two or three feet, landing safely in our little cobbled backyard.
‘I’m fine, Mrs J.,’ I called back in answer to her anxious enquiries. ‘Yes, I’m sure I can get through the window. Yes, I’ll yell if I need anything.’
I pushed the kitchen window and it opened immediately – the catch had been broken ever since we moved in. I propped a couple of breeze blocks beneath it to help give me a leg up and wriggled through on to the worktop without incident.
It was so strange to be in our little home again. In spite of the police search the place looked much the same as it had on the fateful morning when Carl had bundled me into the van and carried me off to his dreadful hideaway. And that didn’t seem right. In the downstairs room I straightened a picture on a wall and replaced a vase, which had been moved from its usual place, and that was about it. I felt in some strange way that the cottage should look different now, now that everything had changed. It didn’t. It felt different, though.
Rose Cottage had always seemed so cosy and safe. On that day it felt cold and empty. No Carl. No Carl and Suzanne. That was over, I felt in my bones. The silence in the cottage was deafening. I had always thought that was a daft expression, but suddenly it made sense. You have to experience it to understand. It comes, I think, from being somewhere that has lost all the life it once had, the life that gives it its reason for being. A once grand theatre that has been closed down, a school playground during the holidays, a ruined old building, a forgotten, overgrown garden – these are all places where you can be deafened by silence. I suppose there can be a certain romantic melancholy to it. In Rose Cottage such a silence was simply unbearable.
I rushed upstairs and switched on the radio, which turned out be tuned to Classic FM, just as I had left it. The bed was as I had left it too, the duvet and pillows untidily strewn across it, waiting to be returned to its daytime sofa mode. Carl and I had always been quite meticulous about folding up our bed. It seemed strange to come back to the room and find it like this, numbing, almost.
I glanced at my watch. It wasn’t yet eleven o’clock. I had twenty-two hours to wait before I would learn the worst at Penzance police station and be able to travel on to Exeter to see Carl. I thought maybe I should eat and drink something, although I wasn’t remotely hungry. I hadn’t eaten since nibbling at an uninspiring hospital supper the previous evening and I realised that I should at least attempt to build up my strength. Shivering slightly, I wandered down to the kitchen. I wasn’t sure whether the cottage was particularly chilly or if it was me. I thought a cup of tea might indeed help, as long as it wasn’t accompanied by Mrs Jackson, and had boiled the kettle before it dawned on me that there wouldn’t be any milk. I opened the fridge door and there was one half-empty bottle there. I picked it up and shook it gently. As I had expected, the milk did not move. When I attempted to pour it down the sink I had to prod at it with the handle of a wooden spoon to make it disappear and the sour smell spread instantly throughout the entire cottage. I made the tea and began to drink it black. Then I dug around for anything edible. Carl and I had no deep freeze and normally bought fresh food almost every day. About all I could find that wasn’t
thoroughly disgusting were a few not too soggy digestive biscuits in a tin. They would have to do. I certainly had neither the inclination nor the energy to go shopping.
I nibbled at a biscuit without much interest and made myself sip the tea. It was no good. I just couldn’t be bothered. My chest and head really hurt now. I was beginning to wonder how big a mistake I had made in leaving hospital prematurely. Maybe sleep would help, if anything could.
I dragged myself upstairs, switched on the electric fire to full blast, then half fell on to the bed and buried myself in the duvet.
Almost at once I was overwhelmed by oblivion.
The next thing to enter my consciousness was the sound of a loud banging on the front door. ‘Carl,’ I thought at once as I sat up groggily. I was wet with sweat. The room now felt stiflingly hot.
It was a second or two before the remains of my brain told me that my first reaction was wrong. He was locked up in the Devon County Prison at Exeter. It could not be Carl.
Anxiously I clambered out of bed, still fully clothed, and hurried down the stairs, eager to see who was outside, but afraid.
I am not really sure who or what I feared at that instant, but it was both a relief and a surprise to see Mariette standing in the alleyway clutching two bulging supermarket carrier bags.
‘I phoned the hospital to see how you were. They said you’d discharged yourself. I would have come to pick you up. You should have called . . .’
I nodded apologetically. It had not occurred to me to call Mariette or anyone else. Without Carl I considered myself to be quite alone.
‘I’ve brought some shopping,’ explained Mariette unnecessarily, lifting her carrier bags a couple of inches towards me. ‘Come on, then, aren’t you going to invite me in.’
I stood aside and she bustled past me. She had never been in our house before although I had been to hers several times. Carl and I had not encouraged visitors, except Will with his cheques.
I watched Mariette take in the small, dark dining room and the way Carl and I had tried to brighten it with pictures and candles.
‘Shall I put all this in the kitchen?’ she enquired and was halfway through the kitchen door before I had chance to reply.
I followed her meekly. She at once opened the fridge. There was nothing inside at all except a few dubious-looking jars of unknown vintage.
‘Thought so,’ announced Mariette triumphantly. ‘You look like you could do with this lot.’
She waved a hand at her bags of groceries and began to unpack while I just stood there watching.
‘What time is it?’ I asked vaguely.
‘Just gone five,’ said Mariette. ‘I managed to get away early.’
Five in the afternoon. I had slept for nearly six hours. As I began to wake up more I thought that maybe I did feel a little better. Well enough, anyway, to take some notice at least of the provisions Mariette was piling on the worktop. There were all the basics – milk, bread, butter, cheese and eggs, and there was also pasta, chicken, mushrooms, an assortment of other vegetables, some fruit and two bottles of wine – one white and one red.
‘We’ll start with this,’ said Marietta, lightly touching the bottle of white and sounding quite masterful. ‘It’s cold. Where’s the corkscrew?’
I gestured to the cutlery drawer. I was pretty sure there was a corkscrew there even though I could hardly remember when it had last been used. Carl and I only drank wine at home at Christmas, or maybe on our birthdays if we couldn’t afford to go out for a celebration meal. Mariette had the bottle open in no time and even found two glasses without asking me where to look. I felt rooted to the spot, completely unable to contribute.
‘Right then, let’s get stuck in,’ she said, in a tone of voice that indicated that she would countenance no argument.
Clutching bottle and glasses, she headed for the chairs around the dining-room table.
‘No, let’s go upstairs,’ I said, coming to life again just a little bit.
She followed me up the rickety staircase and let out a gasp of admiration as she saw the view across the bay from our picture window. The room really was very hot, though.
‘No wonder you’re sweating,’ said Mariette, gesturing towards the glowing electric fire. ‘It is the end of April you know, and we are in Cornwall.’
She should have been in that dreadful old damp hut with me, I thought, but she was right about the temperature.
Hastily I switched off the fire and began the familiar transformation of bed into sofa. Mariette put down the bottle and glasses on the little table by the window and came to help me, glancing back over her shoulder as if reluctant to turn away from the view.
The lights were just starting to go on in the town below. The effect was rather wonderful. We were so far above the harbour, which you could glimpse only over and through the convoluted shapes of dozens of rooftops. I always thought it had an unreality about it, particularly at night, like a kind of toy town.
‘Stunning room,’ said Mariette.
‘Yes, Carl and I more or less live up here,’ I agreed quickly and without thinking. ‘Lived, I should say,’ I added more quietly.
Mariette put a hand on my arm, but didn’t say anything.
‘You know what he’s supposed to have done in America, don’t you?’ I said. ‘You know about the manslaughter charge?’
She nodded. ‘I heard some garbled account, but I’d hoped maybe it was just a rumour . . .’ She didn’t finish the sentence.
I shook my head. ‘No, I’m afraid it’s true. At least that’s what the police say. I’ll know when I see him, I’m sure of that.’
I was too. I told her how I planned to go to Exeter in the morning, after seeing DC Carter.
‘Good, that’s exactly what you should do,’ she said. Then she poured the wine while, almost automatically, I folded up the duvet and sheet.
‘Let’s get drunk.’ She passed me a brimming glass.
I took a deep drink and thought she could turn out to be an exceptionally good friend.
When we had more or less polished off the bottle Mariette announced that she was cooking me supper. I protested weakly and she ignored me, which was probably all for the best because my head was already beginning to spin a little, the combined effect, no doubt, of half a bottle of wine and not having eaten all day.
‘If you don’t eat you’re really going to get ill,’ she said.
‘I have really been ill.’
‘And now you’re going to get better,’ she told me, again in a tone of voice with which I was not inclined to argue.
She busied herself in the kitchen and I laid the table and lit the candles. She poked her head through the door and mumbled approvingly. ‘Amazing what candlelight hides, isn’t it,’ she remarked.
‘Thanks very much,’ I said.
‘Oh, you know what I mean,’ she added cheerily.
She turned out to be what Gran would have referred to as an excellent plain cook; perfectly grilled chicken, well seasoned and enlivened with just a little garlic and rosemary, was accompanied by potatoes sautéed with onions and crisply cooked green beans. She was quick too, carrying in a tray laden with food in what seemed like no time at all.
We spoke very little about Carl or any of what had happened. Unlike the oppressive Mrs Jackson, Mariette did not try to push me into talking about it and I found I just didn’t want to. There wasn’t a lot to say, really. All I wanted to do was get through the time before I could see him, meet him face-to-face and ask him to tell me the truth. And the wine certainly helped with that. Mariette swiftly opened the second bottle and by the time we were halfway through it I was beginning to forget about time entirely. I was not used to so much alcohol. I had never thought about it before, but when Carl and I occasionally shared a bottle of wine he always drank the greater part of it.
That evening was my first experience of the therapy of a good relaxed friendship mingled with plenty of alcohol. It was just what I had needed and Mariette, bless
her, had instinctively realised it.
Typically, she offered to drive me to Penzance in the morning, but did not press the point when I declined. I told her she had a job to go to, one she enjoyed, that she’d already done enough for me and I could get the train. She did not argue, but instead conjured up yet another of her seemingly endless stories of adventure in love – or in her case perhaps lust was more accurate. This one centred around one of the fitness instructors at the gym she had recently started attending, his cycling shorts and whether or not he stuffed a sock down his lunchbox which, amazingly enough, she had yet to know for certain but felt sure she would be able to reveal from first-hand experience shortly.
Mindless chit-chat may not seem much of a solace to a woman whose life has just fallen apart, but sometimes it’s not a bad diversion. By the time we had reached the cheese and fruit stage Mariette actually had me laughing. Quite an achievement in the circumstances.
Mariette, bless her, played nursemaid and insisted on ensuring I was safely tucked up in bed before she left. Almost immediately, and perhaps unsurprisingly after all I had drunk, I sank mercifully into oblivion again.
But I woke not long after four, the wine having done its best before losing its power over me, and tossed and turned for another hour and a half before giving in to wakefulness, getting up and making tea. My head was a bit fuzzy but I did not feel nearly as bad as I probably deserved to. In fact, I was definitely considerably stronger than I had been the previous day.
Just as I was leaving the house to catch the 7.30 train, having located the spare key in its usual place tucked under the edge of the carpet, Will arrived. I opened the front door and he was standing on the doorstep with one hand raised as if about to knock. It was a clumsy meeting. We almost bumped into each other.
A Deep Deceit Page 19
