Cliff Edge: a gripping psychological mystery

by Florrie Palmer

‘My mother will be over the moon.’

  How could he bring his mother into this while she had no family to care? It wasn’t as if the woman cared much about him since she had galloped back to Australia at the first chance she had had. Bette supposed his dependence on his mother might have had something to do with his eagerness to have children. Although he didn’t behave in an especially jealous or possessive way, she sussed that having a child would make her that little bit less independent than she was now.

  Could it be, she wondered, that he doesn’t like me doing so well in my business? But then he had been starting to help her with it and recommended her to clients, so it couldn’t be that.

  She didn’t think to remind herself that he was older than she and that perhaps his biological clock had started ticking before hers.

  But Mike had seen this quite differently. Bette had made it plain that he had put his foot in it. In his high state of excitement he had forgotten her feelings. Of course, he said to himself, she would be terrified of a test that might prove she wasn’t pregnant.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Bette. I should have thought about how you might feel before I rushed off in such a hurry. It was silly of me and I apologise, my darling. Don’t worry: if it’s negative, it won’t matter. We’ll be fine. Just one of those things. We’ve a long time to try again.’

  He had held her close. Without a word, she had showed him the test. He had smothered her face in kisses. ‘My clever girl, my clever darling. Oh, I love you so much.’

  He had been longing to put this into her mind but was scared she might not like the idea so soon and had given her a year’s grace before doing so, adamant that a baby could only add to their pleasure.

  In silence, she had crossed to the bed where she’d sat down slowly. For a moment he had wondered if she was upset. But he often forgot her down-to-earth Welsh roots, though they came to the fore in moments of stress. In the blunt and often funny way she had, she stared at the floor for a while before looking up at him and saying, ‘Shook me rigid, that has.’

  Mike insisted on accompanying Bette to all her maternity hospital appointments, including the breathing classes so he could better understand his role as a father on the day of the birth. At the first examination, the doctor said, ‘I see you’ve already had a child, Bette, and this one will be much easier. Second ones always are.’

  Bette went crimson and snapped at the doctor, ‘I have never had a child before. Why would you would say such a thing?’

  The doctor stepped backwards and stammered, ‘I do apologise, Ms Davies, I fear I must be mistaken.’

  The remark had obviously upset Bette. Mike supposed that anyone would be upset to have their history questioned. It did flit across his mind that she might have had a miscarriage when she was with her ex that was too emotional to mention. After all, she was not prone to discussing painful personal issues. He promised himself he would never mention the matter.

  8

  April 2017. Trumpington, Cambridge

  The exhausted, miserable, half-closed grey eyes of Sara de Vries roamed over the dirty dishes piled on the coffee table of the messy flat. From there, they shifted to the grubby, second-floor window through which they settled on the ugly incineration tower in the distance, rising among the vast complex of buildings of Addenbrooke’s Hospital.

  Just about everything had beaten her and it was his fault. Her angry brain ached for the loss of him, her dignity and for the job she had worked so hard for. She had been let go after a screaming meltdown when she had started to miscarry during a massage session.

  It felt as though she had nothing left in the world. Negative thoughts overwhelmed her as she watched the tall, dirty brick monolith with the two huge chimneys, each topped with three outlets. She imagined herself a part of the smoke that drifted from the chimneys into a dull sky of welcome oblivion.

  That is where I should be, she thought, burnt to a smoky pulp along with afterbirths, aborted and miscarried foetuses, organs and body parts.

  But the part of her brain that was still in touch with reality knew she should be at a doctor’s surgery asking for help. The time had come, she realised, to make the choice to live or die. And the part that was driven to stay alive was more than simply doing that. It knew she must carry on if only to get revenge by not allowing that man to be her downfall. The rage that churned under her depression stirred thoughts of actual retribution but she could not make the effort nor find the wherewithal to bring it about. Perhaps in time, she would. Where the next rental payment, due soon, was going to come from, she was uncertain. Since she’d stopped working, money was becoming a real problem.

  An image of her mother came into her mind, eyeing her daughter and shaking her head in disgust. Sara shook her own head to clear the vision but the mother remained tutting and disapproving, hair scraped back, black dress rustling.

  Dutch-born Sara had come from a small, isolated community of Calvinist people in a remote, traditional fishing town in the north of the Netherlands. Surrounded by sea on three sides, it was a poor place where the people had large families and the town was made up of only white Calvinists, no other races or creeds at all. Only an hour’s drive north of Amsterdam where marijuana and prostitution were legal, it was a God-fearing town with more than nineteen churches. Some of the adults wore black, including her parents who dressed her and her twelve siblings in the same colour as well as covering the girls’ small heads with white, lace-edged caps.

  In that place there was little other for a man to work at but fishing or being a church minister. In Sara’s case, her father was one of the few ministers which meant that the family attended church for three hours every Sunday, rejected television, radio, films, dancing and any displays of jollity. They were sober, reserved, conscientious, rule-driven and thrifty. This meant that they disapproved of just about everything to do with modern living and distanced themselves from it as far as possible. They even had a local dialect that was different from most Dutch. But with the high birth rate and a large youth population, the town had developed a problem among the young with alcohol and drugs.

  Sara had been one of those who had discovered alcohol at the age of sixteen. A pretty, slim blonde, she had met a boy called Lucas with whom she had secretly drunk vodka and smoked marijuana, the thrill all the greater for its illicit nature.

  Eventually, agreeing they had to get out of the place, they had quietly disappeared one evening and hitch-hiked to Amsterdam. Amazed by the place they had arrived at, they had been barely able to believe the city so full of life and lights, the canals, the red-light district and Dam Square with its colourful street entertainers and hawkers.

  They found a rough place to sleep, sharing it with tramps and addicts. Before long, depression had begun to attach itself to Sara and she had started to feel full of remorse for leaving her family. She felt particularly bad about leaving the younger ones whom she had taken under her wing, protecting them from their mother’s repressed rage.

  Although fearful of the certain wrath of her parents and likely ostracism as community punishment, she had wanted to return. Lucas, on the other hand had desired no such thing. But then things had improved when they had found jobs, she as a waitress and he on a kanaalboten.

  The first thing she did when she’d been paid was to go to a second-hand shop and buy some colourful clothes. The black dress she’d arrived in had been ceremoniously dumped in an open rubbish bin.

  She began to adapt to her new life and, feeling renewed, had found a small, furnished studio apartment in a suburb for about 300 euros a month. This ate most of her income, but her newly won freedom felt so exceptional and the potential fun to be had so enticing that she had stayed. She and Lucas gradually drifted apart but she’d befriended a backpacking English student called Emily who was on a gap year and was staying for a few months.

  After a time, Sara’s deeply instilled guilt had decided she should give something back and since it couldn’t be to her own, it would have to be to the
greater community. Years of helping her younger siblings with learning had given her some pleasure in the role of helper, so she knew that helping others was what she wanted to do.

  English language had not been encouraged in her Calvinist school so she decided to enrol on a course. She had bought a second-hand Dutch-English dictionary and found a cheap teach-yourself-English book and started to learn.

  Because of the effort she made to speak English to Emily, they quickly became firm friends and started to spend every evening in one another’s rooms. On one of these evenings, Sara asked her pal whether she liked her new dress, bought from a market stall that day.

  ‘How can I tell if you don’t try it on?’ Emily had grinned.

  ‘Okay then.’ And Sara had turned her back on her friend while she’d slipped off her trousers and top. That was when she had felt Emily approach her from behind, put her arms round her and cup her breasts in both hands.

  Transfixed by what was happening as Emily gently massaged her hardening nipples, Sara had felt a delicious, sweet feeling spread through her body. Emily had lowered her right hand to Sara’s pubic area and slowly felt for her clitoris which was by now wet and slippery. She had eased her forward to the bed where she had brought Sara to the first climax of her life.

  From then on, the pair had become inseparable. Then it had come to the time in September for Emily to go back to England to start at Cambridge University where she was to study music at Gonville and Caius.

  Since Sara wanted to learn English, Emily had told her Cambridge was just the place as it had many language schools. She had first suggested then begged Sara to come with her. Coming from a well-off family, Emily had explained that she would have a good enough allowance to pay for Sara’s lodgings until she found her feet in the town. She added, ‘You’ll be able to find a job to pay for your course.’

  So they set off for Cambridge together and Sara was entranced by the old city. She now felt far enough away from her family – both culturally and emotionally – to really start life again. Amsterdam had been a learning curve of life without her family; Cambridge proved to be a place where she at last felt grounded.

  The affair between the young women flourished for a few months but gradually waned as Emily began to find undergraduate friends and Sara did the same at her language school.

  After a year of intense study, Sara, a diligent girl, working all the time to support herself, had become close to fluent in English. By this time, she had learned that she liked men as well as women. She had now moved in with a group of three other students. One girl had become a close friend with whom she had slept until the band of four had dispersed.

  Sara became so devoted to the country she now lived in that in a sense, she became more British than the British. Her remorse at leaving her younger siblings made her determined to help treat and, if possible, heal others.

  She worked hard waitressing and cleaning houses and flats to earn enough to pay for her courses. Gaining certificates in massage therapy and Indian head massage, she soon had a thriving little practice within a big sports centre in the heart of the city.

  But today, so empty of energy that she couldn’t have managed to massage a cushion, she realised she hadn’t washed for ages and that she smelt bad. It took an intense effort to pick up her phone and select the contact number for her doctor. She was told, ‘You need to call back tomorrow morning at 8am if you want an appointment.’

  It took even more to wake up the following morning after the disturbed, unrestful night that had become her norm. The glimmer of hope that had prevented Sara from killing herself had provoked her to set the alarm on her phone to get up in time, and somehow she managed to be on the phone making her appointment at 8am.

  Offered an appointment at 9.15am meant actually having to get washed and dressed. During the past few weeks she had had pizzas and food delivered to the flat and had never ventured outside what had become a cocoon of misery. She pulled on a long-sleeved, brown T-shirt, a shabby green cardigan, a pair of black trousers and some trainers that had seen better days. Her hair was greasy and unwashed but she struggled out of the flat, dragged herself to her elderly, small car and drove to her appointment.

  The doctor diagnosed severe depression and gave her a prescription for anti-depressants and told her that in two or three weeks she would start to feel better. He also suggested counselling but the way Sara felt did not encourage her to speak to anyone about her feelings, least of all a stranger. She had kept those feelings under lock and key since early childhood and was not about to start revealing them now.

  We sat together in the car. I was wide awake but the other person was so sleepy they could barely keep their eyes open. The car bumped along down the potholed track to the cliff edge. Then they began to fall asleep and slumped forward onto the dashboard. I pulled on the handbrake and the car jerked to a stop. Reaching into the glovebox for the torch, I got out of the car, walked round to the driver’s side, opened the door, shook the driver half awake and helped them out of the car.

  9

  Winter 2016–May 2017. Kingswell Road, Cambridge

  To Bette’s disappointment, Mike had barely touched her since he had learned of the pregnancy. She understood that he had longed for a child but why he had been quite so over-precious and wary of having sex with her she had yet to discover, believing his behaviour to be quite unnatural, especially for a man with a high sex drive. But he would not be drawn on the subject so she had little she could do but accept it as a fact.

  Now she had only a month left before the due date, she and Mike spent their first Christmas at Cliff Edge before the baby was born. They invited an old university friend of Mike’s to stay and although Bette was too far advanced in her pregnancy to go walking, the men explored the area on foot during the short hours of daylight. The rest of the time, when not cooking, the threesome played games of Scrabble, Monopoly and read books.

  And a few weeks later, after an untroublesome pregnancy, the event of giving birth that on account of her impatience Bette had said she thought was never going to happen, did.

  At the end of January, a baby girl was born. They named her Lucy and the small family lived in contented if exhausting Baby-land. Bette didn’t fancy breastfeeding so Mike was able to share in feeding the child and became proficient at winding, nappy-changing and trying to rock her off to sleep, at which he frequently failed.

  Excited, Mike contacted his mother to let her know she was a grandmother, he was hoping she’d say she’d be over as soon as she could, but she didn’t. Asking her whether she could get over to see Lucy sometime in the next month, she said she was going on holiday to Hawaii and wasn’t going to be able to visit for at least six months but asked him to be sure to send videos and photos.

  The old resentment bubbled up in him. How dare she? How could she? He had never felt so angry with her in his life and shouted down the phone, ‘Tell you what, mother, don’t bother. Just don’t bother. We don’t want you anyway. Actually, since it’s obvious you have no desire to see your only grandchild, I have no desire to see you – ever again, understand?’ If he could have slammed down a receiver it would have been so much more satisfactory than pressing a button to cut her off but press a button he did with as much a flourish as he could manage. When she tried to call back a few times, he didn’t respond. That was the last time he ever spoke to his mother.

  By April, Bette was drained, as was Mike. With persistent determination the child cried day and night and whatever they tried failed to stop her screams. They dosed her for colic but it made no difference.

  They rubbed Bonjela on her gums, but it didn’t stop her yelling.

  They took her for long walks pushing the pram on Midsummer Common, during which the little girl slept happily until the moment they turned the pram into the small hallway of the house and lifted her up, when she would start up yowling again.

  In May, they took her to the doctor who could find nothing wrong. Becoming desperate, they longe
d for one uninterrupted night’s sleep.

  Then one night they had the best sex they’d had for a long time and both got a better stretch of sleep than usual, when Lucy slept through. At the baby’s normal waking hour, 6.30am, Bette tiptoed to her room. Lucy was still asleep.

  By 8am, there was still no sound and Bette asked Mike to check on her. But the baby was still asleep. Unusual though it was, he left her sleeping. She must suddenly have turned the corner into normalcy and he did not wish to question such a momentous thing.

  But at 8.20am, before leaving for work, he went again into the child’s bedroom and peered at her lying in her cot. He spoke her name, at first quietly then louder. She didn’t stir. He crept to the side of the cot. He gazed at his daughter, soundlessly sleeping. He touched her cheek. Surely that would wake her.

  But the cheek felt wrong.

  He touched it again and it was cold. How could it be cold? Struggling to process this unnatural sensory information, he hesitated before dialling 999. When put through to the operator, he said quietly into his phone, ‘Ambulance, please.’

  While he waited, he couldn’t look at Lucy. He shouted for Bette to come.

  When the ambulance service answered, he again spoke quietly, ‘Oh hello. Erm, excuse me, I’m not sure… I have a feeling… not sure my daughter is…’

  The operator said, ‘This is the emergency service. What is your emergency, please?’

  And that was when he heard himself shouting, ‘Help me! Help me! I don’t think she’s breathing. My daughter. She was sleeping. Help me, please! I don’t know what to do.’

  He was now screaming, ‘My baby’s not breathing!’

  Soundless, Bette had picked Lucy up and was holding her close.

  A calm operator asked Mike a series of questions. His mobile phone clenched between his face and shoulder, he followed her instructions, took Lucy from Bette and placed her on the floor. He told Bette to go downstairs and open the front door, ready for the ambulance.