The Strangers We Know

by Pip Drysdale

  But nothing.

  And so I scrolled through to the app to see when Oliver had last been online.

  I went to my messages, searching for his photo on the left hand side to click through to his profile. But his messages were gone.

  His profile had been deleted.

  Which made sense after that fight and my threat of sending a screenshot to his mother. But my insides ached as the night before came tumbling back, I let out a small moan, rolling over and closing my eyes.

  I lay there, trying to avoid thoughts, dozing fitfully for a good hour or so. I imagined him doing all the things he always did in the mornings: turning on the Nespresso machine, having a shower, picking out a shirt. Did he even miss me? Why hadn’t he called?

  It was just before nine that a need for caffeine finally got me out of bed and I trudged to Tess’s kitchenette, big sulky footsteps. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. I reached for the cupboard above the sink and pulled out a mug, then flicked on the kettle while the night before ran in a loop through my mind: his Peroni, me threatening to text his mother, my head hitting the plaster, his hand over my mouth, the scratch on his face. That would have left a mark. How will he explain that at work? My face grew hot. Shame.

  Shame at still being triggered after all this time.

  Shame that he would have banged my head like that. He’d always been so gentle with me.

  I opened the freezer, pulled out the coffee, and spooned some into the cafetière she’d left out for me. There was a bag of black liquorice on the table and I chewed on a piece while the kettle hummed to a boil. Breakfast of champions. The smell of coffee filled the air as I poured boiling water over them then took my coffee back to bed. That was a Monday and the shop was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. So I thought I had a full 48 hours to spend in bed feeling sorry for myself.

  Let’s just say I was wrong.

  It was then that my phone started ringing from beside the bed. I rolled over to look at it, expecting it to be Oliver. But it wasn’t – it was Natasha Neighbour. That was weird. She’d never called me before, and the only time she’d ever texted was to check I’d remembered to water her plants – basil, orchid – because she was away (and a control freak).

  The phone stopped ringing. It went to voicemail. But something was off, I could feel it. I sat up, picked up my phone and stared down at the screen. What did she want?

  My phone beeped. A text. Natasha Neighbour. I frowned at it: what was going on?

  It read: Just checking you’re okay hon. I heard the yelling last night. Where are you?

  Oh right, well that made sense then. Natasha was thinking of my outburst yesterday, coupled with the fight she’d overheard and was hoping my relationship with Oliver was on its last legs so she could swoop in. Well Natasha, you are welcome to him. You, and every other woman in London. I imagined her knocking on our door with a plate of cookies to ‘check on him’. Seeing his face. What would he tell her about the scratch?

  I picked up my coffee, letting the heat seep into my hands, and took a sip.

  Tess had left a hot pink towel for me on the end of the bed. I needed a shower so I took my coffee, picked up the towel and went through to the bathroom.

  I turned on the faucets, dropped the t-shirt I’d slept in onto the floor, and stepped inside. The water was hot, too hot, on my scalp as it flowed over me, but it was good to have that kind of sensation to draw me into the present. I used Tess’s shampoo and conditioner to wash my hair. Now I smelled like coconut too. I turned off the taps and reached for my towel, dried myself off then wrapped it around me before wandering back through to the bedroom, sipping my coffee. We were on the fifth floor so nobody could see me, but I pulled closed the pale blue curtains anyway then sat on the edge of the bed.

  My phone beeped again. Another message from Natasha. You need to come home right now. It’s about Oliver. The police really need to talk to you.

  I put down my cup. What the fuck was going on?

  I typed back straight away: What? Why? What happened?

  But there was no reply.

  And in hindsight I think it was her silence that first warned me. But then a final beep: Just come.

  9.58 am

  By the time I got a clear view of our flat it was obvious something really, really bad had happened. The Uber had dropped me two blocks away – I had it stop the moment I saw the yellow, blue and white of a police car – and I went straight to the park across from our flat to get a better (sheltered) view. Our building had been sectioned off by do-not-cross police tape. The air smelled of soil and cut grass. There were three police cars in all, one ambulance and a bunch of what I assumed were police – but would later decide were forensics people – dressed in grey coveralls moving in and out of the building. I could see them through our front window: they were in our flat. Lots of them. Something had happened in our flat.

  I thought back to Natasha’s message: You need to come home right now. It’s about Oliver. The police really need to talk to you.

  Shit.

  Because everybody knows that when the police are looking for you, there’s only one thing you should do: comply. They’re supposed to be on your side. If you tell the truth, everything is supposed to be okay. But as I stood there, dressed in a dark green satin jacket, white t-shirt and black jeans (all belonging to Tess), my hair in a ponytail at the nape of my neck, my bag (with a few things and my laptop inside) slung over my shoulder, doing my best to go unnoticed, I just couldn’t bring myself to move towards them.

  No, I was paralysed, stuck to the spot.

  Because what if Natasha had told them we were fighting? What if they’d seen the scratch? What if they thought I had done something?

  What was I going to do, just tell them that I hadn’t and hope they believed me?

  Fuck that. They didn’t believe me last time, why would this be any different?

  I needed to know what was going on first.

  I’d call Oliver.

  I was his wife, it was perfectly acceptable that I might call him, check on him. And then maybe he could tell me what had happened. Maybe he was fine. Maybe it was another break-in. Maybe it was nothing serious.

  But it didn’t look like nothing serious.

  I pulled out my phone, went to my favourites and dialled his number.

  Calling Oliver flashed up on my screen and I held the phone up to my ear. It rang. And rang. And rang. On around the fifth ring someone picked up.

  ‘Hello?’ But it was a woman’s voice.

  ‘Hello? Ummm, I’m looking for my husband Oliver. This is his number isn’t it?’

  A breath was taken. It was audible.

  ‘Is this Charlene Buchanan?’ said the voice. She was northern. I imagined her having dark hair, pointy features and light eyes that could see straight through me.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied.

  ‘Charlene, this is DCI Holland. Where are you?’

  ‘Why?’ I asked, my breath quickening.

  ‘We need to speak to you immediately. It’s extremely important.’ Her tone was short. Clipped.

  ‘Of course,’ I said, trying to control the timbre of my own voice. Why wasn’t Oliver answering his own phone? I swallowed hard. ‘What is this about?’

  I was watching the scene in our flat, wondering where she was – was she sitting in a police car? Standing in our apartment? Sitting on Natasha’s sofa? But she didn’t need to answer my question.

  Because a moment later I saw the answer for myself.

  First came voices. Shouting to get out of the way.

  Then came a stretcher being rolled out through the front door towards the ambulance. There was a red blanket covering a big lump. A body. No space for the face to breathe. And a navy blue covered arm hanging off the side. A hand. A gold wedding ring winking in the morning light.

  It was Oliver’s arm. His hand. His ring.

  And I’d seen enough cop shows to know what that meant.

  ‘It would be better if we spoke in person,�
�� DCI Holland said. ‘It’s something of utmost importance. I can come to you if you tell me where you are.’

  My breath caught in my throat and I swallowed. ‘I’m just with my agent,’ I lied, my heart beating rapidly as I watched them move the stretcher into the ambulance. Bile filled my mouth but I forced myself to speak. ‘I can come in afterwards. Where are you?’

  ‘Charing Cross Police Station.’ And I could hear her voice in the distance, an echo, as she gave me the exact address and I pretended to note it down.

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  And then we hung up.

  All I could feel was the breeze on my face. My vision grew white.

  How is he dead?

  A ripple of what he would have felt in his last moments moved through me – it winded me. That awful realisation. The terror. The acceptance. Nobody deserves that. Did he know the face who did this? My hand instinctively moved to cover my mouth as though I knew a sob was coming. The enormity of what was happening was crushing. My eyes burned, I let out a small whimper and hot tears streamed down my face. I choked them back. I couldn’t break down now. I wasn’t safe.

  What was I going to do?

  Then came another sob. I couldn’t control them. I needed to get away from the police. And so I moved as quickly and quietly as I could further into the park, away from their field of vision. As I did the sobs got deeper, louder, and I bit down on my lip to stop them, clenching my eyes shut. There was a bench up ahead of me and I couldn’t see anyone around so I jogged towards it. It was still damp from rain the night before, droplets sparkling in the sunshine. As I lay down on it I could feel the cool water seeping into the fabric of my clothes. I huddled in a fetal position, my arms wrapped tight around me, and cried.

  The world had gone cold. My sun had been eclipsed. My head was filled with cotton wool and I could feel my nose running cold as my tears ran hot.

  I kept my eyes clenched for a good ten minutes as I cried it out. The breeze dried my tears just to have new ones fall and a siren blared in the distance. As I lay there I imagined the red light flashing as the ambulance pulled out onto the road and took Oliver to the hospital or the morgue or wherever they take dead bodies. I let out a whimper and opened my eyes, and when I did I realised there was a man nearby – a jogger – watching me. My stomach clenched. I couldn’t draw attention to myself.

  I sat up. Stiff. My face hot as I wiped tears away with my sleeve. He looked concerned. I smiled at him as if to say ‘Breakup, you know how it is.’ He nodded back and kept moving. My breath was quick and shallow as I looked around me through a blur of tears.

  I could see the police were still there in the distance.

  Nothing made any sense.

  Oliver had been alive, probably still drinking a Peroni in his office, when I stormed out. What had happened after I left?

  What was I going to do?

  Because everybody knows the spouse is always a suspect. Even if they’re cleared in the end, they’re always a suspect in the beginning.

  Always.

  Especially if there was cheating. Especially if there was life insurance. Especially if the neighbours heard fighting.

  But then, I had an alibi, a really strong one: I wasn’t even there when it happened. Tess could vouch for me. Although, time of death is iffy at best (they use the contents of the stomach as a gauge – don’t tell me movies aren’t educational) and it could always be argued that I’d hired someone to do it for me. Someone bigger. Stronger. And by that hypothesis, my not being there ultimately appeared to be an attempt to create an alibi, thereby supporting my guilt not my innocence. I imagined DCI Holland going through Oliver’s phone, reading my text messages: I hate you … I know everything. Had she gone through his emails yet? Found that screenshot of his dating profile Justin had sent him? Absolute proof he was cheating.

  Shit.

  The app.

  I reached for my phone, navigated to the app, deleted Annabella’s profile and then removed the app from my phone. The last thing I needed was DCI Holland getting hold of my phone and reading the messages between Oliver and ‘Annabella’: I want someone to tell her. I want her to know, I want it over.

  If that wasn’t motive, what was?

  And it would be bad enough when they spoke to Natasha and heard about how she’d helped me move a load of his stuff into his car the day before, about how boozy my breath was and what I’d said to her.

  Had they seen the scratch? Of course they would have …

  My DNA.

  I swallowed hard.

  I needed to go and talk to the police, to find out what happened, tell them it had nothing to do with me and help them with their investigation.

  I needed to trust that the truth would work out for me this time.

  But even though the police were right there, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I remained stuck in position. Scarred by experience.

  Because I knew what it was to tell the truth and not be believed. And for all I knew that night when I was sixteen was on some file somewhere. It might be construed as a pattern of behaviour. Used against me.

  I couldn’t risk it.

  And so, as I sat there statue-still and staring at the police, my synapses fired: white hot, faster than sound. Multiple narratives presented themselves simultaneously as I tried to figure out what to do, tried to predict the end result of each choice. If I went to the police and they didn’t believe me, they could arrest me. And I didn’t want to go to prison. But if I didn’t turn up to Charing Cross Police Station? What then? Was I on the run from the police?

  What do I do?

  My mind was a swirl of pros and cons, fears and … well, then I was thinking of that random Google search on my work computer: Where to buy a taser in London.

  What if whoever killed Oliver was setting me up to take the fall? What if they’d planted other evidence too, evidence I didn’t know about yet, evidence DCI Holland was busy cataloguing?

  Don’t be paranoid, Charlie.

  But the thought had been seeded. As I stared at the crime scene I could see two policemen coming into the park towards me. They were chatting. They weren’t looking for me. But as the distance between us grew shorter my heart pounded louder and faster, so loud, so fast, I thought it might thrash its way out through its cage. I’m not sure exactly when I made the final decision, but a moment later I stood up from that park bench and began walking briskly in the opposite direction. I needed time to think. To figure things out. And so I was going to the only place I could think of where they wouldn’t look for me.

  Because a certain someone never did ask for his key back.

  Episode 6

  MONDAY, 11 JUNE 2018 (10.43 AM)

  I was trembling, the keys gripped tightly between my fingers as I made my way up the five cement stairs that led to his front door. Josh’s front door. Yes, my ex: #nevergoinghome #holidayspam #Biarritz. So that’s where I was: Fulham. It was the only place I could think of to go. Please don’t let him have changed the locks.

  Up close, the white paint was still peeling off, just like it always had been, and a dusty breeze swirled around me as I pushed the key into the lock. Took a deep breath. And turned the key.

  Click.

  The door creaked as it swung open: the hallway smelled of wet cardboard or newspaper and it was empty except for a bicycle and a couple of boxes taped up with packing tape that had been left in the nook beneath the staircase.

  I shut the door quietly behind me before anyone could see me. But it was mid morning by then, so I figured that most people would be at work and wouldn’t be back for hours. And Josh was away in #Biarritz according to Instagram, so I had a safe house.

  I took the stairs two at a time. Old blue carpet turned grey in the middle from feet and dust and wear. As they creaked with my weight, I thought back to those moments in the week before, the ones when I’d felt eyes on my back, the little hairs on my neck standing on end, when I’d been certain I was being watched. Maybe I wa
s. How else would whoever killed Oliver have known he was home alone?

  And then I was thinking of that internet search on my computer in the shop: Where to buy a taser in London.

  My stomach turned to oil. Could I be right?

  Could I really be someone’s fall guy?

  But who would do that?

  By the time I got to the fourth floor I was out of breath and my eyes were burning with tears again.

  I fumbled with the key at Josh’s door. I was desperate to be inside. Safe. But the moment before I slid it into the lock, I stopped. What if he was in there? Sometimes people post holiday photos to social media after the fact, and the last thing I needed was to let myself in and find him sitting on the sofa, looking at me. I held my breath, listening for movement inside: creaking floorboards, the hum of a TV, muffled conversation, the shutting of a fridge. But no, there was nothing.

  I pushed the key into the lock, turned it and went inside.

  That was the first time I’d been back there since we’d broken up nearly two years before. The room was hermetically sealed, the blinds all drawn, his dirty scrubs lay in a pile beside the washing machine in the kitchen, and his bed was unmade. The Brita filter was still sitting in the same spot it always had – just beside the sink – and the air smelled of damp, dust and the stale citrus of Josh’s cologne. There was something familiar, something comforting, about being there. It was as though I’d stepped into a time capsule to revisit an era when my life was simpler.

  I closed the door behind me, dropped my bag on the counter then pulled out my phone. There was a missed call from No Caller ID. It was the police, I knew it. DCI Holland was calling to find out where the hell I was. Dizziness overcame me, and I held onto the kitchen counter to stop myself from falling. And then I couldn’t hold it in anymore: the sobbing started up again. I crumpled to the floor, holding my hands over my mouth so if a neighbour was home they wouldn’t hear me, clenched my eyes shut and hot tears streamed down my face.

  Everything inside me wanted to call Tess – she’d know what to do – but I didn’t want to put her in that position. To make her lie to the police for me. She was a lawyer – the stakes were higher for her. But she was also still my ‘in case of emergency’ contact with Grace at the shop and so I knew eventually they’d call her. Eventually they’d start watching her flat. Which was precisely why I hadn’t gone back there.