The Strangers We Know

by Pip Drysdale

  ‘How do you take it?’ Brooke asked as she opened the fridge.

  ‘White, no sugar,’ I said. The room filled with the sounds of fridge doors being closed and cupboards being opened and cups being laid down on the counter.

  I was thinking of the phone in my bag. Tess had probably called again. She’d be so worried by now.

  ‘Here you go,’ Brooke said, handing me my cup and sitting on the sofa.

  I took it from her, my fingers burning from the heat.

  Brooke was looking at my bag sitting on the floor by my feet. ‘You pack light,’ she said, and I thought of how I went to Tess’s place just 48 hours ago thinking it would only be for the night.

  ‘I know – I sort of left in a rush,’ I said, taking a sip.

  Brooke was frowning. ‘So how did you find out he was cheating?’

  I shook my head and blinked back tears. But they welled in my eyes despite my best efforts. I was thinking of his body being wheeled out of the building and my helplessness, knowing I’d never see him again. But I couldn’t tell Brooke that and I needed to explain away my tears. And so I told her a half-truth.

  ‘I found him on a dating app.’

  Her eyes got big for a moment. She took in a deep breath. ‘Shit. That’s awful. When?’

  I shook my head as if trying to pry loose the memory. ‘A week or so ago.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, you didn’t say anything …’ Brooke said, taking a sip, her gaze shifting to my hand and then my wrist.

  ‘So that’s why no rings? Oh, and your wish bracelet’s gone …’

  I looked down at my bare wrist, remembering the night he put it on. The wishes.

  ‘I cut it off,’ I said. A hot tear rolled down my cheek and I wiped it away with the back of my hand. ‘You should have seen all the messages, Brooke, in his Facebook account.’ I was playing the cheated-on wife well.

  ‘You poor thing. You must be so angry. Wait – so you have his passwords? Amazing! Let’s use them and get our own back.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I replied with a faint smile. ‘But honestly I just want to think about anything else but all this for a bit.’

  Beat.

  ‘Of course, hon. Well, make yourself at home. I’m afraid all I have is this sofa, but it’s quite comfy.’ She tapped the sofa she was sitting on. Then she stood up and went over to a big cupboard by the bathroom and pulled out a dark blue towel. She came back and laid it over the edge of my sofa.

  ‘Why don’t you finish that up and go take a long hot bath. I can lend you some pyjamas. They might be a bit long,’ – she was a good three inches taller than me – ‘but they’ll do’.

  ‘Thanks, Brooke, that’d be great,’ I replied. And then I took my tea and headed to the bathroom.

  I closed the door behind me and turned the taps on and, as steam began to fill the room, I stared at my reflection in the mirror. My hair was hanging loose around my shoulders and needed a brush. My eyes were bloodshot. And my expression was tense. This was the first time since I’d seen Oliver on that stretcher that I’d had a chance to relax. To feel safe. The sound of water crashing into the bathtub echoed off the white tiles. As I sat on the cool porcelain and reached my hand into the water to test the temperature, my shoulders slumped forward and I started to sob.

  I wasn’t sure if Brooke could hear me on the other side of the door or not, but it was okay if she could: I had an excuse. I’d found my husband had been cheating on me. I’d found him on a dating app.

  I peeled off Tess’s olive green jacket, my white t-shirt and jeans, leaving them in a pile on the floor. Then I unhooked my bra and took off my underwear.

  And that’s when I saw it.

  My period.

  Of course I had my period: because I didn’t have enough problems right now. And my bag was in the other room, wasn’t it? I stared at Brooke’s bathroom cabinet. Was it very off-form to go through it looking for a tampon? I decided it was so I let out a deep breath, wiped the tears from my eyes, wrapped myself in that dark blue towel and pulled open the bathroom door. Brooke was still sitting there, on the sofa now, looking up at me quizzically. ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘Just need my bag.’ I smiled, taking my laptop out – water damage was not what I needed – and rushed back into the bathroom.

  I got there just in time to turn off the taps and avoid flooding Brooke’s bathroom. I hung my towel over the rack and, sitting on the loo, rifled through my bag. I felt my wedding rings, the USB, the red pen I’d taken to the audition, a little can of hairspray, some bits of paper – receipts? – and pulled out a hair band to tie back my hair. There had to be a tampon in here somewhere. Please, dear god, don’t let the plastic be broken.

  And then there it was, a small box.

  It wasn’t the brand I usually bought but I assumed it was one of Oliver’s panicky buys and that made me ache just to look at it. I opened the little black and blue box. It was full. Eight white tampons all neatly packed together. So when I pulled one out the other seven loosened, fell about the box a bit.

  Which meant I saw it.

  A little white circular disk.

  Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom.

  I blinked hard as I stared down at the inside of the box.

  What the fuck is this?

  I reached in and pulled it out, squinting down at it, my breath fast, my heart thumping. I turned it over, looking for some sort of logo or text. There was a rough bit on one edge, sort of like braille which read ‘Zoomzo’. I reached for my phone and watched the screen flash white as it slowly powered up. Then I turned it off airplane mode and pulled up Google.

  With shaking thumbs I typed in Z-o-o-m-z-o.

  And there it was: Zoomzo – the safest way to track your child or elderly parent via your smartphone.

  It was a tracking device.

  I immediately turned my phone back onto airplane mode then shut it off.

  I’d been right. Someone had been watching my every move.

  The room was thick with steam and I was glad that I was already sitting because I felt dizzy. I searched through my memory banks, through every film I’d watched, but there was nothing to guide me. No heroine’s journey for me to mimic, no scene to help me work out what to do next.

  It was just me, alone.

  I was in uncharted territory.

  I stared down at the disk. What should I do with it? If I left it here, wouldn’t that make it easy for Machado or Justin or whoever put it there to find me? But what excuse could I give Brooke for going out and dropping it somewhere?

  And I was very fucking scared to go outside in the dark alone. Inside this house, with the door locked and a witness, was the safest place for me.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  All I knew for sure was that I couldn’t tell Brooke.

  If she realised what sort of danger I’d brought with me, she’d never help me. She’d make me leave. And so I slid it back into the tampon box where I’d found it, turned off the taps and got into the bath.

  WEDNESDAY, 13 JUNE 2018 (6.07 AM)

  On the day I finally realised what was going on, I woke up early.

  Brooke’s bedroom light was still off so I guessed that meant she was still asleep. I was propped up on the sofa I’d slept on, my laptop balanced on my knees, screen glowing blue-white in the dark as I stared down at yet another bloody Excel spreadsheet. It was plugged into the wall – the battery had died but thankfully Brooke had a Mac charger. I’d been up for a couple of hours by then and could still smell the pizza we’d ordered when I got out of the bath. Mushroom. Capsicum. Cheese. First it made me hungry. Then it reminded me of Oliver. Of the pizza place on our corner we’d always loved – and the memory made something in my chest twist just a little more. Like my heart was being wrung out.

  Ouch. I shuffled my weight. My back ached and my bones felt out of whack. I must have slept in a weird position. But I was almost there, almost through all his files. I hadn’t found anything yet, but that didn’t change what I was going t
o do that day. Finding that tracking device in my bag – finding it hidden in a fucking box of tampons – had filled my veins with ice and left me with no doubt as to what I needed to do: go to the police.

  That USB stick was my last chance, but so far nothing on it looked suspect to me.

  I closed the spreadsheet and stared down at the list of folders as the time winked back at me from the upper right hand corner of my screen: 6.07 am. Shit. Brooke would be up soon.

  I told myself not to be mean, that she was well meaning and everything but, even so, I knew she’d slow me down again. Instead of being able to go through the rest of Oliver’s stuff strategically the night before, I’d spent it trying to fabricate reasons why I didn’t want to go through Oliver’s emails with her to ‘see what he’d been up to and how we could get back at him’. You see, it had occurred to me that I’d been really daft to log into his emails two days before in Starbucks – what if the police checked and saw they’d been accessed after his death. It wouldn’t look good. They might find out it was me. So I didn’t want to do it again. Which was why I’d been awake for two hours doing this alone in the silence and peace of dawn.

  But yes: 6.07 am. I was running out of time. I’d need to hand myself in soon or the police would issue an arrest warrant, if they hadn’t already …

  And so I scrolled down and clicked on the only folder I knew I’d be able to decipher quickly: ‘Photographs’.

  It was organised by events like ‘Christmas 2018’, ‘Honeymoon’ and ‘Wedding’, the other folders simply named by year.

  They dated back to 2012 but I didn’t have that sort of time so I started at 2014. I was looking for a picture of Machado. The plan was simple now: I’d give DCI Holland the USB stick full of Oliver’s files, tell her of my suspicions about Justin, and hopefully show her a picture of Machado. Because, no matter what Justin said, I’d seen Oliver’s expression whenever Machado’s name came up: hollow, twisted, pale. He wasn’t just an ordinary business associate. And Justin wouldn’t have tried to pretend he didn’t exist if there wasn’t a suspicious reason.

  But all I was scrolling through were coffee cups and wine glasses, sunsets, shots in the dark where only partial faces were visible, shots with people I’d never seen before. It was frustrating – at this point I would have settled on a shot of that man who’d come into the shop that day. Something. Anything. But I kept going. Watching. Waiting. Soon I came to 2015. A holiday. Summer. His brother and mother. They were in Greece somewhere: lots of white paint, blue seas and red and pink flowers in terracotta pots. I never got to know Oliver’s brother properly – we’d met once, briefly, just after I met Oliver – but I knew he was always in some sort of trouble and so Oliver had always felt the full burden of trying to take care of his mother. I was pretty sure that was what drove him in large part to be so successful despite the odds – there were people relying on him.

  I stared down at his mother’s face: dyed auburn hair with grey roots, green eyes like Oliver’s, deep furrows above her brow. She was a kind woman. The last time I saw her was at her home in Norfolk. Sunday lunch in early January. Beef Wellington. Then we’d smoked a cigarette in the garden, she said how sad she was that she hadn’t been at the wedding. I’d told her I was sorry then tried to make up for it by gushing about how much I loved her son. My chest contracted at the thought of her hearing the news. It would kill her. God, she wouldn’t think I’d done it, would she? Wouldn’t believe that of me? Surely she’d stand up for me, her daughter-in-law.

  I kept scrolling. There were some of Oliver and Justin in Brazil on a business trip. They looked happy. Victorious. Like they’d just done something clever. Oliver was tanned, just like when he got back last time: his eyes sparkling green against the bronze of his skin. And in that moment I could smell him again: ylang-ylang, spice. We were back in our bed again. Everything ached. I kept scrolling.

  Brooke’s bedroom door creaked open. She was up.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, my voice crackly from lack of sleep.

  ‘Hey,’ she replied, wandering through to the bathroom as I looked back to my screen.

  I was at 2016 now. The loo flushed from the bathroom and the shower was turned on. I reached beside me and took a sip of water.

  I was looking at pictures of Christmas 2015 now, one of Oliver sitting on a rollercoaster with his arm around a girl, and I recognised her: dark hair, long sun-kissed limbs, happy smile.

  It was Alyssa.

  My throat tightened as I thought of her Facebook memorial page. I thought of how Justin described her: unbalanced, batshit crazy. How he said she’d committed suicide. Was I really somehow responsible for that?

  I scrolled slowly, drinking in her form, her lines, the woman Oliver had loved before me, and I winced. He looked so happy with her. And Alyssa, she was so vibrant in those pictures, so different to the woman I’d seen in Sainsbury’s. How does a transformation like that happen?

  A few minutes later the bathroom door opened and Brooke emerged in a white towelling robe, her hair wrapped in a blue towel. I was still staring at the screen but was aware of her moving into the kitchen.

  ‘Tea?’ she asked, flicking on the kettle.

  ‘That’d be great,’ I replied, still scrolling through the years, staring back at the screen.

  It was March 2016. Alyssa was with the daffodils now. Alyssa in Paris – I didn’t know they’d gone to Paris. Oliver had never mentioned it. But he’d left her for me, so he must have loved me more. Then there was the two of them in a vast green field, hills behind them, a crisp blue sky with just a wisp of cloud. Where were they? Then came another, this time indoors, and it must have been taken at Easter because Alyssa was holding an egg, sunshine flaring off the tinfoil.

  The hum of the kettle filled the room. Then the sound of the fridge being opened, a drawer. I scrolled down through the pictures. And it was in a strange sort of slow motion that I saw the next shot. Because this one was not of Alyssa and Oliver at all.

  This time Oliver was standing with another girl.

  A girl in a red jumper and a short black skirt.

  Her face, her features had been reshuffled slightly, hardened by time, but I recognised her face immediately.

  Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom.

  It was Brooke.

  Yes.

  The same Brooke who was making me a cup of tea.

  My breath caught in my throat as I squinted at the screen.

  I had to be wrong.

  I looked up at Brooke and back down at the screen.

  My throat grew tight as I tried to set my expression so she wouldn’t know what I was looking at.

  Because it was definitely her. She was a bit younger, her hair was a bit longer and messed up by the wind, but there was no doubt about it. My stomach clenched as I looked up at Brooke.

  Everything was in high definition now, like I was stuck in one of those clever TVs where you can see the actors’ pores.

  The sound of water being poured onto a teabag was crystal clear. As she came over to me and handed me my cup, it was as though she were moving in slow motion. I focused on my breathing and did what I could to control my thoughts. I needed to think good things or she’d know something was wrong: Brooke is my really good friend, Brooke has helped me, Brooke is lovely …

  But even so, I could feel my jaw shake.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

  Fuck.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, forcing myself to meet her eye. Brooke is my really good friend, Brooke has helped me, Brooke is lovely … ‘I’m just really upset about Oliver. And I didn’t really sleep.’

  I took a sip of tea and my ears rang. Shit, should I be drinking this? What if she had put something in it? But she was watching me so I had no choice but to swallow as I wondered why in the hell was there a picture of Brooke with Oliver in his files? How did she know him? How did she know him all the way back in 2016?

  I scanned my mind for a logical explanation. Perhaps this was some sort of six degrees
of separation phenomenon at play?

  But no, that didn’t make sense. I’d shown her pictures of Oliver before so she knew what he looked like. If she’d met him, she would have recognised him. So why hadn’t she mentioned it?

  Now, there’s an instinct in all of us that wants us to survive. It’s the same instinct that kicked in when I was sixteen – once his hand grew so tight around my mouth that I couldn’t breathe, it told me to submit. And right now it was screaming No, Charlie, do not say anything.

  But Brooke was looking at me funny. So I closed down the photographs, shut the lid of my computer, picked up my towel and said as calmly as I could ‘I better shower.’ Then I picked up my bag, the small pile of folded clothing I’d left on the floor from the day before and headed through to the bathroom.

  I just needed to get away from her. I needed to think.

  I closed the door behind me and looked around. I turned on the shower and quickly pulled off Brooke’s pink pyjama set, dropping it on the floor.

  Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom.

  I ran through everything in my mind. Brooke had met me at Pilates. Had that been on purpose? Had she intentionally befriended me? I thought back to all our conversations, to how she’d probed about Oliver’s business. To how she’d seemed such a willing audience when I told her about what we did together, what our couple-y routines were. Shit. Was that why Oliver had wanted me to be so careful on Instagram, so she couldn’t find us? Was she some insane stalker who was in love with him?

  But I’d been careful. How could she possibly have known which Pilates studio I went to?

  I racked my brain. I’d posted a photograph or two on Instagram but they had always been bland, lacking in identifying features, just feet in straps, so how had she known?

  I tested the temperature then stepped into the shower, letting the water flow over my face. If she was listening at the door I needed her to think I was showering, like nothing was wrong.

  As I closed my eyes and let the water cascade over my face, I could see in my mind’s eye the pictures I’d posted on Instagram. One was a selfie, lying on the bed. Just the black leather of the reformer bed behind me. The other was of my feet in the straps. Behind them was just a ceiling and a fan … nothing. Hang on. The straps. Shit. My memory was recalling something white on them. The studio’s name was printed in white on the straps.