by Louise Voss
‘Perhaps.’
I eventually terminated the call, my toes curling so much that I almost got cramp in my feet. But I was relieved at my impromptu decision. I had Ed back, and now it seemed like we had things to look forward to once more. And if, God forbid, it turned out to be a blip, then all the more reason we should make the most of any quality time we had left together.
I couldn’t wait to get back to my newly cured husband to discuss possible holiday plans. I left work an hour early and drove home, thinking about where we could go.
As I parked the car behind the house and walked round to the front door, I was imagining the zing of a Dark and Stormy cocktail on my tastebuds. I could hear the mushy swoosh of crushed ice as I stirred it with a straw, the shock of the cold glass on my bare belly as I lay on a day bed on a hot, empty beach…
Our house was quiet and chilly so I switched on the central heating and made tea, saying a mental farewell to my vision of baking sun and cool turquoise waters and wondering instead, as I waited for the kettle to boil, how Ed had got on in London. He hadn’t replied to my earlier text but maybe he’d still been with Bill. Surely even a late lunch would be winding up by now? I’d got so used to Ed always being home, and to the daily feeling of trepidation about what I’d be coming back to, being without it felt like something was missing, like the realisation that you’d left a full bag of groceries in the supermarket car park. Even now I knew he was so much better, that sense hadn’t dissipated at all.
I called him, but his mobile went straight to voicemail.
‘Hi sweetie. How did it go? Just wondering which train you’re getting, so I can come and pick you up from Hampton Court. Let me know! Dying to hear how you got on! Call me! Love you.’
I suppressed a slight feeling of annoyance that he hadn’t rung me when his lunch finished. Then I had the other, worse, niggle of worry I got every time I didn’t know where he was. What if the recovery had only been temporary and the Pick’s had returned? Or Bill was wrong? Imagine going through all this, for Ed to be back on his slow decline to insanity, hope cruelly wrenched away from us just as we were getting used to having him better again…
My phone bleeped – but it wasn’t Ed. It was a text from April: Hello darling, just to say, check your emails – I’ve just sent you one Xxxx
I opened the lid of my laptop and went to Outlook Express, where one message in bold waited for me, entitled ‘Guess What?!?’ It was nice to see April being excited about something after being so grief-stricken for the past six months. I clicked on it and read, with raised eyebrows:
Darling Lynn,
Please don’t be cross with me but I’ve done something a bit impulsive. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, or say goodbye, but if I had, I might not have been able to go through with it.
I’ve gone to Australia!! I only decided a few days ago, after the memorial – which, as you probably saw, was so unbearably painful that I want to put as many miles between Mike’s death and me as I can. Of course I know that I won’t ever be able to travel far enough to forget him, not even if I flew to the moon. I’ll never forget what we had and the life we made together. He was my soul mate and I haven’t even begun to get used to life without him.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to do anything stupid. I’ve got the boys to think of – even if they are all grown up. I want to be a granny (a glamorous one, of course!). Maybe one day I’ll meet someone else and get married again although I can’t imagine that right now.
You’ve always been such a good friend to me, Lynn. I do love you, you know, and I’m sorry. For leaving without saying goodbye, I mean. Although of course I will be back! Not sure when, probably in a few months. Do you remember that book we read in book club last year, Wild? About that woman whose mum died and she ended up walking a thousand miles down the Pacific coast, up and down mountains, on her own? At the time I thought she must be mad, but now I can really see why she wanted to do it. To remove yourself physically to try and heal yourself emotionally.
As soon as I get there (I’m on a layover in Singapore at the moment, typing this on one of the airport computers) I’ll Skype you – assuming there’s internet of course. Apparently it can be very unreliable.
I’m going to a sort of yoga commune – no, that sounds too hippie – more like a retreat place, run by this guy Doug, an old school friend of Mike’s. He heard the news about his death and messaged me on LinkedIn. It’s on a sheep farm in the outback. Can you imagine? He offered me a free place for as long as I want, to get my head together. Meditation and massages and – best of all – a complete change of scenery.
Again, I’m really sorry I didn’t say goodbye in person but you know me, I hate goodbyes, and I think you’ve seen enough of me sobbing all over you to last a lifetime, so I just decided to take off. Also I was a bit worried you might try and talk sense into me and I’d end up not going … I hope I’m not making a horrible mistake. I wish you could have come with me but I know you can’t leave Ed.’
‘Well, you could’ve asked,’ I said out loud when I got to that bit, blinking. ‘Bit sudden, isn’t it?’ I was hurt that April thought I’d try and talk her out of it – why would I do that? Travel was an excellent idea.
It’s the only thing I think might take my mind off poor Mike, just a little bit. I still can’t believe he’s gone and my heart breaks into more bits every morning I wake up without him. We always wanted to go to Ayers Rock together and never got round to it, so I guess I will just have to go for both of us, now the memorial’s finally over…’
I sighed. It was tough for her all right.
The boys have been supportive. They’re so busy with work that they said they were glad I was going to get a break, and that they felt guilty that they only see me once every couple of weeks. I do hate the idea of being a burden on them, so it’s best all round if I take off for a bit. As I said, I’m not sure when I’ll be back – got an open return.
Love you, sweetie. Hugs to you both, A XXX
I wasn’t sure what to think. I was happy for April, that she was escaping and doing something proactive to take away the dull ache of mourning – but it was so sudden! Who went to Australia on a whim like that? I hoped she wouldn’t regret it. And I would miss her.
I wanted to tell Ed, which reminded me about his radio silence, so I texted him again: GETTING WORRIED HONEY, PLEASE CALL? XXX PS. GUESS WHAT, APRIL’S GONE TO AUSTRALIA!!!
I rang several more times, but each time the phone went straight to voicemail as if it was switched off or, more likely, had run out of battery. Ed’s phone had a notoriously short battery life.
I ran upstairs to check by his side of the bed and was impressed to see that the phone charger was missing. Good. Hopefully he’d be able to plug in his phone on the train home. Lots of train carriages had sockets these days.
I lit a fire, made myself an omelette, fed the cat, had a glass of wine – but just one, assuming I’d be driving to the station later on.
Eight o’clock came and went, then nine, then ten. Perhaps he’d lost his phone altogether, and he never could remember my mobile number to borrow someone else’s phone and call me.
He knew the home phone number though, and he hadn’t called that…
I Googled the Chelsea Clinic on my phone and left a voicemail on their answering machine asking for Bill to call me urgently – but it was a Friday, so he might not get it until Monday. Then I tried ‘Dr Bill Brown at the Chelsea Clinic’, but that yielded only the same switchboard numbers.
Then I went into our office, noting that Ed had taken his laptop with him. That wasn’t so unusual. He’d always liked watching movies on the train into town. Maybe his old habits were really returning, I thought.
But then some impulse – some residual suspicion; some part of my police training that I would never lose – made me slide open the drawer in his office that housed all our important documents. I hadn’t looked in it for ages. There was a hanging file for birth and exam certificates, mort
gage stuff and one for passports and driving licences. There was my familiar green leather passport cover, the one that used to belong to my mother that I appropriated when she died.
Ed’s passport was missing.
I lay awake till dawn, experiencing Ed’s absence more keenly than at any other time we’d ever been apart. With each dark hour that ticked slowly past, I felt more guilty for the days during his illness that I’d relished being alone in the big double bed, with him locked in the spare room. When I eventually drifted off, I woke myself up half an hour later out of the recurring nightmare I hadn’t had for several years. I used to get it regularly and I always woke with tears on my face: I was out in the garden practising my taekwondo kicks and punches, but in the dream I was always eight months pregnant. I kicked so hard that the foetus inside me just fell out and got swept away on a great bubbling river of thick blood, waving its little arms and calling to me as it vanished, the blood-river flowing into the Thames and tinting it dark pink, the baby gone for ever.
And now it looked as if Ed was gone too. How cruel would it be, that after the unspeakable relief of his cure, he’d just got up and left me?
Unless he’d had an accident? The missing passport wasn’t necessarily significant – in fact, I convinced myself that it wasn’t at all. Ed hadn’t used his passport for years, since his fear of flying precluded us from going outside of the UK on holiday. It had probably just got mislaid, or was still in a bag from the last time we went abroad, whenever that had been.
I racked my brains, trying to chase the nightmare out of my mind. Spain, in 2009? No, the villa holiday in 2011 with Mike and April, that had been the last time.
I decided that if he hadn’t returned by 6am I would start calling around our friends to—
I suddenly sat bolt upright in bed and moaned out loud in horror at the thought that I should have had hours ago. A memory that either through subconscious fear or negligence I hadn’t entertained: a memory of April, just a few months ago, ringing me to ask if Ed and I had seen Mike, because he hadn’t come home from his fishing trip.
Mike hadn’t come home, and was found the next morning with his throat cut.
Ed hadn’t come home and wasn’t contactable…
I snatched up the home phone next to the bed and dialled three digits with shaking fingers, my diamond engagement ring sparkling in the weak morning light coming through the curtains.
‘Police, please.’
30
My heart sank when I saw that it was the same rictus-smile police officer who’d attended after Ed punched Alvin; PC ‘call me Martine’ Knocker. I was staring out of my bedroom window at the river when she and another man walked up the garden path. The other man was a burly guy with a bright-red face and really long legs and Martine had to scuttle to keep up with him. I noticed she was looking worried while simultaneously smiling – which didn’t inspire a lot of confidence in me.
I looked down and realised vaguely I was still in my fleecy pink onesie. I didn’t want them to have to inform me that my husband was dead while I resembled an overgrown toddler. I stripped it off, ducking out of sight behind the window. What did you wear to be told your husband had been murdered? Jeans? A dress?
They didn’t tell me anything straightaway. Martine Knocker made me a cup of disgustingly sweet tea and put it on the table without using a coaster. Ed would be mad when he saw that. If he saw it.
‘We have no reason to believe that any harm has come to your husband,’ said the red-faced policeman, Constable Laurie, in between sneezes. He’d started sneezing as soon as he got in the front room. ‘Sorry. Cat allergy,’ he added.
Relief flooded over me. Ed wasn’t dead … at least as far as they knew.
Martine handed her colleague a tissue out of a packet she took from her tunic pocket and he mopped his eyes and blew his nose, as if I was the one breaking bad news to him. I lifted a protesting Timmy up under his armpits and shut him out of the room, then sat down on the sofa, automatically curling my legs under me and cradling my mug like I was about to watch TV.
‘So, Mrs Naismith,’ said Laurie, taking out a notebook. ‘Let’s get some information, if we may. When did you last see your husband?’
‘Yesterday morning, about eleven-thirty. I took him to Hampton Court station to get a train into central London. He had a lunch appointment with an old medical school friend of his called Bill.’
‘Is it safe for him to travel on his own?’ Martine looked disapproving through her smile. At least she had remembered something from our last encounter, although I didn’t appreciate her censorious tone.
‘As a matter of fact, he started on a clinical trial eight months ago that’s having astonishing results.’ I hesitated. I wasn’t supposed to discuss the trial. But surely the police didn’t count? ‘It’s strictly confidential – but because Bill is the doctor who’s running the trial, and he’s an old friend, he told us off the record: Ed’s condition really has improved dramatically. Of course I wouldn’t have dreamt of letting him travel alone, not until recently. It’s like a miracle. But as I said, we can’t talk about it publicly because we signed a confidentiality agreement. He’s like a different person already. That’s what they were meeting to celebrate.’
‘Goodness!’ Martine said. ‘That’s great news. Perhaps there’s hope for us all!’
I glared at her. She sounded so bloody flippant.
‘What restaurant were they going to?’ Laurie asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I confessed. ‘He didn’t tell me.’
‘I see. Well, where is this trial held, and what’s this Bill’s surname?’
‘I don’t know if it’s the same for the other people on the trial, but Ed was being treated at the Chelsea Clinic. Dr Bill Brown.’
‘What time did he say he was coming back? Did you try and get hold of him?’
‘Yes, of course. But I just assumed his phone had run out of battery. He’d taken his charger with him so I thought he might plug his phone in on the train home. He hadn’t told me what time he’d be back but if he ever goes up to London – I mean, when he used to, before he got ill – he would usually get a train back about eight o’clock. He likes to wait until the worst of the rush hour is over.’
‘That’s a long lunch,’ Martine commented. More tacit disapproval. I wanted to slap her.
‘He probably went to a gallery or something afterwards. He sometimes does.’
‘Can you give me any more details about Dr Brown?’
‘I can’t, I’m afraid. That’s all I know really. I met him for the first time on Thursday in his consulting rooms but Ed’s been having monthly appointments with him or one of his colleagues since October last year … I’ve left a message at the clinic as I don’t have a number for Bill, but it’s closed at weekends.’
‘We’ll contact them as well, of course. Does Ed go up London a lot?’ Laurie asked.
Up London. Ed hated it when people said that. I gritted my teeth.
‘Obviously, like I said, he didn’t go at all when he was ill. Before then he used to go up to spend the day with his son sometimes – or we both would, make a day of it and visit museums or galleries, maybe meet up with friends.’
‘And you weren’t tempted to go with him to this lunch?’
I pulled at a loose thread in the sofa cushion. ‘I had to work.’ For some reason I didn’t want to admit I hadn’t been invited.
‘What do you do, Mrs Naismith?’ asked Laurie.
‘It’s Lynn, please. I’m the music administrator at Hampton University, organising concerts. But I think you already knew that, from when Constable Knocker here had to come round before, when Ed was ill.’
Stress was making me scratchy.
‘Apologies,’ he said, scribbling hard. ‘And when did you start getting worried about Ed?’
I thought I heard a trace of censure in his voice too – sort of, Why didn’t you call us last night? But I couldn’t blame him. That’s what I would have thought when
I was a PC.
‘I was a bit worried when I didn’t hear from him yesterday evening, but I thought they’d probably just gone somewhere to carry on drinking after lunch, or to an exhibition. Lost his phone, didn’t think to ring me when he was with Bill, missed the last train back … It was only this morning when I woke up about five and he still hadn’t called – and that was when I remembered what happened to…’
Suddenly I found I couldn’t say it. ‘To…’
The officers were leaning forward with pained, expectant expressions.
‘To his friend Mike Greening?’ Martine supplied, and I nodded.
‘I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before. I feel terrible! Mike’s not even been dead six months but it just seems so far from reality, that someone could have done that to him. But nobody would hurt Ed, nobody!’
I shut my eyes, no longer angry but close to tears.
‘I sincerely hope not, Lynn, but we have to look at the coincidence of your husband knowing Mike Greening…’
‘I know.’
Just because I couldn’t imagine that anyone would hurt Ed didn’t mean that nobody would.
‘Let’s be positive for a moment?’
Let’s, I thought.
‘We checked before we came and there have been no reports round here involving a man meeting your husband’s description. I would assume that someone would have found him by now, had there been an accident or incident. We’ll check the hospitals, and speak to the Met to make sure no one’s called anything in up London. If it weren’t for Mike Greening’s murder I would say it’s actually too early to be worried at all.’
‘I’m sorry to have bothered you,’ I said. ‘You’re right. He’ll probably show up at any minute…’
I stared out at the towpath, willing Ed to materialise. Should I mention his absent passport? They hadn’t asked. And if I did mention it, they’d immediately assume that it was an option that he could have run away and therefore wouldn’t take it so seriously.
