The Old You

by Louise Voss

  ‘Just go through that door and straight up the stairs.’

  I thanked him and knocked at the door marked Private in the bank’s tiny lobby. There was no reply so I tried the handle and it opened.

  ‘Hello?’ I called up the stairs. Huge, bold oil paintings lined the walls all the way up, most of them hung crookedly and I had to resist the urge to straighten them as I passed. There was another door at the top – again, open.

  ‘Ellen? It’s me, Lynn Naismith. Are you there?’

  A voice called back from the depths of the flat: ‘Come in.’

  I hesitated before stepping inside, in the nervous knowledge that I was about to meet someone who really, really hated my husband.

  41

  I perched on the end of a sofa covered in a wrinkled Indian throw, between two malevolent-looking cats that flanked me like bodyguards. Ellen was hopping around the adjacent kitchenette on crutches, throwing teabags into mugs and boiling the kettle, wheezing audibly. I had already offered to help twice but had been turned down. Surely the woman would let me carry the tea in, though?

  The flat smelled of patchouli, cat, cigarettes and old food. Perhaps it was because Ellen was currently too incapacitated to clean, but I suspected it always smelled like this. There were tacky china cats and dogs of different sizes on every available surface, most of them covered with a thick layer of dust. Several lay on the carpet, having presumably been batted off by a bored cat. I itched to pick them up.

  ‘So your husband’s away? Must be hard to cope on crutches without him to help.’

  Ellen wasn’t especially fat but she had an absolutely massive bottom that swayed and banged into cupboard doors, as if her hips had been modelled on the wide bolsters on the dresses of Queen Elizabeth I’s time.

  ‘I’m getting used to it,’ she said in a high, slightly winsome voice, propping one crutch against the kitchen counter to reach for a plate and a packet of biscuits. ‘He’ll be back in a couple of days.’

  She coughed and the crutch promptly slid sideways and clattered to the floor. I jumped up to retrieve it. Ellen hadn’t volunteered any information as to where he was or what he was doing. I’d already gathered that this was not going to be a relaxing chat.

  ‘How did you hurt your leg?’ I asked, eyeing the bright-blue plaster encasing Ellen’s lower left leg.

  ‘Slipped on the cobbles outside, nothing dramatic. Broke my ankle.’ She had some kind of regional accent, pronouncing ‘nothing’ as ‘nuffink,’ although I couldn’t work out which part of the country. Possibly estuary mixed with West Country, I concluded.

  ‘Ouch. Shall I take those?’ I gestured at the two mugs of tea and plate of biscuits, and Ellen nodded, her cloud of frizzy iron-grey hair gently undulating.

  There was a long wiry hair attached to the inside of one of the mugs, so when I returned to sit down I passed that tea along the coffee table towards Ellen’s end of the sofa. Ellen heaved herself down and propped her foot on the end of the low table. Her toes were long and unpleasant, yellowing nails and sprouting black hairs, like something intimate that oughtn’t be on display.

  Ellen coughed again. There was an inhaler lying on the sideboard across the room and I caught her glance at it.

  ‘Here, let me.’ I leaped up again and fetched it, and Ellen took a long puff.

  ‘Breathing problems AND a broken ankle. I’m a wreck.’

  I laughed, thinking she was joking, but then realised she wasn’t. Breeving problems. Estuary; yes, that was it. In a weird sort of way, Ellen was family. Had been Ed’s family. He’d never really spoken about her, but I could immediately tell how much he would have disliked her – even before she started accusing him of being a murderer. He had no time for whingers, smokers – with the exception of Mike – or winsomeness and my first impression of Ellen was that she well and truly ticked all those boxes.

  I briefly tried and failed to imagine a family Christmas, Ellen and Ed facing off over the turkey, Ellen with fag in mouth, Ed with carving knife in hand…

  ‘So,’ Ellen said, regarding me with small round eyes, once her breathing had returned to normal. ‘Ed Naismith. You know he killed my sister?’

  That’s my husband you’re talking about. ‘I don’t believe he did,’ I said evenly. ‘He was devastated when Shelagh disappeared.’

  Ellen snorted. ‘Yeah, right. Devastated. Mr Am-dram himself. He put on a good performance, sure. Bet he practised it for hours in front of a mirror before he spoke to the press.’

  ‘The police thoroughly investigated him on the basis of your claims.’

  ‘He had no alibi!’

  ‘He did. He was at home with Ben that night. And more importantly, Gavin Garvey confessed. What makes you think Ed killed her?’

  ‘He was having an affair. Shelagh found out. Then she vanished.’

  I half-reared up out of my seat. ‘No, he wasn’t!’

  ‘How would you know?’

  I thought of the case notes and police interviews I had spent hours and hours reading, the illicit searches of Ed’s house I had conducted, the discreet pillow talk I’d initiated, the frantic forays into his mobile phone every time he was out of the room, my heart thumping through fear of discovery and my lust for him.

  ‘I just would. I would have known.’

  There had never been any indication of an affair, never. Ed and I had locked eyes and known pretty much from that moment that the other was the The One. Unless the affair had been and gone by then?

  ‘Who was this so-called affair meant to have been with?’

  There was a large mirror hanging on the wall opposite where we sat, tilted downwards slightly so that I could see us both reflected in it. Next to Ellen I looked tiny, as if someone had taken a laser and shrunk me to fifty percent of Ellen’s size. Honey, I shrunk the wife, I thought.

  I missed Ed, suddenly and fiercely.

  Ellen shrugged and stuffed a whole shortbread biscuit into her mouth. ‘Some slapper,’ she said through a mouthful of crumbs.

  ‘You’re wrong,’ I said. ‘He and I got together a few months after Shelagh went – and before you think it, no, I had never met him before, I’d only just moved to the area. We fell in love pretty fast. We were inseparable.’

  There were some framed photos on the mantelpiece, dusty and faded-looking; one of Shelagh and Ellen in their teens or twenties, sitting on a picnic rug on a windswept beach. Although I couldn’t see any resemblance now, I would have known from that picture they were related. They had the same dimples and the same-shaped chin. Ellen had obviously drawn the short straw in the familial looks department, though.

  There was a photo of Ben, too, when he was a boy of five or six, in a wetsuit on a beach. A tubby little boy in an identical wetsuit stood next to him, one arm draped casually around his shoulders. He looked slightly familiar. Ben had been fifteen when I met him, and I didn’t recall that any of his friends had been in his life since primary school. And yet there was something about the large mole on the boy’s chubby cheek that definitely rang some kind of a bell in my memory. I was about to comment on it when Ellen delivered a vicious verbal parry:

  ‘Inseparable? Don’t you think that’s a bit weird, for a man who was allegedly “devastated” that his wife had gone missing? If he was all that devastated, he’d never have fallen for someone else straightaway.’

  I felt breathless, winded, like someone had swung a wrecking ball into my belly. Of course this had occurred to me at the time, how could it not? But our feelings for each other had developed so fast – helped by the tiny ball of cells in my womb rolling and growing – and the more time had gone on, the more I had rationalised it to myself as True Love. But stated so bluntly like that, it sounded utterly damning. Damning of Ed, of our relationship, of me.

  ‘He said that he was devastated,’ I eventually managed, in a voice that didn’t sound anything like my normal one. ‘But lots of men who lose a partner just want to find someone else as soon as they can. It’s not unusual, it h
appens all the time. Besides, he told me privately that he and Shelagh had lots of problems. They weren’t happy together. Obviously he was really worried,’ I emphasised hastily, ‘that something might have happened to her, and upset because Benjy had lost his mum, but Ed told me that their marriage was on the rocks and had been for ages before Shelagh left. He’s sure she killed herself.’

  I was explaining far too much, far too frantically.

  Ellen rolled her eyes as if I was a particularly stupid small child – and at that moment, this was exactly what I felt like. ‘Well, then, it was entirely likely that he would have been having an affair.’

  ‘He wasn’t!’ I repeated, feeling uncharacteristically like bursting into tears. ‘But if Shelagh thought he was, then doesn’t that make it more likely that she did commit suicide, given that she had a history of mental instability?’

  Now Ellen glared at me with open hostility. ‘She did not have a history of mental instability.’

  I was dying to tell her that I’d seen Shelagh’s medical notes and that the woman had been on all sorts of anti-depressants. Ellen’s nostrils were flaring with either rage or misery and she had begun to wheeze again as she spoke:

  ‘Why are you defending him, anyway? He’s clearly done the dirty on you as well. Don’t you want to catch him and get him put away?’

  The ‘trying to keep calm’ thing wasn’t working – even if what she said was exactly what I did want, if it turned out he’d ‘done the dirty’ on me. But I wasn’t going to admit that to Ellen.

  ‘He’s my husband. I love him and, I have to say, I resent you hurling accusations in his direction when he’s not even here to defend himself. You were the one who put him through hell the first time round, insisting that he’d harmed Shelagh, sending the police to investigate him even after they’d already been convinced he had nothing to do with it!’

  I had to make a massive effort to keep my voice from rising, to keep it together.

  Ellen, meanwhile, had picked up her crutch and was pointing the end of it at me, as if she wanted to machine-gun me down.

  ‘You’re still with him?’ she said, disgust imprinted on her features. ‘In that case, I want you to leave my flat. Now. I thought you wanted help bringing him to justice, not help in letting him off the hook for whatever crimes he’s committed since! I heard that his mate Mike had met a sticky end and you know what my first thought was? Ed. Who else? He’s done it once, why wouldn’t he do it again? What you need to work out is why. And I’d watch my back if I was you. He cottons that you’re onto him and you’ll be next.’

  I stood up, blood roaring around my head and my heart pounding painfully in my chest. I wanted to grab the end of the crutch and jam it right back into Ellen’s pasty face.

  How fucking dare you, you pathetic, mean-spirited old witch! I shouted at top volume inside my head. Externally, I managed a strangled, ‘Don’t worry, I wouldn’t stay here listening to this bullshit if you paid me. He’s a sick man, and he’s gone missing. I thought you might be able to help me, but I was clearly wrong.’

  I hefted my backpack onto my shoulder and headed for the stairs. Ellen’s voice followed me, suddenly strident enough that anyone in the bank downstairs would have heard every word: ‘Shelagh was terrified of him. She told me numerous times that she was scared he was going to kill her. And he did! He did.’

  I stumbled out of the flat, down the stairs and past a small, curious-looking queue of customers stretching out of the open door of the bank.

  42

  I was shaking so much I marched straight into the pub next door and ordered a double brandy, downing it at the bar in one huge gulp, much to the curiosity of the barman. I shuddered as it burned and shocked my gullet.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asked. He was old and grizzled, tired-looking with a red nose and rheumy eyes. A once-white apron was wrapped around his thin midriff, finger-shaped coal stains over where each of his hipbones was.

  I nodded. ‘Fine. Thanks. Can you tell me where Blacks Hotel is?’

  ‘’Bout four doors that way, across the road,’ he said, jerking a thumb out of the door. My heart sank. I’d only booked myself into a hotel practically opposite Ellen’s flat. Great.

  It wasn’t Ellen’s fault that she’d lost her sister, nor broken her leg. OK, so the woman wasn’t the most pleasant person I’d ever met, but I supposed that I too would end up fairly bitter if I suspected my only sister’s husband had killed her and nobody would listen to my suspicions about it.

  Except the police had listened. They’d taken Ellen’s accusations seriously enough to send me in to investigate, spending thousands on an undercover operation lasting over a year.

  I had been utterly convinced that Ed was innocent.

  Or rather … I had convinced myself that I was convinced Ed was innocent.

  Not the same thing at all.

  And that was before Ed had been ill for a year, then miraculously got well again – then vanished. That was before he threatened me in the throes – or under the guise – of some kind of dementia psychosis, before Mike was murdered, before April suddenly disappeared.

  I left the pub and walked slightly unsteadily along the road, hoping Ellen wasn’t looking out of her front windows. Why the hell had I bothered with the expense of a hotel? My business in Alderney had been concluded in less than half an hour, I could’ve been back at Maddie’s in time for dinner.

  Blacks Hotel did not look like a hotel. A discreet sign was all that identified it from the outside as anything other than a large stone townhouse. I pushed open the door and was greeted by a rotund lady of indeterminate age in a tweed skirt. There was no reception desk, just a tiny front room with an honesty bar, two armchairs and a tea tray.

  ‘Lynn Naismith, I’m guessing?’ the lady asked, smiling, her eyes disappearing into ruffles of wrinkles. ‘You’re in Hibernian.’

  I hoped I wasn’t emitting brandy fumes when I opened my mouth to confirm my identity. The lady showed me up a very narrow winding staircase, which made me glad I didn’t have my big suitcase with me.

  ‘Here we are!’ she said, opening wide another low door and gesturing for me to go in first. The room was small and cosy – tartan wallpaper, a matching tartan rug on the bed, and a large painting of a thistle on the wall.

  ‘Very Scottish,’ I said. ‘Oh – I get it – Hibernian.’

  The woman laughed as though I had made a hysterical joke and I suddenly felt very tired again.

  As soon as I was alone, I flopped down on my back, sinking into the mattress and trying to gather my thoughts about the disastrous meeting with Ellen.

  What had I hoped to get out of it? I suspected the reason I’d felt so angry was because I’d hoped that, in the intervening years, Ellen had come to regret her misjudged vigilantism towards Ed. But if anything, she was even more bitter. And in accusing Ed of having something to do with Mike’s murder, too, she’d tapped straight into my own worst fears. The woman was either insane, or horribly prescient.

  I pulled my mobile out of the back pocket of my jeans and found the email from Alvin, with a hyperlink to his phone number. I pressed it and heard it ring.

  ‘Professor Alvin Cornelius.’

  It always amused me how he insisted on his full title. He loved people to know that he was a Prof. ‘Hi, Alvin. It’s Lynn. Naismith.’

  ‘Lynn, hello! How are you?’ There were faint traffic sounds in the background.

  ‘I’m all right, thanks. I’m in Alderney, at the moment, in the Channel Islands.’

  ‘Oh! Holiday?’

  ‘Um, no. Not exactly. Although I did come over to Jersey to spend a few days with my best friend.’

  ‘Any word from Ed?’

  ‘Nothing, thanks for asking. I got your email. Is now a good time to chat?’

  ‘Sure. Give me a second, I’m driving. Let me put you on speaker…’

  His voice faded out and then returned, sounding more echoey. ‘Can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes, tha
t’s fine. It’s so weird you knew Ed all those years ago. I hope this isn’t too personal, but I was wondering – what was he like, when he was married to his first wife?’

  There was a brief silence and I thought I’d been cut off, but then heard a distant siren.

  ‘Well. Put it like this, when you got the job at Hampton and I realised that you and he were married, I was surprised. You asked me if I remembered him, when you told me about his dementia, and I kind of swerved the question because I did.’

  I had so many more questions, even though he hadn’t answered my first one yet. ‘Why were you surprised?’

  ‘You just seemed like such a…’

  Perhaps he was going to say ‘mismatched couple’ or something, but he stopped abruptly and instead said ‘…so different.’

  ‘Really? In what way?’

  I hadn’t ever really thought about it, although I supposed from the outside we did seem quite different. But Alvin had never seen us together, bar that disastrous open day punch-up, so it felt like an odd thing for him to say.

  He sighed. ‘I don’t want to talk out of turn, Lynn, but since you’re asking – well, you’re so nice. So kind and attentive and interested in everyone. To be honest, the Ed Naismith that I knew was a bit of a … knob. No offence.’

  I couldn’t help smiling. Ed could definitely be an acquired taste. ‘None taken. Did you ever see him with Shelagh?’

  ‘I wasn’t at MADS for that long. I did one show with them – an Ayckbourn, I think, in the late nineties, maybe 2000. Ed was in it, too. He was a superb actor, really natural, but I didn’t warm to him as a person. Or as a director, in my brief experience of that. I only saw him with his wife – first wife – once, when she came to the show. We were all in the bar afterwards; she tried to say something and he just talked over her in a really condescending way. I recall feeling sorry for her.’