Everything but the Truth

by Gillian McAllister

  There was nothing else.

  13

  I had to get that phone.

  Jools Oliver had been in the Telegraph last weekend, claiming to occasionally check Jamie’s text messages. I found myself thinking: if that posh, wholesome, Boden-wearing woman sometimes lowered herself to checking her husband’s phone, why couldn’t I?

  Maybe I thought it was okay because it was just a phone, a slice of electronics, and not a diary, or an underwear drawer, or looking through a keyhole at somebody.

  Or maybe it was the scientific side of me, the doctor who enjoyed digging, investigating blood results, biopsies, going deeper and deeper until she got to the right answer.

  Or maybe, actually, it was just the way he handled his phone. I tried to ignore my instincts these days, but they were hard to discount entirely.

  I’d watched him enter the passcode, looking sideways at him as he did so, moving only my eyes and not my head. It took three days. I got it one number at a time. 6865. I memorized it the way I used to memorize dosages and interactions: with ease.

  Night-time was the only time I could do it. He was attached to his phone at all other times. It was in his jeans pocket, or in his hand, or – face down, always face down – on the arm of his sofa, right next to him. It was in his hand when he opened Howard’s cat-food tins, and in the bathroom, on the window sill, while he showered, and dropped into his coat pocket as he was locking the doors. He placed it on the kitchen work surface while he cooked, even though fat from the frying pan would sometimes sprinkle over it.

  But at night-time, it was alone. It was charging next to him, but it was alone.

  That night, he fell asleep quickly. He always did; a fact I would come to wonder about later on.

  It was easy. We had the same iPhone, so my finger was poised to press the ‘sleep’ button as I unplugged it, to prevent it lighting up the room. I decided, even though it was a risk if he woke up to discover it gone, to take it away with me, creeping along the cold corridor, past the curtainless hall window and into the bathroom. I’d say I was feeling sick. I’d blame Wally, I thought, with a guilty wince.

  It was in my hands and I was standing, leaning against the sink. The door was locked. I swiped right, entered the passcode, and started reading.

  ITEM 3

  Marsha: Hey J, just to let you know the cheque is (finally!) in the post to you. SO sorry for the delay! X

  Jack: No problem. Thanks so much. Did you send the VAT invoice too?

  Marsha: No, sorry. Will do right away. X

  Mum: Davey’s got a fever.

  Jack: Oh no!

  Mum: Yeah. Seems okay though in himself.

  Jack: Good.

  White Cross Vets: Howard Ross is due for his vaccinations.

  Mike: Ruggers on Sat or are you busy, JD?

  Jack: Up for that. Am I starting? Or passed over due to age and infirm status?

  Mike: Need to review your performance. A committee will meet. I’ll let you know the outcome.

  Jack: Ha! Thanks.

  Gavin Kelly: Hi, can you come to my offices next week?

  Jack: Yes. Why?

  Gavin: Things to discuss. Need to protect your position.

  Jack: You still at Lorn?

  Gavin: Yes same place. Can do Saturday pm?

  Jack: Think I can get away in the day. 5?

  Gavin: See you then. Regards.

  Jack: Just running slightly late.

  I exited the text messages and opened Safari. I googled Lorn. It was near Oban. I googled Gavin.

  He was a lawyer.

  Those messages pre-dated our weekend there a couple of weeks ago. Had he … had he met him? I thought back to that day. I’d been in Mothercare. Why? Come after 7 p.m. That’s what Jack had said. That’s why I wasn’t invited to the rugby match. And maybe that’s why we were up there then in the first place.

  He hadn’t ever played rugby. He’d pretended to.

  He’d met the lawyer. Before the drinks. It seemed obvious. And then – I swallowed, feeling sick at the duplicity as I remembered his damp hair, his minty smell – he’d showered. He’d showered to make it look like he had played when he hadn’t.

  And, of course, Jools bloody Oliver didn’t point out the main problem with looking at somebody’s text messages: unless you found something which incriminated them beyond all reasonable doubt, you had nothing. You couldn’t confront. Your hands were unclean.

  14

  Audrey pushed a mug towards me in Starbucks. The milky liquid slopped over the side. ‘The barista said fall,’ she said, rolling her eyes. We were drinking Pumpkin Spice Lattes and sitting in the draught of the automatic doors, which were opening and closing like self-aware beings as pedestrians unknowingly activated them. It was raining outside. It had been on the news, how much it had rained that autumn. Record-breaking amounts.

  ‘How was the silverback’s birthday in Oban?’ she said to me.

  ‘Excruciating,’ I said, and she grimaced. ‘Lots of displays of dominance.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said. She looked at me then, in the way best friends do; inviting me to talk.

  I told her everything. She listened, her eyes watchful – she had lawyer’s eyes; calculating, sometimes thoughtful – as I stacked up the incidents like a house of cards. A tower of my suspicions.

  ‘Well, I’m sure most of it’s just circumstantial,’ she said with a self-aware smile. ‘The phone behaviour. Seeing a lawyer – probably about his tax return. Having a bit of a pop at someone in the city. They probably just barged into him or something. These add up to nothing. Don’t they?’ She fiddled with a ring that was sitting just above the knuckle of her thumb. She was always far more fashionable than me.

  ‘I don’t know, I …’ I couldn’t articulate it.

  The science – the evidence – said one thing: he was innocent. It was nothing. Circumstantial. And I had to rely on that. I had to ignore my spurious gut instinct. It had got me into trouble before. Besides, it was nonsensical, my gut instinct. It looked past the lack of hard evidence and at the other things. Not at the email itself, but his facial expression, the air puffing out his cheeks. It wasn’t the strange nickname at the rugby club, but his reaction to it.

  It was illogical, but hard to ignore. It had been important to me, once. It had saved lives for me, backed up by the test results. They hadn’t ever contradicted each other, the science and the instinct. Until they did. With Ben, and with work. My instincts went awry. I couldn’t rely on them any more, just like an alcoholic who knew – no matter what their thoughts said – that they couldn’t even have one drink. Now I was to ignore my thoughts as best I could.

  I went for the most concrete example. ‘This email I saw. It mentioned Douglas’s atrocity, but that doesn’t exist. There’s no evidence of this assault. And the message, the way it was worded. It sounded like it was about him. It said sorry. It said your history.’

  ‘Well, it is his history. His friend’s history. And they’re not all reported. Assaults.’

  ‘But atrocities are.’

  Audrey shrugged, stirring her drink with a wooden stick. ‘Papers call anything an atrocity.’

  I sat back. ‘True,’ I said. I couldn’t ignore that. She was right. There were headlines like that every single day. I was being ridiculous; naive.

  ‘And wasn’t he a court reporter? Maybe he didn’t report his mate?’

  ‘Yes. Maybe …’ I paused. Perhaps I was mad. It was all unfounded. ‘He woke me up the other morning and made me drive him a mile. Half a mile,’ I added. There was more evidence. There was. ‘He made it seem so urgent. To get me out of his house. He acted like he was late. But he wasn’t, I don’t think.’

  ‘Right. So you were both at his?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’re thinking he didn’t want you to be alone there?’ she said immediately.

  I pushed my chair back. I hadn’t realized. I was clueless. Literally clueless. ‘Do you think?’ I said.


  He’d had a meeting. But he wasn’t late for it. He said he was, to get me out of the house. To ensure I couldn’t stay there, wait for him.

  ‘Maybe. But what I mean is, that’s normal. Isn’t it? Amrit and I didn’t spend any time alone in each other’s houses for ages. Maybe a year,’ she said. ‘I still wee with the door closed.’

  I smiled. ‘I hope I always do,’ I said.

  And then she knocked over my house of cards.

  ‘All of this – it’s just nothing, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Being afraid of a gun. A mad woman yelling at them in Oban. Taking his phone to the toilet, probably to play Candy Crush. An email about his mate. What’s really wrong? Is there something else going on?’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  But, of course, she couldn’t see the strange anger that rolled across his facial expressions like a vicious summer storm. She couldn’t see the panic in his eyes as he played Trivial Pursuit against my family and did not seem – inexplicably – to know about a global catastrophe from only a few years ago. She didn’t know his lips like I did, and so couldn’t see them blanch when he read an email apologizing for bringing something up. Something they’d all tried to forget.

  She nodded. ‘You’ve had a bit of a year.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said, though I knew exactly what she meant.

  ‘With your mum and then Ben and losing your job … a new boyfriend. A baby.’

  I nodded quickly, my eyes damp, trying not to be offended. Audrey had been there through all of it, quietly shocked about Mum and mostly supportive of me leaving Ben. She knew it all. She knew that Mum had made me feel minuscule sometimes, when she told me that relatives were wondering why I wasn’t yet married. She knew I only used to call her out of duty, that I went over to see Dad when I knew she’d be out. And yet Audrey had held my hand at Mum’s funeral, tighter than Ben had. Because she understood that, too. Loss.

  She’d been the second person I’d discussed the pregnancy with. We’d met for a walk along the Tyne. I’d told her and she hadn’t looked surprised or worried or anything bad. I’d loved her for that reaction. The summer sun had been warm on our faces as we walked along amongst families and people with ‘99’ ice creams. She’d told me not to eat one, because they were rife with bugs for food poisoning, and I’d laughed.

  ‘I’ll be a bad mum,’ I had blurted, out of nowhere. ‘I’ve hardly had a role model.’

  She had shrugged and licked her ice cream, and I’d loved her for that shrug, too. The casualness with which she treated my worst fears, as though they were nothing at all, insubstantial wisps. ‘It’s scarier not to do things, too,’ she had said.

  I considered that, thinking about the women I’d met on my obs and gynae rotation. Nobody told me they regretted having their children. But plenty regretted not trying. Leaving it too late. It was a sad fact of being a woman.

  ‘You could keep waiting for everything to be perfect,’ she’d gone on, ‘or you could just – do it. Like, it’s pretty close to the right time. You’re not sixteen. You love Jack. The rest you’ll figure out.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s true.’

  I didn’t want to risk it. That was the truth. I had seen the women in the clinics when I was a house officer. Their empty arms. Bodies were strange, and baby-making even stranger; the most mystic area of medicine by far. This was my chance, and I was going to take it.

  But … the boy. We hadn’t talked about that, though I’d wanted to. To ask Audrey what she thought. To find out whether what had happened meant that I couldn’t really be trusted to be good any more. But something stopped me and I couldn’t. I just couldn’t say the words.

  ‘After everything that’s happened,’ she continued now, ‘maybe you’ve just, I don’t know. Lost your confidence.’

  ‘Lost my confidence?’ I winced, but I knew what she meant.

  She, Amrit, Ben and I had gone everywhere together, before; to a caravan in Wales one Easter where we stayed up late playing Cards Against Humanity. And then I left medicine and then I became suspicious and horrible, and Audrey always tried to stop me confronting Ben, but it never worked. And then Ben left me and I met Jack too soon, and everything – everything – changed.

  ‘You think I’m being mad again,’ I said flatly.

  ‘No. Maybe. Do you feel – rational?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Look, it’s normal. When I’m on annual leave, like when we went to Bali, I went fully mad,’ she said.

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yeah, because I wasn’t … I don’t know. I wasn’t investigating any cases, I suppose. It was like my mind had all these pathways formed but it wasn’t kept busy, so I started to make up worries instead. Stupid stuff. That I would come home and our house would’ve burnt down.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘And then we came home and I went back to work and I was fine. Maybe you’re just …’

  ‘Under-stimulated?’

  ‘Yeah. Maybe you need medicine in your life. To be you. Because you find satisfaction in investigating things. Solving them. And maybe realizing your mum wasn’t … who she said she was – maybe that’s made that urge greater. The need to solve things.’

  ‘What – so I’m crazy without medicine?’

  ‘No! I just mean, maybe your brain isn’t very good at being more idle. You’ve had a hard year. Just enjoy Jack.’ She reached over and touched my hand briefly.

  It was nice, that sentiment, and the touch that went with it.

  Maybe Audrey was right. Leaving medicine, and my reaction to it, had driven one boyfriend away. Maybe it was happening again, and I was too messed up to see it. Maybe it was grief. My mum dying. It had seemed so enormous, and only one year ago. Maybe I needed to see somebody.

  ‘Do you think it is about Mum?’ I said.

  She shrugged. ‘Maybe. It’s huge.’

  ‘It doesn’t feel huge. I don’t know. I don’t – I don’t miss her as much as I should,’ I said, admitting something I could only admit to Audrey.

  ‘That’s okay, Rach. Really. It was – it was tough with her sometimes. She used to make you feel – tiny. But don’t take it out on Jack.’

  ‘So I shouldn’t ask him?’

  ‘Ask him?’

  ‘Like lay it all out. That’s what I’d like to do. All the facts,’ I said, imagining it like a medical case. There were no concrete test results, no positive scans, no cancerous biopsies, but everything else was there: the evidence. The lump. The grey pallor. The anaemia. The death rattle. No, Rachel, no, I said to myself. None of this is real.

  ‘Definitely do not do that,’ Audrey said, adopting her best, directive lawyer voice. ‘That would be insane.’

  ‘Would it? This gut feeling, I …’ My hand drifted down to my stomach and clutched at the layer of fat sitting there. I was embarrassed to find myself close to tears.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Audrey murmured, seeing my expression.

  I glanced up, and she looked concerned, then thoughtful, then she lapsed into silence.

  ‘Look, Rach. There is something you can do,’ she said after a few moments.

  ‘Hmm?’

  The doors opened, and the temperature dropped.

  Audrey drew her coat around her. ‘If he’s not legit. There are ways to find out. Ways that wouldn’t mean anything. Nobody would ever know.’

  ‘What ways?’

  ‘If he’s got any form at all,’ she said. ‘There are ways to find out. It’s just been rolled out.’ Her tone was tentative. ‘Clare’s Law.’

  I frowned. I’d seen something somewhere about this. A murder. The victim’s parents campaigning. Killing, domestic violence, the underworld. Not my middle-class world in Starbucks.

  ‘It’s just googling him,’ she continued. ‘Getting the police to google him. Using their database. You just ring up and make a request. And it’ll just tell you if he’s done something. Nobody would ever know.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s up to you.’

  ‘What would you
do?’ I said. I’d lost my nerve. There was no evidence – nothing. But this was serious. Audrey’s suggestion made it serious. ‘It seems … I don’t know, extreme.’

  She raised her hands to me. Her wedding ring caught the light. I’d given a speech as her ‘best man’. It was full of all our in-jokes – nobody else understood it – and she’d cried, laughing at their bafflement.

  ‘In twenty years, everyone will do this. Why not?’ she said.

  I looked at her. She probably didn’t want to be spending her Thursday night giving me legal advice in Starbucks because of my spurious gut feelings. But her slightly irritated, hassled expression reminded me of Jack’s, at Kate’s house. Only her irritation was a tenth of his; a thousandth.

  I stirred my Pumpkin Spice Latte with the stick, watching the foamy liquid creep up the wood, sinking in, making it darker. I might never know. I might never know if all of these tiny things added up to anything. And I should know. I looked up at her again.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ I said.

  I googled Clare’s Law and submitted the form as soon as I got home.

  And I cleared my Internet history immediately afterwards.

  15

  It was the weekend our families were meeting each other. We set off on the Friday. Dad and Kate were coming the next day, staying till Tuesday to make the most of the trip north.

  I had hardly said a word for the first part of the journey. Jack looked cold and his arms were folded across his body. He hardly ever sat like that. The car journeys to Oban were too long. Too enclosed. Time became stretched out, sluggish and slow-moving, and thoughts would drip slowly through my mind like percolating coffee.

  After a couple of hours of silence, I’d thought a hundred times about how Mez had described seeing Jack shouting at somebody, and I was ready to ask.

  ‘Mez said something about you,’ I began.

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Yep. When we were watering the mushrooms.’

  ‘What?’ Jack was fiddling with the radio, trying to find a different station as we lost signal. ‘We’ll end up with the shipping forecast,’ he mumbled.