by Marrs, John
My love wasn’t powerful enough to make my mother want to stay, so I was constantly amazed you chose to remain by my side.
Many things tied us together; especially the way our home lives mirrored each other’s. Doreen destroyed my family while fire destroyed yours. But you never allowed your great sadness to define you. Somehow, you steered clear of the dark place where I dwelled. And you knew that you’d get everything you wanted from life in the end if you just believed. You inspired me to do the same, but looking back, I wondered if you only wanted to fix me and once I was repaired, you lost interest. Because in the end, you turned out to be the same as everyone else who broke me in the first place.
Your strength and spirit had been infectious and just being around you made me feel I could conquer the world.
And I did - only without you.
Miami, America
June 4, 10.30am
I’d ordered my second bottle of beer from the bar when a newspaper on the next table caught my eye.
I’d spent much of the day tranquilised under the aquamarine sky of Miami’s Bal Harbour Beach. Dana and Angie, two mischievous Canadian girls I’d met over a hotel breakfast kept me company. We’d just finished a picnic they’d assembled at the beach. But when the still-soaring ninety-degree sun started burning my shoulders, I swapped the sand for a shady café.
I’d avoided newspapers for much of my journey, preferring to remain oblivious to events outside my own bubble. But the date on the Miami Herald felt familiar. Then it struck me - I was one-year-old that day. Exactly twelve months before, I’d left my house and the people in it and was en route to a tatty old caravan park. If I’d known then just how magnificent life could be, I think I’d have left much sooner.
I put the newspaper down and stared at the endless ocean. My year alone had felt like a lifetime. I’d removed myself from birthdays and anniversaries without a second thought. I wondered if you still thought about me?
I recalled how when we were just shy of twenty-two, I’d taken you to the cinema for a matinee performance of ‘Breakfast At Tiffany’s.’ We were almost a decade into our relationship but we still gravitated towards the back row like love-struck teenagers. I was in my last year at college studying for my architectural degree and living with Arthur and Shirley. You were still living with Caroline’s parents, so romance was restricted to stolen moments where and when we could.
“Do you think we’ll get married one day?” I asked the side of your head as it rested on my shoulder.
“Of course,” you replied without hesitation; surprised I’d even questioned it. You pulled another toffee from the paper bag and popped it into your mouth.
“When did you have in mind?” I continued, trying to mirror your breezy mood.
“Whenever you like. I’ve been waiting for nine years but if I have to wait another nine I might run off with Dougie instead.”
“Okay, Kitty - will you marry me?”
“Yep,” you replied, without taking your eyes off Audrey Hepburn. Your cool façade was only belittled by a squeeze of my arm.
That weekend we caught a train to London, still a place haunted by memories of my mother and Kenneth, and returned with a modest gold band and tiny centred diamond that only the Hubble Telescope could locate. I was grateful I’d found a girl who didn’t need material things to feel self-worth.
*
“We’ve got something to tell you,” I announced. I held your hand tightly in the lounge where my father and Shirley ate their Saturday night salad in front of The Generation Game. “We’re getting married.”
Our joy was greeted with silence. I hadn’t expected streamers and balloons to fall from the ceiling; a simple ‘congratulations’ would’ve sufficed. Instead, they looked at each other, then us, and then back towards Bruce Forsythe.
“I’m going to go home Simon; come round later,” you suggested, sensing a shift in temperature. You pecked me on the cheek and left. I waited until the front door closed before I spoke.
“What was that about?” I began.
My father swallowed his food, placed his cutlery back on his tray and folded his arms. “Simon, you’re too young for marriage.”
“I’m 22, you were only a couple of years older than me when you met Doreen.”
“Precisely. Catherine’s a lovely girl but she’s not worldly wise enough to settle down. The girls of today … they’re different to my day. They’re more spirited, they expect more from life. Sooner or later she’ll realise she wants more than you and then it’ll be too late. I promise you, she will break your heart.”
My pulse rose in tangent with the speed of my heartbeat. I swallowed hard.
“She isn’t Doreen. Just because you drove my mother away doesn’t mean I’ll do the same.”
Both were too flabbergasted to respond, but I hadn’t finished.
“I love Kitty, and always will. There’s nothing that could happen to make either of us leave each other. Ever.”
I stormed out of the house still fuming and caught up with you. If only I’d paused to listen to them instead of my heart before we walked down the aisle.
*
“Darren, are you coming for a swim?” Dana’s voice came from behind.
“Let me finish this and I’ll be with you.”
I liked answering to a different name. I swigged the final mouthful of lukewarm beer and cast a panoramic sweep of my surroundings.
“Did you know it’s my birthday today?”
“No way dude!” squealed Angie. “Guess what? We’ve got the best way to celebrate!”
Thirty minutes later and the three of us were in my hotel bedroom, snorting the first in many lines of a bitter white powder that allowed me to make love to them until late afternoon.
If my second year was to be as rewarding as the first, I was going to be a very lucky man.
***
Today, 2.05pm
She wasn’t sure what bewildered her the most about him – his seeming lack of regret for any of his actions, or his complete insensitivity.
First had come the holocaust in which he’d wiped them all from his memory. Then came his all-too detailed account of his life of riley on an extended holiday. And now he’d desecrated the memory of the anniversary of his disappearance - such a pivotal moment in her family’s lives - by celebrating it with drugs and two whores.
‘Drugs, at his age?’ she said to herself. He was a bloody idiot. And he’d hurt her once again by admitting he wished he’d listened to his know-it-all father and never married her. She detested him for making her feel like a mistake.
She hadn’t noticed he’d found it equally as hard listening to her. He appreciated that she’d told him how the children had grappled with his absence – he wouldn’t have blamed her for keeping him in the dark. But they hadn’t been on the straightforward journey of acceptance and healing he’d intended.
Naively he’d presumed that because their minds were young and malleable, they’d have muddled along and eventually forgotten about him. He hadn’t envisaged how necessary he’d been. The mental picture of a faceless son isolating himself from those who loved him was a sobering thought.
While he’d suspected Robbie might prove to be a little different from the others, his lack of understanding at just how fragile the boy had been placed knots in his stomach.
And they wouldn’t be the last.
CHAPTER TEN
Key West, America, Twenty-Three Years Earlier
February 1, 7.35pm
Five miles square. Twenty-five thousand people. Fifty hotels. Twenty guesthouses. Three hostels. Four thousand, five hundred miles from home.
The odds against it were almost too high to calculate. Yet fate still managed to marry my new life with my old in the shape of two familiar faces.
Key West’s location at the southern most tip of America was an attractive destination for fishermen and scuba divers. Having acquired my diving skills from Bradley in France, I promised myself that if the op
portunity arose, I’d explore as much as I could below the land as I could above it.
I’d pushed myself throughout the week with a party of other semi-novice divers, further and further offshore. The crystal clarity of the water by the outer bar and the rainbow of coral colours had been intoxicating. I swam after curtains of reef fish; envious of the surroundings they took for granted.
I pencilled in my first wreck dive for the coming weekend, to explore the remains of the sunken Benwood - a three hundred and sixty foot former freighter off the coast of Key Largo. But after my fifth consecutive day of diving, my muscles strained and I welcomed the night alone with a table by an ocean-side restaurant. As I’d spent so much time in the company of fish, it seemed heartless to then feast on their kin. So I ordered a Cesar salad from the bar, sat at a brightly lit table outside and sparked up a cigarette as I watched the sun sink over boats bobbing along the purple horizon.
A couple walking hand-in-hand on the opposite side of the road caught my eye when they stopped and kissed outside a hotel. At first they offered nothing extraordinary or significant, but even from a distance, there seemed something familiar in their body language. I wondered if we’d crossed paths at a hostel somewhere. But when the headlights of a passing car illuminated their faces, my heart stopped.
There stood Roger and Caroline.
I stared, drop-jawed as Roger took a camera from around his neck, and headed up the steps and into the hotel. Caroline remained on the path, fiddling with a clasp on her earring.
She took in her surroundings and without giving me a chance to react; she faced me for a split second, then turned. But when she did a double take and our eyes met, I knew the game was up.
***
Northampton, Twenty-Three Years Earlier
February 1, 7.35pm
They had remained on the porch floor gathering dust for so long, they’d become a part of the furniture. I used to give your running shoes a quick glance each time I passed them, longing to see you fill them again. But I’d grown to accept they were always going to stay empty.
Moving them was like reaching the final page of a book I wasn’t ready to put down. But fighting my way through small challenges one at a time meant the giant ones were less daunting. I picked them up and placed them with my wellies under the saucepan shelf in the pantry.
But later that day, they’d reappeared in the porch. I moved them again, and by morning they’d returned. I told myself I was being a silly moo when I imagined your ghost had put them back where it thought they belonged. I guessed Robbie was the real culprit. His speech therapist was very slowly encouraging him to find his voice and confidence again. So I didn’t want to confront him and ask, and risk making him feel like he was doing something wrong.
But just to be sure, I moved them again. A couple of days later, I sat quietly in the kitchen unpicking the stitching on a jacket pocket. I heard the patter of Oscar’s paws making their way through the house and, without noticing me; he picked up the first shoe by its laces and carefully walked away with it. Then he returned and took the second one.
I followed him and watched as he placed them by the front door in exactly the same position as they’d sat for over a year. He was startled when he saw me, then regained his composure and wandered off. I’d taken into account everyone’s feelings in the house except for those of your faithful friend.
So I didn’t try to move them again until he too left us.
***
Key West, America. Twenty-Three Years Earlier
February 1, 7.40pm
The speed in which I wrenched my head from Caroline’s line of sight forced a burning, shooting pain up my neck and into the back of my skull.
But there was no time to acknowledge it or to readjust my posture. I focused on her reflection in the smoky glass of the restaurant window instead, and prayed I’d gone unnoticed. But she remained there, squinting at a memory.
Surely Roger couldn’t have tracked me down to Florida? I never knew which direction I was going to choose until I reached a crossroads. So it would have taken a crystal ball for anyone else to predict where to find me from one week to the next. Besides, Simon left no trail. I was Darren Glasper.
So it must have been coincidence that brought us to exactly the same place, in exactly the same street at exactly the same time. Fate was an unpredictable bastard.
I prayed Caroline would quickly come to the conclusion her eyes had deceived her. I continued watching from an uncomfortable angle as she shook her head, believing, like me, it was too far fetched to be true. Indecision made her hover from foot to foot like she needed someone to confirm she was being ridiculous. But there was no one to help.
I began to relax slightly when she twisted her body towards the hotel steps Roger had walked up moments earlier. Then she hesitated and repeated her movements like she was being rewound and fast-forwarded with a remote control.
My heart palpitated and I hoped she’d run inside to find Roger and give me the opportunity to escape. But she didn’t. Instead, she edged towards the curb for closer inspection.
Self-preservation set in and without rotating my head, I threw my blazing cigarette onto the pavement, stood up and began to walk away. I hungered to look over my shoulder to make sure I was alone, but I was terrified of what I might find. I picked up my pace.
“Simon!”
The sound of her voice cut me like glass. My chest became inflamed and I felt the urgent need to empty my bowels. My breath was short and my legs threatened to flop beneath me. All I could do was ignore her and continue.
“Simon!” it came again, but with more authority.
The proximity of her voice told me she’d gained ground but was still on the opposite side of the road. ‘Just give up,’ I screamed inside and accelerated my pace to a near-run. But Caroline must have jogged to keep up with me. My frustration became impossible to suppress so I went against my better judgment and cricked my neck to see her struggling to find a break between moving cars to cross. I used it to my advantage and ran, the prey desperate to avoid the hunter.
“It’s you isn’t it!” she shouted above the noise of the traffic. Red traffic lights gave her the opportunity she needed and she flew across the road with the speed of a tornado.
“Stop running, you coward!” she shrieked. “I fucking know it’s you!”
My body already ached from my dives and my increased anxiety. My daily cigarette intake left me breathless. Short of a miracle, I knew I had to face the inevitable. So I stopped.
Within seconds, her fingers dug into my shoulder and she spun me around. Even though she’d been so confident it was I, disbelief in the actual confrontation spread across her face. We glared at each other in silence before she unleashed her fury.
“You wanker! How could you do that to them?” she shouted, jabbing me in the chest aggressively.
I remained poker-faced and silent.
“They’ve gone through hell without you,” she continued.
I didn’t want to know.
“Well what have you got to say for yourself?”
Nothing, actually.
“What’s wrong with you?” she yelled, growing increasingly frustrated.
Actually everything had been very much right with me until ten minutes earlier.
She slapped me across the cheek. It smarted. She slapped me again. It became numb. Another slap. I felt nothing.
“Jesus Christ, Simon. Do you have any idea what you’ve put everyone through?”
I wasn’t interested.
“Say something you coward! You owe me an explanation!”
I didn’t. In fact I felt no urge to justify myself or my actions to Caroline, or to anyone else for that matter. I owed the world nothing and it irked me she was arrogant enough to assume I did.
“Well? Are you just going to stand there?”
No, I wasn’t.
Using all the strength I could muster; with the force of everything that drove me forwards, I clamped
both my hands around her cheeks, forced her backwards off the curb and then pushed her into the road and into the path of oncoming traffic.
She didn’t even have time to scream.
Neither her last gasp of breath; the crunching of her bones as each set of wheels rolled over her or the screeching of brakes persuaded me to stop walking and turn around.
***
Today, 2.40pm
She remained motionless as she processed the horror of his confession. Her husband was a murderer.
She didn’t want to believe it because what he’d just admitted made no sense at all. She’d never met anyone who’d deliberately killed another human being before. Certainly not someone who she’d allowed into her home. And not one she had loved. She had no idea how to respond.
What seemed to him like an age passed by while neither of them spoke. He focused his eyes on the rug while hers burrowed right through him. He didn’t think it fitting to interrupt.
“You… you killed Caroline?” she stuttered slowly.
“Yes, Catherine, I did,” came his reply, reticent but showing little remorse.
She grasped for words. “She was pregnant,” she said quietly.
He inhaled deeply. “I did not know that.”
The colour drained from her face and she felt sick. Actually she more than just felt sick; she knew she was going to vomit. She leapt up from her chair and winced as her weight took her weak ankle by surprise. She faltered upstairs to the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. She didn’t have time to lift the toilet seat before the first wave struck and she made a mess on the floor. But the second time, she was prepared and it reached the pan.
