The Lives She Left Behind

by James Long

  ‘It doesn’t mean anything . . . sexual, does it?’

  ‘Yes, I think in this case that’s a major part of their concern.’

  He shook his head. ‘They think that? And the school believes them?’

  ‘The school hasn’t got much choice,’ she said gently. ‘I suppose you could say that suspension is the necessary response after an allegation of that sort.’ It felt too soon to dive into further detail. He looked prepared to pull down the shutters at any moment.

  ‘It isn’t true,’ he said. ‘It’s a complete misunderstanding. I hope you know that? I’m not like that. It’s horrifying that anyone could . . .’ He seemed unable to go on and she waited for him to get control of his voice but in the end he only sighed so she talked to give him time.

  ‘I’m sure it will be all right,’ she said, though she wasn’t yet sure of anything. ‘We’ll sort it out. Don’t worry.’

  ‘Look, I’ll just quit. I had half a mind to go anyway. If they don’t believe me I’ll resign.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but it’s not quite that simple. They’re suggesting that this may go back a little while.’

  ‘Does that make a difference?’

  ‘I’m afraid it does. The boy is only just sixteen now. If he was under sixteen when any offence is alleged to have taken place, then it’s not just a matter for the school and the education authority. It becomes a matter for the police.’

  ‘I didn’t even know him until this week.’

  ‘They say you did. They say you took him on a school trip last year – an overnight trip.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake.’

  ‘You hadn’t thought of that?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of any of this.’

  ‘All right, let’s get on and see what we can do. I need to ask you some questions.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘You were married, I understand? Are you still in touch with your wife at all?’

  He looked at her sharply. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Why do you say of course not? Are you on bad terms?’

  ‘We were never on bad terms. Not for a single moment. I say that because she’s dead.’

  That changed things for Rachel. There was sorrow, not anger, at the core of this house, although there was a disconcerting edge to the way he said it.

  ‘Forgive me. I should have known that. I really should. This has had to be done in a rush. How long ago did she—’

  ‘Sixteen years and five months.’

  She thought he could probably have told her in days, perhaps even hours.

  ‘You don’t have any children?’ There were no children here, that was clear, but the question had to be asked.

  ‘Not now. We did.’

  ‘You lost a child?’

  ‘I lost my family. My wife and my daughter. Both at once.’ There was something harsher creeping into his voice.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ she said, aware of the complete inadequacy of the words. ‘I can only guess at what that feels like,’ then, because she had stumbled into this and could not retreat without sounding heartless, she asked the hard and pressing question, ‘How did it happen?’

  He was staring down at the table. ‘They died together. Gally and . . . Rosie.’

  ‘How old was Rosie?’

  He seemed unable to answer, just staring back at her, shaking his head slightly so she pressed on. ‘Was it an accident?’

  He shook his head more emphatically but said nothing more.

  ‘Mr Martin, you need to trust me if I’m going to help. I have to understand a lot about you, and I have to understand that quite quickly. If this isn’t the right time, I’ll happily come back but it will need to be soon. I really am on your side. Please believe that.’

  ‘Are you? Why? You don’t know me.’ He didn’t sound annoyed, more quietly curious about how this thing they had embarked on was meant to operate.

  ‘Of course your union’s paying me to be on your side.’ She saw his eyes slide away from her as if that was what he expected. ‘That’s how it starts,’ she said, ‘but that’s not necessarily where it stops.’

  ‘You make your own mind up?’

  ‘I’m not supposed to, but of course I do.’

  He looked at her then, seeming to notice her properly for the first time. ‘All right. What do you need?’

  ‘It would help if you told me as much about the background to this as you can bear to. All I’ve got at the moment is your professional details. History lecturer at the University of London, then teaching at a Somerset comprehensive?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not even head of a department? Wasn’t that a big step down in the world?’ She was looking for the discontinuities, the chinks the other side might use if she didn’t get there first, but she was also thinking he was perhaps a failure.

  ‘It was a personal decision.’

  She chose to keep her silence and that drew him into filling it.

  ‘It changed when they died,’ he said. ‘There’s no fun travelling all that way up and down just to be by yourself when you get back.’

  ‘You could have stayed in London?’

  ‘No, no. This place was Gally’s whole life. I couldn’t leave here.’

  ‘Gally was your wife?’

  He nodded. ‘Once she found this house she never wanted to be anywhere else. We had our baby down here. It was her whole world.’ He frowned. ‘Does any of this matter?’

  She nodded. ‘It might. Look, Mr Martin—’

  ‘Please. I hear Mr Martin all day long at school. I don’t want to be Mr Martin. Call me Mike.’

  ‘All right. Mike. I don’t think you can guess what this is going to be like. You’re accused of improper behaviour towards a teenage boy. They are going to be turning over stones. There could be all kinds of suggestions.’

  ‘Such as?’ He sounded indignant now. She preferred that to weary hopelessness. She could do something with indignation.

  ‘Well, for example, they might suggest you switched to teaching in this school because you wanted to be with younger children. That’s why I’m asking about your career.’

  ‘That’s mad.’

  ‘I’m afraid when these things get going, you can’t rely on sanity.’

  He was clearly shocked. ‘But I was married. I had a child. I just told you.’

  ‘Sadly there are people out there – married people, people with children of their own – who are still capable of terrible things.’

  ‘Not me. I promise you.’

  ‘The police are going to need more than promises,’ she said gently. ‘I’m sure you’ve never been on the receiving end of an investigation before but—’

  And that was when he astonished her. ‘I have,’ he said. ‘That’s the point. I have.’ He stopped and stared down at his hands and she saw his fingers twisting around each other. She tried to keep her face calm and waited patiently until he looked up at her with an expression of defiance, a new animation.

  ‘You’d better tell me,’ she said.

  ‘The police questioned me about Gally and Rosie.’

  ‘About what exactly?’

  ‘About their deaths.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘They thought it might not have been an accident.’

  She tried to cover up her shock. ‘You were a suspect?’

  ‘I was the suspect.’

  ‘Why? Whatever made them think that?’

  ‘They couldn’t tick their boxes. Gally and Rosie died by poisoning, you see. She would pick things in the hedgerows. Not just for food. For medicine too. Their people couldn’t sort it out, they couldn’t work out the toxins. They didn’t know exactly what made it lethal.’

  ‘So they tried to point it at you?’

  ‘I was all they had.’

  ‘How long did that go on?’

  ‘Weeks and weeks.’

  ‘How very terrible. What happened in the end?’

  ‘They just let it go. They never said they bel
ieved me, only that they didn’t have enough evidence to act.’ He looked at her and it was a moment of certainty for her. ‘I still feel scared every time I see a policeman,’ he said.

  She found herself believing in him. This was a good man, a man who had been fought nearly to a standstill but certainly no murderer.

  ‘Tell me about Luke Sturgess.’

  ‘Luke Sturgess?’ It sounded for a moment as if he did not quite recognise the name. ‘Oh, right. What do you want to know?’

  ‘How did you come across him? In class?’

  ‘No. I never taught him. I only really met him at the weekend.’ Mike explained about the dig.

  ‘And last year?’

  ‘I don’t really remember that much. He came to my after-school History Club once, then he came on the castle visit. They all stayed in a hostel. I was in a B & B next door. He never came again. Like I say, I didn’t ever teach him.’ Mike didn’t tell her what he was just starting to remember – that the boy didn’t come back because the other kids in the club had made fun of him and his interest and the strange questions he had asked.

  ‘So would other teachers confirm that you didn’t know him well before that?’

  ‘It’s a big school,’ said Mike vaguely. ‘I don’t suppose they’d know one way or the other.’

  ‘His parents allege that they witnessed Luke in a highly emotional state in your car.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘And they also say they found him here in this house yesterday.’

  ‘Yes, he was here.’

  Now Mike was facing this keen-eyed woman across the kitchen table, he knew it could not really be explained, not to someone who lived in the realm of logic. The kettle had boiled so, taking a moment to gather himself, he got up to make the tea. Rachel watched him as he filled one mug, put the kettle back down, and only then seemed to remember there were two of them.

  ‘So can you tell me more about that?’

  ‘He was shocked the first time. He’d fallen down a bank at the dig. I was taking him home.’

  ‘Right,’ she said doubtfully. ‘So why did he come back here?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s an unusual boy. He does what he wants.’

  ‘But his parents were worried enough by him disappearing to find out where you lived and come here to find him?’

  ‘His mother and her current partner.’

  ‘Whatever. Why do you suppose they did that?’

  ‘They jumped to the wrong conclusions. He turned up out of the blue. I couldn’t stop him.’

  ‘But you let him in the house. Didn’t you think that was unwise, having him here? You being a single man?’

  ‘I’m not a . . . I don’t think of myself like that. Anyway, it wasn’t really my choice. Like I said, he just showed up.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask him.’

  ‘I may not get the chance.’ She had been waiting for the moment and though this wasn’t quite it, there might not be a better one, ‘Listen . . . I’m sorry, but I do have to put this to you as a formal question. Has there been any sexual impropriety between the two of you?’

  His eyes changed as he closed down on her. He looked as if he had trusted her and been proved wrong.

  ‘I do have to ask,’ she said again. ‘I’m not accusing you.’

  ‘For God’s sake. Of course there hasn’t. Have they talked to him?’

  ‘I’m sure they will, but in these things, a vulnerable boy might not be expected to tell the truth.’

  ‘You do believe me?’

  ‘It’s not just me who needs to believe you.’ She judged that he was near the limit for a first meeting, looked at her watch and saw a chance to get back on schedule. She drained her tea in one long swallow. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow, if I may. What’s better for you, morning or afternoon?’

  ‘It doesn’t make much difference.’

  ‘Nine o’clock?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘We’ll need to talk more about your wife’s death, I’m afraid.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Are you going to be all right?’ she asked, a little to her own surprise. She had a strong sense that she had opened up something that had been sealed for years. All she got was another curt nod.

  A little worried, she pushed it further. ‘Do you have people to support you? Friends in the village?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Now, I must get on.’

  He saw her out and watched as she drove away then he went back in, sat down at the kitchen table and steeled himself to remember, to put it all in place, feeling he could do it now that death was no longer quite so final – that he must do it to be ready for her return.

  Once upon a time, Mike had led what he thought of as a normal life. He had followed his father’s dusty footsteps into academia. He believed in his father’s version of that world, where the people were safely removed from the story, like rocky headlands seen only on a sailor’s chart. Alone, Mike had not known he was lonely until a girl had slipped into one of his lectures and come up to him at the end, admitting she was not a student and challenging him on the desiccated, impersonal way he saw history. He had stepped off a cliff into her wide smile and she had mistaken what she needed from him enough to marry him.

  Mike’s marriage had ended on a Monday.

  He had come back home to Bagstone to surprise her. He knew just how the smile would spread across her face when she saw him and a fine, fierce anticipation hummed in him.

  This return had been quite unlike him, the clockwork man committed to his four-day working week. In term-time he left the cottage every Sunday evening and came back every Thursday night, but on that Sunday he had been loath to leave her. His doubts had assailed him all the way to London. Stuck in the Chiswick traffic, he had dared to imagine asking for compassionate leave. The following morning it had proved much easier than he expected. The Dean was sympathetic and ten minutes was all it took. Two lectures were cancelled, his tutorials were postponed, and the rest of the week was suddenly his to go straight back home and help Gally care for their child.

  He was back at the cottage by midday. The gate had been shut and he left the car outside in the lane to make his arrival more of a surprise. It was February and Gally had been preparing the yard for spring. The signs of her deep care were everywhere in the harmony of stone, brick and the kind channelling of nature. Rosie’s toy shears were on the bench in the porch next to Gally’s real ones.

  He picked up a postcard from the mat, saw a sunny harbour scene, flicked it over and recognised his aunt’s impossible scrawl. Hanging his jacket on the brass hooks, he noticed the answering machine was switched on and went into the kitchen expecting to see the remnants of their breakfast but the table was clear and the oak draining board was empty, pale and dry. The kettle was cold. He filled it half-full, switched it on to boil for the tea they would drink together when he found her. Upstairs, he saw their bedroom was tidy, the bed made up, Rosie’s room too. The spare room door was closed. He turned the knob, feeling it wobble on the shaft because of the broken grub screw – one of the jobs for Jason the handyman on Wednesday.

  The house bulged with silence. The door caught on the loose carpet behind it as he pushed it open and he saw the corner of the window through the narrow gap. That window looked out at the back of the house and he thought he might see them further down the valley. They might even now be walking back towards the house, Rosie swinging and tugging on Gally’s hand. They would be so surprised to see him at the window. Gally would lift Rosie into her arms and run with her.

  Edging his foot through the gap to flatten out the rucked carpet, he pushed the door right open and it came to him even before he saw what lay on the bed that they were no longer anywhere near.

  It was late summer when they finally let him bury her. The churchyard was crowded with the people of the village and a handful of Gally’s older friends. She had no close family and Mike stood by himself at the graveside sepa
rated from the rest by a gap which felt like quarantine. The mourners wondered at his blank face but inside the boarded-up man, mad despair was clawing at the walls.

  He watched the disconcerting, unfamiliar coffin as they lowered it into the underworld of earth and they watched him for a flicker of expression, then they all turned their heads for the second coffin, the tiny coffin, so they missed the agony that creased his face.

  There was polite tea offered afterwards in the old school hall by the churchyard gate but he found he could not go in and thought perhaps the rest of them might prefer it that way. On his way home in the unfitting sunshine, he had branched uphill without any conscious decision, climbing to the top of the ridge, their place, where, alone under the high sky, there had been space to let his anger out.

  ‘It’s your fault,’ he had said inside his head, staring at the stone bench on the hilltop. He said it again out loud but the words seemed no louder than the thought and were swallowed by the ocean of air. He stood over the bench, looking down as if the old man was still there to hear his accusation. ‘It’s your fault,’ he said, and he sat down on the end of the bench, staring at the gap beside him, wishing Ferney had left enough atoms behind him to allow revenge. The three of them – the old man, the girl who had briefly been his wife and their daughter – swirled in the air, two, then three, then two.

  ‘You got what you wanted,’ he said to them. ‘Well, now you’re both bloody well dead and I hate you for it.’

  A skylark had sung far above his head and taken the razor edge off his anger with its song. ‘I fell for it too,’ he had whispered to the shade of her. ‘People die and they’re buried and they rot and that’s it. That’s all there is.’

  Death had dulled his life again and for all those years he had tried not to think but now, as he lifted his head from his hands and looked across at the empty chair where the lawyer had sat, thoughts filled him, rough and jostling thoughts. The boy Luke, for whom he could feel sympathy – the boy who was turning into the man Ferney. How could he feel sympathy for that man who had taken everything from him? He could feel for the child but not for the man. Why should he? What now? Was Ferney the only way back to Gally renewed? Did he have the strength for the battle ahead?