‘We need to talk.’
A calm voice. Deadpan delivery. A deep breath.
‘We need to talk, Jenni. I fear I’ve made a terrible mistake coming back to you. We’ve grown apart. The fairest thing to do for both of us is to share custody of the boys and separate.’
‘I’ve been feeling the same, Craig; we both need space.’
Your hand is on my arm. You are smiling sadly.
‘We don’t need to instruct solicitors, let’s sort things out with a mediator.’
Or. A second scenario.
‘We need to talk, Jenni. I fear I’ve made a terrible mistake coming back to you. We’ve grown apart. The fairest thing to do for both of us is to share custody of the boys and separate.’
‘I’ll fucking kill you, Craig.’ Red faced. Sharp fisted.
I push the image of Jenni’s spitting eyes away and become aware of the heady scent of boeuf bourguignon, bouquet garni and bay leaf. Jenni has cooked my favourite meal. As I pour myself a glass of wine a wave of guilt pulses through me. I slump back onto the sofa, sipping the wine, trying to process the TV picture. Midsomer Murders. Filmed on a village green lined with thatched cottages. A body discovered in front of a yew hedge, found by an old lady riding past on a bicycle with a basket on the front. The wine I am drinking tastes a bit sharp. A bit lemony. As if I’ve just cleaned my teeth. Maybe it’s just too cold. Maybe I should put it on the Aga to warm it up. I stand up and the world falls away.
SIX
~ Rob ~
As our car pushes into the night, Carly sits next to me red eyed and tight lipped. Her emotion cuts into me, threatening me. I had come to terms with what happened between Carly and Craig. Its insignificance.
But Craig’s death has enhanced its importance.
Death eulogising facts. What is wrong with me tonight? I thought I had moved past this.
‘How do you think Jenni is coping?’ Carly says between sniffs.
‘You know my theory. She’ll be numb at the moment.’
Our car batters into the night for hour upon hour. Carly falls asleep. I put the radio on. We arrive at 2 a.m., too late to check in to the pub, but we are armed with futons and sleeping bags and Jenni knows we are coming, so we knock. She comes to the door in her dressing gown, face swollen from weeping.
‘Thank God you’re here,’ she whispers, clinging first to Carly and then to me.
Clinging to me like she used to, as if I am precious. We step inside the cottage, dumping our luggage by the door. Jenni and Carly slump next to each other on the sofa. Jenni has retrieved a tumbler of whisky from the floor by the sofa.
‘Help yourself,’ she says, gesticulating towards the decanter and glasses on the dresser behind the sofa.
I pour Carly and me a generous slug each and sink next to Jenni on the sofa.
‘What happened?’ I ask.
‘I told you on the phone. When I came back from the PCC party I found him dead on the floor. Right here.’
She points to the carpet in front of her. She is sobbing now, shoulder-heaving sobs, struggling for breath. Carly and I sit one each side of her, arms around her back, holding her.
~ Jenni ~
Inspector Browning is sitting in the corner of the sofa. In Craig’s place. The place he must have stood up from just before he collapsed. I’m sitting in a floral armchair opposite him. Inspector Browning, here yet again, invading my space. His third visit this week. Doesn’t he appreciate the anxiety I am wading through? What does he know about trauma? The trauma of finding a husband purple-faced. No longer a husband, but a stiff upon the floor? What does he know about the post-traumatic stress syndrome I am being pulled towards? Forensics crawling all over my cottage doesn’t help, and neither does the painfully slow progress of the autopsy. The only person who is helping is Rob. Carly is trying to help, but somehow I get the feeling she is only just coping herself. Her attitude is too ethereal, all wistful sighs and staring out of the window. My mobile rings. I look at the screen.
‘I need to take this, Inspector.’
We are in an area of poor reception so my father’s voice crackles down the phone line like a Dalek.
‘Jenni, are you all right?’ he warbles.
‘I’m as all right as I can be,’ I say.
‘Just to let you know the children are OK. A bit quiet, but I’ve been distracting them. We’ve been baking.’
‘Dad, thanks. Inspector Browning is here so I’ll ring you later on. On the landline.’
‘Inspector Browning. Again?’
‘Again.’
‘Chin up. Love you.’
‘Love you too.’
I click the phone off and the image of my boys icing fairy cakes falls away, leaving me looking at the beaded pearls of sweat peppered across Inspector Browning’s forehead. He frowns.
‘This must be very difficult for you,’ he says in a crusty northern voice.
‘Difficult doesn’t quite cover it,’ I reply.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Rossiter, but I need to ask you a few more questions.’
‘Fire away.’
‘Tell me again where you found the suicide note.’
‘On the dresser, behind the sofa, behind where he collapsed.’
The inspector is looking at me, eagle-eyed.
‘Please take me through it again, why you didn’t give it to us immediately?’
I sigh inside. Here we go again, for the fifth time.
‘I was devastated when I found the body. It was a while before I realised there was a note on the dresser. After I’d read it I was heart-broken and distracted. Far too upset to think about protocol, you know what with the emergency services arriving and everything – so I just folded it up and put it in my pocket.’ I take a deep breath.
The inspector is frowning at me.
‘And what eventually triggered you to remember that we might be interested in it?’
‘Later on when I was getting ready for bed, after they’d taken Craig’s body away, as I took off my jeans, I realised it was there. Remembered about it. Before that I was just thinking about Craig being dead.’ I paused. ‘And then I telephoned you immediately.’
‘Were you shocked by its contents?’
‘Of course I was shocked. I had no idea my husband was conflicted between me and Anastasia Donaldson.’
~ Carly ~
Jenni, staying at your cottage at the moment is difficult. Watching you so woebegone, so bereft, your saucer-like eyes more pitiful than ever. Missing my children. At least your children are being spared the funeral plans as you have dispatched them to your father’s. I have no privacy here, no time to myself, no time on my own with Rob, as the cottage is crawling with police and funeral arrangements. Hopefully progress towards the funeral will speed up when the inquest is over.
The police have interviewed you about your husband’s death. How did that make you feel, Jenni? And now Inspector Browning is interviewing me, in the living room of your compact cottage, droplets of perspiration adorning his forehead. He wipes them away with a large white cotton handkerchief.
‘Can I get you a glass of water?’ I ask.
‘No, thanks, Mrs Burton, this won’t take long. I’ll get straight to the point,’ he says as he puts his handkerchief in his pocket. ‘Did you have an affair with Mr Rossiter?’
I feel as if I’ve been punched in the stomach. I wasn’t expecting to be asked about Craig.
‘Yes,’ I reply, wishing he hadn’t started on this. My relationship with Craig is ancient history.
‘For how long?’
‘It didn’t last long.’ I sigh. ‘It was a long time ago now. It was of no significance.’
‘How can an affair be of no significance?’ he asks, eyes narrowing.
‘Because it was just sexual. Have you heard the expression “fuck-buddy”, Inspector? It was like that.’
His body stiffens as I utter the words ‘fuck-buddy’. Inspector Browning; a man who never fucks – a man who always makes love.
‘And did you know about Anastasia?’ he asks.
‘I thought he was seeing someone because I saw him kissing a leggy blonde when we visited a few months ago, but I didn’t know her name.’
‘Saw him?’ He pauses. ‘Where?’
‘We were all at the pub together – the one in the middle of Trethynion – their family and mine. We’d come to stay for the weekend. I went to the loo, and then I didn’t feel too good. I needed a bit of fresh air so I went to the front door of the pub and stepped outside. That’s when I saw him. On the harbour wall with the blonde.’
‘And did you tell Jenni about this woman?’
‘No. I didn’t want to upset her.’
‘She never mentioned her to you?’
‘No.’
‘And then? What happened then? Did you confront Craig about it? Tell Rob?’
‘And then – nothing – we’ve been back home in Stansfield, we hadn’t seen Jenni or Craig until we received Jenni’s call telling us that Craig was dead.’ I pause for breath before I continue. ‘It was the most terrible shock.’
I sit looking around the tiny cottage, at the inspector filling the space where Craig used to sit, regret piercing into me. Perhaps the inspector is right.
There is no such thing as an affair that doesn’t mean anything.
~ Rob ~
An hour’s journey to the coroner’s court. Hands on the wheel. Eyes on the road. Too many lorries driving too close together, overtaking each other on hills, slowing us down. Jenni in the front passenger seat, Carly directly behind her. The silence between us is solid. Tangible. Last night we talked and talked and drank and drank, which is why I am having to push through a weary body and a headache to concentrate. I turn the radio on. Classic FM. As the stilted resonance of violin and oboe slices into the car, the atmosphere tightens.
For a second I take my eyes off the road to look across at Jenni. Her eyelids, already closed, seem to clamp shut more tightly, her skin flickering, twitching. Her hands are clasped together as if she is praying. Jenni Rossiter, praying mantis. That’s what Carly used to say before her first breakdown. Well, Jenni looks like that today. Today, on this day of conclusions. Of rubber stamping. Of ritual release. This day we need to pass through.
I look in the rearview mirror and Carly’s pale blue eyes catch mine. Eyes that tell me she wants to go home. Eyes that are tired of staying in Jenni’s small, cramped cottage, sweating with Craig’s memory, wanting to go home and recover from the shock of his death in our own environment. Eyes that want to go home to her mother, to her children. Eyes tired of endless visits from funeral directors with tight-lipped sincerity wearing black cashmere coats whatever the weather. People too familiar with death. The stigma of death clinging to them.
Craig. An ordinary bloke whom death has eulogised. Jenni and Carly, both devastated by his death. And what about Anastasia, the mysterious woman he was shagging? Craig has left heartbreak in his wake. If I popped off like this would anyone care, really care like this about me? A stab of unreasonable envy cuts into me. For how can I reasonably envy a man whose decomposing body is soon to be buried? A man whose life has been cut short aged just forty.
At last we pull into the car park of County Hall, a modern concrete and glass monstrosity surrounded by grass. No trees. No flowers. No softness. We get out of the car. Carly and Jenni link arms and walk slowly across the car park like a pair of old ladies; broken and twisted, clinging on to each other with rounded shoulders, looking at the ground instead of the horizon so as not to miss their footing. I walk behind them. Has his loss brought them closer together?
We arrive, moving through rotating glass doors. We are vetted by security. An usher directs us to court four on the second floor. We trip to the lavatory. To the coffee machine. We sit waiting, lifting plastic cups containing tasteless warm liquid to our lips. Looking at the magnolia wall. At the floor. Until, after what seems like hours, it’s time to go in.
I take the women’s hands in mine. Both of them are trembling, as if they have advanced Parkinson’s disease.
Despite the brutalistic modernity of this County Hall, the coroner’s court is standard, unremarkable. Like a miniature magistrate’s court. We sit at the front, still holding hands. We stand up in respect when the coroner arrives; he is about sixty with a ruddy face and white hair. Like a slim Father Christmas. He sits down. We sit down. He looks straight at us as he speaks.
‘I do not need any more time over this. I have read the evidence. I have studied the autopsy report. My conclusion is suicide by drug overdose.’
~ Carly ~
It pours with rain on the day of Craig’s funeral, bullets of metallic liquid exploding on the bonnet of the car as we follow the funeral cortege along the main road towards the church. Jenni has insisted on walking there via the cliff path. Alone. We all offered to accompany her: me, Rob, her father, her children, several of Craig’s colleagues from the fire brigade. But no. Jenni wanted time to herself. She set off half an hour before us, decked head to toe in Gore-Tex, striding out in her leather walking boots, something soft and black to change into in her backpack.
The car carrying Craig’s coffin leads the way. The second car contains Craig’s parents, Jenni’s father and the children. Rob and I have the third to ourselves. Shiny black cars in convoy, shouting of death. Rob is looking straight ahead, at the back of the driver’s head, a hardness in his face that I have not seen before. As if he is putting a protective layer around himself, pretending not to be here. The car smells of furniture polish and grief. Of suppressed tears. Funerals are hell on earth. When I die I do not want one. I want a non-funeral. I heard about them on the radio. Held at the crematorium. The coffin goes straight into the incinerator. No hymns. No prayers. No vicar. No congregation. No fuss. The family don’t even have to be there. Perfect for people like me who aren’t religious. When I discussed it with Rob he said,
‘Funerals aren’t for the deceased. They’re for the people left behind.’
‘So you think not having a funeral is selfish?’
‘Yes. If you can be selfish after you’re dead.’
Craig’s funeral is to be very unselfish. Hymns, organ music and lilies. A personalised eulogy. Pallbearers. Ushers. An order of service with a picture of Craig on the front. We have spent hours and hours finalising microscopic details. And nobody has done more than Jenni.
The cortege pulls off the main road and begins to snake uphill, along lanes framed with overflowing hedgerows. The hill is steep. The cortege slows and struggles. Rob reaches across to hold my hand.
‘Not far now,’ he mutters.
When the shiny black cars are parked in a line, we get out and fists of wind and rain punch our faces. Shivering, we bow our heads and rush towards the church. As soon as we enter I see Jenni kneeling in the middle of the front pew, changed from her waterproofs into black silk, a waterfall of white pearls at her neck, hands clasped together, praying. Her family are moving towards her but she doesn’t open her eyes. She doesn’t stop praying. Her father, Stuart, is holding the boys against his body, one on each side, squashing them against him as if he wants to engulf them. I can only see the backs of their heads. Their shiny hair.
Rob and I sit in the middle of the church. I close my eyes for a second but do not pray. I open them quickly and sit waiting and watching. Watching Craig’s elderly parents walk down the aisle slowly, leaning on sticks. So thin. So fragile. Can a parent ever cope with seeing this?
His chums from the fire brigade arrive with their burly shoulders and strong faces. Sad but not too sad. Suppressing the shared jokes that bind them together. Grinning at each other surreptitiously with their eyes. Sharing a bullish, boyish sense of denial. The landlord from the pub is here, sitting behind the fire brigade crowd, holding hands with his wife.
I turn around to see what is happening behind me. I realise with a start that Anastasia Donaldson is entering the church. She is wearing a floral headscarf to try and disguise hers
elf. She sits at the back, head bowed, but she cannot spare me from her sculptured cheekbones and small darting eyes.
Why did he want her, when he didn’t want me? I silently will her to go away before Jenni sees her. Jenni, he loved her more than he loved either of us. Does that hurt you as much as it hurts me?
The organ begins to resonate through the church and I pull my eyes away from Anastasia and face the front. The vicar has arrived. The pallbearers are shuffling in with the coffin. Then it comes to me, clear as day: Jenni should move back to Stansfield. We need another nurse practitioner at the surgery. Stansfield is where she grew up. Stansfield is where she belongs. I am better now. I love my friend and want to protect her. If she comes back to Stansfield she will be safe from the humiliation of Craig’s relationship with Anastasia Donaldson. Rob and I will protect her.
~ Jenni ~
At Carly’s suggestion, after my sad bereavement, I have moved from Cornwall back to Stansfield to be near my old friends. To take the job of Nurse Practitioner at Riverside Surgery. A GP Nurse Practitioner. My dream job. I am sitting in my old flat above the shop in Stansfield, drinking a cup of black coffee before I go to work. Fortunately we didn’t sell this flat. We kept it and let it out. But now, the decor looks tired. The oriental throws are less bright. The shaggy carpet less fat. So I’m working hard when I’m not at the surgery, brightening my home with a lick of paint. Being busy right now reduces some of my aching loneliness. The wide, stretching ache that never goes away.
My life is so different without Craig.
Obsession: A shocking psychological thriller where love affairs turn deadly Page 22
