Precious Thing

by Mcbeth, Colette

  ‘If anyone asks,’ I said to Jake as I grabbed my bag, ‘tell them I’m meeting a contact. And I’m taking a crew.’ I ran out of the newsroom before he could ask any questions.

  The blue sky that promised so much earlier in the day had been consumed by clouds. They grew thicker and thicker as I drove out of London until there was nothing left but grey. By the time I reached the A10 gobstoppers of hail started to fall, shattering like pieces of glass on the windscreen. A trail of white spray fell off the car in front. I pinched my eyes in an effort to see the road, to find a way through.

  I twisted my neck one way and the other and tried to loosen the tension that seemed to have calcified my bones. Tiredness was bleeding into my head.

  What was I doing, out there, driving into the middle of nowhere (or Leigh-on-Sea, which was the same thing)? Ostensibly I was taking a punt on a story, but don’t think I had forgotten about you and Jonny. You were the real reason, Clara. I’d run out of places to look for you. I was too close to the search, so tight up against it, I couldn’t see a thing. I needed clarity and perspective and without space I knew I would never achieve them.

  Entering Leigh-on-Sea the road opened up to reveal the water, thrashing and black and desolate. I didn’t see a soul on the approach to the town, no figures out walking, wrapped up against the elements; the benches were empty, the trees bare of leaves. The place was bleak, abandoned; even the fish and chip shops were boarded up.

  I’d approached Ann Carvello the week before, just after the verdict. I had been standing by our live point blown about by the wind which tunnels down the Old Bailey, when I caught a flash of her white hair out of the corner of my eye. Turning round I saw her scurrying away from the court, head bent down so far her scarf almost swallowed her up. She couldn’t run, not at her age, and anyway it would have attracted too much attention. She wanted to slip by unnoticed and she very nearly did because no one else saw her except for me. I ripped out my earpiece and walked as fast as I could. By the end of the street I’d caught up with her.

  ‘Mrs Carvello?’ I said as if I wasn’t sure it was her. I’d stopped right in front of her and she almost walked into me. She lifted her head and looked at me with her bloodshot eyes.

  ‘I don’t think so, love,’ she said through her trademark red-lipsticked lips. ‘There’s nothing I can say.’ She nodded and went on her way, a woman with nothing left in her life except a story that everyone wanted to hear.

  I found her house a few streets back from the beach. A largish semi with a neatly tended garden. On either side of her painted green door empty hanging baskets swung in the wind. Appearances, I thought, must have mattered a lot to Ann Carvello.

  I knocked and waited, pulling my cagoule around me to hide my workwear. Behind the door I could hear footsteps, padding through the hall, then a face mottled through the glass.

  ‘Who is it?’ she asked gently.

  ‘It’s Rachel, I hope you don’t mind, I was passing by.’ I imagined her thinking of a Rachel she knew – it helps having a common name – a niece, a friend, and not wanting to offend them by following up with a ‘Rachel who?’

  I heard her unhook the chain and open the door slowly, her white hair appearing through it first, then her face, red lipstick even at home. She was dressed in a pale blue cardigan and a tweed skirt. Immaculate.

  She stared for a moment, sizing me up, and then I saw the recognition creep across her face. The door began to shut again. I moved my foot quickly to stop it.

  ‘I thought you might like to talk to me,’ I said.

  ‘I have nothing to say.’ She pushed the door harder against my foot.

  ‘I don’t think you knew anything about it, did you? All those interviews your so-called friends have given, your neighbour in the Sun today, your old schoolfriend in the Mail on Sunday at the weekend. They believe it but I don’t.’

  There were footsteps on the pavement, the sound of the gate opening. A man delivering a free newspaper was coming down her garden path. She shifted uncomfortably and shook her head in his direction and he went on his way. I raised my voice against the rain, loud enough for him to hear.

  ‘They don’t understand that you could live with someone for so long and not know. But I know people are good at hiding things when they really want to.’

  ‘The rain,’ she said, ‘sometimes I think it’s never going to stop.’

  ‘I understand.’ It was dripping down me now, running off my nose and soaking through my hair.

  She peered out of the doorway and turned her head from side to side to see if anyone was looking. Then she said; ‘Five minutes, that’s it, and I won’t be quoted, do you understand.’

  ‘Of course.’

  A woman pushing a pram walked past her gate craning her neck to see who Ann was talking to.

  ‘Quickly,’ she said, ushering me in, ‘before I change my mind.’

  The living room smelt of polish and Shake n’ Vac and the trail lines of the Hoover on the carpet suggested it had been recently vacuumed. On the windowsill a neat arrangement of china, figures of a girl in a petticoat and hat with a lamb, another of a dog. A little basket of potpourri gave off a sickly sweet smell. School-uniformed children smiled out from photo frames on the mantelpiece, and couples kissed in wedding photographs. A young man in a graduation picture. A timeline of happy family events. Not one of Ann though. None of her husband.

  She plumped a green velvet cushion unnecessarily and motioned for me to sit down. Then she left me and went into the kitchen; the sound of a kettle boiling and cups arranged, and a few moments later she reappeared carrying a tray with cups and saucers, a teapot and a plate of garibaldi biscuits. These little things mattered to her, perhaps even more so now.

  She sat down in the chair opposite me and pulled her skirt down around her, flicking an imaginary crumb from her lap.

  ‘You’re probably wondering how I could have been so stupid?’ Her voice was stretched and thin.

  ‘That has never crossed my mind,’ I said.

  ‘My friends,’ and she gave a weak laugh, ‘those who still come near, they say they believe me but it’s in their eyes. The doubt, it’s there all the time. Not that I blame them, I wonder how I could have lived with him all that time and never suspected a thing.’ She looked away from me and lifted the cup to her lips, her hands shaking, and took the smallest sip before placing it back on the saucer.

  ‘He was your husband,’ I said as softly as I could.

  ‘I had five children to look after, he worked all hours, he’d come in at night and I’d have his tea on the table. That was the way it was then. There was none of this “sharing roles”. He’d go out to the pub a few times a week like most men. I never questioned it. He always provided for us, never so much as raised a hand to me or the children. It was all so … so … ordinary.’

  ‘When you’re not looking it’s hard to find something,’ I said. I noticed how green her eyes were, watered down now through age but still striking.

  Ann nodded and fixed me with a stare as if she was sizing me up. ‘You seem sharper than the others,’ she said. ‘When you’re too close to something everything is out of focus, it’s only when you step back and see it through a different lens that it all begins to make sense.’ She reached for her cup and saucer again and let her hand hover over them as if she was making a decision. ‘When I look back now,’ she said, ‘I can see my whole life was a lie.’

  Her confession startled me, the way it came so easily, how it was still so raw on her. Throughout the trial she’d been silent, supportive. She must have seen my surprise.

  ‘Oh I never believed he did it, not for a moment,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want it to be true, every ounce of me, everything, I wanted it to be shown as the awful, cruel lie that it was. He kept on saying that I had to believe him, that I was the only one left who did. And I did. I told him over and over again that I did.’

  ‘Sometimes it’s easier that way,’ I said, reaching for a garibaldi.


  She closed her eyes as if to summon up the memory. ‘One day in court, I remember so clearly, I heard him telling the prosecutor why he went out driving late at night. He said he was an insomniac, he couldn’t sleep so he’d take the car and go for a drive.’ She paused and I saw her lips wobble, something catching in her voice. ‘But the thing is, he fell asleep the moment his head hit the pillow. Always. Not once in all the years we were together had I known him to have trouble falling asleep.’ She clicked her fingers. Snap. ‘It was only a little lie but I knew then that he’d lied about everything. That’s when it all came crashing down. All those years of marriage, the children, everything just imploded.’ She pulled a handkerchief from the inside of her sleeve and wiped her eyes. ‘It’s the little things that give people away, that’s how they can hide for so long because those things are so little we often miss them. But if you look carefully enough you’ll find them.’ She paused and in a whisper said: ‘I was married to him for thirty-one years and I hope he rots in hell for what he did to those women.’

  Those women.

  Four women – mothers, wives, daughters – murdered by Charlie Carvello, whose crimes went undetected for decades until science finally caught up with him. He’d been sentenced to life at the Old Bailey the week before.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘and I’m sorry no one believes you.’

  ‘You asked me if I had something to say love, well it’s this. You can be so close to someone for a lifetime and not know who they really are.’

  I looked at Ann and tried to see beneath her immaculate make-up, the hair set into place. And all I could see was a hollow nothingness that told its own story. All the memories built up and treasured through the years, her children, her love, all the smiles and laughter and hard times, they’d all been stripped out of her by his lie.

  ‘Now,’ she said, ‘looking back, I think there were signs. There are always signs and clues, it’s a question of whether we want to see them. Most of the time we only see what we want to see.’

  We talked for another hour until the tea went cold and she made another pot. We talked about her children, her treatment by journalists, ‘most of them were awful, not like you’, and by the time I suggested my cameraman came in and record a few minutes with her – your story, how you want to tell it – there was no resistance.

  When we were finished I gave her a hug as I headed to my car, her body even more frail to touch than it looked. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘for understanding.’ I told her not to mention it and saw the relief in her face, her features softened. A weight lifted. I’d given her the chance to have her say. And then I waved her goodbye taking with me thirty minutes of the interview everyone wanted with Ann the wife of a serial killer. At work people always said I had a knack of getting people to talk, as if it was luck. But luck had nothing to do with it. I could just see what people needed, what they wanted, before they even knew themselves.

  It was dark by the time I arrived in West London. Pulling up outside the aircraft hangar that was the NNN news factory I could see the harsh lights of a newsroom hard at work. Once parked, I ran from the car to the door, swiping my ID card to let myself in. I stopped for a moment to find my phone and check for missed calls – has Jonny tried to reach me? I felt the hard edges of the tape inside my bag and smiled, imagining Robbie’s face when I told him the interview it contained. Finally I found my phone in the side pocket of my bag. Five missed calls: one from my Aunty Laura, two from Jake, two from Sandra, Jonny’s mum. The police have contacted her. I must call her.

  I marched on towards Robbie’s desk and was within earshot of his ranting, ‘You missed your slot, you idiot,’ when I felt a hand on my arm pulling me in the opposite direction.

  ‘You might want to give him a wide berth,’ Jake said, nodding in Robbie’s direction.

  He said nothing else, but his arm was firm around me and I felt myself being swept from the newsroom. When I tried to protest he said he would explain, outside.

  We’d almost made it back to the door when I saw it. The photograph on the big screen, towering above the newsroom. I didn’t recognise the suit, the tie, and the face was younger, but unmistakable. The room slipped away from me; nothing else was left but the picture of him until he disappeared too, replaced by DCI Gunn talking to the camera. And even before I saw it flash up on the screen I knew what was coming next. The CCTV of you and Jonny together on the promenade. It was there in front of me, the shot zooming in, closer and closer still. So close, I thought I could reach out and touch you.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ Jake said and I followed him without a word.

  We went round the corner to Ozzie’s, an old-style greasy spoon. Only the old hacks still went there at lunchtime for fried bread and sausages. Everyone else went to the new deli that sold carrot and ginger and spirulina juice and smoothies and weird combinations of soup. Ozzie himself was an old Greek guy who had eaten too much of his own food and insisted on combing the remaining strands of his dyed black hair over his bald head. The café was empty but he showed us to a table by the window, looking mildly pissed off when we insisted on sitting at the back, out of sight, next to a large mirror. We ordered two teas and pretended to look at the yellowing menus he’d given us.

  ‘They announced it this afternoon and released the CCTV at the same time. I tried to call you.’

  ‘It’s all wrong. It’s so wrong. Jonny wouldn’t have touched her. He wouldn’t, he couldn’t.’ I wanted to say it over and over again and scream it very loud until everyone understood: Jonny had nothing to do with your disappearance.

  ‘You said you’d told Robbie everything, Rachel,’ Jake said, shaking his head. He was wearing an olive-green ’boarding jacket which he unzipped and pushed over the back of the chair.

  ‘I told him enough.’ I didn’t want to look at Jake, I didn’t want to answer his questions.

  ‘But you didn’t tell him your boyfriend was the last person to see her,’ he said, slamming the menu shut.

  ‘I don’t know that he was.’ I was still staring at the words in the menu: omelette and chips, sausage and chips, pizza and chips, thinking of Ozzie’s greasy hands touching the food.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Rachel, I’m trying to look out for you here. You can see the headlines: “TV Reporter’s Lover Prime Suspect in Friend’s Disappearance.”’

  ‘You’d never have made it as a subeditor,’ I said, watching Jake screw his face up in frustration as Ozzie make his way across the café with our teas.

  ‘What can I get you to eat?’ Ozzie asked.

  Jake ordered egg and chips. I shook my head and handed Ozzie the menu, prompting him to mutter something about being too thin and needing to fatten up.

  Jake sat studying my face and then after checking to see that Ozzie was out of earshot, he smiled weakly and said, ‘You’re not as good as you think you are. I know what you do, Rachel, I’ve seen you in action too many times. The way you operate. You tell people what you think they need to hear. You keep from them what you think they don’t. It works, time and time again, the way you cast a spell on them. But don’t make the mistake of thinking it works with everyone.’ I could feel the heat of his eyes on me. He looked different somehow, serious, not to be messed with, unshakeable. I think it was the moment I decided I wanted him on my side.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Everything.’

  I sat there in the dimming light of Ozzie’s, with its once-white paint, yellowed by years of frying food, and the smell of chips sinking into my clothes, and I told him about you, Clara, my best friend in the world, the person who’d shot into my grey life like a burst of sunshine. I described the girl who’d laughed and partied with me and promised we’d be friends forever.

  I told him that I had believed you, but somehow when you became ill our friendship was derailed and no matter how hard I tried to get us back on track I never quite succeeded.

  And then I described how I’d found the photograph in my bedroom, the one of me and Jon
ny switched for one of you and my mother. I watched his face cloud over, his eyes grow wide and I listened to his questions: Wasn’t I mistaken? How could that happen if no one had broken in? When I offered no answers I watched it grow darker still.

  He asked about you and Jonny, about your relationship – a word that stung me, Clara – he talked about the pair of you in the same breath as if you were a unit now, bound together by the threads of the story. I told him what I knew, going back to the beginning. The first time you and Jonny met not even eighteen months before.

  Chapter Ten

  September 2005

  EIGHT THIRTY P.M. – that’s the time I told you the party was starting, which was half an hour later than Jonny and I had told everyone else. I thought it would be better that way, to have more people around when you met him for the first time. I thought it might make it less obvious that there were three people now where before there had only ever been the two of us.

  But when we arrive at seven forty-five you are already lounging on one of the deep sofas in the section reserved for Jonny’s party and cordoned off with rope. You sit, one leg curled under the other, sipping a mojito. Your dark hair is teased back, like you haven’t bothered, and your face is glowing, the whites of your eyes are super-white, set off by black eyeliner which makes them seem unfeasibly big. You’re in a purple dress which is low-cut front and back, and killer heels. You lift a long slender arm in the air and wave it in my direction. I see Jonny watching you, then he turns to me, asking with his eyes if it’s you. I nod.