Precious Thing

by Mcbeth, Colette

  ‘You have no idea what it was like,’ I said, ‘what she was like. To live with a mother whose eyes are full of disappointment and every day you see that. And as if you needed to be told she explains to you time and time again that you are a reminder of where her life went wrong. And she drinks to block everything out, she gets so drunk that nothing else matters and that’s what you come home to every day from school.’

  You hadn’t even looked up; your head was still peering over your bowl, blowing, blowing, softly. You ask a question and you don’t even fucking listen to my answer. I didn’t want to talk about my mother; I didn’t want to be with you at that moment. All the times when I’d called and invited you out over the last few weeks and you hadn’t responded, and there you were when I least wanted you. It wasn’t about comfort or remembering. It was something else buried deep, something I didn’t want to touch.

  ‘So that’s a no then?’ you said.

  ‘My life got better when she died, I think that is obvious.’

  ‘And you always knew that it would,’ you said, fixing me with a smile that made me shiver. ‘You always knew.’

  I got up to leave the table and walk away from the conversation you kept dragging up. I thought you would have got the message by then that I didn’t want to talk about it. You’d tried once before, hadn’t you? Only a few weeks before on our skiing holiday. On one of those endless chair lifts when there was only me and you and we imagined we were being taken up and up through the clouds to the top of the world. You’d breathed it then along with the sharp Alpine air, dancing around the subject before spelling it out. Judging by your face that day I could tell my answer was unsatisfactory but we didn’t bring it up again because shortly afterwards you had fallen badly on a black run and we’d been too preoccupied with getting you to a doctor to revive an old conversation.

  ‘We both know what happened, Clara,’ I said firmly and watched you shrink a little under my stare.

  ‘We both know the truth,’ you said, and taking my bowl you walked into the kitchen and threw the risotto in the bin.

  I left those conversational details out when I recounted my story to Sandra and DCI Gunn. I think most people in my situation would have done the same. We all know words uttered in the heat of the moment could in hindsight be taken out of context, imbued with meaning that was never intended. You can’t blame me for sticking to the sanitised version.

  A little while later when Sandra and I had run out of conversation we called it a night. Once upstairs she walked me past Jonny’s old room with the double bed where we normally slept to the spare room with a few sheets and blankets laid out on a camp bed. It was clear there were some privileges I was only entitled to in Jonny’s presence. I slept fitfully, the springs of the mattress digging into my back, and each time I woke the same thought fluttered through my head, moving, teasing me, offering me glimpses of something I couldn’t catch. Fragments of our story I needed to piece together one by one by one.

  Chapter Twelve

  I LEFT SANDRA’S house early the next morning, driving down the M1 as the dark of the night faded out to a milky, dusty light. It was too early to see the sun proper but occasionally little promises of it hit my windscreen, causing me to blink. There were few cars around, nothing to stop or stall my journey; I felt like I was floating through the air towards something brighter in the distance ahead.

  By the time I reached Westminster the sun was glinting off the river. The outlines of Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament and the surrounding buildings slicing up the cobalt-blue sky. I crossed Westminster Bridge and parked close to the South Bank, pulled my sunglasses from my bag and my winter coat around me and started walking along the banks of the Thames amongst the early-morning joggers and suits heading for breakfast meetings.

  From the moment I had seen your face in the police station, Clara, a thick fog had filled my mind. I had been blinded, incapable of working out what I needed to do. Now in the chill of the morning it began to lift. My thoughts had a sharpness to them, a clarity that had been lacking. I realised I had found myself locked out, kept in the dark, the flow of information about your disappearance siphoned off before it reached me. DCI Gunn had publicly named Jonny as a suspect without so much as even a phone call to warn me. And since I was officially off the story I was no longer privy to the private police briefings. I couldn’t even rely on Sarah Pitts with her schoolgirl grudges to keep me up to date. So many pieces of your puzzle were missing, Clara, and I knew that before I found you and Jonny, I had to find them first.

  There was only one person who might be able to help.

  I sat in one of the riverside cafés and ordered a soya latte, smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, watching the waitress move out of sight before I called the landline in your flat. It rang, once, twice, three times and then a whisper of a voice answered it as if she was unsure how to speak into a phone.

  ‘Amber?’ I asked, knowing it was her.

  ‘Who is this?’ she said, suspiciously.

  ‘It’s Rachel, Clara’s friend, we don’t know each other but I need your help, I—’

  ‘I can’t talk to you,’ she said. Another moment and I knew she would hang up.

  ‘Wait, please Amber, just hear me out, for Clara. It’s important. That is all I ask,’ I said. And I explained softly that we both wanted the same thing, how you would want your friends to work together. Would it do any harm to meet?

  In Brighton hours later, I waited on the beach with a coffee which cooled in seconds under the bracing sea winds. The sea air was sharper than in London, the blue sky endless. Would she come? Amber: your friend, not mine.

  It was then I saw her descending the steps from the promenade, her slight figure crouched against the wind. She looked over to the café where I was sitting and when she saw me she gave a wave and a smile which she seemed to regret as soon as it left her lips. She didn’t look up again until she was next to me.

  She was different to how I remembered her at the press conference. Looser, by which I mean less stiff and tense. Her blond hair was tied back casually and she was wearing trainers and wide trousers that billowed and fluttered in the wind. I noticed a blue yoga mat sticking out from her bag.

  I stood up and pushing my sunglasses up on to my head, reached out to hug her. She recoiled, offering her hand for me to shake instead. When I did, it was cold and limp in mine.

  ‘I’ve told the police everything I know. I’m sure you have too,’ she said as she sat down opposite me with a weak smile. She fished a thick mustard scarf out of her bag and wound it round and round her neck, dipping her chin into it so I could only see her top lip move as she spoke. ‘I don’t really know how we can help each other.’ I pushed my sunglasses back over my eyes and followed her gaze out to the horizon. Then she said; ‘The reporters have been calling nonstop. I don’t want to talk to the papers or do television interviews, I’ve already done what I can to help. I can’t do any more.’ She turned to look at me, ‘You are here as Clara’s friend, aren’t you?’

  Her voice was cold and flat but there was a sting in her words that surprised me. I had imagined we might exchange a few conversational pleasantries before I manoeuvred the conversation round to what I had come for – information that might lead me to you.

  ‘Clara is my oldest friend, this has nothing to do with my job,’ I said and watched her raise her eyebrows. ‘Oh my God,’ I shouted, throwing myself back in the chair, ‘it wasn’t like THAT. I got sent on a story – the first time I knew it was Clara was when I walked into the press conference and then it all started and before I knew it I was on air talking about her. It wasn’t planned. I told my bosses I couldn’t do the story as soon as I got back to the office. You can’t think I would have chosen to report on my best friend’s disappearance.’ I let my head sink into my hands. ‘The last few days have been the worst of my life. I’m here because I don’t know where to turn. I don’t know what to do next.’

  She moved her head up out of her scarf
and let my words sink in. But still she stared, unsmiling. There was something else, something she was holding against me. I picked my words carefully.

  ‘I think Clara found me a bit suffocating lately,’ I told her. ‘I never meant to be like that, it’s just …’ I paused and waited for my admission to disarm her. ‘It’s just that she is so fragile at times I felt like if I didn’t look out for her nobody would.’

  ‘You’re not her only friend, Rachel,’ she said defensively. And then; ‘Look, I shouldn’t have come.’ I saw her finger her bag as if she was getting ready to leave. ‘I don’t know what happened between you but I know something wasn’t right.’

  ‘I always tried to look out for her, I never meant it—’

  ‘When I saw her after Christmas she was different, like she was shrinking into herself. ’

  ‘She’d had a bad fall when we were skiing,’ I said. ‘She’d bruised her ribs. It shook her up. I think it would have shaken anyone up.’

  Through my sunglasses I could see Amber tilt her head to one side and narrow her gaze as if she was trying to see something she couldn’t quite make out.

  ‘Why did you bother with her? I mean, she hardly made an effort. If someone treated me like that I would drop them.’

  I winced. Amber was painting me as this desperate, needy person who wouldn’t let you go. You must have planted those seeds in her mind, Clara. It made me worry about your mental state even more because nothing could have been further from the truth.

  ‘I guess you don’t understand her like I do,’ I said quietly.

  ‘Really? All I could see were the calls and the texts and the invitations she turned down. She wanted some space.’

  I saw Amber’s cheeks colour a little, flushed with rage on your behalf. But how could she understand our friendship, how could anyone? You can’t just let something so special shrink and die. You have to do everything within your power to save it. Shaking my head I looked over to the old pier where we used to go and sit as teenagers, now burnt and charred, the metal framework twisted and bare.

  I took my sunglasses off and laid them on the table.

  ‘I’m sorry you’ve got such a bad impression of me. It’s hard to explain. Clara was like a sister to me.’ I waited for a moment as if struggling to find the words. ‘I really don’t want to sound patronising here, Amber, because I know Clara has other friends and I’m really happy for her. But I’m not sure they all understand where she’s come from.’ I watched Amber’s face cloud over. You hadn’t told her, Clara, you hadn’t told her. ‘Have you any idea where she spent some of the last seven years?’ I asked.

  Amber shook her head slowly. ‘I guessed as much.’ I leant in to be closer to her. ‘I would never normally tell anyone this, but in the circumstances it’s important we’re honest and open. You need to understand that Clara’s grip on reality was not always as firm as it should be.’

  Finally I had her attention. She sat, mouth open wide, and listened, occasionally making sympathetic noises as I told her the story of you, Clara. ‘I understand,’ I said as a final flourish, ‘that you might not want to believe me. But the police know everything. I’m sure they’d tell you.’ Amber shook her head as if to say no need. And I could feel her resistance ebb away.

  We started with Friday night. I laid out my version of events first, signposting to Amber my blind spots, suggesting where she might be able to shed some light. I knew she would have gone through her story with the police once already. I hoped I would be able to glean from Amber the information the police had withheld from me.

  She said you had planned to meet me, at least that was her understanding. ‘But I knew there was someone coming to the flat first, maybe he was delayed and that was why she was late.’

  You’d never mentioned anyone coming to the flat. You were supposed to be ill.

  ‘He?’ I asked.

  ‘It was a guy, that’s as much as I knew.’

  Jonny.

  I saw it again, the image of both of you together, his body leaning into yours on the promenade. Had you invited Jonny to your flat, Clara? What did you talk about? The thought made my mouth go dry. I rummaged in my bag and retrieved a bottle of water. Then I found my phone and shuffled through the old texts to show Amber yours.

  Rach, so sorry, feeling terrible, think I might have flu, in bed still but will heave myself out to make it. Will call later Clarax

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Maybe she forgot to mention him.’ But her voice told me she thought it was as weak a theory as I did.

  ‘Did she tell you his name?’

  ‘No, but she said it wasn’t her fella.’

  ‘Her fella?’ I wondered how many more secrets you had kept from me, Clara.

  ‘He was called Jim or something, I never met him. I think it was someone she knew from years ago. Anyway,’ she said, refusing to be sidetracked, ‘it wasn’t him. She seemed preoccupied, a bit hyper, you know how she is sometimes,’ and she looked towards me for my agreement. I nodded. I thought back to the previous week. The daily phone calls to check I was coming to Brighton, so out of character, Clara. And me happy that you were finally making an effort.

  ‘I asked her a couple of times if she was OK,’ Amber continued, her gaze fixed on the horizon, ‘because she seemed hyper but jumpy too. Like she was scared of something. She said she had a few things on her mind but she would have dealt with them after that night. I didn’t pry any more, it was almost like she wanted to cultivate this air of mystery. It could be a bit infuriating at times. Now I wish I’d asked more. I wish I knew who she was meeting. Though the police think it might have been that guy in the CCTV.’

  ‘Jonny?’

  ‘That’s the one,’ she agreed.

  ‘He’s my boyfriend,’ I said and watched Amber twitch.

  She muttered something about being sorry and how she was sure it was a mistake and then started sprinkling her story with extraneous details so we wouldn’t have to talk about Jonny.

  ‘I warned you I wouldn’t be much help,’ she said, putting her coffee cup to her lips and grimacing when she realised how cold it was. I smiled and reached out to put my hand over hers.

  ‘You’ve been more help than you know.’

  She gathered her things together, her phone from the table, her bag, and apologised but she had a yoga class she couldn’t miss. ‘It’s the only thing that relaxes me at the moment,’ she said. I stood up and thanked her, holding out my hand to shake hers. This time she leant into me and we embraced. She scribbled her mobile number for me and then she was gone, her trousers flapping in the wind.

  I sat there for a while longer watching the flock of seagulls span out above me, climbing high, so high into the white of the sun they almost vanished.

  We both know the truth, Rachel.

  Those were your last words to me and suddenly the thought was there again, fluttering into view. I saw glimpses, flickers of it. But when I tried to hold it down it disappeared into the sun.

  Chapter Thirteen

  YOU SLIPPED AWAY from view over the weekend. Your name unspoken on the radio, your face absent from newspapers and television, Jonny’s too. You have to offer a new twist, an unexpected turn, to stay in the headlines and you had gone silent.

  In my flat there was silence too. No laughter, no chat over breakfast or Saturday night TV or Sunday papers, no Jonny. Only one-out-of-the-blue phone call from Sarah Pitts to break the quiet, surprising me with its apologetic tone.

  ‘Look, Rachel, I’m sorry for the other day, I’d had no sleep. I was going crazy thinking I could have done something to keep her safe but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.’

  I thought back to our frosty exchange in the café, how I had so desperately wanted us to understand and help each other, how I saw all too clearly the shadows of our past still lurked between us.

  ‘Apology accepted,’ I said slowly, allowing Sarah to pick up the conversation. She told me she’d been interviewed by the police but hadn’t heard anythin
g about you since. She asked me what I had been up to.

  Drowning.

  Slowly drowning.

  ‘Oh, you know, nothing much, can’t seem to concentrate on anything at the moment,’ I said.

  ‘I know what you mean. Listen Rachel, you don’t mind if I call you now and then do you,’ she asked. ‘It’s just that you’ll probably get more information than me.’

  I hesitated, and then relented.

  ‘No problem,’ I said, fully expecting never to hear from her again. ‘’Bye for now.’

  I hung up and sank back into a big black hole of nothingness.

  The irony was that Jonny and I wouldn’t have been together that weekend anyway. He should have been in Afghanistan, which was always going to be hard, but missing someone and knowing their absence has a purpose was a whole world away from this, this torture. A huge fault-line had opened up in my world and swallowed up the two people I cared for most. Yet somehow, somehow, I hadn’t felt the slightest tremor until it was too late. All I could see now was the damage it had left behind.

  I remember that weekend in shivers and coughs and aches. My throat was raw, my body felt as if it had been stretched to the point of snapping. I wore layers of clothes, jumpers, socks, slippers, turned the heating up full blast, but still the cold wouldn’t shift from my bones. I ate without restraint in a way I hadn’t done for years: takeaway pizza, Thai, curry, biscuits from the cupboard, whatever I could lay my hands on, anything to fill the huge void inside me. In the end I was sick, which only made me feel even more wretched.

  My thoughts were chaotic, my emotions swung like a pendulum between raw fury and utter desolation. I didn’t know what to think, whether to feel devastated, grief or betrayal. In the end I experienced all three.