When I finally make it back into the lounge, Mrs Bristock is gazing through the crack she has made in the lace curtains. She is ‘ever so grateful for the cuppa: my goodness, waitress service’, and starts to tell me about her husband, Mr Bristock, who had run a school-uniform shop in Southsea. He had been unlucky enough to suffer an early death from cancer in the 1960s.
‘Jack Hopkins,’ she says thoughtfully. ‘I always wondered what happened to him. Remind me why you’re after him?’
‘He was a friend of mine. Is. I lost touch. You haven’t seen him . . . in the last year or so?’
‘Not since the day he upped and left. I believe he became a tourist guide. Coach trips. Over in Europe?’
‘Probably. That’s what he told me, but . . .’
‘After everything – I thought we might see him when the house was sold, but the only person through the door was the estate agent. He probably didn’t want to show his face after. . .’ She loses her thread. ‘Well, the new lot, they’re nice enough. They’ve let the garden go to pot, though. Jilly loved her garden.’
‘What was he like?’ I ask. ‘As a child.’
She glances at me. ‘A gorgeous face. Butter wouldn’t melt. Sweet as pie. Those big blue eyes: he could make you do anything. I used to sit for him, when Jilly was at work. When he was very little, of course. That stopped later.’
She pats gently at her fine white curls. Her eyes fix on a patch on the carpet. ‘He was a complicated lad.’ Her voice flattens. ‘I’m not sure it’s my place . . .’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, if you’re sure.’ She begins to tell stories, long anecdotes. At first, they sound like nothing, schoolboy pranks: fireworks set off at odd times, tortured frogs, dissected mice, her missing pet cat. ‘I always said he had something to do with it. She scratched him once when he was quite small and he hated her after that. He wouldn’t go near her, said she was evil. He searched for her with all the other kids – I’d promised a reward – but I caught him giving me a look that was almost gleeful.’
She takes off her big glasses and rubs at the red mark on the bridge of her nose before putting them back on. ‘There’s not much to do around here for young people in winter. Summer’s different. Once he got a bit older he used to spend time with the holiday lot. He got a job at the yacht club, in the bar. One girl in particular I remember him being doolally about, a boarding-school lassie – she was only here a month, on the way down to Cornwall where her family had a place.’
‘Was she called Victoria?’
‘No idea, dear. But that was typical Jack. He was on and on at Jilly to move to Cornwall. Nothing here was ever good enough for him.’
‘Actually, he loved Cornwall. He bought a small bungalow down there – with the money . . .’ I gesture through the net curtains at the house next door.
‘Well, I hope it brought him happiness.’
I laugh quickly, then sigh. ‘I don’t know.’
She gives me a beady look. ‘I didn’t blame him. Despite what folk said. I like to think the best of people, and the coroner . . . well, he came down on his side.’
I feel myself smile oddly. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘The accident. The summer before he left.’
‘The accident?’ The sofa I’m sitting on is beige velour. I stroke it carefully. The colour darkens.
‘Didn’t he tell you?’
‘No.’
‘Well, someone else will if I don’t. It was Polly Milton, his girlfriend, her father ran the yacht club.’ She nods to herself. ‘She was a beautiful thing, headstrong, like they all are at that age. Played all the boys off against each other. It almost killed her parents.’
‘What did?’
A small boy has come out of the house next door and is riding up and down the street on the blue trike, ringing his bell.
‘She drowned. She’d sailed out to the fort, over by Bembridge, on her father’s Laser with Jack. Her body was washed up at Gosport a month later. She was the love of Jack’s life at the time. He was devastated. Jack said she’d jumped in for a lark and that by the time he managed to turn the dinghy round, she’d disappeared. He tacked back and forth, trying to find her, but . . .’
All feeling has gone from my face. My tongue feels heavy in my mouth. ‘And what did other people say?’
‘Well, people thought he’d killed her. They’d been arguing – someone on a passing boat heard raised voices. No one believed she’d have jumped in, not there, not with the current as strong as it was, not so close to the shipping lane.’
‘Was he arrested?’ I say, louder than I mean to.
‘Yes, though it never went to trial. Not enough evidence. But he wasn’t welcome round here after that.’
Zach
13 February 2012
On the way out of town earlier, I parked up near the school. I stood on the common and watched her up in the school library. The lights were on and she passed by the window twice. The third time, she leaned her elbows on the sill and looked out. She seemed to stare straight at me, though I knew I was hidden, my back pressed against the tree, my face concealed behind a web of branches. I had it in mind to step forward when a man came into view behind her, and as she turned, I saw her laugh, a chink of white throat. I imagined his lips then in the dip of her neck, where the vein throbs, her eyes closing, his hands on the swell of her breasts.
If I know for sure that she has moved on, that she has forgotten what we had, I’ll kill her.
She has no one to blame but herself.
Gulls isn’t the same without her.
I rang her just now, pretended to have reached Exeter with my six months’ worth of imaginary canvases. The gallery owner took them all and wants more! We’re having dinner later to celebrate! At his local wine bar. I’ll have a salad. Shower and a shave in the bathroom at the B & B. Nice woman runs it. Elderly. A widow.
It’s almost comic, her willingness to suck up my lies. Her imagination met me halfway. ‘Was it the abstracts he liked best?’ she said. ‘Or the ones where you play with personification?’ She wants me to do well so she can be free of me, fuck whoever she’s fucking with impunity.
I felt tears at the corners of my eyes. The booze makes me maudlin.
I’ve hardly moved from this chair since I arrived. If the rain lets up, I’ll collect my stuff from the boot. Might read a book. Might not. Peace, quiet: that’s what I need.
I might drive down to the Blue Lagoon later, see if Kulon has had a chance to replenish his suitcase of goodies. I’m a bit short of cash. I’ll take the emergency money. She’ll never know, as long as I fill it up before I leave.
Chapter Twenty-three
Lizzie
I don’t get a taxi. I need air.
When I reach the seafront, I stare out across the water where she drowned. Polly Milton. He told me about a Polly long ago, at a French restaurant opposite Clapham Picturehouse. Steak. Red wine. The warm glow of personal disclosure. She was the childhood sweetheart who slept with his best friend and broke his heart. He didn’t tell me she was dead, or that he had been there when it happened.
I stagger along the sea wall. Polly’s hair like seaweed trailing in the water. Her body bloated, her eyes unseeing, I think about Charlotte – her fall. Zach miles away. The clunk of her limbs against the bannisters, the thud of her head.
Two deaths. This man who lied and lied to me.
I make it back to Ryde, and onto the hovercraft and catch the bus and a train. I feel as if I’m walking underwater, pushing against the tide. The carriage is busy. A woman bounces a baby. A huddle of teenage boys listen to music on a mobile phone. Women with shopping bags. A man with the Daily Star.
Out of the window, I scrutinise the world as it flicks by – gardens, fields, shops, factories. He’s out there. I know he is. He isn’t going to come back and make happy families. He isn’t traumatised. It’s more twisted than that, more calculating. Zach isn’t afraid of me. He doesn’t love me. All those
excuses I made for him. All the things – the thing – I forgave. This is revenge.
At a station, the doors open and a man gets on. I tense, dig my fingers into Howard’s collar. The man has his back to me while he slots the handle down into a wheeled suitcase and lifts it up into the luggage rack. When he turns round, he is much older and shorter than Zach, in his sixties with a bulbous nose and ruddy cheeks. But I have bitten my lip so hard I taste blood.
What does it say that I loved him? Troubled as he was, I thought he needed me, that I could help him. I did believe he was my soulmate. I did feel a connection. Despite everything, I couldn’t get enough of him. What does that say about me?
I fumble for my phone and try Jane and then Peggy. Neither of them answers. Saturday afternoon and normal people with normal lives, normal relationships, are at the cinema or out with friends.
The train has trundled past Guildford when I ring Sam. He’s the only person I can think of. He is in his flat, recuperating. Yes, much better, thank you. Good to be home. No, that’s right, impossible to sleep on a ward. Very nice to be back in his own bed.
He answers my questions politely until I run out. ‘Are you all right?’ he asks then. ‘You sound terrible.’
I’m pressing my forehead against the glass, biting back tears.
‘Come over,’ he says.
I walk quickly from the station to take Howard home. I stick to the main roads, up St John’s Hill, which is thronging with buses, across to Battersea Rise and on to the long drag of Spencer Park, which has the railway on one side, big houses on the other. For the first time I am properly scared walking. I know what he’s capable of now. He’s a violent man. He isn’t troubled, ready to be saved. He is a liar and a murderer and he wants to kill me.
I’ve left the main bus route behind and I’m walking away from the shopping bustle of Clapham Junction. It’s getting dark and, though there is a steady stream of traffic, no pedestrians are in sight. In the dip to the left of me is the railway cutting – trains pass, with a splattering judder of light and noise. I keep turning, just to check. I am halfway along when I notice the cyclist in the white helmet five hundred yards or so behind. It’s a man. I can tell from the bent shape of him, and he is pedalling slowly – his knees at an angle, the bike wobbling to and away from the kerb.
Still looking, I start to run. I keep looking behind. The cyclist lowers his head and speeds up. The distance between us narrows. I run faster, Howard tugging at the lead. I turn round again. Two hundred yards now, cycling towards me with intent.
Zach’s bike, the white helmet I bought him: they were in the shed. I stop, my breath hot in my chest. I should push this to a crisis, force him to act. A train lurches to a halt. I can see the carriage lights, the smudged faces of the passengers, through the railings.
The cyclist is overtaken by a taxi. It has its light on. I put my hand out and, as if in slow motion, the taxi pulls over and Howard and I get in.
Through the rear window I watch the cyclist, pedalling wildly, diminish in the distance.
The taxi driver waits for me while I take Howard into the house and feed him. There’s no sign of Onnie. My note has gone from the table. She hasn’t left one in return, though the flowers she bought me and which I had arranged in a vase are stuffed in the bin – a message of sorts. I wash my face as quickly as I can, settle Howard in his basket, and then I’m out of the house, the door locked behind me, and back in the taxi.
He isn’t a talker, this taxi driver, which is good. My mind is racing. I haven’t been looking for a cyclist. I’ve been looking for someone on foot, or in a car. I’d forgotten Zach’s bike. The traffic is heavy. Could he have caught up with the taxi? I look behind me. A bus – the 319 I was planning to take – fills the rear-view. He could be idling behind, or have overtaken and be waiting at the next lights. That’s the thing about a bike in London: you can duck and dive, get anywhere.
Streatham High Road has a fast-forward blur to it, people falling out of pubs and falling into McDonald’s. Sam’s road in contrast, second right after the police station, behind the cinema, is dark and quiet. The taxi stops halfway up, next to a disused church, and I get out to pay. A cat slinks out of an alley and darts across the road. A door slams behind, and metal clangs: a woman putting something in a dustbin. The taxi driver closes his window and purrs up the road. Silence, except for my footsteps on the tarmac.
I stand on the pavement for a few moments. No bike rounds the corner, no white helmet. But there are several alleys on this road, the empty church, several unlit places to wheel a bike and lurk. Have I been foolhardy? Is it wrong of me to put Sam in more danger? Or is this the only way to draw Zach out? All I know is I can’t carry on now, knowing what I do. I need to force the moment to its crisis, to bring it to an end.
The top window of Sam’s building, a Victorian red-brick converted into flats, is lit. A bare bulb dangles.
I wait, and then I push the gate open.
Sam’s is the bottom bell. I try to arrange my face. I am a normal person going on a normal date. I have a thought and rummage in my bag for the lipstick. I haven’t got a mirror but I rub it on my lips anyway. I can hear Sam’s footsteps, but I turn quickly away from the house, tip my face to the light. In my imagination, a camera whirrs – click, click: evidence of my crime.
Sam opens the door in jeans and a fresh white T-shirt. I can see the shape of the bandages through the fabric. He grins when he sees me, his eyes crinkle. He is so normal-looking, I almost cry.
‘I was going to shower,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t have time. I’m in a bit of a mess. Sorry about that.’
The T-shirt looks new – I can see lines across it from where it was folded in the packaging. ‘I don’t mind a bit of mess,’ I say.
His flat, the other side of a scratched white door on the ground floor, is small and untidy and full of books. There’s a mishmash of furniture that suggests the post-divorce division of spoils – threadbare sofa, a Victorian desk, Ikea shelves. We go into the kitchen, where the sink is piled with washing-up. A cupboard is open, revealing cornflakes, Rose’s lemon and lime marmalade, a small packet of Uncle Ben’s rice. Piled on the table are newspapers and exercise books waiting to be marked.
A wooden door opens on to a small backyard, scratchy grass edged by humps of brambles. At the end, a rickety fence to the next garden. The door has two bolts, one across the top, the other across the bottom, but they’re drawn back.
Sam has his back to me. He’s busy opening a bottle, finding glasses. I jam the bolts home while he isn’t looking.
‘You’re not much of a gardener then?’ I say, still looking out. I’m wondering about the next-door plot: whether there is a side passage; how easy it would be to break into it from the street. But I sound like someone making idle chit-chat at a cocktail party.
‘No.’ Sam comes up behind me with a glass of wine. ‘It’s shared with the upstairs flat. The couple who rented it before used to have the occasional barbecue, but the new guy hardly ever uses it. Occasionally, in the summer, he sits out there and works.’
‘What kind of work?’
‘God knows. He works at home. Writer? IT? Basically he fiddles away on his laptop.’
‘Have you got to know him well?’
‘Nah. Not my type. Bit brooding. Keeps himself to himself.’
‘What does he look like?’
Sam laughs. ‘Why, do you think you know him?’
‘Just curious.’
‘Dark hair. Big beard.’
As I reach for my wine, I notice my hand shake.
Sam seems to notice too. He puts his hand over it. ‘I don’t know why I said that about not showering,’ he says. ‘I did shower. It was quite hard, keeping the bandages dry. I’ve put on a new T-shirt specially. I didn’t want you to think I was making an effort just because you were coming.’
His tone is too matter-of-fact for flirtation. I begin to laugh, and then I realise I am crying.
I start with Za
ch’s lies – everything I’ve discovered about his past from his childhood to his affair with Onnie – and move on to my life with him. I tell Sam the things I’ve kept from my sister and my best friend and which, over the last year, I have tried so hard to forget. Once I start, I can’t stop. I say that I loved Zach, that he was the love of my life. It wasn’t just sex – though a lot of it was about that. When I met him, he was sweet and kind. He looked after me. He thought I wasn’t happy. He wanted me to be happy. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was, that he would be interested in me.
I tell Sam how Zach changed so gradually I hardly noticed, that it began with small things – objects having to be in certain positions in the house – and then escalated. He opened my letters. He followed me. Another teacher at work – middle-aged, married – gave me a box of chocolates to thank me for ordering in some extra books and Zach flushed them down the toilet. Once, in Sainsbury’s, I borrowed change for the pay-and-display machine from a man who was standing there, and when I got home Zach was beside himself. He interrogated me for hours. He’d been watching the whole time.
Sam clears the plates, balances them in the sink on top of the pans. ‘Was he violent?’ he asks.
‘It was more the threat,’ I say eventually. ‘Mostly.’
He sits down again. ‘Did you tell anyone?’
‘At first, it all seemed trivial, as if it were in my imagination. By the time it felt serious, I had learned to think of it as my fault. I thought I was in the wrong. I was making him do these things.’
‘And you didn’t feel you could leave him for that reason?’
I feel my eyes fill with tears. I brush them away. ‘I was going to,’ I say eventually.
‘And what gave you the strength to make that decision?’
I take a deep breath. ‘I haven’t told anyone this.’
Sam waits until I am ready.
‘We’d been trying for a baby,’ I say, in a high, stiff voice. ‘Zach had agreed, but when it didn’t work, he said it was a sign that we were better off as we were. He said he should be enough for me. But the fact is he wasn’t.’ I shake the hair out of my face. ‘That’s the truth. I wanted a baby, and I went to see the GP behind his back to find out why it wasn’t working, and she thought I knew.’
Remember Me This Way Page 27
