Running in Circles: An international mystery with a heart-stopping twist (Lucy Lewis Thriller Book 1)

by Claire Gray

  And then he tells me about his wife, Henrietta, and how he expected her to be relieved when he told her that he was gay.

  ‘She’d said, once before, that she’d rather die than be without me. I thought that was just something people say. I’d known things weren’t as they ought to be for a long time, and assumed she must have felt it too. But I was wrong and, despite everything, she did not want a divorce.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I went ahead with it anyway. It was much easier and less expensive than I’d imagined. The lawyer’s office was next door to a juice bar, and I would bring back a special, brightly-coloured juice for Jenna after each visit. They had a way of layering it, so the juice was in stripes.’

  ‘So, Jenna stayed with Henrietta, after the divorce?’ I ask, trying to piece together the fragments of information that he’s given me in the past.

  ‘No. We never got as far as discussing that,’ Steve says. ‘We were still doing things together as a family during that time, while I was arranging everything, legally. I thought it was unhealthy but Henrietta said she didn’t want to disrupt Jenna’s life any sooner than we had to. So, we were waiting for a train to take us to a museum. We were going to visit an exhibition about Vikings. Something like that. She tried to jump in front of a train.’

  ‘What? Who? Your wife?’

  ‘She was at the other end of the platform. Said she was going to pick us up some coffee and a juice box for Jenna. She looked back at us to make sure I was watching, and then she jumped. But she fucked up the timing. A man pulled her back onto the platform before the train was anywhere near her. But she was screaming and hitting him and someone called the police. Then she was screaming and hitting me, saying all sorts of insane things. It was so ugly, Lucy.’

  ‘How old was Jenna?’

  ‘Very little. But old enough that she still remembers snippets about that day. She remembers the snow. It started coming down as we walked to the station. She had on a bright pink coat, with rabbit ears on the hood. As a policewoman carried her away, Jenna put her hood up and snuggled into the stranger’s shoulder. That’s what I see when I remember that day. My bunny in someone else’s arms.’

  ‘You got her back though, right?’

  ‘Henrietta was in hospital for a while. She told everyone that it was my fault, that I’d been lying to her for years and cheating on her with men. I didn’t. I didn’t do that. But it seemed best for Jenna to have a fresh start with her grandparents after all that. I regret that decision now. More than anything. She grew up on a farm with them, and they were kind and they tried not to speak ill of us in front of her. Henrietta’s family actually blamed me for what happened, and so did some members of my own family. They’re all religious. I think perhaps Jenna blames me too, in some small way, but luckily for me she’s an independent thinker. Anyway, it never mattered what they thought or what they said snidely over coffee, because I already blamed myself. I always will.’

  ‘It’s not your fault. You were just trying to be honest, right?’

  I realise that Steve is looking at me as if he’s expecting something in return for his story, like we’d made some sort of deal. But we hadn’t. Steve has been desperate to share the tale of his dramatically failed marriage since I moved here. We went out for cocktails during my first weekend on the island and he told me it was his wedding anniversary, then his face clouded and he’d been on the brink of saying more, until one of his friends interrupted us, a DJ who has since moved on to Hong Kong. Steve’s come close to telling me the full story many times since then, and has sprinkled hints all over the place.

  I focus now on his nose, trying to ignore the shadows which are flickering from the corners of the dim room behind him. I could be sick. I take a long drink from the bottle which has grown warm in my hands.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Something bad happened to me and I quit my job. It’s in the past. I’m forgetting it a bit more every day. Especially now, when so many other horrible things have happened.’

  ‘That’s not how it works though,’ Steve says. ‘Big horrible things don’t dilute the smaller horrible things. They just all morph together.’

  ‘I expect you’re right.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me anything,’ he says. ‘It’s okay. But I’m always happy to listen, if you ever decide that you want me to.’

  I sit silently for a moment, breathing slowly and watching as the lights from a passing car rise over the wall in the back yard.

  ‘My parents’ neighbour raped me,’ I say, looking down, as if the words have fallen into my lap. The strangeness of saying them out loud makes me want to giggle.

  I’d taken a week off work to dog-sit while my mum and dad went to Majorca. They have a Dalmatian and a terrier, both rescue dogs and terrified of kennels. I walked the dogs, slept in a bed more comfortable than my own, and watched movies on a huge TV. I lit my mum’s scented candles every evening so that no one would know I’d been smoking in the kitchen. I used to smoke a lot back then.

  Arthur often smiled at me from his kitchen window. He seemed like a completely normal man. He had a wife and children, a ceramic hedgehog by the front door, a sunflower that grew right up to the first floor windows. But he worked unusual hours and was often home alone during the day. When he knocked on the door I let him in, because there didn’t seem any reason not to.

  After he left, I straightened the clothes he’d tugged at, and I sat on the stairs with a dog either side of me. I stroked them until my fingers hurt. Libby, the terrier, licked my grazed knees. I sat there for about an hour, because I had no idea what to do next. In the end, I decided to do nothing. I decided to pretend like it never happened. I never told anyone, and I never cried except for during that evening, into the dogs’ necks. I never saw him again.

  It’s strange to think that if he hadn’t raped me I wouldn’t have been here when the bomb went off. I would have seen it on the news like everyone else. I might even have wished that I could be out here, to cover a story that really meant something. That would have been a stupid thing to wish for, but we all wish for stupid things sometimes.

  I know I should have gone to the police about what he did to me. Not for my own sake, but for the sake of all the women he might rape in the future. But I didn’t go to the police and I don’t think I ever will now; I’m a coward. My mum has mentioned that she has new next-door neighbours. After a noisy marriage break-up, the wife and children went away and then he sold up and moved on too. He could be anywhere.

  I’m usually very good at switching off any thoughts I have of him. Thoughts of the pregnancy too. I have to breathe in a certain way, and I picture my brain like a slab of ice, so that everything just has to slide off it. But the bad thoughts creep in anyway, through the ice, when I’m feeling miserable for one reason or another. I’ve let them in a few times since moving here, and I’ve had to scream into my pillow, scratch at my arms. Sometimes I think I see him on the other side of a crowded bar, or bobbing about in the sea. I hope that one day I’ll be able to forget about him entirely, but I don’t think that’s likely. Perhaps if he hadn’t got me pregnant.

  ‘Shit,’ Steve says, when I’ve spat out a garbled version of the story that I relive during every night that I can’t sleep. I watch his face change and I wish that I hadn’t told him.

  ‘You think less of me now,’ I say, realising that this has been my biggest fear all along.

  ‘Not at all. I think a little more of you every day. That will never change. I hate him though.’

  He opens a final bottle of beer which we pass between us, and we stare at the television while we drink, although we don’t have it switched on. There’s an orange candle flickering on top of the TV, like a Halloween pumpkin. Steve falls asleep before I do, and I grab the bottle out of his hands as it begins to tip. I lean back into the cushions, which smell of cheap deodorant. Steve stirs and smiles in his sleep. It’ll be good to sleep, so long as I don’t dream. Am I safe now? Are a
ny of us safe? I close my eyes and find they’re wet with tears. As the sobs come I try to stifle them so I won’t wake Steve, pulling my cardigan up over my face like a shroud.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  We wake early, too hungover to sleep. Steve fries eggs and some pink meat in a blackened skillet. My slice of the meat has hairs growing from it, but I eat it all anyway, mopping up the grease and pale-yellow yolk with a piece of stale bread.

  ‘You might be hoping that I don’t remember much about last night; that I was too drunk. But I remember it all, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say, looking at Steve with my hand stopped halfway to my mouth, a chunk of bread between my twitching fingers.

  ‘And I just want to say, in the cold light of day, with no alcohol involved; I think you’re wonderful, Lucy, and you don’t need to feel ashamed about any of it. Not about a single thing, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ I say, and I manage to smile, just a little bit.

  After we’ve eaten and have started on our second mugs of strong coffee, we switch on the laptop and Steve books himself a flight to visit his daughter in Ireland. He fills out his credit card details incorrectly, and has to restart the checkout process, swearing and spilling tobacco over the keyboard as he rolls a cigarette. Once he’s done, he goes outside to smoke with a smile on his face, and I take his place at the keyboard. My fingers twitch. I half close my eyes and try to picture myself somewhere new.

  When Steve comes back inside he has a bunch of purple and yellow flowers in his fist, mud dropping from their tangled roots onto the floor.

  ‘Let’s take these to the bombsite,’ he says. ‘I feel like it’s time. We need to leave some flowers before they start clearing them all away.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say, staring at the confirmation email I’ve just opened. I’m not sure how I feel. As soon as I settle on one emotion, another comes along and chases it away. I pull my hands into fists to stop them shaking.

  ‘Did you do it?’ he asks.

  I nod.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Australia,’ I say. ‘I’m going to spend six weeks there. Is that okay? Is that too long?’

  ‘Sounds perfect to me.’ He smiles. ‘You’re not going there to work though, are you? You know that’s where they’re supposed to have caught the bomber?’

  ‘Maybe that’s part of it,’ I admit.

  ‘Of course it is. You can’t let go of a thing, can you?’ But he’s smiling as he says this, so maybe it’s okay.

  We go to the bombsite. Neither of us suggests going back to the place near to the police station where we found Pamela Shuttleworth yesterday. We haven’t discussed it, but I think we have both decided to write ourselves out of that story. Perhaps I’ll regret that one day, but it feels like the right thing to do at the moment.

  There is still a grey sort of light in the morning sky, like the night is clinging to the rooftops. The streets are quiet. As soon as we leave the house, we stop speaking. When we get to Main Street, pass the Grand Hotel and then approach the crater, Steve loops his arm around mine and I’m glad, because my legs feel hollow and there’s a hissing in my ears.

  A lot of the debris has been cleared away, but there is still this dark hole in the ground, which looks somehow organic, like a cancer has ripped through it. There are still strips of metal and wood, fallen from the buildings and scattered about the place. I can’t tell what any of them used to be. And there are dark stains which I know were once fresh blood. The buildings look like they’re filled with ghosts, and I think it will be a good idea to tear them all down.

  ‘You can feel it, can’t you?’ Steve says.

  I nod. I know what he means. The air feels different here. Thing looks slightly better; attempts have been made to fix the damage and take the shock away, but the victims are still dead and maimed. And, just as I knew there would be, horrible vibrations run up and down the street. I can sense them heading out through the jungle, beneath the temples and to the deserted golf resort. I think the feeling here will be worse at night, when most people have gone to bed, and the birds and stray dogs have settled. This hum of energy will rise up in the air like a siren, and it’ll feel as if the bomb has only just gone off, and the people are still screaming.

  We add our flowers to the piles already here. There are many sealed cards, soft toys, and some pint glasses filled with rainwater and sodden, ruined notes. Some of the flowers have started to die, but most are still in bloom. Still, there’s a dusty smell of rotting petals in the air.

  Shielding my eyes from the rising sun, I look up at my hostel, fairly certain that this will be the last time I ever see it. It looks unreal, like a stage set. Two green birds are sitting together on the ledge of my bedroom window, feathers puffed up, eyes closed into slits.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Steve says. ‘It makes me too sad to stay here long.’

  It’s as we turn to walk away, that our attention is drawn across the road by the sound of metal scraping along the ground. A woman dressed all in black is dragging a stack of chairs along the pavement in front of the ice cream parlour, moving towards a little white van parked beyond the place where the road is cordoned off. The glass has been shattered from the shop front, but the door is intact, and she has opened it. The interior is charred, tables and chairs upturned, ruined. We walk closer and see that the counter is still standing at the back of the room, and brightly coloured sprinkles are scattered across the blackened floor. She is halfway through clearing them. Jelly beans, pink shrimps and little, bright things are in a mound beside a dustpan and brush. Sauces have been spilled and dried in pink and brown puddles. Melted plastic containers lie on the tiles in distorted shapes.

  ‘Hello?’ I say, looking away from all this and back to the woman.

  She places the chairs down carefully and turns to see us. I recognise her straight away. She is small and slim, her hair tied neatly back. But her face, usually crinkled into a smile, is strained. There are shadows beneath her eyes. She nods at me, a flicker of recognition crossing her face, and then she wipes her hands on an apron around her waist. Her hands are black with soot.

  ‘Hi,’ I say. ‘You’re the owner.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she says, and tries to force a smile.

  ‘Sorry about your café,’ I say. Steve, beside me, is still staring at the remains of this place, where we have spent afternoons watching the world go by.

  ‘Yes, very sad for us.’ She nods.

  ‘We heard that the bomb may have been in one of your plant pots,’ Steve says, glancing at the lip of the crater where the pots used to stand.

  She runs a hand through her hair, catching a strand on her ring and pulling it loose from the ponytail. She looks at her feet as she speaks. ‘The police said we could come back in today. They finished looking. I thought if I come here early, I could clear up before reporters came. You’re fast. You are the first people here.’

  Steve and I look at each other, trying to overcome our hangovers and understand what she means.

  ‘You’ve been away, right? When did you get back?’ I ask.

  ‘Few days ago. We didn’t know anything. We just saw on the TV same as everyone else and we were so worried. We didn’t know.’

  ‘Who was looking after the place while you were away?’ Steve asks, using a tone of voice to imply that he knows the answer but has momentarily forgotten.

  She stares at us, wiping her hands on the apron again, as if it’s a reflex. ‘I give one interview to you,’ she says. ‘And then I’ll speak to no one else. My husband says we should stay quiet, but I think it’s important that people know we had nothing to do with it. No idea. We would never want this.’ She points at the destroyed road, the place where people died.

  ‘I understand,’ I say.

  ‘The police keep his name secret so far, but they will tell today. Everything will change.’

  I nod. People are starting to move around now, further up the street. We can hear mopeds passing somewhere nearby, dogs are barking and
there is a smell of breakfast food frying, which makes my stomach bubble. A black van turns onto the street and begins rolling towards us.

  ‘No time,’ she says. She pulls a loop of keys from a pocket in her apron and locks the front door, out of habit I suppose, and she looks at us with an embarrassed smile when she realises what she’s done. She pulls a gummy sweet off the edge of her shoe and throws it inside, onto the pile that she had been sweeping. It starts a little landslide.

  We walk together to our office, where we pour her an iced tea which she takes tiny sips from. And then she tells us about her son, who she loved very much when he was a small child.

  ‘I know I shouldn’t love him anymore,’ she says.

  She describes how he would volunteer to test all of the ice cream flavours, as if he was doing an important job for his parents. He would sing songs of nonsense from a chair behind the counter, and he kissed her face, befriended the chickens which they kept out the back. But then he went to a boarding school on the mainland, and he began to view life in a new, serious way. He no longer spoke very often, but he gave thoughtful presents and hugged his mother when she met him at the port.

  ‘I wanted to keep him here, and he could work in the café with us, but my husband wanted better for him. He went to a very good school. Very good. We don’t just have this place, we have café all over Thailand. This was first one though. We were all born here.’

  And then she tells us how, after he finished school, their son wanted to stay on the island for a while, to serve ice cream and do very little else, but they discouraged him, and helped him get a place at university in Australia. And that was when he really began to drift away, not speaking to them for months, then speaking to them on the phone and saying strange things, words that did not sound like his own.

  ‘He was lonely,’ his mother says. ‘He met the wrong people. These ideas, they were not his ideas.’