‘One moment!’ she shouted, and then returned to her call.
The man sifted through the envelopes and found one which wouldn’t be missed: You have won £50,000 in our UK-wide, instant win contest! Open now!
It was unlikely that there was a cheque for fifty grand sitting in the envelope. He smiled at his female companion. She knew what he was doing and it excited her. She wanted to take him, then and there in the house. Even better, in the bedroom where it had happened. But the estate agent was still kicking around; she’d have to make do with fantasising as they took their tour.
They waited by the door, keen to give the impression that they were genuine buyers. They surveyed the ceilings and skirting boards, looking for who knows what, eager to convince their guide of their sincerity.
They’d had to undergo a probing line of enquiry. There had been a lot of trouble at the house, what with sightseers and voyeurs. It had got much worse since the website listing went live. It was there for all to see on Great House Move. The hits on the page had gone through the roof, yet no offers had been made.
They heard the woman winding up her call. He knelt down and ran his hand along the skirting board, and she inspected the joins of the wallpaper, which was beginning to come away from the plaster.
‘I’m so sorry to keep you. I’m Melissa Drake. Mr Elliot sends his apologies.’
She reached out her hand towards them. The man stood up and grabbed it confidently, after wiping whatever he’d found on the skirting boards onto his trousers.
‘Alan and Ruth Simpson,’ he said, looking at his female companion. ‘Pleased to meet you!’
The woman stepped forward, grasping Melissa’s hand.
‘Yes, Ruth Simpson,’ she said, as if fixing the name in her own mind. ‘Thank you for meeting us today. We appreciate that you’ve had some problems with the house.’
‘You could say that,’ Melissa replied, keen to get the viewing over and done with. As far as she was concerned, the sooner that house sold, the better. It was the second time Glenn Elliot had dumped it on her at the last minute. It had been agreed that, due to the nature of what had gone on there, he would accompany all viewings as he was the owner of the business. But something was going on at home – he’d come in unshaven earlier that week. He’d rung her at short notice and asked her to cover for him.
‘I’m so sorry to do this to you, Mel, but something has come up. Urgently. We need to get this property off the books, so we can’t be cancelling any appointments. They seem genuine enough, not the usual weirdos and souvenir hunters. I’ll make it up to you, honestly. How about I assign you the property that came in this morning on Stallion Road? There’s a great commission on that one and it’s sure to move quickly.’
Melissa was desperate for the money; the promise of an expensive property and a fast commission was too much to resist. She was broke. That car on the drive didn’t buy itself. The interest rate was phenomenal, but it allowed her to create the illusion that everything was fine. It wasn’t. Everything in her life was turning to shit. She said yes to Glenn, even though it gave her the creeps going to that house.
The first time Glenn had dropped her in it, it was a no-show. Some guy wanted to take a look around, a property investor so it seemed. She didn’t even go into the house that time. She’d put the keys in the door, hesitated, and then decided to wait in her car out on the drive.
Emboldened by the thought of the commission on Stallion Road, she’d gone straight in this time. She’d got no further than the kitchen when her phone had rung. She was grateful that they’d been punctual, she didn’t want to be in there alone.
‘Shall I show you around then?’ Melissa asked. ‘I’m afraid that I’ll need to accompany you all the time, because ... you know ... because of the problems that we’ve had.’
‘Of course, that’s fine, we know the deal. Mr Elliot explained it to us when I called. Has the price changed at all, or are they still asking for the list price? It is they isn’t it?’
He’d risked a probe, he hoped it wouldn’t show their hand. As it was, Melissa ignored it.
‘I think they’d take any reasonable offer to be honest with you. Winter will be here soon, although you wouldn’t know this is summer. The house is already showing signs of not being lived in. I think if it goes before autumn, they’ll be very happy.’
They entered the lounge. That was where one of the bodies had been hidden. There was no carpet anymore, no underlay even. Initials were carved on the windowsill.
‘Is this what they do?’ she asked, running her fingers along the uneven wood.
‘Yes, it’s why I have to accompany you all the time. There are more in the main bedroom upstairs, people carving out their names. I’m not sure what they get out of it. Some macabre thrill I think. It’s very sad. Two people died here. Five people died in all. It was terrible. I don’t know how people can be so horrible about it.’
But the woman knew. She wanted to lead him upstairs and take him in the bedroom. The thrill of the thought made her face redden. She pretended to look out of the window, exhilarated by the idea of what they were planning.
So this is what it had come to. The beer trickled into the pint glass as I made small talk with the fat guy at the bar. Some generic holiday-maker. Middle-aged. Manual worker. Overweight. Opinionated. Bigoted. I didn’t pick up on any of his comments about the number of migrant workers on the site or the noise being made by over-excited kids. I needed the money, and the bar work was helping me to keep my head above water. It was also helping me to forget.
Six months had passed since I lost Meg. Not a word from her in that time. I might have been a father for all I knew, but nothing. Just silence. And an unpaid mortgage.
I’d moved out of the house after the deaths. How could I have gone back there? There were too many memories. It’s hard to make a happy home when all you can picture is the beaten corpse behind the sofa in the lounge and the guy with multiple stab wounds in your double bed.
I’d had to move out. I’d grabbed my clothes, and then got a house clearance company to do the rest. Most of our junk was in storage, like our marriage, waiting for some bugger to come along with the key and let some natural light in.
After the police had had their fill, I arranged for the bloodied furniture to be disposed of. The carpets were torn out and dumped. I don’t know what happens to stuff like that. I assumed it hadn’t been thrown onto the local tip, but who knows in these days of local authority spending cuts? No, it must have been properly disposed of, they’d need to deter the trophy hunters.
Every now and then I drove by. I’d asked Glenn Elliot to collect the post. I used a postal redirection service at first, but it had been too painful seeing Meg’s name everyday, so I cancelled it. Glenn Elliot said he’d pick up my mail whenever they had a viewing, and I could collect it from the office. He’d screen Meg’s post and keep it in a box. If I heard from her, he’d be happy to send it on.
How can you disappear like that? She’d stopped paying into the joint account straight away. I was pissed off by that. I was her husband still. I was the only one who knew what she’d done. Surely she didn’t have to shaft me over the bills?
Her work wouldn’t tell me where she’d gone, at her request apparently. Confidentiality and all that bollocks. She’d probably put in for a transfer, until the baby arrived. I was completely in the dark about what was going on. She’d disappeared from my life and left me with the bills and the house.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t cover the costs, but it was a struggle on my own. The mortgage was hefty. I suppose we’d always assumed that if we did have a family, we had the big house already. We’d never discussed it, but I guess it’s a subconscious thing for all couples. Room for us and a couple more if ever we needed it.
I’d moved over to the Golden Beaches Holiday Park and rented myself a static caravan while the holiday-makers were away for the winter. I hadn’t expected to stay there long. It was what was available at the
time.
Turns out I really liked it. Static caravans are amazing things. I’d never even been in one until I rented at the Golden Beaches. It was luxurious. I had a bath, a shower, a kitchen, three bedrooms, a massive lounge. And it even had mains gas and electricity. It was brilliant. For an extra twenty quid every month, they sent in the cleaners for me. They were mucking out the caravans anyway. It was much quieter at first over winter, so they were happy to take my money.
When things started to get tighter for me, and the house didn’t sell, it turned out that it was easy to get extra work. Vicky, the owner of the park, had taken quite a shine to me, so she was happy to help. I started pulling pints in the bar whenever my shifts at the radio station allowed. I was grateful for the work, in spite of the occasional arsehole among the clientele.
My life had taken a complete U-turn. My wife was gone, my best mate dead and my home a house of horrors. Until I got rid of the property, there was no moving on. Strictly speaking, half of the house was Meg’s. It was difficult to know what to do until I could talk things through with her.
I was lonely. It’s hard to say that, it would have embarrassed me to admit it at the time. I was missing companionship, and on the holiday park female company was easy to find, especially when the season began to pick up and the holiday-makers arrived. You won’t believe how many single mothers take their kids to these places. And they’re all gasping for a bit of male attention. I wash everyday, keep myself tidy, and can sustain a conversation for more than five minutes. At the Golden Beaches Holiday Park, I was hot stuff and I made the most of it.
I felt so sorry for the poor fools who poured their hard-earned money into spending a week on the site. The place itself was great: plenty of bars, music and entertainment to suit all tastes, a half-decent restaurant and a babysitting service for the kids. Perfect for single mums wanting a night out – with a guy who worked on the radio and was chatting them up in the bar.
But Golden Beaches? More like sand covered in crap! I’d reported many times on the sewage problem in the resort. On a bad day even the seagulls would abandon the place. How they got away with calling it Golden Beaches I’ll never know. But they came there in their hundreds when the summer season started, and the place stayed busy and active until mid-September. It was what I needed to take my mind off everything that had gone on.
Vicky walked into the bar. It gave me the perfect excuse to brush off the fat guy. To be honest, it was people like him who were making life so easy for me with the women. I was like Colin Firth to most of them: posh voice, no beer belly and good oral hygiene. That was as good as it got at the Golden Beaches Holiday Park.
‘Hello, luv,’ she began, leaning over the bar and exposing her extensive cleavage.
She was sixteen years my senior and had lost her husband to a heart attack five years before. They’d built the holiday park together, but he’d been abusive towards her and she was pleased to see the back of him. She made no attempt to hide the fact.
‘I’d have put my foot on his throat to finish him off!’ she’d laughed at an after-hours’ lock-in one night. ‘It was the happiest day of my life when he finally croaked and I never had to have the fat sweaty bastard wriggling around on top of me ever again ... but at least it only ever lasted a few seconds!’
She filled the bar with her raucous laughter, but I’d seen enough of human sadness in my life as a journalist to know that it hid despair and loneliness. At least we had that in common. But I didn’t fancy Vicky, she was like another species in terms of the kind of woman I went for.
Unfortunately, she was highly excited by my presence on the holiday site. She’d listened to the radio station for years, she woke up with us in the morning, went to bed with us at night. She knew all the presenters by name, had memorised lots of details about their lives and hung onto our every word.
When I turned up, answering an ad in the paper for winter lets, she couldn’t believe her luck.
‘Do I know your voice, luv? You sound familiar.’
She looked me up and down, and then the penny dropped.
‘You’re that Peter Bailey from the radio. I’ve got your picture on my fridge. You’re one of my favourites, I love your voice ...’
Then she treated me to an impression: ‘“The ten o’clock news, I’m Peter Bailey, with the latest headlines from around the county ...” Ooh, I love the way you say that!’
I smiled, thinking that I’d probably pass on the static caravan. But I’m pleased that I hung on in there, because once she showed me the executive range and revealed the price, I was happy to tolerate a bit of fandom. In fact, she dropped the price to make sure that I couldn’t refuse. She probably thought there would be some free publicity in it for her or perhaps some reflection of my very limited fame.
When I first came to her for a place to stay, she didn’t know what had happened. It was a few days afterwards that the shit really hit the fan.
Once it was revealed to the press that a local radio personality had been caught up in a gruesome murder, it was everywhere. For a while I thought Vicky was going to throw me out, but once she saw my celebrity connections with people like Alex Kennedy from one of her favourite TV shows, she changed her tune.
‘Do you actually know Alex Kennedy?’ she’d ask. ‘What’s she really like? Is she as nice as she seems?’
I didn’t mention that Alex and I had lived together for several years, but I did feed the goldfish by dropping the occasional celebrity morsel into our conversations.
I liked Vicky, although there was no way I was going to give her what she really wanted: a night – or more – in the sack with a local minor celebrity. For her, it would never get better than that. She’d probably want me to read news stories to her while I was giving her one in bed.
No thanks, Vicky, but I was happy to be her friend. Which is why I despised myself so much afterwards, once I’d screwed everything up. Vicky deserved so much better.
I’ve never been a fan of counselling. It’s all too introspective for my tastes. I’d rather work through my issues the good old-fashioned way, a subtle combination of suppression and melancholy. It worked well for me for years. However, I changed my tune after my experiences with Martin Travis.
I had despised and resented Martin from the outset. Meg had opted for marriage counselling. I’d agreed for the sake of the relationship, and I’d begrudged every wasted minute. At first.
Imagine my surprise when the man I thought harboured a secret desire to shag my wife, his client, turned out to be gay. I never saw that one coming. In fact, as I reflected over the events that had occurred six months previously, Martin was the only person who came out with any shred of integrity. Everyone had lied to cover their arses, everyone except Martin and Sally. Sally had died taking the truth with her and that had allowed Meg to cover up what had really happened.
I was still finding it difficult to forgive Martin for owning a Brompton bicycle, but at least he had shaved off the ridiculous facial hair that had bothered me so much. He’d moved up the ranks, but only from ‘that tosser with the dodgy beard’ to ‘the wanker with the Brompton’.
I respected his integrity, I was grateful for the support and friendship that he’d offered to Meg, and I’d be forever appreciative of him taking more pellets from Sally’s gun than I had. However, he still wouldn’t tell me where my wife was.
I’d decided to continue the counselling. With Meg gone and nobody close to speak to, I’d felt the need to get it all out of my system. Even better, I discovered that I had health insurance for it from the radio station. I could continue to skip off work for two hours a week, talk about what was on my mind, and get the bill picked up at the end of it.
I was ready for a move from work. My heart wasn’t in it anymore. Not the job, the place. It’s where Jem and I had met and been friends. Turned out he was a cheating, scheming piece of shit. My judgment in friendship turned out to be completely skewed. Another Pete Bailey classic. I can’t spot a man
who’s gay. I can’t spot a rapist. My social skills appear to be impaired.
I was ready for a move to a new radio station. It would be easy enough to do, but I needed to sort out the house first and see where I was with Meg. My life was in limbo, but I’d move on as soon as I could see a way forward. I needed some time, I had a lot of issues to work through.
I’d turned to Martin for advice and support, and he’d rejected me outright. It was nothing personal, he was at great pains to emphasise that. Mind you, I was sure he’d never forgive me for the scratches that I’d left on his beloved Brompton. He felt that there was a conflict of interest; besides, he specialised in relationship counselling, I needed something broader than that. It was part relationship counselling, part bereavement support and part psychoanalysis. At last I could be like those Americans on TV, whining about my emotions while running up a huge bill for my trouble.
Martin was in contact with Meg, I knew it. He wouldn’t admit it, and I had pushed him on it, but his integrity remained intact and he wouldn’t budge. He reminded me of client confidentiality and wouldn’t be drawn on where she was. Why couldn’t he have been a scheming turd like the rest of us?
Part of me continued the counselling because I wanted to have a good reason to keep visiting the clinic. Seeing Martin regularly was the only way I had to stay in touch with Meg. Even when I was assigned to Blake Crawford, I’d see Martin in the corridors from time to time. It did bring back horrible memories, though. Every time I went for a pee there, I’d be reminded how I’d had to climb through the window of the toilets to try to save my wife.
Blake’s support was really beneficial. He was very different to Martin, older for starters. I prefer to take my advice from people I feel are old enough to have been through the mill themselves. Martin was a youngster, a gay one at that, and part of me couldn’t stop questioning his suitability to advise me on my heterosexual marriage.
I knew the drill, of course. Counsellors don’t advise, they guide. It’s immaterial what life experience they’ve had, they’re trained in counselling, those are the skills that they need to help. Fair enough. I still preferred Blake.
Don't Tell Meg Trilogy Box Set Page 25
