A Twist of Fate

by Demelza Hart

  ‘I love you too.’ We both knew it was the truth. ‘But I don’t think I know who you are.’

  His face twisted in agony, but then, with exhausted resignation, Paul turned and left.

  Twenty-nine

  I sat there on my sofa. The sky turned from russet to gunmetal grey to an inky black diffused by the glow of London.

  I didn’t move. I had run out of thought or emotion. I had no tears left, and I certainly had no reason left.

  I had doubted and now I could feel vindicated in that. I’d told myself time and again from the start that he wasn’t right for me. And now it was proven.

  But then why was I doubting now?

  Why did I long for him? Why did I think of my times with him and know that they were as good as it was ever going to get? I would never feel as complete, as settled. The certainty of that thudded away inside, refusing to be banished.

  I battled with myself. I was wrong. I had been wrong. I had stepped off the path and was paying the price.

  I let time tick away. Cars passed my window with their familiar rising then falling hum and swish.

  In the evening Tina rang.

  ‘How are you doing?’ she asked gently.

  ‘Not great.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I let him go.’

  ‘How do you mean? You make it sound like you made him redundant.’

  ‘I can’t do it. I can’t be with him. He’s a violent criminal.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Callie! You don’t know that at all. How did he explain things?’

  ‘He said he arrived on the scene as the real perpetrator was in the act. He beat him up. The guy ran off and Paul went to help the girl, but she was so delirious that she thought it was him who’d attacked her. She’s remembered him again after seeing him on TV.’

  There was silence down the phone before Tina asked, ‘So why don’t you believe him?’

  I rubbed my head and squeezed my eyes shut. ‘Because … I don’t know … It’s as if I’m not allowed to. We’re not meant to be together, Tina. We’re not meant to be.’

  ‘Callie, for God’s sake. Have you ever heard the expression cutting off your nose to spite your face?’

  ‘Oh, stop it. He’s going to be on trial, Tina!’

  ‘All the more reason why he needs you.’

  ‘He can look after himself. He always has.’

  ‘Everyone needs somebody.’

  ‘Look … I can’t. I keep going over and over everything, trying to make sense of it, and for now, this is my sense. I can’t see him. I can’t let him confuse me even more. It’s best this way. No matter what, it’s best this way. It always was. No one is supposed to get together in the way we did. It was bound to go wrong.’

  ‘I understand your confusion and uncertainty, Cal, but really …’ She sighed. ‘Look, you need some head space, you really do. I’ll give you a few days then ring you, OK? Make sure you’re OK. If you want me in the meantime, call.’

  ‘Yeah … Thanks, Tina.’

  ‘OK. Bye for now.’

  The call ended. My friend wasn’t impressed.

  I barely slept. I deliberately kept my phone out of the room. In the morning I paced myself, making coffee, putting on the TV, before checking to see if he’d rung or messaged. He hadn’t. It made me sick to the stomach.

  I went into school later. Term was due to start the following week. The burden of a school teacher could always distract from other matters. I threw myself into my work and fed off the company of my colleagues.

  In the afternoon I had a text from my mother. ‘Can’t talk as have the Walkers round, but do watch the news tonight. Mummy xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx’

  With dread, I sat in front of the TV at a minute to six.

  ‘From hero to zero,’ announced the headline. ‘Police have today confirmed that Paul Mason, one of only two survivors of the Maldives air disaster, has been arrested and charged over a crime that took place several years ago.’

  I couldn’t listen to the rest, or at least I didn’t hear it. There was his face, images of him from the shows we’d been on, only this time they had chosen ones in which he looked most sinister. Other pictures appeared too: the jewellery shop with crime scene tape around it. A grainy CCTV image of a man walking down the street in a dark hooded coat. Was that him? And then a photo of the girl, her face swollen and bruised. A violent sob burst from me suddenly and I felt the bile rising in my throat. I threw up a hand to my mouth. Oh God, where was he now? Was he alone? I reached for my phone and brought up his details, my thumb hovering over the call button.

  But, with my head spinning, I threw the phone down and buried my head in my hands.

  I heard nothing from Paul over the next few days and resisted getting in touch. It was agony, but it was right. Right. I kept repeating it. His silence convinced me I had done the right thing.

  Term started. The open, attentive faces of my pupils were a daily balm. Here, I could forget. Of course, I was a celebrity around the campus when I went back, all wanting to know what happened, all asking about the TV shows. They asked about Tom Yearsley. I laughed and told them how gorgeous he was. Then they asked about Paul and whether he’d tried anything dodgy on the island.

  No. Nothing dodgy. It was at those times that I told them off for tardiness and hurried down the corridor.

  It was over a week later that I was sitting in the living room when I heard my phone ping with a text. I’d by now grown accustomed to it not being him and went to pick it up with no concern.

  ‘I’m here, Callie. I’m still here.’

  My heart leapt into my mouth. My eyes absorbed the words and I heard his voice in my head. I felt my belly untwisting, its released desire coiling out of me and yearning for him.

  I should have deleted the text. I came close, I really did.

  I didn’t delete it, but I didn’t reply. That, at least, gave me some sense of achievement.

  But I slept beside my phone, calling up the text and staring at it, imagining his fingers tapping out each individual letter.

  I longed to contact him. I rolled over onto the pillow he’d slept on, imagining I could smell him. I lay on it and inhaled deeply, remembering the deep masculine scent of him which seemed to pervade me. Tears threatened again, but I was so angry with myself they held themselves back. I rarely cried, and I’d cried more since the crash than I could ever remember. Many people would have excused a little emotional excess in the wake of surviving a plane crash, but I had been brought up with crying as a last resort.

  Days passed. I learnt not to check my phone all the time, and I eventually learnt to stop my heart thudding every time I received a text.

  It was the little things that got me. One morning I was turning the cushions on the sofa. Down the back I picked out a dark hair. It was his. I didn’t know anyone else who’d sat there with dark hair that length.

  I held it up, studying it, as if somehow I could picture him through it and draw him closer. I wound the hair around my little finger and left it there for the rest of the day.

  It took me some time before I felt like going out again. Friends would come to me and I would go round to theirs but I had no wish to go out happily in public for some time. I wasn’t happy. I knew it, even though I told everyone – and myself – I was.

  Tina in particular tried to set me up with men. I put up with her first couple of attempts – a sweet but opinionated wine merchant and a professional rugby player whose nose had clearly taken a very different path from that his Creator had intended – but the thought of even looking at another man turned my stomach. I asked her not to try again.

  Did I miss sex? No.

  I rarely even touched myself. It seemed like a betrayal. My body was Paul’s. Nobody made me feel like him. I simply couldn’t switch my mind into the state I needed.

  A letter arrived one morning in early December. It had a Central Criminal Court stamp on it. I opened it with trembling fingers and read. It was a court summons. I
had been summoned by the defence as a character witness. Oh Christ, how could I tell the truth if I didn’t know the truth myself? I had tried so hard to move on – failing, I know – but I couldn’t get away. Paul was holding onto me. Or I was holding onto him. I pushed the letter back in the envelope and tucked it into a drawer, determined to put it out of my mind until I needed to attend the trial.

  Christmas came and went. I spent it at my parents’. They talked a lot. Even they’d given up asking about Rupert. He hadn’t been in touch, for which I was glad. That would have confused me even more.

  I managed to make it to a New Year’s party but the champagne tasted bitter and the canapés stale. The chimes of Big Ben sounded up the river. I checked my phone to see if the time tallied. A few seconds later I had a text.

  ‘I hope the New Year brings you all you want, Callie. By the way, I’m still here.’

  My hand shook as I clutched the phone. I stared down at the words, my emotions writhing like a caged beast.

  My phone pinged again.

  ‘I still love you. Can’t help it.’

  Oh God, Paul, please don’t do this to me.

  I couldn’t help it either. I replied to his text.

  ‘When is the trial?’

  Seriously? The man I couldn’t stop thinking about sends me a profession of love and I respond by asking him about the timing of a legal procedure?

  I didn’t get an immediate response and when it did come I could almost hear his wry chuckle accompanying it.

  ‘Last of the romantics, Callie. Trial starts in April.’

  I waited at least five minutes.

  ‘Are you alright?’

  ‘As alright as I can be.’

  ‘What does that mean? Are you worried about the trial?’

  ‘No, I’m missing you.’

  ‘This is wrong, Paul. No more texts. I haven’t changed my mind.’

  There were no more texts that night. Or for the next month. And then on February 14th at 11:59 p.m., I had another. ‘I’m still here. And, yes.’

  I knew what it was in answer to. I asked myself the question every day: Does he still love me?

  If school hadn’t been so busy I would have gone mad. Fortunately, with exams imminent, I barely had time to worry about myself.

  The Easter holidays were fast approaching. And so was the trial.

  Thirty

  It was only in the last week before the Easter holidays, as I sat engulfed by revision papers, that it hit me. I turned on the news for some distraction. It was the second item on the headlines.

  ‘The trial of Paul Mason, the survivor of the Maldives air crash, begins tomorrow. Mr Mason is accused of armed robbery and assault in a crime dating back to 2007.’

  I stared at the screen as the images were paraded before me again. I wanted to see a recent image of Paul. I thought perhaps they’d catch him leaving work or his house. And then another fear took hold. What if he was not alone? What if he had someone with him? Dawn, perhaps? I dismissed that thought. She wouldn’t go near him with a bargepole now. He was damaged goods. Stupid bitch.

  But then … hadn’t I behaved exactly the same?

  But they hadn’t caught Paul leaving his house, alone or otherwise. He’d clearly been lying low.

  I reached for my phone, bringing up the message thread between us.

  ‘Are you alright?’ Before I had a chance to change my mind, I hit send.

  I received no answer that night. In the morning, I still hadn’t. It was the first day of my holiday, usually a day of lazing in bed and eating endless bowls of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes. Today, I was frantic.

  The answer came at half past eight, although it seemed later. ‘Missing you.’

  ‘I meant about the trial.’

  ‘I know what you meant. That’s how I am. How are you?’

  ‘Good,’ I put. That was all. I felt foolish for letting it get to me. My defences were up again. I threw my phone into my bag and buried it under old Extra Strong Mint wrappers.

  I went to my mother’s for lunch – a bad idea, as it turned out. Radio 4 was like crack to her – she needed a constant hum of it in the background to keep her going. Every hour, I heard his name; ‘Paul Mason is in court today …’, ‘The trial of Paul Mason begins today …’, ‘Paul Mason’s trial gets underway at the Old Bailey …’

  My mother tutted loudly each time his name was mentioned. ‘Thank God you weren’t on the island with that man a moment longer. Goodness knows what he would have done. A man’s true nature can never be hidden for long.’

  I stood, my body propelled up through anger. ‘You have no idea! I’d be dead if it wasn’t for him! Don’t you realise that?’ I stormed out of the room, leaving her staring behind me open-mouthed and, for once, silent.

  I could have gone. I decided not to. At least for the first day. I avoided television and the internet assiduously, even steering clear of the electrical section of Sainsbury’s so that I didn’t inadvertently see a reporter standing outside the Old Bailey. I knew I’d soon be summoned to witness.

  I visited friends, I read trashy books, I did some marking and preparation, anything to distract me. But at ten o’clock that night, I succumbed. I watched the news. It was the second item. They said little but some details of the case emerged: the wounds on the victim (horrific), the damage to the store (extensive). And there was footage of Paul emerging from court, his face impassive but calm. He strode ahead, even telling a photographer to be careful when they nearly fell off the kerb in the jostle to get a photo.

  He looked wonderful. In his dark suit and his hair still thick but tamed, I wanted to reach into the screen and take him out. At one point he looked briefly into the camera, probably inadvertently. After the report had ended, I rewound that part and froze it at the moment his eyes were staring out, right at me. I stared right back. Paul. My Paul.

  I went the next day. I hadn’t intended to, I hadn’t even decided to that morning. But at ten past nine, I couldn’t stand it. I practically ran through the streets to get there. As much as anything, I wanted to see him. I wanted to be in the same room as him again. I wanted to breathe in the same air, know that if I took a few steps, I’d touch him.

  The court was full, the public gallery crammed, but when the official saw who I was, she put an extra chair out for me. I sat as quietly as I could right at the back. Nobody had seen me slip in. I could only just glimpse the dock but I saw him immediately and, despite reason telling me otherwise, my belly leapt as it had when I’d first made eye contact with him on the plane.

  He sat still, listening intently to proceedings, his eyes trained on the barrister speaking at the time. He had one hand to his chin and his fingers stroked along his bottom lip distractedly. I looked from him to the jury. Twelve good people and true. That was the hope, anyway. As all were in suits, I found it hard to identify what traits and characteristics they might have. I searched their faces. On the whole they seemed thoughtful and pleasant, almost ridiculously sensible, in fact. Seven men and five women, ranging in ages from early twenties to late sixties, it seemed. I tried to gauge their sympathy. How agreeable were they, even before evidence was presented, towards an ex-soldier Yorkshireman accused of assault and armed robbery? I closed my eyes to it. What was the point in speculating?

  One of the forensic officers who had cleared the scene was giving evidence. Paul’s fingerprints were everywhere, he said. His blood was found in various locations, including on jewellery removed from display and scattered on the gun and on the victim. It had been matched after his arrest. My spirits sank. I looked at Paul. He was sitting as calmly as ever, not even leaning over as he usually did. Did I believe him to be capable of this? I had grown accustomed to him displaying anxiety from time to time. He wasn’t doing that now. He wasn’t leaning forward in the tense manner he adopted when he was stressed. This was the Paul who had saved me, the Paul I relied on.

  But my doubts lingered to torment me. I had decided, hadn’t I? I had pushed him
away for a reason, even if I hadn’t understood it. Wasn’t it a gut instinct? I remembered the dead Afghans, I remembered him pinning Tom Yearsley to the wall, I felt again the intensity of our lovemaking, of his dominance when he took me. Was it so hard to make the leap to the violent man in Caton’s Jewellers? I took a staggering breath and tried to refocus.

  Paul’s lawyer stood up to cross-examine the policeman. His barrister was young, perhaps too young. But he had a quick mind and delivered his points clearly and sharply; Surely there were hundreds of fingerprints in the store that day? There were, but it had been cleaned at lock-up, and there were more of Paul’s than anyone else’s. Wouldn’t this be consistent with him trying to defend Miss Sunley, the victim? It would.

  It was the first time I had heard her referred to by name apart from on television. Natalie Sunley. I scanned the court to try to see her. Would she be obvious, this person who had altered my life, either ruining it or saving it? I found her immediately. She was small and brunette, with a quiet face and fine features. Pretty but discreet. She looked lovely, I could only admit. Her face was entirely without malice or intent. How could anyone not believe her? I could see no obvious facial scarring, but as I looked more closely, there was mottled skin on her neck from a long scar.

  The day wore on. Legal proceedings were long-winded and onerous, but I sat there, listening to facts and figures of blood spatters and the exact serial numbers of bracelets and rings and necklaces.

  Paul hadn’t seen me, but just before adjournment, he let his head fall back, as if stretching out his tension, and, when his neck was fully extended he opened his eyes and looked above him. Almost immediately they shifted to me, as if sensing me.

  Paul locked eyes with me and the rest of the court vanished from my awareness. It was him and me, just the two of us again, clinging together.

  At first he looked surprised to see me. But slowly, as the seconds stretched out, his expression softened into one of utter contentment. I didn’t look away. I owed him that. And then he smiled. That slight, skew-whiff quirk of a grin, the left hand side jigging up just enough to make me want to absorb all of him into me.