The Night You Left

by Emma Curtis

  I stiffen. ‘What’re you saying?’

  ‘I’m not saying anything. I’m trying to explain what the atmosphere was like.’

  ‘Were you jealous of Izzy?’

  Her eyes cloud. ‘No. Not at all.’

  ‘You get him away from your rival and suddenly he’s cosy with your little sister.’

  She scowls. ‘Only because I wouldn’t talk to him.’

  I press my linked hands against my mouth and look at her over the weave of my fingers. She avoids my gaze.

  ‘Afterwards, I felt so bad about everything, you know. I wanted to forget the whole thing, not mention it. Izzy was dead, so what did it matter how Nick was feeling? But it did matter, and I was ashamed, but too proud to admit it or apologize. Nick looked awful at the funeral, like he hadn’t slept or eaten properly since. We had to acknowledge each other, but there was no real communication.’

  She closes her eyes. I wait patiently, feeling desperately sorry for her, or for that screwed-up teenager at least. She behaved badly, but it all feels so familiar. Usually we can leave our self-obsessed adolescence behind us, but not Anna. She’s locked in Taisie’s world because of her sister. She’ll never escape that summer.

  Anna lowers her hands to the table. ‘He didn’t come back to school in September, and after the fiasco with Tim’s restaurant, we moved away. Dad and Mum said it was because they needed a fresh start, somewhere they wouldn’t be reminded of Izzy, but really it was because we had to sell up. I didn’t hear any more about Nick, and our parents had fallen out big-time, so there was no contact. It hasn’t been easy, but I’ve tried my best to move on.’

  It’s cold in her kitchen. I rub my arms, and shiver. ‘Are you asking me to believe that it’s a coincidence that Alex contacted Nick the day after you confronted him in the street?’

  ‘I didn’t confront him.’

  I shrug. ‘According to Cassie, Evan described it as an intense conversation.’

  ‘That was his perception, then. He was wrong.’

  ‘Really?’

  She doesn’t elaborate. She doesn’t need to. It’s Evan’s word against hers.

  ‘Did you and Alex plan this?’

  She frowns. ‘Don’t be silly.’

  The cogs of my mind are turning slowly. ‘But you understand why I might wonder, don’t you? Alex was looking to heal by getting in touch with the other people who were there that summer. If he managed to get hold of Nick’s number, I doubt he’d have had much trouble finding you.’

  ‘Maybe not. But he didn’t.’

  I watch her closely. ‘How do you feel, knowing that he’s been in touch with Nick, talking about the past?’

  She looks me straight in the eye. ‘I feel sorry for both of them.’

  ‘Was there something odd about Izzy’s death? Did Nick know something?’

  She laughs. ‘Oh my God, Grace. Do you have any idea what you sound like? I don’t have a clue why Alex chose now to deal with his demons. As for me, bumping into Nick has brought back some unwelcome memories and I’d imagine the same applies to him. We were a shock to each other. Maybe he felt responsible, or guilty, and seeing me triggered a breakdown. I don’t know. You’re the one who lives with him. What do you think?’

  I swallow. ‘It seems a little fishy.’

  ‘I’m sure it does. I hope he comes back.’

  ‘When you spoke to the police, why didn’t you tell them you knew Nick?’

  She blushes. ‘I thought I could avoid it.’

  ‘You know that I will.’

  ‘Of course, but there’s no need. I’ll do it myself.’ She presses her fingers into the corners of her eyes, as if she’s trying to block her tear ducts. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t come clean before. I was thrown. I’ve had a tough time since Ben died, and it’s made me secretive.’

  ‘Is it because you don’t want anyone to know your husband killed himself?’

  She gasps. She might have been ready for questions about Nick, but she wasn’t ready for that.

  ‘How the hell did you know?’

  ‘Alex told me.’

  She slumps back in her chair and covers her face with her hands. We sit in silence. It’s so quiet I can hear the wind rustling the leaves of the tree that overhangs Anna’s garden from next door.

  ‘You really know how to drive the nail in, don’t you?’ She removes her hands to reveal eyes welling with tears. ‘I don’t tell people my husband killed himself. It’s too personal, OK? I’m ashamed that he didn’t love me or his son enough to stay. I’m ashamed that I couldn’t help him. I’m not going to talk to new friends about that. Why the hell should I? It’s my business. My pain.’

  The tears are falling hard. She slashes them away with her fist. She’s angry and I feel terrible. I move around the table to sit beside her.

  ‘I’m sorry. That was incredibly insensitive.’

  She sniffs and swallows. ‘Yes, it was. Please can you go.’

  ‘I don’t like to leave you like this.’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’ She jumps up, pulls a sheet from the roll of kitchen towel and dabs her eyes. ‘I’d better get back to work.’

  At the door I hug her. Her body is slim and warm, but stiff with tension. Her hair smells of grapefruit.

  ‘Wait,’ she says. ‘How was he? How was Alex?’

  ‘He seemed fine. He’s a lawyer.’ No need to tell her what I actually thought of him. ‘Maybe you should get in contact. I can give you his email address.’

  ‘Maybe. Oh, and Grace? Please don’t tell Nick’s family about me.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I made the break with the past for my own sanity. It’s taken me a long time to recover and I honestly don’t think I could stand seeing them.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ It doesn’t seem logical to me. This is a villagey sort of place. She won’t be able to avoid them for long. ‘Cora can be difficult, but Tim’s OK. Why don’t I speak to him, so that it’s not such a big deal if you do happen to bump into each other.’

  ‘No! For Christ’s sake, Grace. Don’t you understand? I do not want to talk to them.’

  I hold my hands up, bewildered by her reaction. ‘OK. OK. Sorry. I won’t say a word. But, Anna, you do realize that once you’ve told the police about your connection to Nick, they’re going to ask them about you. I can’t do anything about that.’

  She looks uncertain, but then she nods, adding to my feeling that she’s making this up as she goes along, that events are catching up with her, the ripples of what happened to her sister eighteen years ago finally breaking at her feet.

  ‘It’s all right. It’s my problem, not yours. Leave it for as long as possible, so I can prepare myself.’

  ‘Is it really that bad?’

  She lowers her head and I don’t hear what she whispers, so I ask her to repeat it.

  ‘Tim seduced me when I was fifteen.’

  ‘Shit. Oh my God, Anna, that’s awful. Did you tell anyone?’

  She shakes her head. ‘No, and you mustn’t. But you understand why I don’t want him knowing I’m here?’

  ‘OK,’ I say quietly. ‘It won’t come from me.’

  As I walk back, my head is spinning. Part of me can’t believe that the man I’ve known all this time could be capable of something like that. But the haunted look in Anna’s eyes convinced me she was telling the truth. Douglas could clearly see something dark in Tim that I couldn’t.

  TAISIE

  July 2000

  AFTER THE TEARS, THE HYSTERIA, THE COMMISERATIONS, the police and the press and the total, drowning, wipe-out misery, it was the day of the funeral. Taisie couldn’t believe that she was standing in a church and that her sister’s body was in that shiny wooden box with the huge arrangement of bright green foliage and white flowers trailing over the edges. The smell of jasmine, roses and lilies was overpowering. There were so many people it was standing room only, and some mourners had even spilled out into the narrow corridor outside the crematorium chapel. Fami
ly, friends, teachers, Mr Wendover, their headmaster, looking shiny and smart in his dark suit, his fluffy wife beside him. Taisie saw him tip up his glasses and wipe away a tear.

  Her sister was getting SO much attention. It was almost worth dying for.

  Oh God. She could not believe she just had that thought.

  I’m sorry, Izzy. I really am, truly sorry.

  But it wasn’t Taisie’s fault, was it? Izzy knew that if Taisie had known the water level had risen so high she would never have asked her to keep her promise. Izzy wouldn’t have gone in if Nick hadn’t done what he had. A picture of her sister in tears flashes through her mind and is gone. She wouldn’t think about that. She couldn’t. Her mind is swirling with dark clouds. She can’t fix on anything. What had Izzy said to her before she ran off? That Nick had kissed her? That he had touched her breast? She couldn’t picture it. It wasn’t the sort of thing he would do. But on the other hand, the truth is too much to handle. There’s Tim and the way he made her feel, there’s the minutes she lost with her mother’s intervention. Surely Izzy wouldn’t have gone in like that, not without making sure that Taisie was right behind her? So she must have been desperately upset.

  This was horrific, unbearable. She couldn’t untangle the strands. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t. So it must have been Nick’s. He was angry at them for the way they had treated him. Izzy had been kind and he had taken advantage of a young girl’s adolescent crush. Izzy had always been a physical child, prone to displays of affection, hugging, winding herself round you. That’s what must have happened. Nick was unhappy, and he got the wrong idea.

  She choked on her tears and pressed her hanky to her eyes. Down the other end of the pew Nick was with Tim and Cora. She had caught his eye earlier and he had given her a nod, like he understood. He didn’t, but he was going to. She sniffed and turned her head away. He used to be her friend, and she misses that. She can’t help looking back to a time when nothing mattered except playing their daft games. She wished none of this had happened, but it had. Izzy was in that coffin and someone had to take the blame.

  When it was over, they filed out of their pews to the strains of ‘Oops! … I Did It Again’. Taisie had chosen it because it was the song of the summer. Inappropriate, but who cared; Izzy had adored it.

  Later, back at the house where the mourners had gathered, pressing into their kitchen and tramping through to the garden, Taisie found Nick sitting on the old blue-and-red climbing frame. Their garden felt tiny with all these people crammed into it, and it was hot, the men sweltering in their suits. Nick looked down at her. She climbed up beside him, carefully arranging the hideous, knee-length black skirt her mother had bought her for the occasion and insisted she wore, out of respect. Izzy wouldn’t have given a toss. Taisie sat very straight and didn’t speak. She looked at Tim instead. He was talking to her grandmother, his hand on her arm, and Taisie was filled with an angry longing. It wasn’t Tim’s fault; he wasn’t to know that a delay of even twenty seconds would have had such a tragic result.

  Nick said something, and she pulled herself back. ‘What?’

  ‘I think it was my fault she ran off. We were in the cupboard together, and I scared her. I had one of my nightmares, and she was kissing me, but I was still in the dream, so it was like there was this creature trying to suck the life out of me, and I went crazy.’

  She knew all about his nightmares, although she didn’t really believe in his descriptions. Monsters coming out of the cupboard, springing at his face? Yeah, right. He made them up to get attention, and now he was using them as an excuse for what he did to her sister. She sniffed and pressed the pads of her palms into her eyes, trying not to smudge her make-up. It wasn’t her fault, it was his, and he needed to know that.

  ‘So this is all down to you? Izzy’s dead because of you?’

  Nick jerked. ‘What? No. I just mean, she might have been upset because she was embarrassed. I think she had a crush on me.’

  ‘You mean she trusted you and you abused her. And now you’re laying the blame on her. She never kissed you, Nick. She was a kid. It was you who kissed her. Admit it.’

  ‘I … No. I didn’t … I didn’t.’ When he went red, his spots literally glowed.

  ‘You disgust me, Nick Ritchie.’ His face was ashen, but she pressed on, unable to stop the surge of bile. She had to make him think he was the last person to see Izzy alive. ‘You went too far, didn’t you? You—’

  ‘Hey, you two.’ It was Lorna, holding a glass of wine, her eyes red-rimmed. ‘Don’t hide, sweetie.’ She put her hand on Taisie’s knee. ‘I know it’s difficult, but your mum needs you. You can hand round nibbles if you don’t feel up to talking to anyone.’

  Taisie clambered down. She fetched a plate laden with cocktail sausages from the kitchen and wove her way between their guests, listening to snatches of conversation, but mostly people went silent when she approached. After a while Nick wandered over to his mum, but Cora was with some other women, mothers from the school, so he just hovered beside her looking like the spot-encrusted loser he was.

  Her throat tightened, and her eyes pricked. She dashed inside and locked herself in the bathroom. There was only one person she wanted to talk to, and that was Tim. She wanted him to hold her, to stroke her, to caress the pain away.

  PART 2

  GRACE

  Wednesday, 25 April 2018

  NICK’S DISAPPEARANCE HAS FINALLY CAUGHT THE attention of the press. Tim went out for the paper this morning and wordlessly handed it to me. It isn’t a big item; a few column inches to say that thirty-four-year-old Nick Ritchie has been missing since the fourteenth of April. That’s followed by a human-interest piece on how many people go missing each year. A set of startling statistics. So far there’s been nothing about me, but I reckon it’s only a matter of time before some bright spark comes asking questions and discovers that I’m not the conventional mother I appear to be.

  I put the paper down and call Marsh to ask whether Anna has been back to see him.

  ‘And?’ I ask when he confirms this.

  He sighs. ‘And I don’t know. She thinks you’re fixated on what happened eighteen years ago.’

  ‘If I’m fixated, it’s because it was a massive upheaval in Nick’s life. What if he went back to the place where she died? What if he has some sort of guilt complex about what happened? The police should search the river. Maybe he’s in the house or camping out. They were all there; all these people that are, or were, part of Nick’s life: Angus Moody, Anna Foreman, his parents. And now Alex Wells.’

  ‘Slow down. Supposing he did go down to Devon, how did he get there? His car is parked in your driveway and there’s no CCTV footage of him beyond the Queen’s Arms. The Paddington station sighting wasn’t him.’

  ‘I don’t know. But it’s not impossible, is it? Maybe he hitched a lift. Please can you at least look at it?’

  He gives in. ‘I’ll talk to Devon and Cornwall Police for you, but don’t expect them to organize a search without a very good reason.’

  It’s something. I’ve driven a small wedge in the door. I risk another push.

  ‘I think Nick was so upset by meeting Anna Foreman and her brother, and the memories that triggered, that he may have harmed himself or be intending to.’ A lump rises in my throat, causing a break in my voice.

  ‘Has he ever given you reason to believe he’s capable of something like that?’

  Once upon a time I would have said absolutely not, but now I know about his depression, I’ve had to rethink our entire relationship. ‘It can happen to anyone, surely? Given the right set of circumstances.’

  He is unimpressed. ‘If we assigned officers to every what if, we wouldn’t have time to deal with the crimes that are actually being committed. We haven’t been sitting on our hands. We’ve uploaded Nick’s details on to the Missing Persons database. We’ve looked at his computers both at work and at home. We’ve spoken to his colleagues. We’ve been through his phone records and hi
s bank and credit card statements. I have a list as long as my arm of things that need my attention and people who need my help. I cannot devote every hour of every day to finding Nick. If he wanted to go back there to kill himself, why not drive, or get the train?’

  ‘Because he didn’t want to be found.’

  I can almost hear the lift of his eyebrow. I can certainly picture it.

  ‘My point exactly.’

  Cornered, I groan. ‘It’s not that simple.’

  ‘Ms Trelawney.’ He sounds exasperated. ‘If you know something, you should tell me, even if it doesn’t show Nick in the best light. If what you’re saying is true, then we need to act quickly.’

  What Anna told me – what she implied about Nick and Izzy’s relationship becoming blurred around the edges – is hard to articulate, because it goes against everything I know about Nick. I could repeat it to Marsh, but the slightest suggestion that a sixteen-year-old boy assaulted a thirteen-year-old girl, and possibly has some indirect connection to her death, has implications that could be life-changing and career-destroying.

  ‘I’ve told you everything I know.’

  ‘OK,’ he says after a pause. ‘I’ll talk to Moody again.’

  ‘And the Wellses. You need to talk to Anna’s parents.’

  He sighs.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m telling you how to do your job. Please can you email me Nick’s bank statements? I want to go through them.’

  I hang up and go in search of Cora. She’s in Lottie’s bathroom, bent over the bath, a green sponge in one hand, a bottle of lemon-scented cream cleaner in the other.