Greenwich Park

by Katherine Faulkner

  When Charlie and the detective emerged they were laughing like best mates. He was told he could go home. The detective even shook his hand, glanced at me wryly, as if they were all boys together, and I’d caused a whole load of unnecessary fuss.

  I called a cab, waited outside the station. Charlie stood with me, but refused to meet my eye.

  ‘Just tell me, Charlie. Were you together?’

  ‘Of course not! For fuck’s sake, Helen. Why can you never just leave things alone?’

  When the taxi pulled up, Charlie walked off. I haven’t heard from him since. It’s all such a mess.

  When I finish telling Serena the story she sits down and picks up her mug again, takes another sip. It covers her face, so I can’t see her expression.

  ‘I can’t believe he knew her,’ Serena murmurs. ‘Do you think it’s possible that the baby is his?’

  So the police haven’t said anything to them about Rachel’s pregnancy.

  ‘Well, for one thing … it turns out she might not actually have been pregnant.’

  A vertical crease forms between the arches of Serena’s eyebrows. ‘What? How?’

  I put my tea down, tell her the whole story. Serena always makes mint tea. I have told her before that I like it, but I’m not sure I really do. It is making my stomach swim a little.

  When I have finished, Serena exhales, shaking her head.

  ‘Do you think … Rachel could have been murdered?’ I ask. The question comes out in a whisper. My baby kicks square between the ribs.

  Serena grimaces, pulls her spine straight, as if restoring normality. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing like that,’ she says, her voice returning to its usual confidence. ‘The police will find her. Look, Helen, Rachel was … well, she was clearly a troubled person.’

  I nod, embarrassed. A troubled person who I introduced into all our lives.

  ‘I just think she’s probably taken off somewhere,’ Serena adds. ‘Of her own choosing. She’ll turn up.’

  ‘That’s what I keep saying!’ My voice sounds slightly hysterical. I take a deep breath, try to calm down.

  ‘You look so tired, Helen,’ Serena says, after a pause. She cocks her head to one side. ‘It sounds like you’ve been through a lot. I feel bad that we weren’t around.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘Still, I hope you’re not letting all this Rachel stuff get to you. It’s such an important time. You shouldn’t let it play on your mind too much.’ She gives an almost involuntary flick of one hand, as if this can all be batted away, if we wish it to be so.

  ‘The thing is, I still don’t properly remember everything from the night she left.’

  ‘That is strange. You weren’t drinking, were you?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I didn’t think so. But I mean, you remember our conversation, don’t you? In the kitchen?’

  As she says it, something stirs in my memory. Lights behind a curtain, flashing. Something caught in my hair. Her thumb, brushing against my forehead. I went outside. Was she in the garden with me? The images swim together in my mind. I can’t make them out.

  ‘You said you’d been outside – there was a bit of something in your hair,’ Serena says, seeing my confusion. ‘You told me you’d … maybe disturbed someone. At the bottom of the garden? You remember that?’

  ‘Monty!’ I cry with delight. I thought I’d seen Monty, near the fire. He’d got out somehow. I’d gone to get him, to try and chase him away from the flames, get him to come inside. That’s why I’d been out there. I do remember that part. I do.

  ‘Yes, the cat, you said you’d been chasing a cat,’ Serena is nodding encouragingly. ‘And then you saw a couple or something – at the end of the garden?’ She hesitates. ‘You did say … that you’d had a bit of a row with Rachel?’

  My sense of relief evaporates. ‘That’s the bit I don’t really remember properly. I mean I remember getting angry with her. I know I shouted.’ I ball my fingers into fists. ‘It wouldn’t matter if I could just know for sure she is all right, but –’

  ‘Hey, don’t get upset.’ Serena comes close, wraps her slender arms around me, like a necklace. I smell her perfume again, deep and sensuous. It makes me think of black flowers. ‘You’re under such a lot of pressure,’ she says. ‘Pregnancy does strange things to you – it’s stressful. Don’t read anything into it. I forget things all the time.’

  I shake my head, feeling tears welling in my eyes. ‘This is different. People forget to turn the oven off, or take their keys with them when they go out. You don’t forget whole chunks of time.’ I pause. ‘What if …’ I lower my voice. ‘What if it was because of me? I should never have shouted at her, told her to get out. What if something happened to her, and it’s my fault?’

  Serena’s eyes grow wide. ‘Helen, don’t be ridiculous! None of this is your fault.’

  I wipe my face, sniffing into my cuff. ‘It’s so strange though. How can she have just disappeared? How can no one have seen her leave?’

  Serena shrugs. ‘It was busy. People were drunk. Why would they notice a girl they didn’t know leaving a party?’ She stands up, places two hands on her lower back. Her belly looks so much bigger now. ‘If people aren’t looking for things, they don’t see them.’

  I watch her as she gazes out of her window, massaging the bottom of her spine with her fingertips.

  ‘Serena,’ I say. ‘I need to tell you something. Something about Rachel. I should have told you ages ago.’

  GREENWICH PARK

  The rain scatters everyone, washes all the people from the streets. They do awkward crouching runs with makeshift umbrellas – magazines, newspapers folded in half. They cower in doorways, under the awnings of shops. They pull out their phones and call for rescue.

  In this part of town, no one looks at anyone. I pass a pizza place, a jobcentre. In the launderette, the machines spin round and round like rolling eyes. It is a place and yet it is nowhere. Pavement puddles hold up a grey mirror to the metal sky.

  The phone box is under a huge billboard, a peeling election poster for the side that lost. He pulls down his hat as he reaches it. There is no CCTV here, they have checked. There is only concrete, the roar of traffic, the skid of crisp packets across the pavements.

  The phone box stinks of piss, but the phone still works. He takes a coin from his jacket pocket with a gloved hand. As he dials the number, the pornographic eyes of girls stare blankly back at his.

  HELEN

  Katie and I are sitting on her sofa, pizza boxes piled in front of us, an old romcom on pause. Rain is beating at the windows, a dull drum roll over the sound of the wind in the trees in Dartmouth Park.

  I couldn’t be at home any more. Daniel and I are under siege, reporters knocking all the time, asking about Rachel. It’s the same for her flatmates too, apparently, and at Charlie’s club. I texted Daniel, told him I was going to Katie’s to get away from it all. He was worried, didn’t want me going so far from Greenwich with the baby due any moment. But I assured him I’d be OK. Even if I do go into labour, it’ll be hours before I need to go to hospital, I told him. As you would know if you’d come to the antenatal classes, I felt like adding.

  It is cosy in Katie’s flat. Of course it’s silly to envy Katie her place – after all, it’s barely the size of our living room – but I do sometimes wonder what it would be like to have a little space that is just mine, not Daniel’s. Katie’s cat, Socks, is curled up on the sofa between us. As we pull slices of pizza away from the box, coiling the stray strands of mozzarella with our fingers, I ask her if she’d seen Charlie since I took him to the police station.

  Katie shakes her head. ‘He called me that night – late, it must have been when he got back from the station with you. He asked me what I was doing, taking that photograph, showing it to you, instead of talking to him first. He was angry, we rowed.’ She looks down, fiddles with the blanket over her knees. ‘I haven’t spoken to him since.’

  ‘I’m
sorry.’

  ‘It’s not your fault.’ She pauses. ‘Helen, what exactly did he say about how he knew Rachel? Did he just know her from the club? Or did something happen between the two of them?’

  I glance at her uncertainly. She rolls her eyes. ‘Come on, I can take it,’ she says firmly.

  I feel blood rush into my cheeks as I recall the conversation. ‘He was maddening, actually. He kept saying they were friends, and that he only kept the fact that they knew each other a secret because she asked him to. He claims he doesn’t know about her pregnancy – or lack of it. Or why she wanted to keep it a secret that they knew each other. And that he didn’t ask.’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘I know. But you know what he’s like. He doesn’t talk to me. He’s probably told the police more than he’s told me.’

  Katie finishes her slice, presses her fingers into her eye sockets.

  ‘I don’t know what to think,’ she says quietly.

  The rain is picking up. It occurs to me how much safer I feel here in Katie’s flat than I do at home. Earlier, when I arrived, I pressed a set of spare keys to our house into her hand. ‘When the baby comes,’ I said, ‘would you mind – if I have to stay in hospital with the baby – coming and feeding Monty, keeping the plants alive?’ She looked at me. I knew what she was thinking. It was a long way to come to feed the cat. But for some reason, I felt strongly that I wanted her to have them. I wanted to entrust the house to her. In case something happened. I didn’t think too much about what. She nodded, slipped the keys into her bag. Of course, she said.

  ‘You know,’ I say, ‘before she left – before all this Charlie stuff – I was starting to think something was going on between Rachel and Rory.’

  ‘Rory? Jesus. Why?’

  I tell her about the two notes I found, the first one in Rory and Serena’s bathroom, then the other one in Rachel’s suitcase.

  Katie looks at me, one eyebrow raised. ‘You just found them, Helen?’

  ‘All right,’ I mutter.

  ‘What did they say, these notes?’

  ‘Nothing really. I couldn’t understand them. One said “wear to show me”. I never read the other one – just saw the initial.’ I pause. ‘But you’ve got to admit it’s weird. Finding them in his house and then in her suitcase.’

  ‘I guess so.’ Katie nods slowly, but I can see she is unconvinced.

  ‘It’s not just that that made me think it,’ I add. ‘Do you remember how Lisa thought she remembered Rachel?’

  Katie furrows her brow. ‘Oh yeah. I thought that was odd.’

  ‘And the way Rory reacted, when he saw Rachel in his kitchen. Remember, when he dropped all that glass?’

  ‘You don’t know that was because of Rachel.’

  I sigh. She is right.

  ‘You think I’m an idiot.’

  ‘No, Helen. I don’t think that. You need to stop putting yourself down. But I mean – I just think it doesn’t prove anything. And it certainly doesn’t explain what was going on with her and Charlie – unless – hang on … If Charlie knew her from the club – could Rory have met Rachel through him?’

  I consider this. ‘I suppose that would explain why Charlie was told to keep it secret that he knew her.’ I chew my lip. ‘Oh God, Katie. Do you really think Rory could have been having an affair with her? And hiding it, all this time?’

  ‘I don’t know. None of it makes any sense.’ She shifts in her seat. ‘Where is Rory, anyway?’

  ‘Home. They’re back now, from Italy. I went to Serena’s exhibition the other night.’

  I’d finally told Serena about the notes. It hadn’t gone well. She just looked at me, white as a sheet, then muttered some excuse about wanting to lie down. And I haven’t heard from her since.

  ‘Didn’t that seem a bit odd to you?’ Katie is saying, wiping her mouth with a napkin.

  ‘Didn’t what seem odd?’

  ‘Rory and Serena. Going abroad so soon before her baby is due. I’m surprised she was even allowed to fly.’

  ‘She got some private doctor to sign it off, I think.’

  ‘But why would they want to go away? When the baby is due so soon?’

  ‘I hadn’t really thought.’

  The rain gets louder, and we both glance up at the skylight. The taste of the pizza is so comforting. The food of sleepovers, when Katie and I were teenagers and she’d come over, and we’d watch Clueless and Scream on repeat. After we’ve finished the pizza, Katie collects the boxes while I head to the kitchen to scoop ice cream into bowls.

  ‘Anyway, I’m sick of thinking about it,’ I say, when we are both back on the sofa. ‘Tell me what’s going on with you. I saw your front page. That interview with the girl in the rape case, it was amazing. You must be really proud.’

  Katie smiles, looks away, but I can tell she is pleased. There’s been a lot of talk about the interview, about how Katie persuaded the girl to waive her anonymity.

  ‘Helen,’ she says, swallowing a mouthful of ice cream, ‘you know I asked you before about that other rape case years ago. When you were at Cambridge. The boathouse rape?’

  I nod slowly.

  ‘Did you really not remember it?’

  I start fiddling with my spoon, avoiding Katie’s eye. It’s pointless trying to hide things from Katie when she is in this sort of mood.

  ‘I mean, it was such big news at the time. And it all happened the summer you –’

  ‘All right, all right.’

  Katie stops. I shift on the sofa, the baby digging under my ribs. I suppose it doesn’t matter now.

  ‘I’m sorry, Katie. I wasn’t entirely honest with you.’

  Katie frowns. ‘What do you mean? Why not?’

  ‘I suppose I knew you’d want to ask questions, and Daniel … he hates talking about it. We were interviewed about it, you see. By the police. The four of us. Daniel, Serena, Rory and I.’

  Katie’s eyes widen. ‘Why?’

  I shrug. ‘They thought we might have been in the boathouse. That we might have seen something.’ I look her in the eye. ‘We hadn’t seen anything, obviously. We’d been out punting all day. None of us had anything helpful to tell them.’ I sigh. ‘I wish we had. That poor girl.’

  Katie considers this. ‘So why does Daniel hate talking about it so much?’

  ‘I just remember he was upset when those horrible boys got off. Even though there was nothing he could have done.’ I smile sadly at Katie. ‘It’s just what he’s like. He cares about people.’

  On the table in front of us, Katie’s phone rings. ‘Probably work,’ she says. ‘Sorry.’ I motion that I’m going to the bathroom anyway.

  When I come back, she is sitting on the very edge of the sofa.

  ‘Katie?’

  ‘It wasn’t work,’ she says quietly, looking up at me. ‘It was Daniel. He said he’d been trying to call you. Where’s your phone?’

  I frown. ‘In my bag, I think, or … maybe in your kitchen. Why – what’s going on?’

  She opens her mouth, closes it again.

  ‘Katie?’

  ‘He … he said you should come home straight away. The police are searching the offices –’

  ‘What, Daniel’s office?’

  ‘Yes … and … Helen, your brother’s been arrested.’

  It can’t be real, I think. It doesn’t feel like real life.

  ‘Charlie?’

  Katie shakes her head. ‘That’s just it. He said … he said they’d arrested Rory.’

  SERENA

  The room smells of bleach, of dust, of neglect. A single light hangs overhead. I take a seat in the grey plastic chair in front of a screen, a constellation of little holes drilled into the glass, like in a banking kiosk. A little gap underneath. I sit down, carefully, steadying myself on the glass, hugging my bump to my body. Things are getting more difficult now. I place my bag on the floor, twist to spread my coat across the back of the chair so it doesn’t crease. I sit there, waiting,
for what seems like a long time.

  Finally, there is a buzzing noise, harsh, institutional. The sound of a heavy door opening. And there, on the other side of the smeared glass, is my husband. A day-old stubble on his cheeks, a haunted look in his eyes. A blue nylon bib on his chest as if he is off to play five-a-side. Except he is not. He is in police custody, facing a charge of murder.

  Rory’s eyes widen when he sees me.

  ‘Serena,’ he says. Then his face collapses. He slumps into the chair, covers his eyes with his hands, like a child trying to hide. His forearms are brown, still, although the colour has faded a little. Just a couple of weeks ago, we were still on holiday, sailing out to Capri. The sky had been overcast, but there had been a brightness behind the clouds that made you squint. The sort of day where you burn without realising.

  I lean towards my husband, try to reach my hand through the flap. ‘No touching,’ a voice snaps from the corner. I look up to see a guard standing in one corner. I hadn’t even noticed him come in. I pull my hand away.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I tell him. ‘It’s going to be all right.’ But the truth is, I don’t know if it is going to be all right. I really don’t.

  When he has calmed down, I lean again into the little holes in the glass.

  ‘Rory.’ He looks up. ‘I need to know what happened.’ I hold his gaze, to be sure he understands. ‘I need to know everything.’

  And so, he tells me.

  He tells me about the interview room. The female detective, her hair pulled back from her face. How she had watched him with her dark brown eyes as she spread out six photographs on the table.

  Despite the blurry focus, the graininess of the half-light, there was no mistaking what they showed. The purple sign of the cheap hotel visible in the corner. A mane of dark hair, his hand buried in it. The florid milky pink of his face under the glare of the flash. His eyes red, like a rabid dog’s, where the flash had gone off in his eyes.

  Her voice was clear, devoid of emotion, like a recorded message.

  ‘Do you recognise the individuals in these photographs, Mr Haverstock?’