by Tudor, C. J.
When dawn edged around the thin curtains, he showered, shaved and pulled on the same clothes from the day before—a black shirt and jeans. He took a crumpled tie from his pocket and knotted it around his neck, pulling it a little tighter than necessary. He regarded himself in the mirror. Aside from the pallid color of his skin and blood-streaked eyes, he looked almost presentable. Formal identification, he thought again, grimly.
Then he sat back down and waited.
All a mistake. A terrible mistake.
Harry and Evelyn called him back just before midday. Evelyn sounded surprisingly calm. No trace of the hysterical woman from the night before. They wanted to come with him, she said. For support. Gabe didn’t want them to. He told them it was unnecessary. But Evelyn insisted: “You can’t do this on your own. Harry will drive. In case it’s too much for you.”
Back then, before the accusations and suspicions had broken down their tenuous relationship completely, he supposed they were still playing the role of supportive in-laws, the three of them united briefly in their loss.
“Have you eaten?” Evelyn asked when they arrived. “You need to eat. You need strength.” As though food would somehow fill the aching hole in his heart.
They took him to the pub next to the hotel. The lights felt too harsh, the decor too bright. Gabe had no idea what they were doing there. The scrape of cutlery on plates set his teeth on edge. Evelyn chattered resolutely about nothing, her voice a little too brittle and high. He could see her eyes were sore and red-looking. Once or twice she took out some eye drops and squeezed them in. Harry made intermittent grunts and funneled a cheese sandwich into his mouth. Gabe managed one bite of stale bread and ham and two cups of black coffee. It was cold and bitter. An apt metaphor. Life had lost its taste.
It was a twenty-minute journey to the hospital, which was on the outskirts of town, near the beltway. The same hospital where Jenny gave birth to Izzy. He thought his heart had wrung itself dry with grief, but now he felt it twist again. Bitter drops that burned his soul and made his gut convulse with nausea. He clutched his stomach.
“Are you all right?” Evelyn clasped his hand.
He nodded. “Fine, I’m fine.”
She reached into her purse, took out a small vial of pills and shook two out into her hand. She offered them to him.
“What are they?”
“To help, with your nerves.”
That explained some of the odd, manic chatter. He looked at the small pink tablets and started to shake his head. Then he felt his stomach clench again. He changed his mind. He took the tablets and swallowed them dry. Bitter, he thought again.
They parked in the visitors’ car park, adding to Gabe’s sense of unreality, but then they were hardly going to have spaces marked “Morgue Only,” perhaps with a white outline of a coffin, were they? Wouldn’t want to remind people that the hospital isn’t always a place where their loved ones get better.
Anne Gleaves met them in the reception. She held out a hand. He took it, but it felt like shaking Plasticine. Maybe the tablets were kicking in. Every part of him felt numb.
“If you’ll just come this way.”
A cliché to say the rest was a blur. But there it was. He felt like he was walking through a world made of fuzzy felt, all the sharp edges rubbed off. They padded down soft-blue corridors. Muffled voices settled like sludge in his ears. The only thing that felt sharp and clear to him was the smell. Chemical. Medicinal. Embalming fluid, he thought. To stop the bodies rotting. His stomach rolled again.
They reached a small waiting room. He supposed it was meant to look homely. More pastel hues. Grey sofas. White flowers in a vase. Fake—their fabric petals faded and dusty. Leaflets were spread out on the table. Dealing with Bereavement. Counselling Services. Explaining Sudden Death to a Child. A picture of a wide-eyed toddler stared up at him. He looked away.
Anne Gleaves sat down. Explained about “the process.” It was nothing like you saw on TV. There would be no hideous, dramatic pulling back of a sheet. Jenny and Izzy would be lying on tables, just their faces visible. Gabe could spend as long with them as he wished, but he mustn’t touch the bodies. When he was ready to leave, he would be required to sign a form confirming that the deceased were his wife and daughter. Did he need a drink of water before he went in? Did he want someone to accompany him?
He shook his head. He stood. He made it to the door.
Everything swam. His vision was distorted by wavy lines. He tried to breathe deeply, but all he could smell was that damn chemical stench.
“Mr. Forman? Do you need a moment?”
He opened his mouth to reply. His stomach knotted and vomit spewed from his throat. He couldn’t stop. He threw up again and again, all over the soft-blue carpet tiles.
“Oh God.” He heard Evelyn’s voice. “We should never have let him come.”
He wanted to tell her he had to come. He had to do this. But his head was a grey, fuzzy cloud. His ears buzzed. His knees buckled. He collapsed to the floor.
Distantly, he heard Anne Gleaves say: “I’ll get a nurse. We can do this another day.”
And then Harry’s voice. Surprisingly firm. “No. It’s all right. I’ll do the identification. It’s for the best.”
* * *
—
FOR THE BEST. For the best. The words thrummed around Gabe’s head.
Later, he had asked if he could go back and see them. But by this point, after he had been released from the hospital, where they put him on a drip and asked repeatedly if he had “taken anything,” the police had arrived. His world tilted on its axis again. He was no longer a grieving husband and father. He was a murder suspect. He found himself in another bland, featureless blue room. But there were no flowers or comforting leaflets here. Just a tape recorder, DI Maddock and another grim-faced detective, and a young solicitor, hastily found and seemingly more nervous and unprepared than Gabe.
He sat by, looking helpless, as the detectives asked Gabe about his relationship with his wife, his job, his background…and oh, what exactly had he been doing between the time he left home at 8 a.m. and the time he made the phone call from the Leicester Forest East Services at around 6:15 p.m., seeing as he hadn’t been at work?
He didn’t want to answer. Didn’t want to confirm their suspicions about him—that he was the type of man who could hurt or kill somebody. But it was futile. They knew about his record. They had tracked his phone. It had all come out anyway. Most of it, at any rate.
Things between him and Jenny’s parents had disintegrated fast after that. Even when he was eventually released without charge, Evelyn refused to take his calls, changed their number. Shut him out completely. He found out the date of the funeral through his solicitor. He had to take a taxi to the crematorium because his car was still impounded for “evidence” and Evelyn wouldn’t allow him to travel in the funeral car.
As it was, he didn’t even make it through the service. He couldn’t sit there, listening to the minister’s meaningless words, staring at the coffins. Jenny’s was a gleaming oak that was, no doubt, the most expensive Harry’s money could buy. Izzy’s was a miniature version, painted pink and decorated with brightly colored flowers. As if that could make the awfulness, the horror of that tiny coffin, more palatable. Instead, it just made it worse. No coffin should ever be so small. No child should ever lie so cold and still. Children were light and warmth and laughter. Not darkness and silence. It was all wrong, and he couldn’t—wouldn’t—accept it.
He had risen with a strangled cry and run from the chapel, collapsing onto the damp grass outside. He lay there and screamed into the earth, until his throat was raw and his suit and shirt were sodden and stained with grass. No one came to help him. Even as the other mourners filed out, not a single person paused or offered their hand. No one wanted anything to do with a man tainted by murder.
At some point, lying there on the wet, muddy grass, he came to a decision. He could never get up again, he could kill himself, or he could find the car—find an answer, one way or another. Only then would he allow himself to grieve. Only then would he accept that Izzy was gone forever, carried away in a tiny pink coffin painted with bright, scentless flowers.
As the sun started to falter in the sky, he staggered to his feet and walked away: from the chapel, from the ashes of his family and from his life.
A week later, as he was loading his final few possessions into the trunk of his recently purchased second-hand camper van, he had received the text from Harry. He had been surprised. Then angry. He had thought about deleting it. But something stopped him.
Gabe didn’t have any parents, no close friends. He had become accustomed to keeping people at a distance, scared that if he let them too close they might see through his façade. Or worse, that one day someone from his past might emerge, strip away his emperor’s new clothes and expose him for who and what he really was.
He had work associates, but it’s funny how a murder accusation can cause those colleagues to fall away. He was aware that, had he not resigned, it would only have been a matter of time before the agency found a reason to let him go.
He didn’t even have a home any more. Despite the clean-up team eliminating any trace of what had happened, he could still see the blood spatter on the walls. He could still hear the screams. Every morning when he walked into the kitchen he saw Jenny standing there, body bloody with bullet holes, eyes cold and accusing.
“Why did you let this happen? Why weren’t you here to protect us?”
A week after he was cleared to return home he called an estate agent and put the house on the market. Then, he packed a small suitcase and checked back into the Premier Inn, returning only to collect post and feed the cat. He didn’t care about the house.
The only things Gabe had ever truly cared about in this world were Jenny and Izzy. Now they were gone, and that world had ended. The only remaining link to it was Harry.
He had stared at the text and pressed reply.
* * *
—
THEY HAD MET a few times since then. Not enough to call it regular. Not always at Gabe’s behest. But always here, in the Garden of Remembrance.
They sat, sometimes in silence, which, strangely, had never felt awkward. Mostly, they talked. About Jenny and Izzy. About happier times. Embellished on both sides, Gabe felt sure. But there was no denying that the talking, letting their memories breathe, out here in the open air, amidst the greenery and flowers, eased the hollow ache inside him. Just a little. Just for a short while. Sometimes, that had to be enough.
They discussed other things, too. Banal day-to-day things. Occasionally, one of them mentioned the police investigation. Or lack thereof. How no one had been brought to justice for the crime. How hopes of catching the person responsible grew fainter each day.
Harry knew all about his motorway travels. But he never mentioned it. Just like Gabe never brought up the identification. A mutual consent of silence. A grenade that could blow apart their fragile bridges.
Despite their past differences, Gabe had always believed that Jenny’s father was a good man, a principled man, a decent man.
Today, for the first time, he wondered if he was also a fucking liar.
Clickety-click. Alice opened her eyes and blinked blearily. Where was she? It took a moment. The hotel room. Across from her, Fran slept. But something had woken her. Clickety-click.
She glanced at the bag on her bedside table. The pebbles. She could sense them, shifting softly inside.
They were restless, she thought.
I’m dreaming, she thought.
Clickety-click, the pebbles whispered.
She sat up. The artificial darkness disoriented her. She had no idea what time it was. She realized she needed to wee. Maybe this wasn’t a dream. She slipped out of bed, softly and carefully. She didn’t want to wake Fran. She must be tired. All that driving. How far? Are we there yet? Would they ever be there?
She didn’t remember much before they started running. Or perhaps she had tried to forget. Sometimes it came back to her in dreams. Not the dreams she had when she fell. She wasn’t even sure they were dreams at all. But the other ones. The ones that seized her the moment she closed her eyes at night. Dreams that were full of blood and screams and a pretty lady with blonde hair. Mummy? Something had happened to her. Someone had hurt her. And they had wanted to hurt Alice, too. But Fran had saved her. Fran had kept her safe. Fran would always keep her safe. Fran loved her. And Alice loved Fran.
Except, sometimes, just sometimes, Fran scared her a little, too.
Her bladder demanded her attention again. She padded to the bathroom, flicked on the light switch and pushed the door open.
The bathroom was small and bright. She shut the door again so as not to wake Fran and sat herself on the toilet. She weed, wiped and flushed. Instead of facing the mirror over the sink, she ducked and washed her hands under the bath taps.
Clickety-click. The pebbles sounded louder, which was stupid because they were in the other room. Clickety-click. And now she was sure she could hear something else, like the soft washing of waves on sand. Like the sound was inside the room. No, inside her head.
She tried to shake it out, but it wouldn’t go. Clickety-click. Clickety-click. It was hard to resist the pull. And it was getting stronger. Slowly, she raised her eyes. The girl in the mirror smiled.
“Alissss.”
“I can’t.”
“Pleeeeease.”
Alice shook her head. But the movement was slow and sluggish. Her eyelids started to droop. The bath tap gushed, water swirling down the plughole.
Alice stepped into the bath and lay down.
“I want to ask you something.”
Harry sighed. “I may not want to answer—”
“Do you think I’m crazy?”
Harry paused. Obviously not quite what he was expecting. He took a while to reply.
“I think, when something terrible happens, we all deal with it in different ways. We find something that helps us cope.” He coughed, cleared his throat. “Evelyn volunteers now, at a shelter for abused women.”
“Really?”
Gabe couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice. He found it hard to imagine the perfectly coiffed, starchy, conservative—with a small and big “C”—Evelyn lowering herself to mix with the desperate and disadvantaged. But then, maybe she’d changed.
“Things had got quite bad,” Harry said. “She…she took some pills.”
That didn’t surprise him. He remembered the pills Evelyn had given him before the identification. Throughout everything, for as long as he’d known her, Evelyn had always been in control. Even at the funeral, she didn’t cry. Not really. Oh, she dabbed at her eyes, she sniffed, she popped eye drops. But proper snot-dribbling-down-your-chin wailing—no. She kept it all in. Kept up her composed façade. But you can only button yourself inside that chemical straitjacket for so long before you realize that your jailer is you and there is only one way of release.
“Anyway,” Harry continued, “it seems to have helped her. Knowing she is doing something positive for other women and children.”
“I’m glad she’s found a vocation.”
A thin smile. “It takes her out of the house. I sometimes wonder if that’s her real motivation. If being with me, together, reminds her more.”
His voice cracked a little. He coughed again. Harsh, guttural. Gabe wondered again about his sudden agedness, the limp. If he still had the expensive-cigar habit.
“What about you?” Gabe asked. “What do you do?”
“I keep myself busy. Golf, gardening. I’m learning archery.”
Gabe raised an eyebrow. “Right.”
“I�
�m not sure if it’s coping or distraction. But we do what’s necessary to get by.”
“I suppose.”
“What I’m saying is, I understand that this obsession of yours is your way of coping. I don’t think you’re crazy. But I do think it’s desperately unhealthy.”
“Thanks.”
“Until you accept that they’re dead—both of them—you’ll never move on with your life.”
“Maybe I don’t want to.”
“Your choice. But you’re still young. It pains me to say it, but you could meet someone else, have more children. It’s too late for Evelyn and me. But you could rebuild your life. A fresh start.”
Fresh start. Like life was a carton of milk. When one went sour you threw it out and opened another.
“I want to help you, Gabe,” Harry said in a softer voice. The one Gabe imagined he used to use with his patients when he told them that their test results were back and the news wasn’t good.
“I know. That’s why I called you.”
Harry nodded. “Well, if I can do—”
“I found the car.”
Gabe took his phone out of his pocket. He had taken several photos the other night. They were a bit grainy, the flash whiting out a lot of detail, but they showed most of what he needed. The car, from several different angles, trunk closed. The stickers. Harry peered at them and frowned.
“D’you see?” Gabe said, unable to contain the slight desperation in his voice. He needed Harry to believe him, he realized. Needed vindication.
“I see a rusted old car in a lake.”
Gabe zoomed in on the screen.
“See the stickers?”
Harry peered more closely and gave a small shrug. “Maybe. I couldn’t be sure.”
“It’s the same car, Harry. The one I saw that night.”
Harry sighed. “Gabe, maybe you did see a car with a little girl in it. Maybe this is the same car. But it wasn’t Izzy. You made a mistake. It was dark, at a distance. Little girls that age can look alike. It was another little girl who looked like Izzy. You must see that?”