The Evidence Against You

by Gillian McAllister

  He pauses, seemingly gathering his thoughts while looking around him. His eyes dart to the beams above them, unchanged, and the kitchen behind them, reconfigured and refitted. He runs his fingers over the bar – the same bar her mother had, but painted white – and reaches up for a glass.

  ‘This is huge,’ he says.

  ‘Huge wine glasses are trendy now.’

  ‘It’ll work itself out,’ he says, running his fingers around the rim until it sings, a mournful sound in the silent night.

  She wonders if he, too, sees her mother everywhere here, despite the changes she’s made. He fiddles with a pot on the bar – he made it, years ago, a tall, thin vase they used to keep breadsticks in but which now houses a bunch of fresh lilies. He taps the top, then smiles at her knowingly.

  ‘I’m sure,’ she says, ignoring the fact that she has kept his pot. Ignoring what it means.

  ‘Someone just needs to be brave and hire me,’ he says.

  She looks at his slim wrists, his white hair; only a handful of hairs remain black, hidden amongst the grey and the white, like the parts of her father from before. To avoid responding to him – to avoid telling him that even she, his daughter, has her phone in her pocket, poised ready to dial Nick quickly, if necessary – she walks into the kitchen and rifles through the fridge.

  ‘Would you like a spare cheesecake?’ she says to him.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘It’s a blue cheese cheesecake,’ she says, coming back out to the bar. ‘Full-fat Shropshire blue.’

  She tips it on to a plate and adds an artful smear of balsamic vinegar. Her father raises his eyebrows.

  ‘Blue cheese cheesecake?’ he says. He plucks a menu up off the bar and glances at it. He runs his finger underneath each word like a child.

  ‘It’s a thing, these days,’ she says, taking the menu. ‘Don’t read, just try.’

  He spears a piece but pauses, fork hovering near his mouth. ‘We ordered the week’s meals every Monday. Inside,’ he says shyly.

  ‘What kind of things did you eat?’ she says, leaning her elbows on the bar.

  ‘Things that could be cooked in batches … kedgeree. Stews. By the time I’d been in there four weeks, I’d eaten every single meal on offer.’

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘We had weird things sometimes, too. Chicken and coleslaw was a popular one.’

  ‘I’d quite like that,’ Izzy says, and he laughs.

  ‘People got inventive with kettles. My old cellmate from Belmarsh, Raj, cooked curries in his. He put cling film over the kettle and doctored it so it would keep boiling. He used a tin of mackerel and these Bid Fest spices. Tea tasted awful ever since.’

  ‘Bid Fest?’ Izzy says.

  ‘Oh, every Friday we were allowed to order things in. Like an internet shop, except they cost a fortune. A packet of mints would be two quid. They called it Bid Fest.’

  ‘How did you get money?’

  ‘We worked. Stitching up prison uniforms … cutting people’s hair – though only those of us that could be trusted with razors, obviously,’ he says with a tiny smile. ‘Cooking. Gardening. Building things, sometimes. My best year was when I was doing the bricklaying. Could be outside more and think. But I earned seven quid a day. It’s a different economy, and I got so used to it. Can hardly remember what’s normal now. Anyway …’ he breaks eye contact and looks down at the bar, then eats the piece of cheesecake.

  ‘Could you do bricklaying now?’ she says.

  ‘Maybe. I’ve got six months.’

  ‘Until what?’

  ‘Until Jobseeker’s is discontinued.’

  Izzy frowns, thinking of the snippet she overheard him say when he thought she wasn’t still on the phone to him. ‘Isn’t it eight weeks?’

  ‘No. Six months,’ he says, frowning at her. And then his face changes. ‘My point being,’ he says loudly, ‘that you could spend a day’s earnings on three packets of mints.’

  ‘How unfair.’

  He must have said six months. She must be mistaken. ‘Do you have any more interviews coming up?’ she says. ‘There must be bricklayers needed.’

  ‘You run this place completely differently to your mother,’ he says softly, looking up. ‘God, this is delicious.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He doesn’t want to speak about his job seeking, that much is clear. His gaze drifts behind her and she realizes he is looking for more food. She finds him a roast, cobbles together a few potatoes and a slab of beef. She puts it into the microwave. He eats as fast as a dog, barely pausing for breath, clearing the plate in less than ten minutes. She looks at his ribcage, just visible above his grey T-shirt, and feels her innards twist.

  He has mopped up the gravy with a piece of granary bread that Chris made that morning. He makes brilliant bread; she is sure it is because of his huge hands, his muscular arms, and because he puts heart into it, unlike Izzy.

  ‘Do you make a profit?’ he says.

  ‘Of course it turns a profit,’ she says. ‘I thought Mum had it all in hand but she used to spend too much on ingredients. And nobody ever had three courses. Or much wine. She needed to get her ancillaries up.’ She feels pleasure bloom across her chest when her father’s eyebrows rise. He’s impressed. She’s impressed him.

  ‘I see. Anyway. It’s very pretty. Much prettier than when she –’

  ‘People want to Instagram everything these days,’ Izzy says, gesturing to a bell jar with a candle inside, to the fairy lights strung up above the bar.

  ‘They what?’

  She smiles up at him. ‘Never mind,’ she says.

  He’s quiet for a second. She hands him a soufflé that folded in on itself in the oven. It has sat on the side, waiting to go in the bin. ‘It’s chocolate,’ she says. ‘It looks rubbish but it’s edible.’

  ‘Do you love it like she did?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Cooking. Dining. Food, I suppose.’

  Izzy’s skin prickles with his insight. He knows. Without knowing her at all, he knows. He knows about the heavy, dragging feeling she gets in her stomach at the start of the working week. He knows how she sometimes thinks, halfway through a shift, that she could happily bin all of the food she’s prepared, and just walk out. He knows.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘Her parents wanted me to reopen it … to carry it on.’

  Her father blinks, looking at her. ‘Granny and Granddad?’

  ‘Yes. They wanted …’ She pauses, trying to be fair to them. ‘They wanted it open again. As though … I don’t know. It was as though it kept her alive. Her name, I guess, too. Her name on the sign.’

  Izzy wishes she remembered the moment it happened, but the truth is, there wasn’t one. Izzy had offered up her expertise on how long was left on her mother’s lease, on who the accountant was, on where she had ordered the food from. And suddenly, as a woman without anything else to do, she was running the restaurant, unofficially and then officially, without truly noticing when one became the other. There was no moment. There was simply Izzy answering everybody’s questions, realizing she could make a nice risotto and spot when a profit margin wasn’t quite right. It had been a welcome distraction, at first.

  Nobody had ever asked her. But that was how it was at her grandparents’. When Izzy asked to turn off the television coverage of the US Open Golf, her granddad simply said, ‘Why?’ She couldn’t justify it, so instead, she said, ‘Never mind.’ What Izzy wanted – ballet, Pip, travel, all-day breakfasts in a can – didn’t matter.

  Tears gather in her throat as she remembers those bleak years. Everything good – Gabe’s happiness at heading off to tennis, his painting, her mother’s delight over an apple pie – was rationed. Life became monochrome. There wasn’t even a speck of joy. Not a single Indian takeaway, a morning cup of coffee in the sun, a read of Glamour magazine in the hairdresser’s. Instead, life was dreary Sundays spent watching Only Fools and Horses and the Grand Prix, drinking weak tea and reading classics on loan from th
e library. Life was functional, lukewarm showers that dribbled, completing puzzles alone in the conservatory, perfunctory phone calls with her aunts and uncles, and a job she came to hate. Her morning coffees were an attempt to ward it off, but they didn’t work, not really.

  She can’t tell Gabe that. It would break his heart.

  ‘I see,’ Gabe says, nodding quickly. He stabs the soufflé with a fork. The remaining air evaporates and it folds fully in on itself. ‘I’m sorry. You could … you could start over. You know. Do what you want.’ He catches her eye. ‘Whatever that is.’

  Izzy can’t think about that. About the paths not taken. Ballet school. Seeing the world. Pip. It’s too much.

  ‘I visited our old house today,’ she says.

  His face brightens. He finishes the soufflé and puts his fork down. ‘Rainsdown?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I have a question.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘What exactly was the taxi driver’s evidence?’

  ‘That Mum went inside.’

  ‘Was she asked to describe the house?’ Gabe is silent, thinking. His jaw clenches. ‘Ye-es,’ he says. ‘She knew about our lamp.’

  Izzy’s heart sinks. ‘Right. The thing is …’

  ‘Why were you at the house?’

  ‘Because I’m looking into the case against you.’

  His expression darkens and his brow lowers. His eyes dart around the restaurant, looking glittery. ‘Are you not yet ready to stop looking into me? To look into who really was responsible?’

  He picks up his fork and she sees his fingers blanch.

  ‘It would be easy for her to make out a lamp through the windows,’ he explains. ‘She would have seen the glow from it, and could have imagined the rest. I don’t think she was lying about seeing Mum go into the house. But she could have been mistaken.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I wish you’d see,’ he says, the fork still gripped, jaw still set. He releases the fork angrily, and it clatters to the plate.

  ‘Are you mad at me?’ she says, figuring she may as well ask the direct question.

  He rests his head in his hands for five seconds, ten, then says, ‘Yeah, you know, sometimes I am.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of what we had.’

  She sees his eyes are wet. She looks down, saying nothing. He doesn’t seem angry with her now. Just sad. He’d never hurt her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says.

  ‘We were a pretty special father and daughter. Weren’t we?’

  ‘We were,’ she says softly.

  ‘First day missing,’ Gabe says. ‘That’s next. To discuss.’

  She takes a deep breath. They are getting to the worst bits. And she knows he has no explanation. ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Okay.’

  30

  PROSECUTOR: What did you do the day after you murdered your wife?

  GABRIEL ENGLISH: I didn’t murder her.

  PROSECUTOR: Were you out looking for her?

  GABRIEL ENGLISH: No.

  PROSECUTOR: Why?

  GABRIEL ENGLISH: I was worried she would come home and I didn’t want to … to miss her.

  PROSECUTOR: Why did you wash her clothes?

  GABRIEL ENGLISH: I wanted to … I wanted to … to do something. Anything. To act. To think.

  Tuesday 2 November 1999: one day after Alex’s murder

  Gabe

  She had been missing for twenty-four hours. I thought the worst part would be going to bed without her, consigning her non-appearance from misunderstanding to missing, but it wasn’t: the worst came when the clock reached four in the afternoon. Another eight hours and she would have been gone twenty-four. That was the moment she seemed to disappear, to me.

  Cleaning. That’s what I thought I’d do, Izzy. I know, I know. But I just needed to move my arms and my legs, and to let my mind think. To clean up those crumbs, to make the house nice for her – for her return.

  I emptied the kitchen cupboards as I ruminated. What had she been wearing on her feet? Had she put shoes on? We thought a pair were missing, but she had so many pairs, your mother – ‘Shoes are life,’ she once said to me – that we couldn’t know for sure.

  I wiped down all the counters, lifting up your mother’s herbs and spices and wiping the bottoms of the jars. I wish I’d asked her who that man was. I wish that I had kissed her goodbye, or touched her shoulder just as I was leaving. I was her husband, but I had left so casually. So complacent, so sure that we would have more time, that there would be future conversations and goodbyes to be had, that I could skip one.

  I sorted through the washing, picking everything up off the bedroom floor and bundling it into the machine. Load after load after load. Everything she’d worn. Everything I’d worn. Think, Gabe, think. Had she seemed angry, melancholy, regretful? Not especially. Maybe slightly distracted, but only with hindsight. Hindsight isn’t always helpful, is it? Hindsight, for me, anyway, obscures everything.

  Halfway through hanging up the washing, I ran into the bedroom and took an itinerary of my pots. Looking back, that was madness – why would she have taken a pot? – and, anyway, it was impossible to tell, impossible to know, whether or not they were all there. I was scared to go anywhere and scared to stay in the house, not looking, being inactive. She was missing, and it seemed impossible and easy to find her, all at once. We just needed to look harder. But where? Where was she?

  I walked upstairs later and looked in on our bedroom. There was my painting of two impressions in sand, hanging crookedly above our bed. It meant something only to me and Alex.

  When I was eighteen, my parents – your grandparents – had settled on the Isle of Wight for the longest they’d been anywhere. There was talk of them getting jobs, a house. That summer, we were staying in our caravan on our patch in Norton Green. It had wooden steps and pink curtains. It was one of the first things I ever painted, trying to capture the way my parents didn’t close off the outside world the way people who lived in houses did. We’d sleep with the door open, sometimes, the smells of the seasons drifting in. We’d eat outside. We’d have hot drinks before bed on those steps, made from a copper kettle put on the campfire.

  Every night during that summer of 1970, I’d walk along the coast between Norton and Yarmouth. In the evenings, when the tide was high, there was just a shabby little stretch of sand; room for only one person’s footsteps. I wound my way around there every night.

  I followed the path round until it opened up. It was August, and the Isle of Wight festival was in full swing nearby. It wouldn’t be put on again until 2002. A group of teenagers was gathered near the waves. They were trying to start a fire, ineffectually poking at the sticks, holding lighters up to them, laughing drunkenly.

  Your mother was on the outskirts, wearing a green dress. She threw me a sardonic glance. ‘Left the festival for this,’ she said. A gesture to the fire. I noticed the effect of the moonlight on her skin. She looked so pale, almost blue. Ghoulish. My little ghoul.

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea how to get a fire going, so I’ll bow out,’ I said.

  ‘You can chat to me, instead,’ she said. She was forward like that. She held a beer bottle up. She couldn’t find another, so we shared hers. One sip for her. One for me. Our lips leaving imprints on the rim. We were almost kissing, I thought excitedly. She was wearing an Isle of Wight wristband. She was cold. She kept rubbing at her freckled arms.

  We talked for two hours. The sand had two distinct impressions from our arses in it by the time we stood up. Alex pointed to them, and we laughed. ‘Look how big they are!’ she had said, clutching her green dress to her rear. ‘Is mine that big? Tell me it isn’t!’

  She made me agree to meet her in the same spot – ‘By the arses,’ she said – the next day. I knew the tide would sweep them away, so I memorized their location, a few feet along from that groyne, just there.

  I walked up to the clifftops and took the long way home. I wanted to be alone, away
from the crowds. Everything was open late, and the festival’s music thudded through the streets. I popped into a newsagent’s and bought a packet of cigarettes. Embassy. Filter Virginia. I’d never done such a thing before, had never wanted to. I’d always liked to feel clean air in my lungs. But that night was different. I lit one up and I smoked and smoked, striding the streets alone, little pockets of smoke left hanging in the air where I’d walked. I had become a man, you see, because I had met the woman I was going to marry.

  The next morning, she was waiting by the tide for me. ‘The sea has wiped our bums away!’ she said. She was wearing a denim pinafore, that hair – that fucking glorious hair – left loose and wild and red.

  Later, I painted those impressions in the sand and gave the portrait to her.

  And now she was missing. And there was the portrait. God, why couldn’t the painting of the fucking beach bums be missing, and she be here, in this room, soft-skinned and smiling and alive?

  At seven o’clock, I called Tony.

  ‘Fancy a game?’ I said to him. We went up to the tennis courts, in the November wind and the rain, and knocked a ball around. We didn’t talk about Alex. What was there to say? I didn’t know where you were, Izzy. I never even asked, and I’m sorry.

  Izzy

  He was cleaning everything.

  Izzy was sitting outside in the November rain, underneath the apple tree in their back garden. Her back was to the trunk. The ground was uneven and uncomfortable underneath her and the trunk was damp. The rain was pattering on the leaves up above her, occasional fat drops hitting the grass beside her, and she didn’t care at all.

  She had a view of the other houses, and could listen out for footsteps or cars. It didn’t matter that her hands were freezing, that the seat of her jeans was damp. It was like the priorities of everyday life had shifted. Nothing mattered.

  She would sit here and wait and wait and wait and soon – very soon – her mother would arrive home. Perhaps injured from an accident. Perhaps casually – ‘The hen do, remember?’ – and then they suddenly would remember, and … how they would laugh about it. Izzy looked up into the bright white sky and felt those outcomes so fiercely in her chest they were almost real, almost tangible. She reached her phone out to check for a text from Pip – although God knows, he had enough going on – but then cocked her head, listening. What was that?