by Ali Mercer
‘OK, Aidan, we’ll leave it,’ Viv says reasonably, and Aidan’s rage passes as quickly as it came. He says, as if by way of explanation, ‘It’s dead,’ and then sets off again at a pace towards the café, with Rachel and Aidan hurrying to keep up.
There are two young mothers sitting in the front window of the café with a toddler who is working his way through a big cookie studded with Smarties. As Aidan and Viv go in, with Rachel following, one of the mothers gives them a hard stare and pulls a face at her friend as if to say, Did you see what we’ve got to contend with now?
Rachel catches her eye and glares at her, and she turns sulkily away. Viv, who is at the counter and already asking for tea and cakes, is the picture of equanimity; maybe she hadn’t noticed their fellow patrons’ response to their arrival.
At least the proprietor is smiling at them. He’s a big man, neatly dressed; Turkish, perhaps. He makes a point of saying hello to Aidan, who doesn’t look too sure what the form is for such occasions but contrives to say hello in return.
‘We don’t see you so much these days,’ the proprietor says to Viv. ‘You keeping well?’
‘Yes, just getting older, which beats the alternative,’ Viv says. She gestures towards Rachel. ‘This is my friend Rachel.’
The proprietor doesn’t seem to find this strange at all, despite the gap in their ages. He beams at Rachel approvingly. ‘Good to see you. I’ll bring everything out to you as soon as it’s ready.’
‘Thank you,’ Viv says, and leads Aidan towards a table at a slight but hopefully safe distance from the mothers and toddler by the window.
Aidan rearranges the salt and pepper pots, then picks up the laminated menu and taps it experimentally against the table. One of the two women sitting at the window is watching them – not the one who turned her nose up when they came in, the other one, but she too appears not to find their company to her taste.
Aidan puts the menu down. He stares at the table and mutters, ‘No iPad.’ He gives Viv a shrewd look, as if about to propose a deal, and adds, ‘We eat, we drink, and then we leave.’
‘Absolutely,’ Viv says.
‘We can talk,’ Aidan comments with a shrug. He picks up a teaspoon and begins to drum it on the table.
Over by the window, the toddler is seized by joyful inspiration. He grabs a spoon and begins to bash it in approximate time with Aidan’s.
His mother takes it off him and says, ‘No, Louis.’
Louis points at Aidan. ‘But he’s doing it.’
‘Well, maybe he doesn’t know any better. Maybe somebody should be telling him not to do it as well,’ the woman says.
‘Excuse me,’ Rachel says. ‘Do you have a problem?’
‘Rachel,’ Viv says warningly.
Aidan keeps on tapping his spoon. His face is a blank.
The woman gets to her feet. She says, ‘He’s making a terrible noise. Can’t you stop him? I can hardly hear what my friend’s saying.’
‘I had the impression you didn’t have a whole lot to say to each other anyway,’ Rachel says.
‘If you can’t control him, you shouldn’t bring him here,’ the woman says, and she and her friend gather up their bags and take the toddler out.
The instant they’re gone, Aidan lays down his teaspoon.
He looks appraisingly round the café, which appears suddenly idyllic in the afternoon sunlight, and gives Rachel a slow, canny, quite deliberate smile.
Thirty-Five
Rachel
The day of the loss
Her train was held up – typical. When she finally made it back to Rose Cottage, the people carrier wasn’t there.
Mitch must have popped out for something or other. Anyway, there was still plenty of time before Becca would be back.
Rachel let herself into the house. Something about it – a stillness and coolness in the air, the sense of something brewing – reminded her of meeting room three earlier that day, just before Elizabeth began to speak.
Suddenly the little scene she’d witnessed that night at The Merry Miller pub came back to her, as clear as day, as clear as when she had seen it with her own eyes.
Mitch and Mary Chadstone.
But they had talked about it… she had asked him outright. She had wept, and he had held her and soothed her.
She had asked him again, and he had said, ‘You need help,’ and she had believed him.
Now all her suspicions came screaming back, and it was no longer possible to ignore them.
If he had lied… if he was someone who was capable of lying like that, so deliberately, so believably… then what else might he have lied about?
If he was a liar… then how on earth could she continue to believe in him, and in the life they had built together?
She locked up the house, got back into her car, turned it round, and set off to find him.
It was a quick journey, in spite of the traffic. How convenient it must have been… Two houses with no nosy neighbours: Rose Cottage with its lane and its bridge, and the Chadstones’ place with its high wall and screen of towering horse chestnut trees. Two houses, two spouses who commuted to London and worked long hours.
So many questions…
How long?
How often?
When had it started?
Had they been together in her house, her bed?
Was it true?
She had to know. She drove as if washed along on a tide of urgency, but at the same time she was aware of making a special effort to be a careful driver, a model citizen. This was who she was, even today, even now. A considerate person, a person who did the right thing. She was fair, she was reasonable, she gave others the benefit of the doubt.
She had especially given her husband the benefit of the doubt.
She had thought that was the right – the necessary – thing to do. And he’d made a fool of her.
Mitch had told her she was paranoid, and she’d believed him. It seemed as good a word as any for the return of the old feeling, familiar from her childhood, that the people who were meant to care for her couldn’t be trusted. It had even been reassuring, in a way, to know that it was all just in her head. That this time round, the threat wasn’t real.
Besides, it was difficult to think clearly about anything in the Deep.
She knew what she was going to see before she saw it. And there it was, at the end of Mary’s drive, next to Mary’s Range Rover: the people carrier. Mitch’s car. Their car.
It is the car he had used to collect her and Becca from hospital, thirteen years ago that day. The car in which she had held her mother’s ashes.
The car he had used to visit the old friend he had fallen in love with, whose house she was now outside.
Thirty-Six
The following Sunday Rachel calls in at Viv’s house just after lunchtime, as usual.
No answer.
She rings the bell again.
There is music coming from inside, something classical – Brahms maybe? – rising and falling, not in an operatic way but with the gentle, lilting melody of a folk song. Upstairs, the bathroom window is open. Viv must be at home then – she’s always so careful about locking the place up.
Rachel lifts up the letterbox and peers through it. Through the fuzzy rims of insulation, she glimpses a narrow slice of Viv’s hallway. It all looks the same as it always does.
Perhaps Viv is in the garden and can’t hear her. Maybe something has happened, something that has made her lose track of time? Maybe she’s on the phone, or in the bathroom, or has just had to pop out for a minute and will come up behind Rachel on the path any second now, all smiles and apologies.
It strikes Rachel that there is a peculiarly still quality to what she can make out of the interior of the house, as if it is frozen in time or memory. As if there is nobody there to stir the air. But that is just her imagination working overtime.
Has Viv fallen, hurt herself? If so, why doesn’t she call out?
Maybe she’s unc
onscious.
Rachel calls through the letterbox and goes round to the side to shout over the gate.
Nothing. The house remains resolutely tranquil. Not even an echo.
There is a sudden buzzing right by her ear and she jumps half out of her skin. It’s a bumblebee, seemingly much more certain of its direction than Rachel is; it zigzags past her and zips upwards out of sight.
She gets her phone out of her bag, scrolls through her contacts.
In Case of Emergency…
ICE Mitch.
What is she going to say to him? Look, I know it seems crazy but I just wondered what you thought I should do, I’m outside my friend Viv’s house and the radio’s on and the window’s open but there’s no sign of her…
It goes straight through to voicemail. That familiar, grumpy voice: Can’t come to the phone right now, so leave a message.
What did she expect, that he would suddenly swoop into the scene on a white charger and tell her what to do? Surely she should know by now that no man – especially not her estranged husband – is going to save the day.
She ends the call and rings both neighbours’ doors. No answer. It’s such a lovely Sunday, everybody will be out – probably walking off leisurely pub lunches down by the river.
This time, when she shouts through the letterbox, she’s less surprised by the lack of an answer.
She reaches forward and tries the handle of the gate. To her astonishment, it turns. She pushes it open.
Abracadabra.
Rachel goes through. Viv isn’t in the garden, which is as well-tended and peaceful as it always is, but with no signs of recent activity; no trug part-filled with heads of weeds or gloves that have just been put aside, no cooling mug of tea.
The back door is unlocked, too. Rachel goes in. She calls out one more time: ‘Viv?’
No answer.
She has come to know Viv, to drive her to see her son once a week, to love her. It’s for her to find whatever there is to find.
The music is louder now: the radio is on in the kitchen. The washing up has been done – there isn’t much of it, a bowl, a plate. It has been stacked neatly on the draining board, some time ago, it seems; it is bone dry.
There’s nobody in the living room. Rachel makes her way up the stairs. She feels as if she’s flying, as if she’s weightless; her steps seem to make no sound. At the same time the air seems dense and liquid; it is possible to move but only because she has magically acclimatised. She’s as much part of this strange scene as the altered elements.
Viv is in her bedroom, lying on the floor next to the immaculately made bed. She could be sleeping except she’s obviously not. If she was napping, she’d be curled up on top of the covers. Instead she’s sprawled on the carpet with her limbs at awkward angles. She doesn’t look uncomfortable, however. Nor does she look undignified, or peaceful. She looks like a challenge posed to nature: How can the human body, the human will, come to this?
Rachel reaches for her phone. She thinks of Aidan waiting, dressed in his blue T-shirt. As she rings she tries to remember her long-ago first aid training: mouth-to-mouth, the recovery position. There has to be something she can do…
But she knows it is too late. Viv has already gone.
Thirty-Seven
Rachel
The day of the loss
She wanted to throw rocks at the windows. But because she was a good citizen, a model citizen, she rang the bell.
No answer.
Of course not.
She hammered away with the door knocker, stooped to yell through the letterbox: ‘Mitch! Mitch, get down here. I know you’re in there and I’m not going anywhere.’
The house remained silent. It could almost have been empty. Well, sooner or later he’d have to come down, make his case, try to pull the wool over her eyes. They were probably frantically cooking up a story right now, as he cleaned himself up and zipped himself back into his jeans.
All that time she had spent working, feeling guilty about working, carrying the weight of supporting the family on her shoulders…
How long had this been going on?
How could he do this to her?
How could he do it to Hugh, his oldest friend?
And Becca, the apple of his eye?
And today, of all days. On Becca’s birthday. How could he have forgotten what today meant – the pain and fear and joy of it, Becca so small and sleepy and swaddled up tight, his first time of holding her? The three of them together, becoming a family.
And here he is, with someone else. With someone who’s supposed to be a friend.
The door swung open and Mitch greeted her with astonishment.
‘Rachel, is everything OK? What are you doing here?’
‘What are you doing here?’
And there was the watercolour of the garden at Rose Cottage, hanging on the wall just behind him. A melancholy, frosty scene, almost colourless: a January morning, soon after dawn. The garden didn’t look particularly special – it was a small lawn surrounded by mostly leafless borders – but the light was beautiful. It suggested a desire for something more vivid and intense than the ordinariness of home, even if more transient.
She grabbed for the painting, lifted it off the hook – it came away easily – and smashed it down onto the floor. The frame broke into two and the glass shattered with a satisfying crack and scattered in jagged fragments. She wanted to hurt him back – to smash something he’d made just as he had wrecked everything they’d built together. But it was fuel to the fire: the sight of the damage she’d done just made her angrier.
‘You miserable, self-pitying bastard!’ she yelled at him. ‘How can you stand there and act like you don’t know what I’m talking about? For years it’s driven you crazy that you couldn’t have the success you wanted and I was the one paying the bills and keeping a roof over our heads. I suppose this was your way of getting your own back. Did she make you feel good about yourself, Mitch? Did she flatter you?’
Mitch held out one hand as if to keep her at bay. ‘Rachel, you seriously have to calm down.’
‘Don’t patronise me! The least you could do is admit the truth. How long has it been going on, Mitch? How long have you two been getting away with it? It’s not just me you’ve done this to, it’s Hugh. Pretty much your only friend. How could you?’
‘What is going on?’ It’s Mary, who had come into the hallway, taken in the scene and decided to stay at a safe distance.
‘What’s going on is that you’ve been screwing my husband, and now I know about it.’ Rachel gave Mitch a shove. How could he keep looking like that – so shocked and innocent and untouchable, as if she was the one who was breaking the rules, as if she was making some crazy scene that had nothing to do with him? ‘You told me I was going crazy! You must have thought I was so stupid, believing you. You liar!’
Mitch looked down at the mess at his feet. The painting was face down, half covered by the backing board and littered with bits of glass.
‘You’re hysterical,’ he says. He is cold and contemptuous: that just enrages her even more. ‘You need to get a grip.’
‘Oh, fuck you!’
She could quite happily have grabbed one of those big chunks of glass and stabbed him with it, just to wipe that look of lying superiority off his face.
‘You know what you’ve done! Just admit it!’
She shoved him again, and he staggered back and somehow missed his footing and thumped down onto the floor.
He screamed. A great shout of pain and fear. Mitch. Her Mitch. To cry out like that…
What had she done?
How often had she watched her mother fall, listened to her shriek and whimper? And here it was, again – the chaos and viciousness of it, shouting and glass and bits of broken wood…
Blood. Suddenly everywhere, a great gush of it, pouring from Mitch’s hand.
‘Hold it up. Up!’ Mary commanded.
Somehow Mary had got in close to Mitch and was k
neeling beside him and making him keep his hand up, to slow the flow of blood, and the flesh of his palm was hanging open and there was gore everywhere – wet, sticky, as bright as paint – and Mitch was groaning, and Mary was pulling off the cardigan she was wearing and wrapping it round his hand to staunch the flow.
I’m so sorry I’m so sorry – someone was saying it over and over – it was her, and she was the one who had done this – who had made this happen.
‘You could have killed him,’ Mary spat at her. ‘You stupid bitch.’
Through the open front door came the sound of a car being driven onto the gravel and braking to an abrupt stop. There was music coming from it, something with a fast beat. The music went off, too, and someone laughed.
Mary said to Mitch, ‘That’ll be Henry with the girls. Becca’s going to be here in a minute.’
He had gone waxy, as if he was about to faint. Even his lips were pale. The blood was still pulsing out of him, soaking the pale-blue material of Mary’s cardigan.
He murmured, ‘Oh no, no, I don’t want her to see…’
Rachel stepped forward, reached for the phone on the hall table. ‘I’ll call an ambulance,’ she said.
‘Leave it,’ Mary barked. ‘I’ll drive him down to Kettlebridge hospital. It’ll be quicker.’
‘I can take him,’ Rachel said.
Mitch said something Rachel couldn’t hear. He rallied and tried again.
‘Rachel, I don’t want you to take me,’ he said.
She froze. He was right – how could she be the one to help him, when she was the one who had made this happen? She was no better than any other abusive spouse…
But it had been an accident.
No. No, that wouldn’t do. She had broken the glass. She had pushed him. She had made it happen.