The Blame Game

by C. J. Cooke

  ‘She’s here,’ I say. And I begin to tell them about the TRKLite and how cool it is but they’re on their mobile phones, telling someone called Guv that my mum’s in Luc-sur-Mer.

  51

  Michael

  9th September 2017

  I wake before sunrise. Helen’s still asleep. I sit for a long time in the wicker chair by the window, watching her lying there so still. She’s on her left side, one palm pressed into the mattress, quietly snoring. Her hair is slightly spread across her face, the duvet is wrapped around her waist. Her face is messed up from the crash but she’s still beautiful to me. Every day for the last eighteen years, I have asked myself what I did to end up with this woman. I really don’t deserve her.

  My dad took me to see my grandfather a few times when I was about ten. I’d never met him before but he squatted down to eye level and pinched my cheek, called me ‘a good lad’. He had a glint in his eye, a spring in his step. His house overlooked a wood and a river and we went out there and did a bit of fishing. The next time I saw him I was shocked. He was in a rocking chair by the fire, a blanket over his knees. He couldn’t remember my name. I thought he was playing games. How could he not remember who I was? It had only been about eight or nine months since we went to see him. And then the next time I saw him he was in hospital, no more than a skeleton in a bed. I couldn’t believe someone so thin and so sick could still be alive. They kept pumping him full of antibiotics. He was terminally ill, Dad said. I thought, why are they keeping him alive? Even as a boy I could see he was never going to recover, never going to have any kind of quality of life. Dad told me he would need care every second of every day. In hindsight, I can see I was angry at how people saw life and death. My grandfather had served honourably as a fighter pilot in the Second World War, won medals, buried friends, children, a wife. He came home and spent his life working on a farm. My grandma died giving birth, and my grandfather raised my dad and his brothers on his own while working from dawn until dusk. His life had been full and rich. He believed strongly that he’d see my grandma on the other side. Keeping him alive in that terrible, skeleton state was cruelty, not preservation.

  It made me realise that life and death are a matter of perspective.

  My life with Helen has been the most amazing eighteen years I could have imagined. Few people experience love like I have. I could have died on Mont Blanc, right after I met the love of my life. Fate made me find Helen a second time. So I don’t consider the sacrifice of my life a death of any kind. How could I? Luke’s parents want retribution, and they’ll have it.

  I remember the dream I had of the other side of the door of flame. I dreamt it right after the bookshop burned down and it brought me such comfort. A sweeping landscape of green fields and valleys bathed in gold light, a narrow road cutting through them. At the end of it was our house. Chewy was there, barking and furiously wagging his tail, telling us in doggy language to scoop him up and give him a cuddle. Saskia was in the back garden in her tutu, performing a little dance on the flagstones. Reuben was sitting under the apple tree with his iPad. When he saw me he lifted a hand and waved, Hi, Dad. Helen was kneeling by the edge of the garden, filling a trug with fresh strawberries. Everything was washed in an eternal light, an infinite summer.

  I woke up from the dream in the middle of the night and saw Helen sleeping, just as I am now. I lifted a pillow, put it over her face. She moaned and turned away. I tried again. But I couldn’t go through with it. What if she woke up in the middle and realised what I was doing? How would she feel about that? It would be the ultimate betrayal because she wouldn’t understand. I was always bad at explaining things.

  It had to be another way. After a holiday. After a celebration of our lives.

  We had a book in the shop about accessing the dark web. I went online and found it quickly, found the right source. Made a connection, a payment.

  He told me to buy a tracking device to make it seamless.

  A few days later a package arrived at the shop. Saskia was helping me open the letters and she found a padded envelope amongst the pile.

  ‘What’s this, Daddy?’ she asked, opening something that had a foreign postmark and a small round tag, baby pink. ‘It’s pretty,’ she said, and I watched as she fastened it on to Jack-Jack’s collar. Behind the fog that veiled my brain I recognised what the tag was. It would enable us to be located at the right moment, after our last big family holiday, and taken through the door of flame.

  I knew everything would be better. No one would separate us. We would always be a family.

  Except it didn’t work out as planned.

  When I woke up in the hospital I knew what I had to do. They had been watching all this time. I would find Luke’s family and kill them. They were planning to hurt us. They wanted to take Saskia and Reuben away from us.

  I lift the pillow and hold it out, lowering it to Helen’s face. She moans, tries to push it away, and I press harder. I’ll have to do this twice more for the door of flame to open and let us in.

  But something stops me.

  Not now, a voice says in my head. Not like this. Not until it is done.

  The taxi pulls up at Château de Seuil. It’s a beautiful day. Blue skies and lush countryside all around, a nip in the air drawing blood to our cheeks. Helen looks shaken as we step out of the taxi and face the entrance to the estate.

  ‘I promise you,’ I tell her, taking her hand. ‘This will all be put right.’

  ‘But what if they call the police,’ she says, wiping tears off her face. ‘What if they take Saskia and Reuben from us? Reuben would never cope in a foster home, Michael. He wouldn’t cope …’

  I pull her close to me, hold her tight. I know exactly how she feels.

  ‘That won’t happen. I swear on my life it won’t happen.’

  We follow the tour group towards the castle, then duck around the side to the house at the back. A few hens are pecking in the yard. I see the small white rectangle of a doorbell and press it.

  For a long time, nobody answers. Helen visually contemplates walking away, eyeing up the road beyond, as though we could turn back and forget this ever happened. We know how that went.

  But then the door opens and a woman’s face appears there. She appears to be in her late sixties, maybe early seventies, stylish white hair to her jaw. A beige turtleneck, expensive slacks. Twinkling diamond earrings. Something about her eyes is familiar. She looks over Helen and me with curiosity.

  ‘Oui?’

  ‘We’re looking for Chris Holloway,’ I say. ‘Can you help us?’

  She looks taken aback. ‘I’m Chris,’ she says in perfect English. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I’m Michael Pengilly,’ I say slowly, extending a hand. ‘I was Michael King. I think you’ve been wanting to speak to me.’

  The woman’s mouth falls open. She ignores my hand and says something I don’t hear, then shouts up the stairs. ‘Paul?’ Another shout, this time in French.

  Helen flinches beside me and eyes up the road again but I hold her hand tightly. We have to face this. We have to follow through.

  ‘Please,’ Chris says, stepping back from the door and gesturing at us. ‘Come inside.’

  The hallway is enormous, a vaulted ceiling above with a mosaic in the centre. Oak panelling on the walls, a sweeping Gone with the Wind staircase.

  ‘The living room’s on the top floor, I’m afraid,’ Chris says, regaining her composure. ‘Are you sure you can both make it?’

  Her accent is cobbled together from all over the world: English wrapped in French with a hint of American. She is Luke’s mother. I never met her but I can tell: she has the same widow’s peak and high cheekbones as the twins. Luke’s father died when he and Theo were little and his mother remarried. I remember this now.

  Helen and I share a brief glance before following Chris up three flights of stairs.

  A vast drawing room with stunning views of the lake afforded by a large bay window. Plush velvet sofas
facing each other, crystal chandeliers, gleaming candelabras, an ornate marble fireplace. An oil painting of Luke and Theo on one of the walls draws a faint noise from Helen and a leap of my stomach. There’s a huge dollop of the Romantics in the way they’re portrayed, their faces wistfully luminous, haughty as fallen angels. Luke is standing with one hand on Theo’s shoulder, his face angled upwards as though measuring the triumphs he’s yet to scale. Theo sits, hands on his knees as though he’s primed to rise and stride off, his face contemplative, turned as though he’s observing the commencement of the apocalypse.

  ‘Please, have a seat,’ Chris says, gesturing at the sofas. Helen doesn’t move. Her hands are clasped, her face drained of colour and anxiety thumping off her in hot waves. I can tell she’s thinking of running out of here.

  ‘You know why we’re here,’ I say.

  ‘Yes,’ Chris says after a long moment, visibly rattled and trying to hold herself in one piece. ‘Well, why don’t we all sit down and … talk?’

  ‘I’d prefer to stand,’ I say.

  ‘You’ll sit, if it’s all the same to you,’ another voice barks. We both turn to see a man at the other side of the room. Tall, early seventies, navy jumper. A face full of outrage. He is holding a pistol by his side. I hear Helen give a small noise of fright.

  ‘There’s no need for this to get nasty,’ I say calmly. ‘We didn’t come here for anything other than to give you what you’ve been requesting all these years.’

  ‘Alright,’ Chris says, and she gives a nod at the man holding the gun. Then, to Helen: ‘I apologise for the mess. If I’d known I was receiving guests I’d have cleaned up and made a pot of coffee.’ She turns her eyes to the man on the other side of the room. ‘Paul, come and talk with us.’

  Paul, I don’t recognise. No trace of the twins in his lanky form and hook-nosed, heron face. He takes a cautious seat in the velvet armchair opposite, setting the pistol on the armrest without tearing his eyes from mine. ‘If we have any nonsense I’ll be using it. Understood?’

  ‘Perfectly understood,’ Helen whispers.

  ‘Well, this is a long overdue visit,’ Chris says. ‘And I suppose I’d like to begin with asking the question I’ve wanted to ask for a very long time.’ She turns to me with a grim look. ‘What happened on that mountain?’

  ‘It was an accident,’ I hear myself say, though the blood is roaring in my ears and I’m there again, on the side of Mont Blanc, looking down at that drop. I see the rope swinging and Luke’s body hanging, his arms and legs pulled back by gravity and his head arched back. His hair darkening with blood.

  Chris considers my response, waits for more. ‘If it was an accident, why run? Why not talk to us, tell us what happened?’

  ‘We were afraid,’ Helen says. Her face creases, her eyes brimming with tears. She cups a hand to her mouth and stammers an apology. ‘We were afraid of what might happen. How the whole thing would be … interpreted.’ She wipes her face. ‘Hindsight’s twenty twenty, isn’t it? But I can’t turn back time. I was in shock. I was only nineteen. I had lost Luke. I felt like I had nothing to live for.’

  Chris studies Helen, taking in the sight of her bruised and swollen face, her wrist brace. I sense she wants to ask what the hell happened, but decides to stay on topic. ‘You were Luke’s girlfriend, isn’t that right?’

  Helen nods. ‘We were together for about eight months. I never wanted anything bad to happen to him. I never …’

  ‘You killed Luke!’ Paul erupts. ‘Both of you. When we found out you got married we knew you’d planned it from day one. Get Luke out of the way, ride off into the sunset.’

  Helen shakes her head, emphatic, a twitch in her gaze. ‘That’s not how it was.’ Then she blurts out the whole story in urgent, slurring whispers: how she fell in love with Luke and couldn’t believe it when her feelings were reciprocated. How he talked her into going on the trip despite her lack of training or experience. The weird shift in dynamics, the fight between me and Luke. And then the descent: Luke persuading us to go down when we should just have turned back and found the right path. The rockfall. The moment that we knew Luke was hanging at the bottom of the rope, unconscious, the weight of his body about to pull us all down with him. Helen looks over their faces – Paul is puce, Chris has her palms clasped to her mouth and her eyes squeezed tight against fresh sorrow – and breaks down.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she weeps. ‘I’m so, so sorry. I promise I never meant for it to happen …’

  ‘How can you say that?’ Paul explodes. ‘How can you say that you shouted for Luke to be killed and that you didn’t mean for it to happen?’

  Helen looks wrung out. Her face says she’s under siege by a thousand emotions, that there isn’t really any answer at all, other than she’s sorry. Chris reaches for a tissue on the coffee table and dabs her eyes.

  Paul glares at Helen. I can see he wants to go in hard, those big hands of his eager to clamp around her neck and shake the life out of her, as though he can trade it for Luke and Theo’s. I bet he’s dreamed about doing just that for the last twenty-odd years. I know it well, the terrible urge that has burrowed into him, empowered by grief. Perhaps this is the moment when I should take that gun off him, finish this right now.

  Chris takes a weary sigh. ‘Enough, Paul. They were all just kids. It was a horrendous position to be in …’ She sits closer to Helen and puts an arm across her shoulders, holding her in a deep, stricken look.

  Paul’s eyebrows jump up at this. ‘We don’t know it happened as innocently as she makes out,’ he cautions her. ‘Theo said …’

  ‘Theo took his own life,’ Chris says firmly, shutting him down. She turns to Helen, confiding. ‘Theo blamed himself for not hanging on long enough to save Lukey. We got him counselling, antidepressants, hypnosis. We told him over and over that there was nothing he could have done but that self-blame ran so deep.’ She gives a sad shrug. ‘He just wanted to be with his brother.’

  ‘Theo blamed himself because there was no conclusive enquiry, no justice,’ Paul counters. He turns to me, his eyes narrowed and burning with hate. ‘We got a phone call from the gendarme asking us to come and collect our son’s body. The coroner called witnesses. Our most important witnesses were missing. Michael King and Helen Warren. We tried everything to reach you both. The coroner recorded it as an accidental death. No trial. No justice. No explanation.’ His voice breaks, and he waves his hands around, painting the air with his wounds. ‘I raised Luke and Theo as though they were my own boys, my own blood. We lost both of them in the space of four years. Both of them. Our boys – gone. Because of you.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I say, and all eyes are suddenly on me. ‘I did kill Luke. I was hanging off the cliff, about to die. Luke wasn’t answering anyone.’ I turn to Helen. ‘I looked up and I saw you. I couldn’t lose you. So I made the decision. I cut the rope.’

  My voice feels like it’s detached from my body, like I’m speaking in a dream.

  ‘I cut it. Every day for over twenty years I have thought about what I did. I felt unworthy. I felt I deserved to die. I remembered Luke saying one time that he fancied opening a bookshop when he was older. Not just any bookshop but a really amazing bookshop with special editions of Chaucer. A treasure trove for book geeks. I opened the bookshop for him. I thought that maybe if I fulfilled his dream, the guilt would stop eating me from the inside out.’

  I look at Luke’s mother, then his stepfather. I can’t tell what they’re thinking. I feel like I’ve stepped outside my body. Maybe I’m dead already. Maybe that’s what this is.

  ‘Michael didn’t kill Luke,’ Helen says in a small voice. ‘We both ran because we were afraid, in shock at what happened. Michael had a split second to act. Luke was unconscious. He’d been hurt in the rockfall.’

  ‘But you understand why we sent a private investigator searching for you?’ Chris asks, emphatic. ‘We had questions. And the longer you avoided us, the more urgent those questions became.’

  �
�I’m so sorry,’ Helen says. ‘But there is no justification for what you did to us in Belize. It won’t bring Luke back. Or Theo.’

  ‘Belize?’ Paul says, leaning forward, his face folded in confusion. ‘What do you mean, what we did to you? All we did was hire a professional to locate your current address.’

  Helen looks from Chris to Paul in a look that’s somewhere between confusion and horror. ‘But … the car crash,’ Helen says, her eyes slowly turning to me, as though the pieces are slowly lacing together. ‘You tried to kill us all. Our daughter’s in a coma.’

  ‘What?’ Chris gasps.

  In a burst of frustration Helen shouts out what happened in Belize, but her voice falters and her eyes steady on me, and I know it’s over. She knows. Chris and Paul ask frantic, bewildered questions about the crash, about Saskia, their faces turned to Helen, and so I lunge forward and seize the gun. Paul holds his hands up. Poor guy. He looks like he might wet himself.

  ‘I love you, Helen,’ I say. She holds up her hands and shouts something I don’t hear. The room is a wintry landscape, a mountain covered in snow.

  I put the barrel against my head and squeeze the trigger.

  52

  Helen

  9th September 2017

  I’m screaming at Michael to stop, my hands reaching out to him, when I hear the click of the trigger. My mind lurches, racing ahead to scenes of blood spurting out of his head and barely able to keep up with what’s happening. He continues holding the gun to his head and clicking the trigger like it’s a toy. Chris and Paul are on their feet, too, all of us with our hands held out. We shout Stop! in unison and it seems to reach him. Michael opens his eyes and looks at me blankly, as though I’m not there.

  ‘What’s wrong with you people?’ Paul shouts, horrified. ‘First you burn down your shop and now this … I’m calling the police!’

  Michael points the gun at him and he jumps back, knocking a table and vase to the ground.