by Claire Allan
Of course, Izzy wouldn’t be happy with another day cooped up in the yard. She kept staring at the door and whining, a not-at-all subtle hint that she wanted a walk. I was nervous, though. I didn’t want to walk those roads any more, but she caught me in her gaze – her big brown eyes pleading.
‘Just a short walk, then,’ I eventually conceded.
We wouldn’t go far, just down the road a little. Let her have a runabout and then back in time for the dough to have proved. We set out just after ten, when I knew the roads would already have been well travelled and there’d be other people around. Izzy bounced around my heels as we made our way down the yard, past the old barn that no longer housed any animals or machinery, towards the gate.
At first I thought it was an old bin bag, blown by the wind to the gate, clinging onto the rusting metal’s jagged edges. As I got closer I saw that it was something else, satin, black, tied to one of the gate’s rails. There was something sickeningly familiar about it.
I called Izzy back to me and looked around for any sign that anyone was nearby, but all was silent bar the sound of my footsteps crunching on the gravel. I arrived at the gate and pulled it open towards me, my worst fears confirmed when I could clearly see a black bow – just like the one we’d hung on the gate when we were waking Laura from the farmhouse. At the centre of the bow, a bunch of wild flowers, forget-me-nots, tied with thick twine. My heart lurched. A small card, wrapped in cellophane, was pinned in one of the loops of the bow. I lifted it, read the four words neatly printed on it in black ink:
Laura sends her love.
I stumbled back as if I’d received a physical shock, an electric pulsing that knocked my heartbeat off rhythm. Everything became hazy. There was a buzzing in my ears, a screaming from deep inside me. Izzy jumped around my heels, desperate to walk on, but I wouldn’t … couldn’t.
Who’d done this? Why would someone have done this? I tore at the blasted bow, tried to haul it from the railing. It was tied too tightly. I pulled, tore at the string until it started to cut through the paper-thin skin of my palms, but still I persisted. There was no way I was leaving that horror hanging there at my gate.
Izzy whined and whimpered, and I shouted at her to leave me alone, realising I was crying and struggling to gain control of my breath. Panic was whipping around me, invading me. Was someone watching? Was this someone’s idea of a sick joke? I looked at the ground, scuffed footprints in the gravel and dust. Indeterminable to my tired eyes.
I couldn’t imagine how anyone could be so unconscionably cruel. Several of my nails broke on the rough iron of the gate as I pulled against the string and the rust until the bow came undone. Drops of my blood coloured the parched ground beneath, seeping into the dust. Even as I held the bow in my hands, I wanted to keep tearing. I wanted to throw it to the ground and stomp on it, to let Izzy toss it around like one of her toys, but I knew that wasn’t the right thing to do. I knew I had to hold on to it and what … call the police maybe? Did they not have enough on their plate with the murder inquiry without dealing with someone leaving poison-pen letters at my house? But what if this was proof that I was at risk, after all? How was it DI Bradley had put it? If someone knew what Clare had said to me they might have wanted to keep me quiet.
I walked back home in a daze, a dejected Izzy at my heels. My tears still falling. None of this made sense. Laura had been dead for two years. Gone. Buried. I’d wake sometimes after nightmares about how decomposed she’d now be lying in that cold earth. At times, I had to physically restrain myself from clawing at the ground where she lay just to try to do something to save whatever was left of her. This – whoever did this – was monstrous.
As I slammed the back door closed behind me and walked into the kitchen, throwing the macabre gift on the table, I picked up the phone to call DI Bradley. The flowers, so beautiful but so menacing wrapped in their mourning colours, taunted me.
Whoever had left them knew just how to get to me and just how to hurt me.
Chapter Sixteen
Rachel
I’d dressed in my gym gear early that following morning, whispered to Paul that I was going for a run, and was out of the house before he could wake. I drove to the walkway along the banks of the River Foyle, where the weekly park-run event set off from, but I knew I had no intention whatsoever of taking part.
I was exhausted. I’d barely slept. My body seemed to have been acutely aware of Paul beside me in the bed with his livid red scratches and his tousled hair and his deception. I’d spent the night clinging to the edge of the bed, reticent to touch him.
When I’d finally come out of the bathroom after we’d had sex, he’d put on his boxers and T-shirt, like he did every night before going to bed, and was sound asleep. I couldn’t get another glance at the scratches and while a part of me wanted to shake him and ask him to explain himself, I held back. Had I been scared of where the conversation might have led? Perhaps, but I’d also been aware of the three glasses of wine swirling around in my stomach, my fuzzy head and my emotional exhaustion. In the cold light of the following morning I knew I’d been overdramatic, jumping from scratches on his arms to murder. It would be laughable if it weren’t so serious.
But jumping from scratches to an affair? That wasn’t overly dramatic at all, especially given that I’d slept with another man just two nights before. Given that I wasn’t sure if I was falling dangerously in love with another man. A man who I’d told myself I’d push aside so I could work on my ailing marriage.
Just five years ago I’d have very confidently said Paul Walker would never, ever have an affair. But I’d have said the same of myself. Things change. We’d changed.
Sitting in my car, I watched the runners stretch and limber up in preparation for setting off on their race. I didn’t envy them given the heat, but it appeared they didn’t want to let anything deter them. I sipped from my coffee cup, the air-con on full in the car. I felt a little lost.
I knew I shouldn’t, but I took my phone from my bag anyway and scrolled down until I got to Michael’s number. I hit the call button and listened as it went straight to his voicemail. I was surprised at just how disappointed I felt that it had. I scrolled up my phone until I saw Clare’s name. I wondered whether the police had uncovered any information from her phone – were they any closer to catching who was responsible? I dialled her number, listened to her voice telling me to leave a message or, better still, to send a text because she never checked her voicemail.
I ached for her, in that moment. Wanted to say all the things I never had because you never think you’re going to run out of time. Certainly not so quickly. So violently. You assume the world is good and kind. You assume bad things won’t happen to the people you love. You assume these kind of things only happen on late night TV dramas.
A strange notion overcame me, and I put my phone and my coffee down, put the car into first gear and drove off.
The road had been reopened on Friday evening. You wouldn’t have known driving along it that just three days before something so horrific had happened here. The faint buzzing of bees filled the air and a heat haze sat over the long grass of the fields. The tarmac road was dusty, the potholes long since dried up of their puddles of stagnant water.
I wasn’t sure where on the long road she’d been found. I drove slowly, imagining what had been going through her mind as she’d driven down this road last. Had she known what was awaiting her? Did she know what this monster had intended to do? If it was, indeed, the man she’d been in a relationship with, did she know that he didn’t love her, after all? That he was going to hurt her? I hoped she hadn’t known until the very last minute. I hoped she’d been blissfully unaware: calm, not scared. I couldn’t bear to think of her trying to scramble to safety.
I followed a small bend in the road and saw them. The Taylors, walking with their backs to me towards their car. At the side of the road, Ronan stood at a gap in the hedgerow, his head bowed, his eyes closed. I slowed the car, pulled
over to the side, and waited for Mr and Mrs Taylor to set off before I switched off my engine and walked up to where Ronan stood.
I said his name softly, reached out and touched his shoulder. He turned to look at me.
‘I just came for a drive,’ I said. ‘Felt the need to come past here. This … this is where it happened?’
He nodded, reached his arm out to me and pulled me close to him, and I slinked his arm around my waist as we stood side by side. I looked to the ground. There was nothing there to show that something so unthinkable had happened apart from a few bunches of flowers, some chalk circles not yet washed away. The smallest remnant of yellow police tape attached to a twig. I wondered if I should have brought some flowers myself. Felt foolish for not doing so. It hadn’t even crossed my mind.
‘My parents wanted to come up here. Wanted to lay flowers. I don’t know why, really. I find it mawkish when people leave flowers at the scenes of a tragedy. It’s not like the dead person is there. I don’t want to think of any part of her here,’ he said, his eyes not leaving the ground.
I looked at the flowers, a bouquet of lilies. A couple of supermarket bouquets. A posy of forget-me-nots, tied with thick twine, the stems wrapped in thick black satin, which looked out of place against the delicate light blue petals of the flowers.
Macabre, even. I had a bad feeling and despite the heat, I shuddered.
Chapter Seventeen
Rachel
I reached down and took Ronan’s hand. ‘Ronan, how did this happen? How did we get to this?’
I could feel him shake beside me.
‘You must be running on empty,’ I said. ‘You know, you need to look after yourself now too, don’t you? You’ll run yourself into the ground …’
I’d no sooner said the words than I realised that they were grossly inappropriate in the circumstances.
Ronan looked at me, his face crumpled, and my heart sank until I realised he wasn’t angry or horrified at my tactlessness but laughing. That hysterical, grotesque laugh that comes from grief and exhaustion. It was almost like a madness and I held him in a hug until he gave way to tears.
I held him until the shaking subsided and then I told him he really did need to get home and get a good rest.
‘You’re right,’ he nodded. ‘I’ve barely closed my eyes since this happened. I’m scared to let my mind wander and I want to be there for my parents.’
‘You’ll be no use to your parents if you burn yourself out. The best thing you can do for you, and them, and for Clare’s memory right now is to look after yourself. Can you get some of those sedatives the doctor gave your parents? Take them, sleep away the afternoon?’
He nodded as another car pulled up further down the road and I heard the opening of their car door.
‘More ghouls come to gawk,’ he said. Is that what he thought of me? That I’d come to ‘gawk’?
‘Maybe they just want to pay their respects,’ I said softly. ‘None of us have been prepared to deal with any of this.’
He nodded, hugged me and walked off, a dejected figure, heading back to his car as I stood and watched him while a couple carrying another bunch of supermarket flowers walked towards me. Ronan was right, I thought, looking at the flowers on the dusty ground. Clare wasn’t here. She should never have been reduced to this.
I crouched down to read the cards on the flowers. They were full of the usual trite phrases of condolence. There was a plain white card tucked into the ribbon around the forget-me-nots, wrapped in cellophane. I picked it up and read the words written in black ink:
Every action has consequences. Every inaction, too.
I blinked at it, confused. It gave me the creeps. I shuddered just as Ronan had done. What was it supposed to mean?
I heard a cough from the couple who were behind me, fought the urge to tell them to back off and give me space. Was I getting in the way of their rubbernecking? I stood up, wiped the tears from my eyes and walked back to my car, not so much as acknowledging them as I left, just letting the words I’d read play over and over in my head.
Taking a deep breath to settle myself, I picked up my phone and googled the phrase, trying to find some context. It seemed to be a bastardised version of a quote from the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, but it still didn’t seem to make any sense when it came to Clare.
I pinched the bridge of my nose to fend off a headache. Then noticed a missed call was logged on my phone. I half expected it to be Paul, calling to ask when I’d be back. My stomach lurched when I saw it was from Michael and that he’d left a voicemail. My hands shaking, I put the phone to my ear and listened.
‘Rachel, I’m so sorry. I’ve had all sorts of problems. Please call me back as soon as you can. I need to know you’re not angry at me.’
This was the moment in which I could choose where I went from that point, if I’d do everything I’d promised myself just the night before, where I’d focus on my marriage and my family. I could ignore his call. He’d understand, eventually. It was in my power. But those promises had been made before I’d seen the scratches on Paul’s arm. That changed everything. And hearing Michael’s voice just confirmed that.
I called his number and he picked up within two rings. He didn’t give me the chance to speak before he started talking, his words falling over each other.
‘Rachel, I’m so sorry. I dropped my phone in the sink on Thursday and I couldn’t get it to switch on. I had to stick it in a bowl of rice to dry it out. I didn’t have your number to call you from another phone and my laptop’s on the blink, so I couldn’t even send you an email or a message.
‘I got your message about the flowers just before it happened and I’m so sorry. I just wanted to do something. I watched the press conference and it’s just beyond belief. I’m so sorry. What must you think of me, especially after Wednesday night? You probably thought I was the worst person in the world.’
He sounded so genuinely upset, I just closed my eyes and let his voice soothe me. The knowledge that he hadn’t been ignoring me, or huffing with me, came with such a sense of relief that I felt the need to see him as quickly as I could.
‘Can I come and see you?’ I asked.
‘Of course you can. Can you come now?’
‘I’ll be with you in ten minutes,’ I told him and we ended the call.
Even though I knew Paul would be expecting me home shortly, even though I knew the girls would be awake and wondering where I was, I selfishly needed to see Michael more than I did them, so I set off for his house.
I parked at the rear of Michael’s house, aware that it was daytime and that my car could easily have been spotted by passing traffic. He was waiting for me at the back gate and quickly ushered me inside. I fought the magnetic urge to reach for his hand as we walked up the garden path, knowing we had to be careful. Once inside, I allowed him to pull me into a hug and, to my embarrassment, I started crying. He held me and rocked me as I let go of the tension I’d been carrying with me all morning.
He didn’t make promises that it would be okay, only that he’d be here for me when I needed him. When I broke away from his embrace, he led me to his kitchen, where he sat me down and made a cup of tea. He fetched me a glass of water and some paracetamol for the headache that had just kicked in.
He listened as I told him about going to see where it had happened. About the bizarre note. He listened as I told him that I suspected Paul may be cheating on me.
‘How would you feel – really feel – if he was?’ Michael asked, his green eyes staring intently at me.
‘I suppose it would be hypocritical to say I’d be hurt?’ I said, knowing that it was.
Michael shrugged. ‘I don’t think it’s hypocritical. You’re allowed to be hurt. But would you be devastated? Do you, given everything, envisage yourself staying with him in the long term?’
This was a loaded question, of course – whatever answer I gave would have ramifications for Michael and me.
‘I’m not sure what I
think,’ I told him.
He shifted in his seat as if my answer annoyed him.
‘It’s like there’s so much going on in my brain at the moment – so much that I’m trying to process – that I don’t know … my brain can’t work anything out. I know we’re broken,’ I said, raising my eyes to his again. ‘Paul and me. I know that there’s probably no coming back from this, but my brain’s too full of what’s happened to Clare, wanting the police to catch her killer, wanting to get her body released and her home to her family … My brain’s just so full of that to know how I truly feel about anything else.’
He sighed, looked downwards, brushing back a curl that had fallen across his forehead. ‘I’m sorry. I know I’m expecting too much from you at the moment. I’m being selfish. The last thing I want to do is to cause you any more upset and stress. What we have is good, and it’s fun and pure – I don’t want it to make your life tougher.’
I reached out and took his hand, turned it over in mine and bent forwards, kissing the heel of his palm gently, breathing in his scent. ‘It’s not you who makes my life tougher,’ I told him. ‘You’re the good thing. You’re the positive.’
He put his hand to my cheek and I revelled in the feeling of it against my skin, closing my eyes to breathe him in. I felt the gentlest touch of his lips on mine and I was lost to him.
‘It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this way about anyone,’ he said. ‘If ever.’
My phone rang, a Nineties dance tune jerking us from the intimacy of the moment. Julie was calling me. I grimaced at my phone where it sat with my car keys. I didn’t want this interruption. Michael looked at it, then at me.