Can't Let Go

by Jane Hill

  'Of course you do. I can see you've found my letters.'

  'You wrote these?'

  'Of course I did.'

  'Why?'

  'Because she was a murdering bitch.'

  The world flipped around. She? 'What do you mean, she was a murdering bitch?'

  'Judith. Zoey, as you knew her.'

  'You wrote these to Zoey?' I felt as if the whole world had suddenly fallen off its axis.

  'Yes.' He smiled. 'Oh, I know. You got caught up in it, didn't you? I think I dropped off one or two of them at your flat, or when you were with Judith. That's why I addressed them so carefully. "To the murdering bitch." So she'd know they were for her.'

  Edward Moore's voice was so calm and reasonable. He was smiling a dreadful smile, revealing teeth that were long and yellowish, with receding gums. His diction was so perfect, such correct English with such a stiff upper lip.

  'I don't understand. Why was Zoey a murdering bitch?'

  He'd been leaning over me but suddenly he stepped back on his heels. He put his hands in his pockets and pursed his lips. He seemed to be weighing up his options. There was something ominous about his implacability. I wondered if his final conversation with Zoey had been anything like this. I was scared. I darted sideways and tried to get around him, but he simply put out his left arm and grabbed my right shoulder with a strong hand. He grabbed it so hard that I dropped the pile of letters and they fluttered to the floor. He pushed me backwards and I slammed into one of Zoey's bookshelves. He pulled his right hand out of his pocket. There was something shiny in it. I opened my mouth to scream, but that strong left hand was instantly clamped over my mouth, digging into the flesh of my cheeks. The shiny thing in his right hand became a knife – a flick knife, I think. He was just holding it casually, like an extension of his hand.

  'Now, don't be stupid,' Moore said. 'You're just trying to change the subject. You weren't supposed to be here, you know. You shouldn't have been here. I came here because Judith has some things of mine, some things she took, some things that I want back. But in fact I'm glad I found you here. It's good to talk to someone about Judith, someone who understands. It's good to speak to you because you know all about it. I think you're the only one. You've seen the notes. Y o u know why I killed her.'

  His right hand, the hand with the knife, was between us now. He was holding it at stomach level, and all I could think about was how he'd torn Zoey's stomach apart. I was trying to bite his hand but I couldn't get my teeth into it. His hand was so big that it covered my entire mouth, and all I could do was to nip harmlessly at the fleshy part of the palm. His hand was so big that it was partly covering my nostrils as well, and I was struggling for breath.

  'I had to kill her.' His voice was still soft and beautifully spoken. 'You know why. I'm sure she told you about me.'

  I couldn't speak. I could barely breathe. I shook my head to tell him no, and also to try to shake him off, but he just squeezed my mouth harder.

  'I did love her, honestly. But she was a bitch. A murdering bitch. She killed our child. I ask you, what man could stand for that?'

  Christ. This was crazy. Zoey, a child-killer? What was he on about? I couldn't clear my head. I was panicking. I could feel bile rising in my throat. I was going to choke.

  Moore leaned his forehead against mine. It was an intimate gesture. It felt almost as though he was going to kiss me. I would have kicked him in the shins, my favourite self-defence move, but I was pinned against the bookshelf and it was cutting into the back of my knees, cutting off my circulation, making my legs go numb.

  'Please tell me I'm right,' he said, and his voice was gentle and pleading. 'What man can stand for that? It's wrong, killing a child. She said it was just a foetus, that she wasn't ready yet. She said it was just a surgical procedure, that she had every right to do it, but she didn't. That was my child she killed. So I had to kill her. You do see that, don't you?'

  I could taste the skin of his hand. I could smell his scent, sharp and lemony and old-fashioned. His hair was in my eyes. He was crying, and I could feel the tears on my skin. And I could feel his knife, digging into me, just above my navel. This was how I was going to die. Finally I knew. If I hadn't been so terrified I would have been laughing. A mad knifeman was about to kill me, and it had absolutely nothing to do with Rivers Carillo.

  Suddenly there was a loud noise. A clicking, mechanical sound, like someone at the door, but it came from the kitchen. He – the knifeman, the killer – looked at me, as if I'd somehow conjured the noise. It was the washing machine; that was all it was. It was the washing machine moving into a new phase of its cycle. But he didn't know that. And as he looked at me, puzzled; as he tried to work out what the noise was, who was there, I grabbed his hand, the hand with the knife. I twisted it, a sudden sharp movement. I twisted it savagely towards him, and then I felt his hand over mine and he was helping me, he was guiding the knife. There was a sharp stabbing motion, and all at once there was warm liquid all over my hand. I clutched my stomach with my hand but there was no wound. And then I realised that his left hand had fallen from my mouth. He had the knife in his own stomach, and he was jagging the weapon from side to side. There was a gaping wound. His blood was all over his shirt, his trousers, all over me. And then he gave a strange gurgle, and he fell forward onto me.

  I tried to save him. Frantically I pressed my hands against his stomach to try to staunch the blood, as if that would save him, save Zoey, save Rivers Carillo. But it didn't work. Zoey's husband died a long and painful death.

  Forty-four

  Danny was frantic. He'd been ringing me over and over, desperately trying to get hold of me, to see if I was all right. He had dashed down to Euston to meet me and he hadn't been able to find me. He'd had announcements put out over the station tannoy for me, about me, appealing for help to find me. He'd asked at the information booth. He'd reported my disappearance to British Transport Police and was about to talk to the local police station too. He had been out of his mind with worry, he told me.

  All that time, all those missed calls. It wasn't until after I'd dialled 999 and called for an ambulance and the police to come to Zoey's flat, and I'd sat there with blood on my hands for the second time in two days, that I had thought to call him.

  Danny came racing over to Zoey's flat and he hugged me. He was annoyed and he was worried, and he was caring and he was cross. He pushed the hair out of my face and he sat with me and held my hand as I told a uniformed policeman and then a pair of detectives all about Zoey's husband, and how – and I knew this; I knew this for sure, I wasn't making this up – how it was his hand that had twisted the knife in his own stomach. And I wasn't quite sure why, or how, but they seemed to believe me.

  And later, quite a lot later, several hours had gone by. We were still at Zoey's flat and then DI Finlay arrived. He had flown down, he said. Part of the investigation. He mentioned Steve's name. Steve had something to do with it. But I still couldn't work out what Finlay was doing there. And then I had to tell the story all over again, to DI Finlay, and while I was talking I couldn't remember where I was, what city I was in. There was blood all over the floor and my clothes were covered in blood and so were my hands and it felt like déjà vu. And then I remembered the note, but it was only when I reached into the back pocket of my jeans, as I tried to think of a way to explain why I'd taken the note from Zoey's body, that I realised they weren't my jeans at all. They were Zoey's jeans. My jeans were in Zoey's washing machine, still with that note in the pocket.

  While I was talking to DI Finlay, while I was trying to remember who was who and where I was, I looked up and saw my face in the antique mirror, all twisted and distorted. And that's when I remembered how the world had flipped around when Zoey's husband was talking to me. I realised that I didn't have to mention Rivers Carillo at all, because he didn't matter. He was nothing to do with anything. None of this was connected with him at all. It's weird how you can see things completely the wrong way aroun
d.

  Later, Danny took me back to my flat. I had another bath and went to bed. It was nearly morning and I had never been so tired in my life. But despite that I lay awake, my brain turning and turning, trying to make sense of things. It was nothing to do with Rivers Carillo. It was nothing to do with me. Those were the facts that I kept coming back to. The notes I got? They'd been for Zoey, not me. The note at school – the day we had lunch together. Give this note to the lady when she comes back from lunch. Vicky had misunderstood. She'd given it to the wrong lady. Remember, that note had begun. Remember, I'm watching you. Why 'remember'? That should have been the clue. It was the first note. How could I remember anything if he'd never told me anything before?

  The comedy night in Southampton: no one had followed me down there. Zoey's name was on the bill. He knew she was performing there. He waited, watched us arrive; noted the car. She'd been in my flat when the third note arrived. Murdering bitch, he had written on the envelopes, so that Zoey would know they were addressed to her.

  Zoey must have been out of her mind with fear but I had never noticed. I was too self-centred, too self absorbed. My fear, as it turned out, was a selfish emotion. I got caught up in someone else's screwed-up life and because of my fear, or because of my paranoia, or because of my guilt, I assumed the whole thing centred on me. Two extreme ways of dealing with fear: I, with my imaginary threat, had been scared of ghosts and shadows. Zoey, with her real threat, had been defiant and careless and bold.

  'She was fucking stubborn,' said Steve. He'd known, it turned out. He'd known about the letters. He'd known at least some of the story. The two of us were having an early-evening drink in the upstairs room of a pub near Piccadilly Circus where later a bunch of comics would perform at a charity night in Zoey's memory. 'She was so fucking stubborn. She was fierce about it. "Why should I change my life because of him?" she said. The more letters he sent, the angrier she got. And the more risks she took.'

  Steve had been with Zoey when one of the notes had arrived, just before she left for Edinburgh. Eventually he'd persuaded her to tell him about them, about the abortion, the real story of her marriage. He'd tried to make her go to the police. He suggested that she should think about changing her material, stop doing jokes about her husband. That was why they'd fallen out, why Zoey had claimed Steve was 'clingy'. That was why she'd given me the keys to her flat, not him.

  'He didn't abuse her physically, I don't think, but he was an emotional abuser. They met in the States and everything was fine, apparently, but once they moved back over to England, he turned into a fucking monster. He tried to belittle her, to make her feel small and worthless. She knew she couldn't bring a baby into that relationship, and that's why she had the abortion. And then things got worse. She said the notes started soon after she left him and started doing comedy again, over here. And of course, Zoey being Zoey, the worse things got, the more bitter her jokes got. Apparently he would turn up at gigs and watch her from the back, and she would just get fucking angry and stubborn and refuse to compromise even one line of her material. I guess you have to admire the stroppy bitch. Except that's how she got herself killed.'

  None of this has changed anything I did. I still killed Rivers Carillo. But now I'm learning to live with it. I'm not scared of him any more. I'm not scared of any avenging angels. It won't happen. It's over, it's in the past.

  I've told a few more people what I did because I owed some people some explanations. I needed to build some bridges and form some normal human relationships. I invited my older sister Sarah down to London for a weekend, to stay at my flat. She was so surprised to get the invitation that she claimed she nearly fainted when I asked her. I invited Jem round for dinner while Sarah was staying with me. After the meal, while we were all sitting around comfortably enjoying each other's company, I told them the story that I'd told Danny. Jem said 'Shit' and 'Oh my God, that's fucking awesome.'

  Sarah hugged me hard, and cried, and said, 'I always wondered what happened to you over there.'

  'Now you know,' I said. And it was all right. They didn't freak. They didn't hate me. They didn't judge me.

  I didn't tell my parents. That would have been a step too far, and it would have hurt them far too much. But I've been to see them a few times recently and my mother has told me how happy I look. She asked me if it was because of Danny.

  Danny. I could give you a happy ending. I could give you Danny and me in love, together for ever, but it wouldn't be true. Danny was too nice to me after it all happened, and he asked too many questions: how I felt about it, was I okay, did I need anything?

  I treated Danny so badly. I took him for granted. I dangled him on a string and I used him when I needed him, and then I didn't even think to tell him where I was on that final evening, when he was searching for me at Euston. I was snug in Zoey's flat, lying in a bath, and I didn't even remember to phone Danny to tell him that I was okay. I didn't even answer his phone calls. I was off in my own little paranoid self-centred world.

  Everything I ever felt for Danny was a muffled emotion: a vague fondness, goodwill, a general feeling of warmth. I took advantage of his feelings for me, of his good nature and his kindness and his sensible normality. Sometimes the kindest thing you can do for someone is to let them go. Danny deserves someone nicer, someone good, someone who won't take him for granted. He's moved away now; he's found another flat. Jem bumped into him recently and said that he seemed okay. I hope he finds someone nice, someone who will love him properly.

  Steve asks questions too. Maybe he asks too many questions as well, but they're interesting ones, and because he seems to know something about darkness it's somehow easier to answer them. We've been seeing quite a bit of each other recently, and it's good. It feels strange, though, as if we're betraying Zoey in some way. Sometimes it seems as if Zoey's still in the room, and that it's not right that Steve and I are going on with our lives without her, and it's not right that we're finding comfort with each other. And sometimes I wonder if I'll ever allow myself to be completely happy, completely at ease in a relationship.

  Because, whatever happens, Rivers Carillo will always haunt me. I'm not scared of him any more. I'm not scared of his ghost, and I'm not scared of being caught. But I'm scared of myself. Sometimes I get that same old urge: an urge to blurt out the truth. Sometimes I wonder if it's time to let go, if I could possibly tell Steve the truth.

  When I was eighteen I killed a man. No. Tell it properly. When I was eighteen I murdered a man and got away with it. I'm a murderer. I murdered Rivers Carillo. I kicked him and he fell backwards over the cliff. I stood on that clifftop in San Francisco and I fought off Rivers Carillo. But he wouldn't have raped me. He was too sensible. He would have stopped sooner or later. He was only trying to scare me, to scare some sense into me. I pushed him and he fell. That's true. I pushed him over the cliff, and when I did it I was scared. I was pushing him away, and he fell over the cliff.

  Onto a little ledge just a few feet below.

  The second time I pushed him, I meant to kill him. He was lying there, on that ledge, looking up at me, pleading for help. I think he'd broken his leg or twisted his ankle. He couldn't get up. He was lying there, and he needed my help. And I pushed him again. This time he fell onto the rocks below, and his skull cracked open and I knew he was dead. I knew he was dead because I murdered him.

  Why did I do it? I wish I knew. But there is no 'why', and that's the thing that scares me most of all, more than anything. I killed him for no reason. I could say that I saw red, or that I saw my chance, or that I was covering my tracks. Or maybe that I figured I could do it and no one would ever know. I had the chance to kill someone and no one would ever know. I hated Rivers Carillo, and I had loved him too. He'd made me feel wonderful. He'd made me feel ridiculous. Maybe I saw a big red button and just had to push it. Maybe the imp of the perverse sat on my shoulder and told me to do it.

  So that's it. That's why he's been haunting me all this time. Now you know. No
w you finally know. And I deserved it – I deserved every single little bit of fear and self-loathing that I've felt over the last seventeen years. I deserved it. I murdered a man and got away with it, so instead of the law doing it I have had to punish myself.

  What would Steve say if I told him? I have no idea. And it doesn't matter anyway, because I never will. I will never let go. I've kept the secret for so long. I've kept the secret for seventeen years. I think I will probably keep it for the rest of my life. And I think Rivers Carillo will probably haunt me for the rest of my life, too. He's been doing it for seventeen years. Why would he stop now?

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to my agent Luigi Bonomi and my editor Nikola Scott. I couldn't have done this without you.

  I would like to thank every comedian I've ever worked with and every promoter who has ever given me a gig, including – but not limited to – Shaun Almey, who gave me my first-ever gig; Lynne Parker and Funny Women; Nick Doody; Steve Hall and We Are Klang; all at Pear Shaped; my fellow survivors of that gig – Ashley Frieze, Jeff Lane, Gareth Richards, Sophie Johnson and Chris Mayo; and of course the wonderful Logan Murray, who taught me most of what I know about stand-up.

  Thanks to my family, as always. And finally, thanks to all my friends – both real-life and on-line – who kept me going with support and encouragement.