Complicit

by Unknown

  I told myself I wouldn’t buy the paper, but I found myself counting out the change, taking it and trying to read it as I walked along the street. The caption under the picture told me to turn to page seven, so I stopped in the first café I came to, where I ordered a cappuccino and a slice of carrot cake. I felt I needed a dose of carbohydrate and sugar. Only when I’d eaten half of the cake and finished the coffee did I turn to page seven, and when I did, another photo leaped out at me: of a youthful Hayden with his arm wrapped around a woman who was vivid with happiness. She was slight and had a mane of chestnut hair, a wide, smiling mouth. Underneath the photograph there was a caption. Her name was Hannah Booth.

  I closed my eyes for a moment but when I opened them again, there she still was. I liked the look of her. She was someone I could imagine having as a friend in another life. I looked at the caption again. The photo had been taken in 2002, seven years ago. Hayden would have been about thirty then – his face was thinner and softer than the one I had known, perhaps happier. Or perhaps that was simply because he was standing arm-in-arm with his wife. Why was I surprised and why was there a pain in my chest and why did my eyes sting?

  I skimmed the story, my eyes jumping from paragraph to paragraph. Much of the beginning was a rather floridly written repetition of what had been in the papers before – talented and reckless musician, mysterious death, shocked friends, body found in the reservoir, police following up clues. But at the centre was the interview with Hannah Booth, who had spoken to the reporter about her grief (‘although I always believed he would die young’) at the murder of her estranged husband. ‘Estranged’ – I seized on the word and let it comfort me a bit, until my eyes lit on another word: ‘child’. I felt as though someone had punched me hard in the stomach. Hayden had a child, a son, aged just six and a half, who had last seen ‘his daddy’ a few months ago. His name was Josiah. Hayden had left Hannah and Josiah four years ago, when his son was just a toddler. Hannah Booth described how their marriage, embarked upon with such hope, had deteriorated. ‘I don’t think Hayden knew how to be content,’ she said. ‘He never had that kind of stability. He let his ambitions and his dreams destroy the reality of what we had together. And he hated getting older – he was just a kid at heart. A great, lovable kid. But you can’t be married to a child, especially when you become a parent yourself.’

  I laid the paper aside for a bit and finished my cappuccino, sipping it slowly through the froth, trying to concentrate only on its milky sweetness. He had told me he never wanted to be a father, and all the time he had been one; he had told me he never wanted to be tied down and all the time he was married. OK, married to a woman he never saw, but married all the same. She had even taken his name. Why hadn’t he told me? Then I remembered his hasty, urgent note, my last communication with him – was that what he had wanted to tell me?

  When I returned to the story I read about his mother, who said that Hayden had been a naughty boy and a troubled man and, no, she hadn’t approved of his lifestyle, but that a parent should never have to bury a child. His sister, three years his senior, who said that he had a lust for life. His great friend Mac, who was absolutely gutted: he had seen Hayden just a week or so before his death and Hayden had seemed excited about life and newly happy. All these people whom I’d never known existed. Of course I’d realized that Hayden had a life of his own, friends, relationships and a complicated history behind him – but never before had I understood what a tiny corner of his existence I had occupied, how very little he had communicated to me. It was as if he could only live in the perpetual present, blotting out all that had gone before and all that would come after.

  I closed the paper and folded it so I wouldn’t have to see his face. He had a mother and a sister; he had an abandoned wife and son; he had best friends who would miss him; and presumably he had made dozens of enemies along the way, people who would have wished him dead in the way that most of our band had done at one time or another. Even me. There had been times when I had wanted him, if not dead, at least wiped from my consciousness without a trace left behind, so that I could forget not just about him but about the me that I was when I was with him.

  I put the newspaper on the table when I left and walked blindly home, with no idea of what I was going to do with myself when I got there.

  Sally was crying. She lay on my sofa in a crumpled heap, her skirt above her knees, her blouse bunched up at her waist and her hair half over her face, sticking to her wet cheeks. I had never seen her weep like this – or anyone at all, really, except my mother on her worst days. Her body seemed entirely taken over by wretchedness: she gulped and sobbed; tears streamed from her eyes and ran down her face and into her neck; words came out in whimpers and hiccups and she couldn’t catch her breath for long enough to make any sense. Her crying was more like uncontrollable retching. She was heaving up her misery. All the while, Lola stood beside her, occasionally reaching out a hand to give an anxious poke at Sally’s shoulder or stomach.

  She didn’t seem distressed, more curious and a bit nervous. ‘Mummy?’ she said every so often, but Sally would only wail louder. At first I tried to calm her, crouching beside her and putting a hand on her writhing body or wiping away the snot and tears from her cheek, but after a while I gave up and concentrated on Lola instead.

  ‘Do you want a biscuit?’ She stared at me. ‘Or some juice? No, sorry, I don’t have juice. I have milk. I think I have some milk. Or some –’ What did someone of Lola’s age like? ‘You could draw something,’ I said. ‘Shall I get you a pencil and some paper and you could make a picture for Mummy, to cheer her up?’

  Lola went on staring at me. She chewed her fat bottom lip.

  ‘She’ll be all right soon,’ I continued. ‘Everyone cries sometimes. What do you cry about?’

  Lola shifted from one leg to another. Her face was scrunched up with effort.

  ‘Do you need a wee?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Here.’ I took her hot little hand in mine and pulled her towards the bathroom. ‘Do you need help?’

  She nodded again.

  I pulled down her knickers and lifted her onto the toilet. Her legs dangled; she was wearing red shoes with striped laces. We waited. She put a thumb in her mouth and gazed at me pensively. We could hear Sally’s loud sobs; there was a certain regularity to them now and I wondered if she was coming to the end of her crying fit at last.

  ‘Done?’ I asked.

  She shook her head firmly. Sally’s sobs turned into long, shuddering breaths and then there was silence. I lifted Lola down from the toilet, wiped between her legs, pulled up her knickers and then washed her hands under the cold water. When we went back, Sally was sitting up, her skirt pulled down over her knees, her shirt straightened and her hair pushed behind her ears. Her face was puffy and there were red blotches on her cheeks.

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘I think so. Sorry. Lola?’ She opened her arms but Lola shrank back against me, her thumb in her mouth again. ‘Lola, will you come and give me a hug?’ There was a note of panic in her voice.

  ‘I’m going to make a pot of tea,’ I said, and left them alone.

  I stood in the kitchen and stared out of the window at the blank blue sky, feeling so vastly tired that there was no room for thoughts or emotions any longer. I could hear the murmur of Sally and Lola’s voices from the other room. The kettle boiled, sending up puffs of steam. I poured the water over the teabags and found some shortbread biscuits at the back of the cupboard. I carried them through and sat on the sofa next to Sally. Lola was on her lap, her head on her shoulder and her eyes closing.

  ‘Do I look a wreck?’ asked Sally.

  ‘I’ve seen you better.’

  She gave a tired grin. ‘You too. You look as if you’ve been up all night.’

  I opened my mouth to say that I had, then stopped myself. I couldn’t start unburdening myself to Sally because that might be like easing the first small stone out of the wall.

 
Lola gave a long, gurgling snore and I could sense her body softening and slumping against Sally, who leaned her chin on her daughter’s hair and sighed.

  ‘Hayden?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, Bonnie. Hayden, Richard, the whole sheer fucking fact of it all, if you know what I mean. Which I don’t. Bloody life. The mess I’ve made of everything.’

  ‘I’m sorry about it all,’ I said inadequately.

  ‘I’ve been staying at my mum’s for a bit, but it was awful. I couldn’t tell her anything – I didn’t know how. And then the police called me up and I had to go back to be interviewed again. Oh, God, Bonnie, it was horrible.’

  ‘Horrible how?’

  ‘The way they talked to me, asked questions. I told them everything.’

  ‘About you and Hayden?’

  ‘I had to. They were behaving as if they knew anyway, and I suddenly thought how petty and unfeeling I was being, worrying about my stupid little secret getting out, when someone has murdered him. So I told them everything – not that there was much to tell. And then they were really interested. They behaved as if I’d done it. And they asked about Richard, if he knew and how he’d reacted and was he the jealous type, and I think they’re going to interview him now. I know I did a terrible thing and deserve to be punished – but this feels as though the whole world is falling round my head. I slept with another man, but I’m not a monster because of it.’ She gave a violent sniff, and I put a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘It’s better it’s out in the open,’ I said. ‘Secrets are dangerous.’

  ‘They think I did it.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s not true.’

  ‘Or Richard.’

  ‘No – they’re just following up all leads.’

  ‘Oh, Bonnie, I don’t know what I’d do without you to talk to.’

  ‘If it hadn’t been for me, you wouldn’t have met Hayden and then none of this would have happened.’

  ‘Something would have, though. I couldn’t have gone on the way I was.’

  ‘How are things with Richard now?’

  ‘I don’t know. I mean, sometimes he’s very sweet to me and sometimes it’s as if he can’t bring himself to even look at me. As if I’m carrying some terrible disease.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Sometimes he cries. Not in front of me, though. In the bathroom, when he thinks I can’t hear.’

  ‘Things will get better.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ She shivered and kissed the top of Lola’s head.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Nor do I.’ She rubbed the back of one hand against her forehead. ‘He seems a bit mad sometimes.’

  ‘Mad?’ Unease settled on me.

  ‘Wildly unpredictable, at least.’ She looked down at Lola. ‘You know the only good thing to come out of this?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How I feel about her. I never get impatient with her any more. I just want to be with her and never let go of her. How could I have threatened all of that?’

  ‘These things happen,’ I said uselessly. ‘They take us unaware.’

  Before

  Even when you’ve split up with someone, it takes quite a long time for them to give up the rights they used to have over you. Except that in the case of Amos I strongly believed that he ought to give them all up immediately, especially the right to come to my flat unannounced and walk in as if we were still living together.

  ‘Is this something urgent?’ I said. ‘Because I was just about to go out.’

  ‘Where?’ he said.

  ‘You see, that’s the sort of thing you don’t get to ask any more,’ I said, ‘due to us not being together.’

  Amos took a piece of paper out of the pocket of his jeans and unfolded it. ‘I’m not blaming you for this,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Disentangling possessions after two people have been living together is always a complicated business.’

  ‘We did this already, remember?’ I said. ‘It’s done.’

  ‘It’s just a few loose ends,’ he said. ‘I’ve been jotting them down as I’ve thought of them.’

  ‘Are you saying I took things I wasn’t entitled to?’

  ‘No, no, no,’ he said, as if he was trying to calm an over-exuberant puppy. ‘It’s just that we did it so quickly.’

  ‘What we need is to draw a line,’ I said.

  He looked at the piece of paper. ‘The one-volume Shakespeare,’ he said. ‘I got it as a prize when I was in the sixth form. You couldn’t have taken that by mistake, could you?’

  ‘No, I couldn’t,’ I said, ‘due to it having a big label inside it with your name on, which you kept showing me and telling me about how you won it.’

  ‘Did you take my Steely Dan boxed set?’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ I said. ‘Due to me being a woman.’

  Amos looked hurt. ‘Is that one of those things women don’t like?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘Oh, well, I may have lent it to someone.’ He went back to the list. ‘There was a small etching.’

  ‘What of?’

  ‘I can’t really remember. It had gone very faint. I think it had a windmill in it and a horse or a donkey. An aunt gave it to me.’

  ‘I don’t remember that at all.’

  ‘I had a blue bowl that my mother gave me. I didn’t think much of it but apparently it’s made by someone famous.’

  I was going to say no again and then I felt a jolt. An uneasy jolt. I had an internal flashback of me putting the bowl into a cardboard box. I’d never thought of Amos as the sort of person who would own a decorative bowl. Or perhaps because I had been the only person who had ever got the bowl out of the cupboard and put fruit into it I had assumed that it must have been mine. Unfortunately, the first flashback was followed by a second flashback in which, with great clarity, I saw myself throwing the box onto a skip.

  ‘I haven’t got that,’ I said, quite truthfully.

  ‘It’ll probably turn up,’ said Amos. ‘Sonia’s got this thing about bowls of fruit. She keeps bringing apples and pears and oranges and then there’s nowhere suitable to put them. I must say that, for me, fruit should go in the fridge, if you buy it at all. Why put it on the table?’

  ‘Is there anything else?’ I asked, keen to move on.

  ‘Those green towels. Were they really yours?’

  I thought for a moment. ‘Do you know?’ I said. ‘I’m really not sure whether they’re mine or yours. I thought we’d sorted it out, but if you want them, take them. One’s hanging over the bath, so you’ll probably need to wash it before you use it.’

  ‘And you checked inside the books you took away? Mostly I write my name in mine.’

  ‘Which is why I checked,’ I said. ‘But if there are any you want, you can take them back.’ I thought with a pang of guilt about the bowl. ‘In fact, if there’s any object at all that you want, take it, but take it now. We’ve got to draw a line – we’ve got to have, you know, like that thing where you can’t prosecute Nazi war criminals any more.’

  ‘A statute of limitation.’

  ‘That’s right. We had this strange time where we shared our things and we owned things together but it’s over.’

  Amos folded up his piece of paper and put it back in his pocket. ‘You can keep the towels,’ he said. ‘They’ve gone a bit rough anyway.’

  ‘Is that it?’ I said. ‘You came all the way over here about towels you don’t want?’

  ‘And the Steely Dan boxed set. You’re really sure you haven’t got that?’

  ‘Is anything up?’ I asked.

  Amos didn’t seem to be paying attention. He wandered around the room, inspecting the half-painted walls, the books in boxes, the general air of neglect and abandonment. ‘You want to get someone in to do this.’

  ‘I was planning to do most of it myself. That’s why I didn’t go away this summer.’

  ‘It looks as if you’re behind schedule.’

  ‘I think I m
ay have taken on a bit too much,’ I admitted.

  ‘What happened to us?’ he said.

  ‘Amos…’

  ‘When I look at this mess here, you trying to make a home for yourself, and me with my stupid piece of paper and us arguing over who bought which paperback book…’

  ‘We didn’t really argue. We bickered.’

  ‘I can’t believe we started there and ended up here. Do you remember the early days? That time we had the plan to cycle along the canal towpath until we reached the countryside but we didn’t make it and came back on the train? That was when even the things that didn’t work out seemed somehow fine, and then we got to a stage where something was wrong even with the things that did work out. How did we get there – here?’

  I’d known almost from the start that this visit wasn’t just about a few things he thought I’d taken. ‘We’ve been through all of this,’ I said. ‘Over and over again. We’ve moved on now. You’re with Sonia. She’s a special woman.’

  He smiled. ‘In a way that you’re not?’

  ‘I can quite honestly say that Sonia is special in many ways that I’m not. I should also say that this is exactly the sort of conversation that you and I don’t have any more.’

  Amos frowned and there was a pause.

  ‘It’s not working out,’ he said finally.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘What?’ said Amos, puzzled. ‘No, I don’t mean Sonia and me. That’s fine. Whether it’s a serious thing, whether it’ll last, I don’t know.’

  ‘Stop,’ I said. ‘Don’t talk to me about that. I don’t want to hear. You’ve no right.’

  ‘Who else have I got to talk to?’

  ‘Not me,’ I said. ‘Anyone but me.’

  He was affronted by that. Did he want to have Sonia and somehow hold on to me as well?

  ‘Anyway, I didn’t mean that. I meant the music, the performance.’

  ‘What’s your problem?’

  ‘My problem?’ he said, with a sarcastic laugh. ‘I just feel it’s my responsibility to point out that things are not going well.’