The Sweetest Poison

by Jane Renshaw

  And, false modesty aside, it wasn’t as if there was any serious competition for Section Head. They were hardly going to give it to Marc: twenty-five, and clueless. Didn’t know his arse from his unguentarium.

  She smiled, imagining what Suzanne would have had to say about Marc. She’d probably have done something outrageous, like phoning up Stuart pretending to be one of the Directors complaining about Marc’s work.

  She went to the counter, dropped a teabag into a mug and poured on the water, swirling the teabag around with a spoon and watching the water darken.

  Sometimes she felt as if the parallel world in which Suzanne hadn’t died was the real one and this – this was just a ghost world, an imaginary ‘what if’ world in which disaster hadn’t, after all, been averted. Back in the real world, surely, the real Helen and the real Suzanne drank tea together and did all the other normal things of normal life – called each other to bind on about men and mothers and the bitches at work; agonised in changing rooms; pored over menus and colour charts; carefully avoided the subject of Rob; laughed till they cried about Helen’s schoolgirl crush on Hector Forbes.

  But in this other world, the ghost Helen bought clothes without bothering to try them on, and sat in cafés with people she didn’t care if she never saw again, and lived in terror of Rob Beattie, and stalked Hector Forbes on the internet. And the ghost Suzanne couldn’t do anything except lie under the ground on the Hill of Saughs or Knockbeg or the Muir of Aven, or under the water in Loch Deer, while the rain and the snow fell, and the sun rose and set, and the wind blew by.

  She looked across at the laptop.

  Oh God. She really was turning into a sad mad old bat like Mrs Cunningham. Next thing, she’d be accosting people on the stairs and complaining that she never heard them coming in and out: ‘You young people and your soft-soled shoes.’

  If Stuart ever found out how she actually preferred to spend her evenings... Probably not something she’d be adding to the ‘Interests’ section of her CV: cross-stitch, wildlife, 19th Century novels and internet stalking.

  Pathetic.

  But harmless, surely? And it was the one thing guaranteed to distract her from obsessing about Suzanne. The one thing that could bring her down off the ceiling when she heard a strange noise in the building and was immediately convinced it was Rob, jimmying open the door.

  And it wasn’t just Hector she stalked – it was all of them.

  Did that make it better or worse?

  She loved finding out what they were all up to; imagining what they might be doing at any given moment. Maybe today Fiona and her two older girls – Cat and Ruth – had been out on their bikes after school, along the back road to Logie Coldstone, the spring air sharp and sweet, high voices raised above the whir of the bicycle wheels. And Damian had had the dogs out, Hector cursing him when they came back covered in mud – Irina wouldn’t let him have a pet in their own house because of the mess, but Damian was at Pitfourie so much it didn’t really matter.

  Ridiculous. She knew that Cat and Ruth had bikes because there’d been a photo of them on Fiona’s Facebook page. But she didn’t know if Hector had any dogs. She didn’t know where Irina and Damian were even living.

  Yet.

  She unlocked the top drawer in the desk, removed a scrapbook at random and took it and the stewed tea to the coffee table. She sat down on the sofa, shrugged out of her jacket and kicked off her shoes.

  The first photo was of Norrie and another man, photographed against a misty hillside. In the accompanying article, some freedom-to-roam person was moaning on about Pitfourie Estate putting a deer fence across the hill at Crask. Hector was quoted as saying it was necessary for regeneration of the forest, and he was sorry if anyone was going to be inconvenienced, but the gates in the fence were clearly marked on maps that could be downloaded from the website. Norrie, Pitfourie Estate’s ‘Forest Regeneration Project Manager’, gave facts and figures about how long regeneration had been shown to take with and without exclusion of deer.

  Norrie looked like some sort of native creature himself, blending into the hillside in his estate tweeds.

  He’d come to see her not long after she’d left Pitfourie, and they’d all sat round the table at Auntie Anne’s making polite conversation, and then she and Norrie had gone out to see a film and on the way back he’d gently taken her hand, and she’d gently removed it.

  The next photo was of Fish – District Procurator Fiscal, no less – outside a courtroom with some other lawyer types, very smart and actually a bit intimidating-looking, with slicked-back hair and an opaque expression.

  And then Hector, handing over a prize to some child who’d won the under-12 girls section of a charity fun run sponsored by Pitfourie Estate. The little girl was rabbit-in-the-headlights. Hector was grinning, very handsome in tweed jacket and tie.

  It was worth the subscription to the Press and Journal for that photo alone.

  Suzanne would have gone absolutely mental.

  You sad sad cow! Get over it!

  But she didn’t want to get over it.

  Even in the aftermath of London she hadn’t been able to harden her heart against him. She’d tortured herself with ‘what if’s: what if she hadn’t taken him to the Tower of London – the most famous prison in the world, for God’s sake? What if she hadn’t been a silly little idiot, giggling at the carvings of a lion and a bear in the Beaufort Tower and saying how cute they were? What if she’d managed to talk to him in a mature and intelligent way about things he was actually interested in? What if she hadn’t kept mentioning Suzanne and Rob? What if she hadn’t been so pathetic and clingy and needy and weird?

  What if she could have been what he wanted?

  She’d written to Irina at Pitfourie, a brief note saying she’d ‘met up with’ Hector but had lost his contact details – could Irina let her have them?

  Three weeks later a note had come back in Irina’s flamboyant handwriting, with an email address and a PO box number in San Carlos. Another week and Helen had composed an email message she was happy with. She’d sent it off, and a couple of days later a reply had come into her inbox.

  Opening that email had been one of the hardest things she’d ever done in her life.

  She had it still, in a folder called ‘HF_email’. She still remembered it word for word. She closed her eyes and saw the black typeface.

  And in the quiet of the flat she heard it:

  A footstep.

  She jumped off the sofa, sending her mug flying, tea arcing over the carpet. She stared at the open door into the tiny hallway.

  Another footstep.

  Footsteps.

  Footsteps, but through the wall. Muffled footsteps on stone. On the stone landing outside.

  She laughed breathlessly. Oh God. She really was turning into Mrs Cunningham. It was just Linda, who lived in the flat opposite. Or someone coming to see Linda.

  She waited for the sound of a key in the door of Linda’s flat, or the sound of her doorbell, or knuckles rapping on her door.

  But there was nothing.

  She slipped into the hall, noiseless in her stocking feet, and put her eye to the peephole. The fish-eye gave her a distorted view of the whole landing, stark in the fluorescent lighting bouncing off the lemon walls and the huge worn old flagstones.

  There was no one there.

  But she could hear the footsteps again, moving up, above her head…

  Someone going up to the top floor.

  But wait a minute.

  Callum and Jo in the flat above hers were away in Dubai for two months. And the other flat was empty while Mrs Ritchie was in hospital. She knew this because she needed the agreement of every household on the stair before she could get CCTV installed, and when she’d asked Mrs Cunningham why she never got a response from the top floor flats Mrs Cunningham had started moaning on about how irresponsible it was for people to leave flats empty. An invitation to squatters.

  Maybe it was Mrs Ritchie’s daught
er come to collect the mail or something.

  She really was channelling Mrs Cunningham.

  But there was no way she was going out onto that landing to check. She made sure both chains were securely fastened, and the mortice locks engaged. Then she tiptoed back to the living room and sat back down on the sofa and stared at the wet streak of tea on the carpet as she listened out for any other noise.

  She closed her eyes.

  Hector’s email. She had been thinking about Hector’s email.

  Helen, for God’s sake, it’s I who should be apologising. You’re quite wrong – I don’t think you’re a bunny boiler (!) and you have nothing at all for which to reproach yourself. I’m the one who should be doing that. I’ve behaved appallingly, as usual, and I wouldn’t blame you if you hated my guts.

  I should have told you from the outset what the situation was. I somehow managed to convince myself that I’d made it clear, but of course I hadn’t.

  Nothing that you’ve done or said has made me think badly of you. How could it? You are, and have always been, one of my favourite people in the world, and I’ll always remember our weekend together. But I can’t have a relationship with you. Not the kind you need and should have. You seem to have developed a very idealised view of me – I don’t quite know how! I’m afraid the reality is very different.

  I don’t think any sort of correspondence is a good idea, and in any case my internet access will be intermittent over the next few months. What I told you, about working for an oil company – that wasn’t exactly the truth. My circumstances preclude any sort of regular contact, let alone anything more.

  I’m sorry for treating you so badly. It’s the last thing you deserve.

  Thank you, and yet again, sorry. I always seem to be apologising to you, for what apologies are worth, which of course is very little.

  Love,

  Hector

  He probably thought he’d been pretty convincing. That she’d believe he was just a bad boy who wasn’t capable of commitment. That the truth wasn’t buried in there, between the words. That it wouldn’t hit her like a sledgehammer.

  He’d spent those two days with her as an act of charity.

  When Hector had been back at Pitfourie, Uncle Jim must have let slip something about how Helen still wasn’t coping with Suzanne’s death, was still beating herself up about it, had terrible self-esteem issues, was a paranoid mess – not that Uncle Jim would have put it like that. And Hector had sought her out, as he had long ago in the school playground, to dry her tears and kiss it better – only literally, this time, after she’d sobbed at him that she should have known he could never have written those letters. In other words: I know I could never be good enough for you.

  And so those two days had been his gift to her. A gift to say: But, you see, you are.

  He couldn’t know that it wasn’t a question of self-esteem but of love; and that his gift was always going to be too much, and not enough.

  She had replied with just nine words:

  Thank you. I could never hate you. Love, Helen.

  There had been no reply.

  She’d started going out with a guy called Pete, who’d turned out to be a card-carrying gold-plated bastard. She hadn’t cared. She’d moved on to Richard. And then Jeff. And then someone whose name might have been Rod. And then no one for a while. And then back to Jeff again.

  And then something unexpected had happened – in M&S, of all places. Jeff’s mission had been to get a treat for dessert while she checked out the clothes, only she’d decided she’d better make sure he didn’t get something healthy like a melon, so she’d gone after him. And there he’d been, lifting a chocolate cheesecake from the chiller cabinet, a long-faced man with accountant-channelling-Romantic-poet hair, and it had hit her:

  I’m happy.

  And not just because of the cheesecake.

  For the first time in her life she’d felt like a proper adult in a proper adult relationship: they were ‘Helen and Jeff’, taking photography classes together and going off to Cornwall to stay with his parents. They’d rented a basement flat in Battersea – a hovel, but they’d splashed out on Farrow & Ball paints – Cooking Apple Green over the dark veneers of the kitchen units – and Jeff had spent a month breaking up the concrete in the ‘outdoor space’ at the back, and trailing the bits through the flat to the wheelie bin, so she could have grass and flowers and herbs and even, one year, courgettes under a cold frame made out of a window he’d found in a skip.

  And she’d convinced herself that Jeff was right, Mum was right, Hector had been right – Rob Beattie wasn’t going to come after her. Jeff had even got her to ‘face her fear’ and go jogging with him, early in the morning or in the evening, when it was dark and anyone could be lurking. A couple of times he’d even persuaded her to go on her own, greeting her on her return with big sloppy kisses all over her sweaty body that had made her scream with half-hysterical laughter.

  Even Mum had liked Jeff.

  Maybe that had been part of the problem – everyone liked Jeff, and he returned the sentiment. He loved being with people, brunches and lunches and dinners with his huge extended family, conversations going on across and around her. And oh God, the parties – waking up to find Jeff with three new best friends in the kitchen, discussing American foreign policy and feeding them the contents of the fridge.

  She remembered, as things had deteriorated, Jeff snapping at her that he was the kind of person who needed company, and snapping back: ‘So what am I – part of the furniture?’

  After the split, it had seemed the right time to get out of London. To accept that she wasn’t ever going to find Suzanne sitting at the back of a bus or standing in the queue at the chemist. New job, new city. Back to Edinburgh, and Mum and Auntie Anne.

  She opened her eyes and picked up the scrapbook.

  The next photo showed Hector as one of a group of ‘local landowners’ opposing plans for a windfarm near Lochnagar. She liked this one of him best of all. The men – they were all men – had been photographed outside, with a backdrop of the hills, and Hector was looking slightly to one side, as if he’d been distracted at the last minute. The wind had tousled his hair and he looked like a schoolboy at a sober gathering of old men, eager to be off doing something else.

  But he was thirty-seven now. The lines of jaw and nose and cheek more defined; the planes of his face no longer softened by youth.

  She’d done an osteoarchaeology course at uni and had been surprised to discover that the bone structure of people’s faces changed not just when they were growing in childhood but throughout adulthood too. A twenty-something man tended to have more gracile, more delicate, less masculine-looking facial bones than his thirty-something older self.

  In most people the changes were subtle. If you put a photo of Hector in his twenties next to this one, you’d see some differences but you’d have no problem recognising him. But in other people the changes could be much more marked.

  She closed the scrapbook.

  Other people.

  Rob Beattie’s face had changed a lot from when he was a child to when he was a teenager. Was it possible that it had changed just as much in the sixteen years since Helen last saw him? Since anyone last saw him?

  Oh God.

  Oh God.

  She flew to the desk and flipped open the laptop.

  It didn’t take long to find a photograph of Rob on an ‘unsolved crimes’ website. He smiled goofily from the screen, his face white in the flash. He held a beer bottle in one hand. The photo seemed to have been taken at a party in someone’s kitchen, oak-effect country-style wall units behind him.

  His nose was a completely different shape from the nose of the man she’d seen today. But there was such a thing as plastic surgery. She put a hand up to the screen to hide the nose –

  Was it possible?

  Was it?

  20

  It was one of the hardest things she’d ever done: opening the door of the flat
and stepping out onto the cold flagstones of the landing. But Medusa would be closing in five minutes and she couldn’t go through a whole night not knowing. She clung on to the door after she’d shut it behind her, the Yale key still in the lock, ready to snap it open and dive back inside at the first sound from the top landing.

  But there was nothing.

  Heaving in a breath, she locked the top mortice and then the bottom one, yanking the key from the lock and running for the steps, careering down them two at a time.

  Good decision to change into joggers and trainers.

  Adrenaline was pumping so hard it was almost like flying, her feet skimming the steps as she plummeted down them in near free-fall.

  She ran for the outside door, not looking behind her, concentrating on flicking the Yale open and hauling open the door and diving outside, eyes constantly swivelling, checking the tiny front gardens, the pavement opposite…

  Then she was across the road and running.

  Up to the junction.

  Across the roundabout.

  Lights were blazing from the windows of Medusa, bouncing off the shiny surfaces of mirrors and glass and glossy black hairdryers neatly lined up on their rack. But it was deserted – a Marie Celeste version of itself.

  The sign on the door was turned to Closed.

  She was too late.

  She rattled the door handle. She slapped at the glass of the door, the breath almost sobbing in her throat.

  And from the back of the salon Karim appeared, carrying a cloth and a can of cleaner, swaying slightly to silent music. She windmilled her arms at him, grinning manically, and he pulled out his earbuds.

  ‘Karim,’ she gasped when he’d opened the door and she’d half-tumbled over the threshold. ‘This is going to sound really weird, but – the man who was in here before... The one I thought I knew... Would you have a record of his name on the database? He’s got an appointment for two-thirty on Tuesday. That’s what your receptionist said. Two-thirty.’

  ‘Helen. What is going on with you, huh? Who is this guy?’

  What could she say?