Both of You

by Adele Parks

  And then there is the 1 per cent who remain unaccounted for, sometimes forever. Clements lies awake at night thinking about the ones that don’t come home. Their faces haunt her; immortalised in holiday snaps, school photos or dressed in out-of-fashion wedding dresses. The image of Leigh Fletcher is already scorched onto her brain. She glances about, as she and Tanner walk down the street, automatically scanning women’s faces; hoping to spot the Fletcher woman. It surprises and frustrates Clements that despite over a million CCTV cameras tracking movements, PIN numbers, databases, credit ratings, bank records, phone records, registration plate recognition, social media, tracking apps, emails, GPS and even bloody nosy neighbours, people can slip away unnoticed.

  Or are dragged away?

  Clements doesn’t let her mind go there yet. It’s not rational. Statistically, a missing adult has left of their own volition, although admittedly with varying levels of intentional planning and often more than one cause. She mentally runs through the checklist of why a person disappears and holds it up for inspection against what she knows about Leigh Fletcher. Mental health issues, diagnosed or not, account for up to eight in ten missing adults. Possible. Relationship breakdown is the reason for three in ten to do a runner. Mark Fletcher admitted to an argument, so not the garden of Eden, but one row is not usually enough to make a person leave home. In this case, dementia can be ruled out – four in every ten people with dementia will go missing at some point, often unintentionally. Homelessness can also be ruled out. Leigh has a lovely home. Financial issues? They were not apparent, but Clements will look into it. Abuse or domestic violence? You never know. She’d need to do a bit of digging.

  Clements takes a deep breath, a clear, logical head is paramount. She reminds herself something she was told in her training days. You can’t let it get to you, you can’t let it depress you or drive you mad. She coughs, ‘The devil is in the detail, Tanner.’

  Tanner shrugs. No matter what the superior officer says, his mind is made up to the way he wants this to go. Secretly, some part of him is hoping Leigh Fletcher is not only missing but chopped up and hidden under the floorboards somewhere. No, not really. He’s only messing. But sort of. Because he’s never investigated a murder and he’s dying to. Excuse the pun.

  If Tanner had more experience, he wouldn’t be so keen. Murder cases are not glamorous, just sad. ‘Let’s hope this is something and nothing. That Leigh Fletcher is just cooling off after their argument. That she comes home before the end of the evening,’ says Clements. But even as she says it, she can’t help but think the absence of a social media platform usually flags a problem. For a woman of Leigh’s age, it is unusual behaviour. There were many people who had accounts but don’t show pictures, don’t share much of their lives and just used it as a way to nose about in friends’ and colleagues’ worlds. There were many people who had privacy settings turned up to the max. Forty-three-year-old women that had no presence at all, generally had secrets. They wanted to be invisible.

  8

  Leigh

  Tuesday 17th March

  I’m parched. My wrist aches. My head too. I massage my wrist to get the blood to flow back into it. The pain in my head is unbearable but of course I do bear it, because what choice have I? I touch my skull tentatively, wondering if there might be a sticky gash. There isn’t one but there is a tender bump at the back. Was I struck from behind? Or was I drugged? I think that’s most likely. I don’t know. I feel drugged, dense and opaque, yet at the same time my heart is hammering at a speed that will split me open from inside. Thinking is terrifying, horrifying. More painful than any physical discomfort. Thoughts of what might come next assault me. Dark and dreadful thoughts but I can’t push them away.

  Am I going to survive this?

  What is going to happen to me?

  I do not know what to do. I am without choices and that is alien to me. I always have choices. I am always able to act. But now, at least for the time being, I have to submit. I am locked up by a madman. Of course it is a madman because what sane person locks up another human being? But how mad? What is he going to do to me? My body quivers with shock and fear. I move my left arm and the chain fastening me to the radiator rattles again. I can’t get used to the sound. I’m powerless.

  ‘What do you want with me? Why have you brought me here?’ My shaky voice sails out into nothing. Into the space which is at once endless and yet claustrophobic. No response. I’m pretty sure he is just on the other side of the door. I can feel him, sense his menace. He hasn’t said a word to me yet. His silence scares me. The light around the boarded window is fading. Can I have been here a full day? My fear is overpowering and debilitating. I crawl into a ball and cry.

  I must fall to sleep and only realise as much when I wake with a jolt. I guess my body shut down as a defence mechanism but I’m furious at myself for losing any sense of time. Sleeping is careless. I should stay alert. I have to. I notice a bottle of sparkling water had been rolled into the room. Unsteadily I crawl towards it, snatch it up and glug too much of it down, too quickly. I don’t know when more might next be delivered, I should ration myself. So I stop drinking. Or at least try to but as there is nothing else to do in this room, I find I keep taking sips. I can’t stop myself. It seems like some level of control – doing something – even though it is probably the opposite thing to what I should be doing. Self-sabotage. My head is light and I can’t think clearly.

  Something switches from flight to fight. Whatever it is seems to be out of my control. I’m nothing more than a quivering bag of fear and adrenalin. ‘I need some food!’ I yell, suddenly furious. Furious more than afraid. ‘I’m no fucking use to you dead!’ I kick the wall I can reach. I immediately regret my outburst. My foot aches. I’m an idiot to injure myself. I need to stay fit, in case an opportunity to escape presents itself. Besides, how do I know I am no use to him dead? I don’t know what this sick creep wants. Maybe starving me to death is his plan. I should be conciliatory. I should be trying to find a connection, that’s what happens on dramas on TV. That’s what locked-up women do. They try to talk to their captors, find something human and empathetic about him.

  It’s such bullshit.

  Be nice. Be good. Even when you have been abducted and chained. Especially then. I am sore and thirsty and afraid. Mostly that. So fucking afraid. I’m not able to behave as they do on TV. I yank at my chains again. Hard, so I hurt my shoulder. They clank and clash but don’t give at all. ‘Let me out, let me out!’ Silence. I feel like a toddler that has thrown his biggest tantrum and the parent looks on unmoved, but simply – silently – points to the naughty step. I slump. The fight gone almost as fast as it arrived. ‘Someone will come for me. They will be looking for me,’ I insist.

  Then I hear the typewriter again. Rat-tat-tat. The rustling. Paper under the door.

  Who will come for you? Your husband?

  I read the note and freeze. It doesn’t feel like a question. It feels like a taunt.

  9

  Kai

  Sunday 15th March

  ‘How’s your mum?’

  ‘The same.’

  ‘Is she responding to the antibiotics?’

  ‘It’s too early to tell.’ I try not to go into too much detail. Talking about illness – imminent death – is sad, everyone knows that. It is also boring; people don’t admit that.

  ‘Try and not worry, hey, darling? You know that Alzheimer’s sufferers get a lot of UTIs. She’s had them before and pulled through.’ I know what that sentence has just cost my husband. This world I have brought to his door is alien to him, a little frightening if the truth be told. He doesn’t want to think about my mother’s wee. Of course not. I don’t want to either. ‘You know the delirium is a result of the infection. Her seeming agitated and restless is just a symptom.’ He repeats back some of the information I have already given him in the past. Perhaps to demonstrate he listens to me, perhaps simply for something to say on the matter. ‘At least they caught it in g
ood time.’ I once explained that if a UTI goes unrecognised and untreated for too long, it can spread to the bloodstream and become life-threatening. I don’t like reminding him of that fact. It seems too dramatic. A little manipulative to introduce a ‘what if’ scenario. Nor do I mention that UTIs make Alzheimer’s patients aggressive, sometimes unrecognisable. It’s all too much. Daan tries to change the subject. ‘What is your hotel room like?’ He knows, because I’ve told him I stay in the same place every time.

  ‘It’s a Travel Inn, Daan. I think you can imagine.’

  ‘I wish you’d stay somewhere smarter.’

  ‘It’s a waste of money.’

  ‘We have money to waste.’

  ‘I know, but—’ I don’t finish the sentence. When Daan and I go to a hotel, we only ever go to the very best ones. The ones that feature in colour supplements, that have a media team behind their Instagram account. High-thread-count bed linen and white fluffy robes are a starting point. We go to places where we can sip champagne whilst sharing enormous copper baths, stay in there until our fingers go wrinkly. Daan has introduced me to the sort of hotels that offer a private boat ride to an exclusive island, a clifftop hot tub that offers views of the caves, beaches, crashing waves, where we will be served a plate of fresh oysters. He can’t imagine a mean single bed, a synthetic pillow, a bathroom that doesn’t have Molton Brown toiletries. He would never stay anywhere less than the finest. He doesn’t want me to. I’ve explained that luxury hotels aren’t a part of visiting my mother, they can’t be. I would find it obscene leaving a hospice and then sinking under a goose-down duvet. Even if I could find such a place nearby. ‘You only want me staying somewhere plush so you can imagine me lying in a big bed,’ I say, allowing him to hear the smile in my voice. I need to switch this up. For me, as much as him.

  ‘No, I’m not so shallow,’ he says. I can hear the amusement and anticipation in his response. He knows where we are going. We have a lot of phone sex, we have to. ‘I can imagine you in a shabby room, if you want.’

  ‘It’s not shabby,’ I say defensively. ‘It’s just functional. Basic.’ I have never let him visit my mother’s care home in the north-east of England. He has offered to come with me on a number of occasions, of course, but I’ve never allowed it. The best explanation I can offer him is that there is family stuff that I have to do on my own.

  ‘I don’t care what sort of bed it is; the important thing is you lying in it. What are you wearing?’ he asks.

  ‘Nothing.’ I always say nothing. I wonder if he really thinks that is likely or whether he knows I’m really still in my jeans and jumper, sometimes I’m in cosy pyjamas. It is just a game we both know the rules to.

  ‘I wish I was with you.’ His voice is low, thick with desire.

  ‘I wish that too.’

  ‘Do you know what I’d do if I were?’

  ‘Tell me.’ I do allow myself to lie back now. I unbutton my jeans.

  ‘My hands and mouth will be all over you. My tongue in your mouth. Your little pussy, hot and wet, on my face. Your perfect little arse. My cock rock hard in your hand. Your tongue all over it. Then you straddling me and riding it. My hands on your arse, looking up at your beautiful face and perfect tits as you fuck me insanely until I come hard inside you.’

  It’s blunt. Honest for that, and as usual I feel waves of lust build between my legs, rush through my body. My tits sit up, perky at the thought of being cupped, nipples harden, begging to be sucked. The only thing that I don’t quite like is the word pussy. Together in bed, he’d use the c-word, but he never does on the phone. A step too far perhaps. I want to tell him that pussy is outdated, somehow dwells in the world of Austin Powers with words such as groovy, that can only be used ironically. But he prides himself on his command of the English language and use of idioms, so I don’t tell him because I don’t want to offend him. He’s been using it for years now. It’s too late.

  Instead I respond by telling him precisely what I will lick, suck, fuck. The hard, primitive Anglo-Saxon words work their magic on my gentle, sophisticated Dutch husband. I hear him reach climax. It’s an efficient process, we’ve been here before, but nonetheless an exciting one that we both value.

  ‘I miss us.’ His tone is forlorn. I shouldn’t have rung him on a Sunday night. Normally I don’t, I encourage him to go to the gym and I just send a WhatsApp message. Tonight, I needed him a little bit more than usual. I listen and hear him walk to the kitchen. I know he is going to pour himself a whisky nightcap. I listen as he opens a cupboard, retrieves a glass, the ice clatters into the glass and then cracks beneath the alcohol. We sometimes do this, just be on the line to one another, in comfortable silence. Especially after phone sex. It makes it seem more normal. If I was with him now, we’d both be having a drink. The preparation of a drink is supposed to be a celebratory sound. If you are drinking with your spouse, friends or family, I guess it is. Alone, the ice sounds like chains clinking. I think of Jacob Marley, dragging around his sins. A wave of sadness swooshes over me. Something telepathic as I sense his loneliness. ‘When you are here with me, I feel full, purposeful, vibrant. When you are not, I am a balloon well after the party is over, shrivelled. Used,’ he says.

  He’s a poetic man. Confident that revealing his innermost thoughts to me is not only safe but desirable.

  I understand. Things can get lonely in our beautiful, huge apartment. The strange thing is it can get stifling there too, despite the size. I don’t have a day job. It’s just not possible with my commitments here that are unpredictable but vital and non-negotiable. I constantly battle with feeling torn as it is, putting a third element in the mix – work – is too much. We don’t need the money, so it doesn’t make sense. However, not being gainfully employed does mean when I am not here, I am often alone in our penthouse. I spend my days going to the apartment gym or pool, but I find the joy of the convenience is negated by the feeling I am trapped. That I have trapped myself. I eat up time thinking about what food I should cook him, what underwear I should buy and parade around in. If you fill your head with enough little things there is no room for the big things. I’ve managed not to think about anything important at all for four years. I wonder if Daan feels similarly trapped when I’m not there? Most likely not. Not usually. He works in the city and has boisterous companionship all day long. What he feels when I have to be away is most likely less complicated, simply a bit lonely, possibly a bit sulky. I am suddenly swamped and exhausted by my ever-present concern that I am not being fair to him. This situation is untenable and unkind. But I don’t have a choice. I have responsibilities.

  ‘I’ll be home tomorrow night. Shall we go out or stay in?’

  ‘Let’s stay in.’ I can hear the growl in his voice and my body responds with another pulse.

  ‘And on Tuesday we have people coming around, right?’

  ‘Yes. Everyone has confirmed.’

  We like throwing supper parties. Not dinner parties. Inviting people for dinner is a little passé, a little-try-too-hard for our friendship circle. In a similar way, we regularly eat out at the very best restaurants in London, but we rarely talk about going out for dinner. There must be no suggestion that it is an occasion. The whole thing must appear more spontaneous and be undervalued, even if we are visiting the sorts of places where you have to book weeks in advance, sometimes join a waiting list or promise to give up the table after ninety minutes. Paradoxically, casual is the most valued vibe amongst our attractive friends who try so intensely at everything: staying slim, staying on top, staying fit, staying informed, being brilliant, beautiful, the best. The people Daan and I invite to supper are bankers, broadsheet journalists, CFOs who nurtured internet start-ups twenty years ago and have watched them thrive, the occasional actor who has a film breaking in Hollywood. They are the top 1 per cent.

  I like them though.

  I wasn’t expecting to. I’m far more ordinary in just about every way than anyone Daan knew before he met me. That is to say, my
education and social background is very ordinary. I was however lucky that my parents’ genes collided successfully and – there is no modest way to say this – I’ve always been considered pretty. Some would say quite exceptionally so. Although not my father, and since my father never said it, I never really believed it or saw the value in it. Until, that is, I met Daan. Then I realised beauty is something I can bring to the table. When he first talked to me about the friends he made at his elite private school and at Harvard University, or the glossy, impressive colleagues and clients he wanted me to meet, I felt intimidated, sure I wasn’t going to like them – worse that they weren’t going to like me. But I was pleasantly surprised. Yes, some of them are arrogant and boring, others are superficial and vain but many of them are interesting, driven, ambitious. I found listening to their stories about their various roles in diverse industries exciting. I’m not stupid, I can easily hold my own and my obvious interest and reasonable knowledge about the world, combined with my slim frame and high cheekbones, means I fit right in on most occasions.

  It’s not as though I could tire of Daan’s friends, or feel threatened or jealous of any one of them in particular, because while we throw a supper party about once a week, our guests are in constant rotation. I’m not expected to become bosom buddies with any of the chiselled and toned businesswomen or any of the beautiful clotheshorse wives who visit our home. The men remember me as charming but usually politely ask Daan about ‘that lovely wife of yours’ not bothering to commit my name to memory. Busy sorts, like these people, don’t expect intimacy, just stimulation.

  While I only expect to see most people every six months or so, often less frequently, I keep a logbook detailing who visits when, what I served (or what the caterers served), who sat next to whom, to avoid the catastrophe of serving anyone the same thing twice. The level of organisation clearly belying the casual ‘oh you must pop over for supper’.