2004 - The Reunion

by Sue Walker

  As for your attempts to make amends. I am impressed at what you’ve achieved professionally and I believe you when you say that you want to heal others. I also believe that you now want all the truth to come out, whatever the consequences. These are all laudable actions and aims. However, you also mentioned wanting, needing, forgiveness. How you will achieve that I do not know. I believe that you are a changed person from the one I knew in the Unit. But I cannot dismiss the fact that you were involved. You were an active participant. I’m not sure and I don’t think you have any clear idea about how you are going to make things right.

  Whatever you, hear about my fate, and I know since we met that you will take an interest in what happens to me, please know that the choices I have made have been mine, alone. I have made plans, which, when carried out, you will see as absolutely fitting. And now I have only one concern in life. To do something to make amends. In relation to that I have enclosed a copy of my will, outlining the substantial beguest that I am leaving to ‘Renewal’. I think that action speaks for itself.

  Finally, there is a separate letter enclosed for you to show to any authority you may think fit, if and when you want to. It outlines all I now know.

  You will receive this package after my death. I don’t deserve to live.

  I hope that I can find peace.

  Let the pain of the past die with me,

  Isabella

  The lump in his throat wouldn’t budge. She had been a beautiful and decent woman. But her hopes of peace, for the pain of the past to die with her, were impossible dreams for him at this moment. But not for much longer. Gently, he placed the pages back into thek envelope and put it inside his breast pocket. Closest to his heart. Since receiving it, it had been his spur.

  His mind swayed back, as it so often did after reading the letter, to wild imaginings of her last hour on earth. Imaginings rney might be, but her actions were, as she’d promised, ‘fitting’, although only he, and Alex, could understand them. God, what it must have been for her, that last evening! He’d made it his business to find out as much as possible about that final hour. Inquest reports, press reports, interviews with locals, witnesses who saw her last—he’d built up a reasonable picture of what had happened, just as he’d done after die return of his litde Katie. Like then, the need to know, or at least to add some sense of ‘reality’ to the awful event, was a necessary dealing mechanism for him. Each and every obsessive detail and the rest…well, the rest of it may have happened diat way…

  Her bag would have been packed. Towel. Goggles. All there. Perhaps she dumped the bag in the hall as she headed back into her study. The pale blue envelope was sealed with a gentle lick of her tongue. The other enclosures placed in the bigger, bulky brown envelope. Finally, she would write out the address in that fine, loopy script, picked out with delicacy by a cherished Mont Blanc he’d remarked on when visiting her home.

  She’d then have locked up the house and headed for the sports centre. The chemist’s at the end of the road would still be open.

  “Ah. Evening, Professor Velasco. Swimming lessons tonight?”

  She’d maybe tried an automaton’s smile and looked around at the old-fashioned shop with its old-fashioned wares, picking out what she wanted. “Good evening, Mr Maitland. Yes, swimming tonight. I’ll just have those, please.”

  Outside the shop, did she hesitate at the post-box? Then recover, watching numbly as the First Class slit swallowed up her packages?-The walk to the sports centre, through reception, and down to the female changing area, would have seemed like a dream. Was her mind clear then perhaps? Empty? No thoughts left. Maybe she answered greetings by reflex, with an unfeeling rictus grin.

  Forty-five minutes later she would have recalled nothing of the lesson. The gaps in her memory were getting worse. It was the drugs. The ones her GP had prescribed were useless. She had procured much more effective ones from work. She knew only too well how much to take to get through the day and how much was too much. Tonight she’d taken too much. But that was fine.

  By this time she’d be sitting in her changing cubicle, swimming costume dripping wet, towel hanging limply in her hands. All around her, women would be chattering, showers hissing, hairdryers humming, the pungent tang of chlorine saturating the damp air. For how long she’d never have known, as she sat unmoving in the tiny space, curtain drawn against the world. The oblong, wooden shape of the cubicle like an upended coffin. Apt.

  Then, after a while, she’d notice it. Silence. She’d draw the curtain aside. The place was deserted. Maybe she’d slump back on to the bench seat, fumbling for her small handbag inside the bigger sports holdall. Yes. It was there. She would take out the syringe and vial of clear liquid now. She’d stolen it, perhaps that very day, from work. To do such a thing seemed the final confirmation of the action she was going to take tonight. That and the purchase at the chemist’s.

  She’d watch herself in some out-of-body-experience way -a bit like he did sometimes—as she measured the local anaesthetic into the syringe and plunged it into first the left wrist, and then the right. The effect would have been instantaneous. Next, the chemist’s paper bag. She’d slide out the rasyr blades, carefully unwrapping them from their folds of delicately thin paper.

  As she wandered towards the door leading to the pool, she wouldn’t remember making the cuts. But on either side of her lay the red trails. Through the door, and in five steps, she was in the blissfully warm water. Her last sight, the bobbing head of a child looking like a doll, high up on the balcony above…

  FOURTY-SIX

  Simon sat back in the old Nurses’ Office, forcing his memory and his imaginings to take a momentary rest. He was now regularly feeling the need for strong drink to calm him. From the desk drawer he lifted out the half-bottle of brandy. He’d brought it here for this very purpose. He put the bottle to his lips and drank greedily, the burning sensation a comforting distraction. He put the bottle back in the drawer and sat back, one foot upon the desk. Now that he’d reread Abby’s letter, she remained in his mind. And other haunting thoughts came back to him. She’d let it all pour out that evening he’d visited her. The image of her sad monologue, uttered in strangely calm, clinical tones, now grafted on to his memory…

  “The day Danny died, the Queen of the Minch…yes…I remember the name of that ferry…I sailed on her so often, I felt I knew her. Anyway fae. Queen of the Minch docked ten minutes early. It had been a busy crossing. I was glad. There must’ve been about fifty foot passengers, all eager to make their way off the ferry and disperse into Ullapool or get on to the next stage of their journey. I know I looked a state but…but incredibly, no one seemed to notice me. Everyone was just interested in their own thing. I remember stumbling my way across the wet ramp, heading for the women’s toilets attached to the booking office. Absolutely no one else had noticed me, even though I must’ve been ashen-faced, my body shaking, and I was ripping off my jacket and wrenching the hat from my hair. I was going to throw up.”

  “It was odd. It seemed as if the waves of nausea were paradoxically stronger now I was on terra firma, and I dry-retched into the bowl, again and again. When they subsided, I recall pulling at the roll of toilet paper and wiping my eyes. Just to staunch the non-stop stream of tears. At the wash-hand basins I soaked ice-cold water on my face again and again, and checked in the mirror for telltale blotches. I was convinced someone would stop me as soon as I set foot outside.”

  “And outside, the afternoon was mocking me. The sun, unbelievably, even had a hint of warmth in it. The single-decker bus was waiting for the alighted ferry passengers, and I dragged my rucksack and my weary body up into the empty back seat. The one nearest the toilet. At no time, then, before or afterwards, did I make any attempt to look at anyone, to talk to anyone—fellow passengers, boat crew and certainly not harbour police. I knew there was no point. The bus jolted and pulled out of the station, and I risked a look back towards the docked ferry. Like an X-ray, I imagined my gaze passing throug
h the ship, into the grey waters of the Minch. Out where Danny lay. Tossing about on the waves. Cold. Dead.”

  “The drive from the ferry port seemed to take for ever. I left the bus at Inverness and transferred to another that was going straight to Edinburgh. Again I found a kind of haven in the relative security of the back seat. Cocooned into myself, with the occasional glance out the rear window, expecting…expecting what? Oh, someone or other to be in hot pursuit.”

  “By the time I was at Edinburgh Bus Station I knew where I was headed. Well, I had the List, hadn’t I? The one Danny had taken from your house that reunion night. Danny had eventually let me have a copy of my own, complete with your own details, which Danny had added ages ago. Why? For his own sense of neatness and orderliness? Everyone on one page—at a glance. Very Danny. Anyway, yes, I had all their addresses. No problem there. But…and I don’t know why I did this…I don’t really know what I was thinking about all those hours travelling. Or if I was thinking or feeling anything. When I look back now, it all seems…I feel numb. Anyway, instead of boarding a bus for Fife to see you, I hailed a taxi and made for Cramond.

  The frantic hammering on the front door would’ve been enough to tell Alex that something was wrong. I could make her out, marching down the hall, peering at my distorted figure outlined through the frosted glass in the door. She’d unlatched it and I literally fell through. I stood, propping myself up with my back against the wall of her hallway. What a sight I must’ve made! Hair wild, a heavy rucksack hanging limply from my shoulder. I was dressed respectably in an expensive waterproof and smart, corduroy trousers, but I must have looked mad. For one fleeting moment I wondered if Alex thought I was the wronged partner of someone who, mistakenly, had thought she was her husband’s mistress. Whatever, it was clear Alex hadn’t a clue who I was. And as for Alex? I didn’t question it was her at that moment. Didn’t wonder at the transformation in her.

  “I was shouting by then. ‘Alex! Alex! It’s Isabella. Isabella Velasco. Danny’s dead! Dead!’ I do recall Alex looking as if she’d been struck across the face. But she’d rallied quickly and, in a moment, was steering me into her living room, pushing me down into a chair. I was crying again. Uncontrollably. A huge drink, brandy I think, was poured and force-fed to me within seconds.”

  “And then I remember sitting bolt upright. Staring at a blank TV screen. Catatonic. Alex was keeping out of my eye-line…maybe preferring to watch from afar. Maybe working it out. Yes, this definitely was Isabella! Didn’t she look the same? When she wasn’t looking…demented? Haunted? What the hell had happened? Was Danny really dead? It must’ve all gone through her mind. Maybe she was scared of me at that moment. But she risked a step forward to replenish my glass. I drank quickly but stayed silent, and closed my eyes. Then, without any warning, I jumped up. I needed the bathroom. The sickness was back.

  “Alex had grasped my arm and frog-marched me to a downstairs bathroom. Alex…her face and jaw were taut…angry-looking…she was watching me kneeling over the toilet bowl, heaving and wiping streaming eyes on toilet paper. Just as I had at the ferry port.

  “And then she spoke to me. Were these her first words? Couldn’t have been. Yet I felt I was hearing her speak for the first time in over quarter of a century. She said, ‘Isabella? Abby? Here, let me help you.’ The next thing I remember was, like a biddable child, allowing myself to be led by the hand, back to the living room. And then she was being nice to me. It made me cry again. “I’ve a wet face-cloth here for you, Abby. With very cold water. Here.” And then she was kneeling down in front of me, wiping my face like a baby’s. ‘Abby? Come on. You’re okay.’ And the combination of cold water and the soothing voice must’ve done it. I came to. I looked, really looked at Alex for the first time, and was at last taking in my surroundings…and then it hit me with full force. The delayed shock. The awful reality. ‘Alex? Oh, Christ! Oh…oh, help me! I must go to the police! He’s dead. It’s my fault!’ I cried it a few times. And Alex held me down as I fought again and again to get up, out of the chair. But she held me down until the impulse to flee subsided. Then she lowered her face to meet mine, a hand stroking my cheek. “Listen to me, Isabella. Tell me what happened? Where have you been?”

  “And I knew it was time to tell it Tell my story. “We were on the ferry. From Stornoway,” I told her. ‘We’d been seeing a lot of each other. He said that he wanted to see me safely across to the mainland after another idyllic visit with him. Maybe, I hoped, it would be the last time I would have to leave him. I had wild thoughts of living permanently with him, maybe marriage, who knows? I…I just wanted a…a last couple of hours with me…and…him. I was going to tell him that I loved him…then he went funny. Said we should go up on deck where it was quiet. Private. Then he told me…told me about…oh, God, how could I have missed it! He told me three times! I wouldn’t believe him.” And Alex was raising her voice. “What, Abby? What exactly did he tell you? What?”

  “But I wasn’t listening and wanted, had to go on with my story. ‘And…and…and then I just started hitting him. With fists! Really punching him…but the deck was wet. Greasy with oil. He slipped…fell backwards over the safety rail…I couldn’t hold him…he just went over…he’s dead! Deeead…!’”

  The imagined screams of her anguish had stayed with him night after night. And again they’d returned on this most significant of nights. Pushing the chair back, Simon gathered up what he needed. He checked his watch. Any time now. Two minutes later, the side door-bell rang.

  The motorcycle courier stood head-to-toe in black. Simon handed him the package.

  Well done for being on time. I wasn’t sure. It’s a bit out of the way here. “Okay, now remember, if Dr Logan’s not there, call me immediately on my mobile. There’s the number and here’s something extra for yourself. It’ll take you about an hour and a half to get to her hotel in Glasgow. She’s on business there. She’ll be registered. The night porter will have to rouse her. This is urgent. Top priority. Don’t leave it with anyone else, and don’t deliver it before 2 AM Got that? Timing is very important.”

  He closed the door behind him, hoping to God that the courier could follow those simple instructions. The chances were that Sheena would hit the phone as soon as she’d digested the contents of the package. And then, timing would be of the essence. Now, there was only one other to arrive here before his tasks were completed. Before he’d played out his last, personal act of psychodrama.

  With an inner weariness taking hold of him, he fetched another package from the old Nurses’ Office and made his way back up to where Alex was waiting for him.

  FOURTY-SEVEN

  In the hotel car park Innes sat for a moment. Rational thought was beyond her. The experience of meeting Alex had been worse than she’d thought it would be—but in a different way than she had expected. She’d sat there, strangely impotent, as she let Alex take control. Most irritatingly of all, she’d allowed herself to be lectured. Yes, lectured! But mulling it all over on her way back here, she’d replayed the lecture in her mind. Something hadn’t rung true about the whole encounter. Alex had been too relaxed, too incurious about everything. And, most of all, she was lying. About exactly what she didn’t know, but Alex was lying. Innes cursed herself. Jesus! She, of all people, should have seen it earlier! It was part of her bloody job to work out if and when someone was lying! And Alex was a good liar but not good enough.

  The journey back to Alex’s was spent with Innes rehearsing her second attempt at tackling her. She didn’t care if Alex had gone to bed. No, Alex was going to talk, really talk to her. And she wasn’t going to leave the place without answers. The house was lit up just as it had been when she left. But there was no answer. She tried the front door. Locked. Round the back, her eye caught the fluttering of the muslin curtains as they billowed through the open French windows.

  Inside, the living room was much as she remembered it. And yet not. Alex’s empty glass was lying on the floor beside a chair, not the sofa she
’d been sitting on earlier. And the television remote control was lying shattered in pieces in the far corner.

  “Alex? Alex! It’s Innes again! Alex! Alex!” She heard the heightened pitch of apprehension in her own voice and stopped in the centre of the room. Uneasiness was sending out a warning. Wait a minute! Don’t go upstairs jet. She combed the ground floor. Nothing.

  Okay. Next. Nerves ate away at her stomach again as she moved upstairs into unfamiliar territory. All five bedrooms were deserted. As were die bathrooms. She stood on the landing, scowling, and then started back down, the creaking of the old floorboards disconcertingly loud in the silence of the empty house. She was heading back for the French windows to secure them, when the mobile sounded. Shit! Her heart hammered as she fumbled to pull the phone from her jacket pocket.

  “Yeah, hello?”

  “Innes. It’s Alex. Look I’m sorry about earlier…if I seemed unfriendly. B—”

  Innes cut in. “Listen, I’m at your house. I came back to talk to you. You’ve left the whole place unlocked. Where the hell are you?”

  Alex’s voice crackled through a patch of bad reception. “You’re what? In my house? Oh…I…hold on a minute…eh…I forgot about the French windows. Please just shut them behind you. Just forget diem. Look, I’m calling you to apologize for tonight. I wasn’t very…very forthcoming. I’m a bit…a bit uptight. Listen, there’s a lot I need to tell you.”