I Let You Go

by Clare Mackintosh

  I got out of the car and went into the bar. I bought some Becks and began weaving my way through the packed room. Someone jostled against me and sloshed beer on to my shoes, but I was too intent on my search to demand an apology.

  And then I saw you. You were standing at the end of the bar, waving a ten-pound note in vain at the bar staff, who were working their way through a queue four-people deep. You saw me and for a second you looked blank, as though you couldn’t place me, then you smiled, although the smile was more guarded than the last time I had seen it.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ you said, when I had pushed my way through to you. ‘I thought you were seeing Pulp.’ You seemed a little cagey. Women say they like surprises, but the reality is they would rather know in advance, so they can prepare.

  ‘I gave the tickets to a guy at work,’ I said. ‘I didn’t fancy it on my own.’

  You looked abashed to be the cause of my change in plans. ‘But,’ you said, ‘how come you ended up here? Have you been before?’

  ‘I bumped into a mate,’ I said, holding up the two bottles of Becks I had had the foresight to buy. ‘I went to the bar and now I can’t find him anywhere. I guess he got lucky!’

  You laughed. I held out one of the bottles of beer. ‘Can’t have it going to waste, can we?’

  ‘I should really get back. I’m supposed to be getting a round in – that’s if I ever get served. Sarah’s saving a table over there.’ You glanced over to the corner of the room, where the tall girl with dyed hair was sitting at a small table, talking to a guy in his mid-twenties. As we watched, he leaned forward and kissed her.

  ‘Who’s she with?’ I asked.

  You paused and shook your head slowly. ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Looks like she’s really cut up about the ex-boyfriend, then,’ I said. You laughed.

  ‘So…’ I held out the beer again. You grinned and took it, clinking it against mine before taking a deep swallow and then licking your bottom lip as you lowered the bottle. It was intentionally provocative and I felt myself harden. You held my gaze almost challengingly as you took another slug of beer.

  ‘Come back to mine,’ I said suddenly. Sarah had vanished, presumably with her new man. I wondered if he minded that she was so easy.

  You hesitated for a second, still looking at me, then you gave a tiny shrug and slipped your hand into mine. The bar was heaving with people, and I pushed my way through, keeping tight hold of your hand so I didn’t lose you. Your keenness to come with me both excited and dismayed me: I couldn’t help but wonder how often you did this, and with whom.

  We burst from the hot fug of the Ice Bar on to the street and you shivered as the cold hit you.

  ‘Did you not bring a coat?’

  You shook your head and I slipped off my jacket and put it round your shoulders as we walked to the car. You smiled gratefully at me and I felt a warmth of my own.

  ‘Should you be driving?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said shortly. We drove in silence for a while. Your skirt had ridden up as you sat down, and I reached out my left hand and placed it just above your knee, my fingers touching the inside of your lower thigh. You moved your leg: only a fraction, but enough to shift my hand on to your kneecap instead of your thigh.

  ‘You look sensational tonight.’

  ‘Do you really think so? Thank you.’

  I removed my hand to change gear. When I put it back on your leg, I slid my hand an inch higher, my fingers gently caressing your skin. This time you didn’t move.

  Back at the house you walked around the sitting room, picking things up to look at them. It was disconcerting, and I made the coffee as quickly as I could. It was a pointless ritual: neither of us wanted a drink, although you said you did. I placed them on the glass-topped table and you sat next to me on the sofa, half-facing me. I tucked your hair behind your ears, keeping my hands either side of your face for a moment, before leaning forward and kissing you. You responded instantly, your tongue exploring my mouth and your hands running over my back and shoulders. I pushed you slowly backwards, still kissing you, until you were lying underneath me. I felt your legs wrap themselves around mine: it was good to be with someone so eager, so quick to respond. Marie had been so unenthusiastic that at times it was as if she was entirely absent, her body going through the motions but her mind somewhere else.

  I slid my hand up your leg and felt the soft, smooth flesh of your inner thigh. My fingertips brushed against lace, then you pulled your mouth away from mine, and wriggled up the sofa, away from my hand.

  ‘Slow down,’ you said, but your smile showed me you didn’t mean it.

  ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘You’re so gorgeous – I can’t help myself.’

  A pink flush spread across your face. I rested on one arm and with the other pulled up your skirt around your waist. Slowly, I ran a finger under the elastic of your knickers.

  ‘I don’t—’

  ‘Hush,’ I said, kissing you. ‘Don’t spoil it. You’re the most lovely thing, Jennifer. You turn me on so much.’

  You kissed me back and stopped pretending. You wanted it just as much as I did.

  27

  The train from Bristol to Swansea takes nearly two hours, and although I’m desperate for a glimpse of the sea, I’m glad of the solitude and the time to think. I didn’t sleep at all in custody, my mind racing as I waited for morning. I was frightened that if I closed my eyes the nightmares would come back. So I stayed awake, sitting on the thin plastic mattress and listening to the shouts and thumps from up and down the corridor. This morning the gaoler offered me a shower, indicating a concrete enclosure in the corner of the female wing. The tiles were wet, and a clump of hair covered the plughole like a squatting spider. I declined the offer, and the stale stench of the custody suite still clings to my clothes.

  They interviewed me again, the female detective and the older man. They were frustrated by my silence, but I wouldn’t be drawn on more detail.

  ‘I killed him,’ I repeated, ‘isn’t that enough?’

  Eventually they gave up and sat me on the metal bench by the custody desk while they had whispered conversations with the sergeant.

  ‘We’re bailing you,’ DI Stevens said eventually, and I looked at him blankly until he explained what it meant. I hadn’t expected to be released, and I felt guilty at how relieved I was to hear that I had another few weeks of freedom.

  The two women across the aisle get off at Cardiff in a flurry of shopping and nearly forgotten coats. They leave behind a copy of today’s Bristol Post, and I reach across for it, only half wanting to read it.

  It’s on the front page: Hit-and-run driver arrested.

  My breath quickens as I scan the article for my name, and I let out a small sigh of relief when I see they haven’t printed it.

  A woman in her thirties has been arrested in connection with the death of five-year-old Jacob Jordan, who died in November 2012 following a hit-and-run in Fishponds. The woman was released on bail, to appear at Bristol Central police station next month.

  I imagine this paper in homes all over Bristol: families shaking their heads and holding their children a little closer. I read the piece again, making sure I haven’t missed anything that might give away where I am living, and then I fold it carefully so the story is on the inside.

  At Swansea bus station I find a bin and push the newspaper underneath the Coke cans and fast-food wrappers. The ink has come off on my hands, and I try to rub it off, but my fingers are stained black.

  The bus to Penfach is late, and when I finally arrive in the village it’s getting dark. The Post Office store is still open, and I pick up a basket to collect a few groceries. The shop has two counters, at opposite ends, both staffed by Nerys Maddock, helped after school by her sixteen-year-old daughter. It is as impossible to buy envelopes at the grocery counter as it is to buy a tin of tuna and a bag of apples at the Post Office counter, and so you must wait as Nerys locks the till and shuffles from one s
ide of the shop to the other. Today the daughter is behind the grocery counter. I fill a basket with eggs, milk and fruit, pick up a bag of dog food and place my shopping on the counter. I smile at the girl, who has always been friendly enough, and she glances up from her magazine but doesn’t speak. Her eyes flick over me, then drop down to the counter again.

  ‘Hello?’ I say. My growing unease turns it into a question.

  The little bell above the door rings as an elderly woman I recognise comes into the shop. The girl stands up and calls through into the next room. She says something in Welsh, and a few seconds later Nerys joins her behind the till.

  ‘Hi, Nerys, I’ll take these, please,’ I say. Nerys’s face is as stony as her daughter’s, and I wonder if they have had an argument. She looks straight past me and addresses the woman behind.

  ‘Alla i eich helpu chi?’

  They begin a conversation. The Welsh words are as foreign to me as always, but the occasional glances in my direction, and the distaste on Nerys’s face, make their meaning clear. They are talking about me.

  The woman reaches around me to hand over the change for her newspaper and Nerys rings through the sale. She picks up my basket of groceries and dumps it behind the counter by her feet, then turns away from the shop floor.

  The heat from my cheeks burns my face. I put my purse back in my bag and turn round, so desperate to get out of the shop that I knock into a display and cause packets of gravy mix to come tumbling down. I hear a tut of disapproval before I can wrench open the door. I walk swiftly through the village, not looking left or right for fear of another confrontation, and by the time I reach the caravan park I am crying uncontrollably. The blind on the shop window is up, meaning Bethan is there, but I can’t bring myself to go and see her. I continue along the footpath to my cottage and only then realise that Patrick’s car wasn’t in the caravan park car park. I don’t know why I expected it to be there – I didn’t call him from the police station, so he has no way of knowing I have come back – but its absence leaves me with a feeling of misgiving. I wonder if he stayed at all, or if he left as soon as the police took me away; if he wanted nothing more to do with me. I console myself with the fact that even if he found it easy to walk away from me, he wouldn’t abandon Beau.

  I have the key in my hand before I realise that the red on the door isn’t an optical illusion, caused by the setting sun, but smears of paint, crudely brushed on with a clump of grass that now lies abandoned at my feet. The words have been written in a hurry; splashes of paint covering the stone doorstep.

  GET OUT.

  I look around, half expecting to find someone watching me, but dusk is creeping in and I can’t see further than a few feet. I shiver and battle with the key, losing my patience with the temperamental lock and kicking the door hard in frustration. A shard of dried paint flies off and I kick it again, my pent-up emotion venting itself in a sudden and irrational rage. It doesn’t help with the lock, of course, and eventually I stop, leaning my forehead against the wooden door until I’m calm enough to try the key again.

  The cottage feels cold and inhospitable, as if it is joining the village in wanting me out. I know without calling for him that Beau isn’t here, and when I go into the kitchen to check that the range is on I see a note on the table.

  Beau is in the kennels at the surgery. Text me when you’re back.

  P.

  It’s enough for me to know that it’s over. I can’t help the tears welling up and I screw my eyes tightly shut to stop them from spilling on to my cheeks. I remind myself that I chose this path and now I have to walk it.

  Aping Patrick’s curtness I send him a one-line text message and he replies to say that he will bring Beau over after work. I had half expected him to send someone else, and I feel both eager and apprehensive at the thought of seeing him.

  I have two hours before he arrives. It’s dark out, but I don’t want to stay here. I put my coat back on and go outside.

  The beach is a curious place to be at night. There is no one up on the clifftop, and I walk down to the water’s edge and stand in the shallows, my boots disappearing for a few seconds as the tail end of each wave reaches me. I take a step forward and the water licks at the hem of my trousers. I feel the damp creep up my legs.

  And then I keep walking.

  The slope of the sand at Penfach is gradual, leading a hundred metres or more out to sea before the shelf ends and it falls away. I watch the horizon and put one foot in front of the other, feeling the sand sucking at my feet. The water passes my knees and splashes my hands, and I think of playing in the sea with Eve, clutching buckets filled with seaweed, and jumping over foam-tipped waves. It is icy cold, and as the water swirls around my thighs my breath catches but I keep on moving. I’m not thinking any more; just walking, walking into the sea. I hear a roaring, but if it’s coming from the sea I don’t know if it is warning me or calling to me. It’s harder to move now: I’m chest-high in the waves and dragging each leg forward against the weight of water. And then I’m falling; stepping into open space, and slipping under the surface. I tell myself not to swim, but the voice goes unheeded and my arms begin thrashing of their own accord. I suddenly think of Patrick, forced to search for my body until the tide throws it up, broken by the rocks and eaten by fish.

  As though slapped on the face I shake my head violently and take a gasp of air. I can’t do this. I can’t spend my whole life running from the mistakes I’ve made. In my panic I’ve lost sight of the shore and I flail in a circle, before the clouds shift and the moon shows the cliffs high above the beach. I begin to swim. I’ve drifted further out since I stepped off the shelf, and although I kick downwards, searching for a foothold, I feel nothing but freezing water. A wave hits me and I choke on a mouthful of salty water, retching as I try to breathe through my coughs. My wet clothes drag in the sea, and I can’t kick off my laced boots, which weigh heavily downwards.

  My arms are aching and my chest feels tight, but my head is still clear and I hold my breath and push under the water, focusing on slicing my hands cleanly through the waves. When I look up and take a breath, I think I am a little closer to the shore, and I repeat the movement again, and again. I kick a foot downwards and feel something on the toe of my boot. I swim another few strokes and kick again, and this time I step on to solid ground. I swim and run and crawl my way out of the sea, salt water in my lungs and ears and eyes, and when I reach dry sand I crouch down on all fours and anchor myself before standing up. I am shaking uncontrollably: from the cold, and from the realisation that I’m capable of something so unforgivable.

  When I reach the cottage I strip off my clothes and leave them on the floor in the kitchen. I pull on warm, dry layers, then go back downstairs and light the fire. I don’t hear Patrick approach but I hear Beau bark, and before Patrick knocks at the door I have thrown it open. I crouch down to say hello to Beau, and to hide my uncertainty at seeing Patrick again.

  ‘Will you come in?’ I say, when I eventually stand up.

  ‘I should get back.’

  ‘Just for a minute. Please.’

  He pauses, then comes inside and pulls the door closed behind him. He makes no move to sit down, and we stand for a moment or two, Beau on the floor between us. Patrick looks past me to the kitchen, where a pool of water has seeped from my sodden clothes. A hint of confusion clouds his expression, but he says nothing, and that’s when I realise any feelings he had for me have evaporated. He doesn’t care why my clothes are soaked; why even the coat he gave me is dripping wet. All he cares about is the terrible secret I kept from him.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Inadequate, but heartfelt.

  ‘What for?’ He’s not going to let me off so lightly.

  ‘For lying to you. I should have told you I had…’ I can’t finish the sentence, but Patrick takes over.

  ‘Killed someone?’

  I close my eyes. When I open them Patrick is walking away.

  ‘I didn’t know how to tell you,�
� I say, the words falling over themselves in my hurry to speak. ‘I was frightened of what you might think.’

  He shakes his head, as though he doesn’t know what to make of me. ‘Tell me one thing: did you drive away from that boy? The accident I can understand, but did you drive away without stopping to help?’ His eyes search mine for an answer I can’t give him.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, I did.’

  He pulls open the door with such force I take a step back, and then he is gone.

  28

  You stayed the night, that first time. I pulled the duvet around us both, and lay beside you watching you sleep. Your face was smooth and untroubled; tiny flickers of movement beneath the translucent skin on your eyelids. When you slept I didn’t have to pretend, keeping my distance in case you realised how hard I was falling for you. I could smell your hair; kiss your lips; feel your soft breath on mine. When you slept you were perfect.

  You smiled before you had even opened your eyes. You reached for me without prompting, and I lay back and let you make love to me. For once, I was glad to find someone in my bed in the morning, and I realised I didn’t want you to leave. If it had not been absurd, I would have told you right then and there that I loved you. Instead I made you breakfast, then I took you back to bed, so that you would know how much I wanted you.

  I was pleased when you asked to see me again. It meant I didn’t have to spend another week on my own, waiting for the right time to call you. So I let you think you were calling the shots, and we went out again that night, and again two nights later. Before too long you were coming over every evening.

  ‘You should leave some things here,’ I said, one day.