Never Tell

by Seeber, Claire

  There is no safety net, of course – J wouldn’t have thought of such a thing. And I realise the girl is lost; there is no time to save her. She is lost. And the silence is broken only by a crunch, the hideous thud of a body crumpling on the floor.

  I wake up. I run down the stairs, my heart beating frantically, tripping in my high shoes.

  ‘Ring an ambulance,’ I yell at someone, and I see Alicia’s great eyes wide with shock.

  I push through the crowd to the girl and she is not moving, though her eyes are open and she is still alive, I think, thank God. One leg is tucked neatly behind her again, the other out at a horrible angle that I cannot bear to look at, and two of those stocky men are pushing towards us. Holly’s mother offers a pink pashmina to place below her head.

  ‘Don’t move her!’ another voice says.

  I look at that leg and I grab Effie, who is round-mouthed with horror, and shove her into the nearest arms, which are Jen’s, hissing. ‘Take her away, get her away, please. And Alicia and Holly.’ Jen nods dumbly, the colour draining from her face, and grasps Alicia’s hand. Star is so drunk she bursts into tears and begins to wail.

  ‘Mummy,’ Effie whispers over Jen’s shoulder, ‘the lady’s not flying more now, is she, Mummy?’

  I feel a hot needling in my eyes, and I crouch down by the spangled girl who is breathing shallow rapid breaths, and I say, ‘Try not to move, OK?’ and I try really hard to smile reassuringly.

  ‘The ambulance is coming,’ an authoritative voice says, I don’t know whose. I think it’s one of those men, he’s on a phone, and I take the girl’s hand and it’s so cold, and as I look up I see the other two thugs escort my husband through the arch, towards the front door. And by the door I think I see Ash Kattan turning away, and the beautiful blond boy. They look like brothers, I think vacantly, though the blond boy looks horrified, truly sickened – and then a voice cuts through my thoughts.

  ‘It was like she threw herself off,’ the voice says, ‘I’m sure she did.’

  ‘It looked like she did,’ someone else agrees, breathy with shock. ‘It was like she was – I don’t know. Trying to fly.’

  I turn back to the silver-spangled girl and I wonder why her sequins are turning darker, and then I realise with a kind of dull horror it must be blood. I see her eyes flutter, reflecting the thousand tiny lights strung up around the room, and she’s saying something, something I can’t understand. A name, I think. Helen Kelsey’s husband, Frank, is heading towards me now and I remember with relief that he’s a doctor.

  Just as I hear the front door bang shut against the spring wind, the candles all guttering in the breeze, the girl’s eyes close; they flutter and they close. The reflections are extinguished; her eyes are shut.

  Chapter Twenty

  At first they wouldn’t tell me about the girl. The nurse at reception established that I wasn’t family, therefore I couldn’t know, but eventually relented in the face of my evident distress. A harried doctor came to talk to me; wearily he looked at my face and asked what had happened to me. I’d forgotten about my own bruise. I’d covered it so carefully for the party with makeup that had apparently now worn off.

  ‘It doesn’t look very hopeful,’ he said quietly about the girl, and asked me if I knew how to contact her family. Before I could answer, the crash-cart came racing down the corridor and the doctor went running.

  I sat alone in the waiting area, drinking tepid coffee and trying to think straight. I still had no idea who had taken James. After he’d been manhandled out of the house and all hell had broken loose, I’d shooed everyone away into other rooms. I’d quickly seen that Star was far too drunk to accompany her injured friend to hospital, and out of frantic guilt, I’d left the kids with Domino and Jen and ridden behind in the ambulance.

  Two hours later, I still didn’t know where James was; his phone was ringing out – and now Liam, whom I’d left in charge of the guests, wasn’t answering his mobile either.

  And then the doctor who I’d just spoken to appeared from behind the rapidly drawn curtains and walked towards me, head bowed in exhaustion.

  I couldn’t believe Katya had died. I just sat in the neon-lit corridor on an orange chair, in shock, my mind racing. Sparkles from her costume on the corridor floor caught the overhead lights, twinkling incongruously against the well-trodden lino. Rational thought seemed impossible, but I promised the staff I’d get them her details as soon as I could, and then I called a cab and went back to the house; the house that seemed even less like home.

  The children were sleeping, thank God, and the guests had all gone apart from the few who’d passed out in drunken disarray. Jen was still up. She grasped my hands and told me there was still no news of James.

  ‘I’m sure he’ll be fine. You know James,’ she soothed, and made me tea, hugging me for a silent moment before going to bed herself.

  I sat amongst the debris of the party, the half-full glasses smeared with lipstick and fingerprints, the overflowing ashtrays; the empty canapé platters and discarded bits of clothing; the paper streamers and the hundreds of crimson roses, and I tried again to call Liam, James, anyone who might tell me what was happening. I was scared that James had been hurt, that he had been strong-armed away by someone he’d upset in clubland. I didn’t know who to call but I tried calling them all anyway, until I ran out of options. Eventually I fell into a doze on the sofa, clutching my cold tea.

  The phone pealed through the bizarre dream I was having about dancing in the old college bar with Danny Callendar and Dalziel, and I spilled the tea down my leg.

  ‘Rose.’ It was James. He said – and he wasn’t calm, he was a very long way from calm – he told me he had been arrested. The men who looked like thugs, they had turned out to be police.

  ‘What for?’ I asked harshly. A single silver stiletto shoe lay abandoned beneath the coffee table.

  ‘I don’t know.’ His voice sounded strangely small and high-pitched. ‘They just keep asking me where I’ve been recently and how I met the guys I bought the marble from.’

  I stared blindly at the ice sculpture of the couple fucking; it was melting.

  ‘How did you meet them?’

  ‘I can’t remember,’ he said plaintively. ‘My head’s a mess right now.’

  God knew what he had been taking at the party.

  ‘What do you mean, you can’t remember? Isn’t that why you went to Vietnam?’

  ‘The last few weeks have been so mental, I can’t think straight. I think Liam introduced me.’

  ‘Liam did?’ I said. I thought of Liam poking round the studio when James was away. I thought of Liam’s face on the day he had brought my children home. I thought about the fact that James said he hadn’t remembered asking Liam to collect them.

  ‘I need to speak to him,’ James said urgently. ‘Now. He needs to come down here.’

  ‘I can’t reach him. I don’t know where he’s gone, and Star’s out cold.’

  ‘Well, keep trying, can you?’ he snapped. ‘It’s pretty fucking desperate here.’

  I saw the trapeze artist spinning in the air; I shut my eyes hard as I heard the crunch and slap of her body hitting the ground. Someone had covered up the bloodstains with a towel; it lay at my own feet now.

  ‘She’s dead, James.’ My voice was a croak.

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘The girl on the trapeze. She died.’ I stared numbly at the towel. ‘I went to the hospital with her.’

  ‘Dead?’ he whispered.

  ‘They couldn’t stop the bleeding. She had massive internal injuries.’

  There was a silence. ‘James?’

  Softly my husband started to cry. ‘Oh Christ,’ he sobbed. ‘Oh Christ. I can’t believe this is happening.’

  ‘If there’s anything you need to tell me, J,’ I said, and I felt very cold, ‘you should do it now.’

  There was a pause. I pulled my cardigan tighter around me but I couldn’t stop shivering. The crying stopped. I could sense
James pulling himself together.

  ‘I need a lawyer. Ring Ruth Jones. Get her here now.’

  In the morning, after a few hours’ troubled sleep, I found a bedraggled Liam in the kitchen. Jen had apparently taken the children into Burford for hot chocolate and Star had already left for London. She would contact Katya’s parents and the hospital, Liam said, handing me a stewed cup of tea. I looked at him slumped over the kitchen counter.

  ‘What the hell’s going on, Liam?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know, Rose.’ He looked exhausted as he ran a meaty hand through sandy curls. ‘I’ve been at the police station half the bloody night myself with some weasely-faced copper yelling at me to tell the fucking truth.’

  ‘Were you?’ I stared at him. ‘James didn’t say.’

  ‘James didn’t know.’

  ‘So why’ve they let you go and not him?’

  ‘I don’t know, Rose. I just know that I haven’t a fucking Scooby what’s going on myself.’

  Of course, in time, that transpired not to be true, either.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  THE TIMES, APRIL 2008

  Millionaire record producer and club promoter James Miller was apparently apprehended by police during a lavish party at his home in Gloucestershire last night. It is unclear at this stage what, if any, the charges brought against Mr Miller are but he is currently being detained at Oxford police station. Mr Miller had considerable success in the late ‘90s with remixes of various Top Ten dance hits, the most famous being Domino’s smash ‘Hole in the Head’. Miller is also a partner in the Revolver super-clubs in London, Paris and New York. His business partner, Liam MacAvoy, was unavailable for comment today as was Miller’s wife, Rose Langton, the award-winning journalist; she is believed to be at the couple’s million-pound home in the Cotswolds, along with their three children.

  Slowly, everyone left the house until I was alone with my children. And the scary thing wasn’t being on my own; it was that I felt a kind of peace I hadn’t felt in years, a peace rapidly spoiled by my own guilt – and the fact that the poor girl had died here.

  On Monday morning I took the children into school, valiantly ignoring the stares and whispers. Only Holly’s mother Karen, who’d been at the party, asked if I was all right. The rest just stared, po-faced, beady-eyed – and I had the horrible feeling they were glad; that they felt I deserved it. We had always been outsiders, however ‘cool’ they thought we were, they didn’t really like us. They didn’t like our success, hated the fact I’d kept myself apart. But I hadn’t isolated myself for the reasons that they suspected. I was just wary of getting close to them; to people who would see the cracks beneath the façade of my life.

  When I got home, a car was waiting in the drive, a small dark woman leaning against it in an efficient grey suit. Too efficient to be a journalist.

  ‘Mrs Miller?’

  ‘Yep.’ I went to unlock the front door.

  ‘You need to come with me, please.’

  ‘Are you arresting me too?’ I swung to face her.

  ‘Not unless you want me to,’ she said pleasantly. ‘Or you think there’s a reason I should?’

  At the police station they kept on and on about James’s recent movements. I was torn between explaining that I rarely knew what he was up to at the best of times, and playing the loyal wife. I plumped for the latter, but I could sense it was to little effect, mainly because I didn’t have the answers they wanted.

  ‘You live an extremely comfortable life, don’t you, Mrs Miller?’

  ‘We’ve worked very hard for it.’

  ‘Really?’ She looked disbelieving. ‘I thought you were a stay-at-home mum.’

  I stared at her. How in this day and age could one woman look at another with such disdain? What happened to the sisterhood?

  ‘I am a “stay-at-home mum,” yes. At the moment. Apart from the one day I do at the Chronicle. But I was an extremely career-driven journalist before I had my first child six years ago. I had a weekly column; I did a lot of radio. I was doing well, financially.’

  ‘So you don’t work? Not really.’

  ‘Not really, no,’ I said wearily.

  ‘But still you live in a beautiful and costly home, you drive top-end cars, you employ a cleaner, your children go to private school—’

  ‘I drive a five-year-old Passat. Alicia goes to the village primary. The twins go to a nursery that we pay for, yes. But it’s hardly Eton.’

  ‘You have expensive foreign holidays, your clothes are—’

  ‘Sorry,’ I interrupted, ‘but what exactly are you getting at? My husband set up a record label in the nineties that does extremely well. He also produces artists who are multimillionaires themselves. You might even have heard of some of them.’

  ‘Might I?’ Her smile was false. ‘Enlighten me.’

  ‘Bono, Radiohead, Coldplay? Plus he co-owns three large nightclubs with a massive turnover. Occasionally we holiday in the towns they’re based in, but other than that, we mostly go to the Peak District to stay with my mum and dad. And like I said, I used to be fairly successful myself before I had Alicia.’ I drew breath, steadied myself. ‘We’re doing all right for ourselves, thank you. That doesn’t mean we are criminals.’

  She changed tack. ‘So he’s away a lot, your husband. And you keep up with his arrangements, do you?’

  ‘He travels all the time. It’s normal in his line of work. We both used to, when I worked full time. It’s hard, with three small kids, to keep up with exact schedules.’

  DS Montford looked unimpressed. ‘Does he often say he’s out of the country when he’s not?’ She peered at me over black rectangular glasses, like an impatient schoolteacher.

  ‘Sorry, I don’t follow,’ I said, glancing at the clock. ‘Will this take much longer? I have to collect my twins soon.’

  ‘Not much longer, no,’ she smiled affably, perusing her notes briefly. ‘The thing is, you’ve just told me Mr Miller’s last business trip was to Vietnam, last month.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Only, according to all our information, he never left the country.’

  ‘Never left the country,’ I repeated stupidly. My mouth was suddenly dry as sandpaper. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Pretty sure, yes. He never boarded the flight you say he did. He never crossed a border.’

  ‘But I dropped him at the airport. I spoke to him out there and everything.’ I thought of the crackly line, the shouted conversation. Helen Kelsey’s smug little face reared into my mind. I saw him driving yesterday. I looked at the policewoman. ‘As far as I know, he was abroad.’

  ‘He wasn’t, you know.’

  ‘Well, where was he?’

  ‘As his wife, Mrs Miller, I was hoping that you could have enlightened me on that one.’

  I felt a tightening in my chest. I didn’t answer.

  ‘As it is, we’re just trying to ascertain exactly where he was.’

  ‘Are you enjoying this?’ I asked her flatly. ‘Because you look like you are.’

  ‘Just doing my job, Mrs Miller,’ she smiled grimly, and pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. ‘Just doing my job.’

  They wouldn’t let me see James that morning. I knew that they probably couldn’t hold him much longer without charging him: the lawyer said they still hadn’t. But they also wouldn’t free him.

  I drove home through hedgerows still bursting with spring. Unbelievable that in the midst of this burgeoning beauty my life had just turned on its head; I feared it was not about to turn back soon. I was just grateful that for now, the children were still oblivious to the situation.

  A white butterfly fluttered across the windscreen – but when I glanced again to see it fly to freedom, it had disappeared. I had a horrible feeling that I had just destroyed it. Annihilated for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was starting to realise this wasn’t all just a horrible mistake.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  That
night, after I’d read stories, sung songs, warmed endless milk and kissed fat cheeks, trying desperately to pretend everything was absolutely normal, that Daddy was away for work again, that I was actually sane, I wrapped a blanket around myself and went alone into the dark. I sat on the bench beneath the magnolia tree, now bare of its petals, and listened to the gentle popple of the pond as the frogs broke the surface; I thought that this night-time peace was one of the things that had made my isolated life here worth it.

  I had been so lonely recently in the presence of my husband. I thought about the fact that now he was not here, it didn’t feel wrong.

  There was a soft crunch of gravel underfoot; my head snapped round. And then he was there, stealthy as the cat he had entered the garden without me realising; he was standing to my left.

  He stood beneath the stone archway where the roses grew in summer. My breath caught in my throat and my heart began to race until I had to forcibly quell it. There were so many things to say and yet nothing at all. I didn’t want to sound recriminatory and yet there were only recriminations. I was stupidly glad that he had come, although I knew I shouldn’t be; and yet so hurt and confused that I didn’t know where to start.

  Why did you vanish? Why did you threaten me? Why did you come near me in the first place?

  Questions flooded my head and yet I stayed silent. I stared at him as he leaned back against the wall, contemplating me. In the half-light it was hard to see him properly. With a pain like a hammer striking home I realised the only thing I wanted to do was reach out and touch him – and yet I was still so angry I wanted to scream. Worst of all, I was furious with myself for feeling like this.

  In the end I said, ‘Have you come to hurt my children? Because you’ll have to hurt me first.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ His voice was low and hoarse, and he seemed more unsure than I’d known him before.

  ‘Great. Thanks for the apology.’ I stood up. ‘Please, will you go now?’

  My legs were unsteady because I’d been sitting for so long. He crossed the gravel in two strides and I stepped back quickly, out of his reach, almost overbalancing in my haste to get away.