by Sarah Wray
I wish she would stop saying my name like I am one of her pupils.
‘I understand you must be in a very difficult position right now. Really I do. And I wish I could do more to help. But I can’t, I’m afraid.’
‘The police, they said you had mentioned the incident with the student.’
Silence. Just her breathing.
‘When the girl… when she was upset and you’d said he shouldn’t be alone in the classroom.’
‘It’s standard practice, Ms Pendle.’
‘But was there anything more to it?’
‘Ms Pendle, it’s my duty as headteacher of this school to be transparent – I stated the facts to the officers that I spoke to and, frankly, I would rather that we were not having this conversation about it. I don’t think it’s appropriate. It is beyond what I am comfortable doing.’
Her voice is nothing but official now. The wall is completely up.
‘Is that all, Ms Pendle? I’m very sorry. Really, I am.’
I click to end the call.
After the call with the school, I’m still a ball of energy. My nails push into my hands, jaw flexed. It didn’t help. Didn’t get me anywhere at all. Everywhere I go I just get a hand in the face, locked out. No one is interested in finding Chris, or helping me to.
Twenty-Two
Friday, 13 November
Jeannie and I sit in the seafront café, surrounded by the minty green walls and the high ceiling that make it feel even colder indoors than it is. The glass doors at the front of the café look out to the grey sea. I can’t warm up after the blustery walk over so I leave my coat on. Jeannie’s been texting me non-stop since the newspaper article. She pretty much demanded to meet.
Pictures of poolside beauty contests in the 1950s line the walls in cheap, black plastic frames – the women look coiffed and pristine in close-fitting shorts or voluminous skirts and halter-neck tops. A fake, romanticised version of real life, surely. How will they represent our era, I wonder?
The foam wobbles as Jeannie puts two cappuccinos down, and two scones.
Before I can refuse, Jeannie gets in there first. ‘Do me a favour and just eat it, will you, Becs? I’ve got an hour on my own to have a coffee without someone swinging off me or demanding food. Just go with it, for me.’
I stir the coffee and break a small piece off the scone. Jeannie slathers hers with a thick layer of butter.
‘So, I have finally got a hold of you then.’
‘Sorry, I was visiting Mum and stuff.’
‘How is she?’
‘Same.’
‘Bless her. Give her my love. I’ll bring Sam and Ellen in to see her again soon.’
‘She’ll like that.’
‘So the thing in the paper then…’
I take a gulp of the coffee and it burns my throat. Good.
‘There’s nothing to say that it’s true.’
‘Becs—’
‘There isn’t!’
‘Have you spoken to the police? Detective Whatsherface.’
‘Fisher. Yeah. She came round.’
‘And what’s her take on it?’
‘Same old. She doesn’t give much away. They have to investigate blah blah blah.’
‘Well, at least she’s giving you a bit of information for once. But she didn’t say she didn’t think it was true?’
‘No, but she wouldn’t say that, would she? What are you trying to say, Jeannie?’ I put my cup down and it clatters a bit too loudly. People turn and look.
Jeannie lowers her voice. ‘I’m just saying… well, I’m just trying to find out how you feel about it. Because the thing with Ellen the other day; at my place. The questions you were asking her. I was… well, I was wondering if you were having your doubts.’
I push the barely touched scone away. ‘I’ve never had anything but doubts, Jeannie. This hasn’t changed my mind about anything.’
The mental cramps, the spasms; they’ve been getting worse. When I’m trying to get to sleep or just sitting around, they come in so vividly from nowhere. The images of Chris and Kayleigh. But I don’t tell her that.
‘Will you not come and stay with us for a few days? Ellen would love it, I know she would.’
‘How is she? After the other day? I’m so sorry, Jeannie. Really, I am.’
She bats the air away in front of her. ‘Honestly, she’s fine. Please let’s just forget about it. You’re under a lot of pressure.’
But her manner is too breezy. It’s obvious it’s a ‘thing’. Dan’s probably had a word with her about it.
‘I’m fine at the caravan. Really, I am. I prefer to be on my own.’
Jeannie sighs and takes a big bite of the scone, talking with her mouth full. ‘Well, I don’t really get why, but whatever. I’m not going to rope you into babysitting, you know.’
‘You’d never let me babysit your kids.’
‘Don’t be daft.’ But she looks uncomfortable. ‘Becs, just promise me you’ll lie low. You’ll knock it off with the leaflets and hashing over the stories on the Internet again. Please. People will be on edge right now with all this. So just keep a low profile.’
‘We wouldn’t want to upset anyone, would we?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Yeah, I know. Does going out for your birthday count as lying low, then?’
‘I said lie low, not roll over and bloody die. I’m saying don’t provoke people. You’re allowed to go out and have a laugh.’
‘I’ll see how I feel. I’m really not up for going out at the minute. Sorry.’
‘You’re coming out. End of, Becs. It’s my birthday and you have never not come out for my birthday. It’s happening.’
Jeannie looks out at the sea, drinking her coffee without blinking.
‘Jeannie, I want to ask you something.’
She lowers her cup. ‘You don’t need permission.’
‘You won’t like it.’
‘Out with it,’ she says, clattering the cup onto the saucer.
‘The other night. Dan. What was he saying?’
‘Not this again. I don’t want another row, Becs.’
‘It’s not that.’
‘What then?’ I suspect she knows what I’m referring to but evading it.
‘He said “no wonder” something about Chris.’
Jeannie lets out a sigh and turns to the waves again. ‘You really want to do this? OK, it wasn’t just about Chris.’
‘What do you mean?’
She puts her hands out in surrender. ‘He said no wonder you were always arguing.’
‘What? That isn’t true. Why would he say that?’
She takes a sip from the cup, even though it’s empty. ‘Look, Becs, the last few times we’d seen you, things seemed a bit… tense between you?’
‘No.’ I can’t keep the defensiveness out of my voice. ‘It was more that I had a lot on with Mum and everything and sometimes it just got a bit much for us.’
‘What about that day at the beach? Ellen said you had a row.’
‘It was stupid.’
‘OK. You don’t have to tell me.’
‘I was trying to tell him to try to get an exhibition of his pictures at one of the cafés in town and he lost his temper a bit with me. He felt like they weren’t good enough. Or maybe he was offended that I suggested an exhibition somewhere so small. I don’t remember now. It was nothing.’
‘Alright, Becs. Fine.’
‘Then why are you looking at me like you don’t believe me?’
‘Becs, I just want you to take the rose-tinted specs off a bit. I think maybe it will help you deal with all this a bit better.’
We sit in silence for a bit after that. She tries to make chit-chat with me but I give her one-word answers. We say a frosty goodbye after a while, and Jeannie watches me walk away until I’m out of view. It’s like I said to Detective Fisher – people fixate on the cracks and the flaws in other people’s relationships.
‘See you tomorro
w!’ she shouts after me.
I need to go round to the house before I go out, to get something to wear for tomorrow night, and to check for a credit card – just one more, in case one of the others gets stopped.
I take the bus to the house, as close as it will take me anyway. It’s almost empty, just a group of boys at the back. I try not to look at them, not be noticed. In case it’s any of the ones who have been to the caravan park.
I sit close to the front and watch myself on the CCTV screen, grainy, then the picture switches. I can’t get a clear view of the boys because there’s a delay. The footage jerks. There’s a whoop and laughing from behind and it’s a physical effort not to turn round. They’re on the camera again, coming down the aisle towards me. I tense up. No longer able to stop it, I crane my head round but they’re already past me and out onto the street. They’re only about twelve years old, laughing and joking among themselves, not interested in me at all.
As we approach the estate, I notice how strange the newly laid roads look, how much they stand out for their perfect straightness, and the emptiness on either side. Just fields and swathes of wasteland where they said they would build. There’s no sign of anyone, like always; the show home placard still there, the houses uniform, bland, boxy.
I keep my head down between the bus and the house, just in case anyone is around.
As I open the door, letters collect behind it in a snowdrift. I can’t look at them now. Most will probably be telling me how much money I owe, others will be offering me more credit. I will need those ones, later on.
I lock the front door behind me and stand in the entrance breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth, with my hand on the handle of the door to the front room. My stomach is contracting. I close my eyes and push, forcing them open after a few moments in the room. This time I don’t run upstairs – I force myself to look.
Everything looks and feels just the same, as if I’ve just been out to work or popped to the shops, like the letter I left for Chris suggests I have done. As if he and I are still living here as normal. At least, I think it feels the same. It’s hard to focus on a solid memory of what it was actually like, but I can so clearly picture Chris, about to pop his head out of the kitchen, wearing rubber gloves or an apron, getting started on tea or the washing up when he got in from work. There’d be music or comedy on the radio or a CD playing. Here, now, it’s completely silent, except for a tap dripping in the kitchen.
I survey the room more slowly now, try to stop my mind doing an auto-fill. Sometimes I think, Maybe I should just move back here. Why pay twice? Especially when I have so little money anyway. But I can’t. My stomach is twisting, throat tight already at just being so close to him, yet so far away. I am better at the caravan.
I take a slow walk around the house, and already the tears are rising. It’s too much. This is why I don’t come here; it’s my way to block things out. I can see now, cold-eyed, that it looks like a house but not a home. Maybe it’s just because he’s not here, it’s not lived-in. Because it was cosy when we were here: the mornings with tea and toast on the sofa with a blanket, the nights watching films.
But now, the pictures we have up look cheap and anonymous. We said we were going to get some of Chris’s photos blown up, but we hadn’t got around to it. The cushions that I bought from the supermarket looked fun when I saw them – parakeets on one, coloured houses on the other – pink, mint, yellow, powder blue. They look tatty and washed out already.
Deep breaths. There’s some vodka in the fridge. Someone left it after we had them round for a meal and board games. A couple – Chris plays football with the husband – it’s bad that I can’t remember their names now. Ashley rings a bell. Was that her or him?
The fridge is empty except for the vodka, but it still smells foisty. Sealed for too long. I don’t remember clearing it out before I left. I can’t imagine I would have, but a lot of things from around then are a blur. I take a swig. It’s icy cold, which makes it easier to swallow; it burns less. One more, since I need to go upstairs to the bedroom.
I should really turn off the fridge, save what little money I have. But, pathetically, that feels too final. Part of me wants to leave everything as it is so we could just pick up as we left off tomorrow – as if nothing has happened.
Buoyed by the hit of vodka, I go up to our room to find something to wear later. I just want to get this over with now. All our clothes are still hanging there, lifeless. His in the wardrobe on his side of the bed; mine in the one on my side. His side. My side.
I open my wardrobe. The colours, patterns and shapes; each reminds me of the old me, my old life, our old life. Places I have worn them, days out we had together. Jeannie’s wedding, my last birthday. The flowery anniversary dress I opened with a cava breakfast in bed – two sizes too small – his face fell before we laughed about that. I take out a jumper of Chris’s from the drawers on his side of the bed and lie down with it, breathing it in, its softness against my face. The need to hold Chris, to touch him and be near him is physical; it’s overwhelming. I would give anything, really anything, for just one minute together. I hold a pillow and drape the soft jumper over it. The blinds are slightly open and the winter sun is beaming through. I close my eyes, and for two minutes, I allow myself to imagine we’re lying there together. I don’t let anything else, the truth, in at all for that short time. I am getting good at that. I am completely calm for those moments. I almost feel as if we are actually here.
But soon this feeling will be replaced by the anger again – the rage that he’s just abandoned me here; that he might have betrayed me in one of the worst ways I could ever imagine. The shame he’s made me feel for something I haven’t done.
I wake with a start. Being back here in the bedroom, I dreamt Chris and I were lying here, intertwined. But I turned into Kayleigh somehow. In that way you can in dreams, I was both Kayleigh and I was me, outside of it all, watching them in horror. I was trying to shout at them, at us, but no sound would come out.
Even though there is no one to see me, I suddenly feel foolish clutching the pillow and the jumper. I feel exposed somehow and I push them both away.
I lie there for some time, just in the blankness, focusing on the feeling of the softness of the bed underneath me, the weight of my limbs.
I don’t know how long I have been here, but the time is getting on. The alarm clock blinks red. It’s 4 p.m. already.
The light outside is changing. Eventually, I force myself up to find something to wear for this stupid night out. I no longer feel like going, but it would upset Jeannie if I didn’t. And she’s right: I can’t slip back to where I was before.
I am unenthusiastic about the clothing selection, scraping the hangers along the rail and discounting each option immediately. Once, I would have spent hours picking out the right outfit, trying things on, getting a new lipstick, doing a trial run with my hair. In the end, I decide on blue jeans, a cheap black vest with subtle sequins around the edges, ballet flats and a long black cardigan. The type of thing I would once have worn for an average day – to the supermarket, even. Not for a night out. But I have no interest in looking ‘nice’; it’s for Jeannie’s benefit. I don’t want to drag her night down.
Something in me keeps feeling that making an effort would be inappropriate, that it would be frowned on.
When Dad died, before Mum really deteriorated, she fretted for days about what to wear to his funeral. Should it be bright, in celebration of his life, or dark and sombre? It was Mum’s friends who had mentioned the ‘celebration of life’ approach. But, really, we’re not that kind of family. It’s too modern. We’re a fire and brimstone, all in black, get-pissed-at-the-wake type of family. She went for dark grey in the end and I wore an old black dress.
The outfit I have picked out won’t draw too much attention. It’s suitably nothing.
I go downstairs and take one last look back into the living room; another twinge. I can’t put my finger on it –
this niggling feeling that something is off or out of place, not quite the way it should be.
Twenty-Three
Friday, 13 November
Back in town, I wander aimlessly for a while, looking into the arcades, peering into empty pubs as I go, before drifting into the town centre and past the betting shops. I think about going in again, asking around, but what would be the point? I wonder if the woman would remember me, from throwing me out the last time, guiding me by the elbow. She said I was ‘harassing her customers’.
On the high street, the shops and cafés are already starting to close. There are lights off in some; in others people are cashing up or hoovering, ready for tomorrow. Further along the seafront, the traffic peters out to almost nothing.
There’s a narrow road that leads to the caravan park. As I approach the turning, a parked car suddenly flicks its lights on and starts the engine. No one has got in, though. They must have been sitting, waiting. Waiting to collect someone, perhaps, passing the time with a newspaper. Or pulled over to make a phone call.
The red car gets a little ahead of me, then drops back again, parallel. It makes me think of the dog, Polly, that Mum and Dad had after I moved out. The trainer told Dad the dog should never be allowed to get ahead of you when you’re out walking. If you want to show it who’s boss, it should always be next to you or a little behind. ‘You’re walking the dog; don’t let it walk you,’ she’d said.
I slow down slightly. The car’s engine runs at a low hum. It’s going slower than it should on this stretch of road, but there are no other cars around now. I try to look quickly into the car but all I can see is my own reflection.
I speed up again to turn into the narrow lane to access the caravan park. It’s poorly lit, only a few street lamps too far spaced out, high walls and huge trees on both sides, making it feel even darker. I realise the car is in the lane too. Just a coincidence, I tell myself. I take out my phone, flashing on the light, making it clear that I can contact someone, call for help. Reaching into my bag, I position my key in the fist in my hand – the point poking out, a makeshift stabbing device, like they tell you to do for self-defence.