Gone Without a Trace

by Mary Torjussen

  I searched my iPod for the Dave Matthews Band album Matt and I used to listen to in our glory days and put it on low. I didn’t need Ray coming round to complain about the noise, but I didn’t want to sit there with only my own thoughts for company. I hadn’t played those tracks since Matt left, and they brought back so many memories of us lying on the sofa with our arms around each other and our faces close, so close I’d feel each breath he’d take.

  I shook myself. I’d go crazy if I started to think of him like that. I sat there with the flowers all around me, flickering in the light of the candles, and I drank my tea and thought about what I was going to do. Panic fluttered in my belly. There seemed no way out.

  And then, in the brief moment of time between one song and another, I heard a sound, a scraping sound. I thought it came from the kitchen. My heart began to pound so hard my chest wall hurt.

  Someone’s in my house.

  Slowly I stood up. I felt dizzy from the adrenalin rush and had to steady myself on the sofa. I strained my ears but couldn’t hear anything.

  I grabbed my phone and dialled 999, but didn’t press call. I was aware of the irony of phoning for help after all that had happened the previous day, but I knew that if I needed backup, I wouldn’t hesitate to call. Now there was silence, and I wondered whether I’d imagined the sound.

  I twisted the living room door handle and opened the door slowly. Tentatively. The hall was dim and nothing stirred. The kitchen door was open but the room was in darkness. I hesitated, then realised who it was. Who it must be.

  I stepped forward into the hall. I could feel my head buzzing and at that moment I truly felt I was going out of my mind.

  ‘Matt?’ I said. My voice sounded shaky, and I swallowed. ‘Matt, is that you?’

  I must be wrong. There’s nobody here.

  I turned back to the living room and saw my face in the mirror, lit up by the glow of the candles. I was so pale and thin I could hardly recognise myself. My cheeks were flushed with excitement and my eyes were sunken and black.

  I looked mad, completely mad.

  Then in the mirror I saw someone’s face behind mine, and my body jolted with shock.

  It was James.

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  ‘I was right,’ he said.

  I swung round. He stood in the doorway, blocking my path. He looked taller than usual, though that could have been the shadows. His eyes flickered over my bare arms and I crossed them quickly, but I knew he’d seen the scratches. He seemed pumped up. Furious. He stared at me as though he couldn’t believe his eyes.

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  It was as though I hadn’t spoken. ‘Why did you kill her?’

  I tried to speak, but my mouth was dry as dust.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No. Don’t even think of denying it.’

  He took a step towards me and I backed away.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you.’ There was a pause, and then he said, ‘I’m not like you. That’s not what I do.’

  I stood stock still.

  ‘Did you think I didn’t know what you were doing?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve always known, Hannah,’ he said. ‘Right from the day Matt left you.’

  I swallowed. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You were hitting him,’ he said. ‘That’s why he left.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just as you hit me,’ he said, ‘when we were together. That’s why I left you, remember?’

  Suddenly the ground felt unsteady beneath my feet. I grabbed hold of the side of the sofa and held on to it, using it as a shield between us.

  As I looked at James in the flickering candlelight, I remembered him as he was when I was with him that summer. I thought of us lying on his single bed making love for hours; walking arm in arm through the night around our little town, dreaming about the future. We talked non-stop that summer, and I told him things I’d never told anyone since.

  And then I recalled, too, the nights when I’d just see red. I flinched as I remembered the way I couldn’t stop hitting him and thumping him and calling him names. He’d laughed at first and tried to ward me off, but I was stronger than I looked. I always have been. And I’d learned from a master, too. Even as a small child, I’d learned how to hurt the one you love.

  ‘You didn’t leave me,’ I said. ‘I dumped you.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Really? You have a very short memory.’

  I flushed. I remembered all right. He’d written me a letter and told me exactly why it had to end. We hadn’t spoken again until more than ten years later, when he’d started dating Katie. The first time I saw him with her he took me to one side and said, ‘The past is past, Hannah,’ and then had acted as though we were friends.

  I should have known that we weren’t. How could we be?

  ‘And now here we are again,’ he said. ‘You and your temper. You’re out of control, Hannah.’

  My face burned and I realised that the embers of the fire that had been in my belly when I’d fought with Katie hadn’t died. Not quite.

  I tried to stay calm. ‘I’m not out of control.’

  ‘You were there, though, weren’t you?’

  I was silent, my brain working frantically to see how I could get out of this.

  ‘You were there,’ he said again, louder now. ‘Don’t pretend you weren’t.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, still trying to quell the fire inside me. ‘I was there. But I didn’t kill her.’

  ‘Of course you didn’t,’ he said. ‘You just happened to be chasing down your old boyfriend and you found him with your best friend. And you have a problem with keeping your hands to yourself when you’re angry, and now she’s dead and he’s in a coma and, funnily enough, you’re covered in scratches.’

  I looked down at the livid marks on my arms and winced. I knew bruises would soon appear all over my body from the kicks and punches Katie had landed as she tried to fight me off.

  ‘Did she put up a fight?’

  I couldn’t speak.

  ‘Well good for her,’ he said. ‘I can’t say I forgive her for having an affair, particularly with Matt, but I’m glad she gave you a hard time.’

  I probably shouldn’t have said anything after that, but I couldn’t help it. ‘I can’t forgive her either. I just can’t. She looked me in the eye, day after day, and lied to me.’ My voice broke. ‘She was supposed to be my friend!’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘She told me you were her best friend. She said it again and again. She was a bitch to you, and to me too, it seems. But she didn’t deserve to die.’

  ‘I know she didn’t! I didn’t want her to die!’ At first I thought that was all I’d say, but then I found I couldn’t stop. ‘I didn’t mean to do it.’

  He groaned, as though he was winded.

  ‘She just kept on talking. She wouldn’t shut up!’ My heart raced at the thought of it. ‘She said they were getting married, that they’d have a baby.’ I still burned with the injustice of that. ‘And yes, I hit her. I hit her to shut her up. But she hit me too. Look at me! Look what she did!’ I thrust my arms at James. ‘It was like being in school, the fights we’d have then. And then she fell against the little railing of the balcony and . . .’

  I couldn’t go on. The image of her falling, her mouth in an open scream, would always be with me, and I was so, so angry about that. What had she done to me, leaving me with that memory of her?

  ‘And what?’

  Suddenly my head was full of a red mist and I thumped my fist against it again and again. As if from miles away I could hear James shouting at me to stop, but I couldn’t. He grabbed hold of me and I twisted away, banging my head against the mantelpiece. I heard him swear and reach up to steady the candlestick, I think, and I leaned back and banged my head a second time. This time I saw stars, and for a moment there was relief.

  Just like he used to years ago, he grabbed me again and held me t
o him. ‘Tell me,’ he urged. I could feel his breath, jagged against my hair. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘The railing broke away,’ I whispered. ‘I reached out to her, to grab her, but she didn’t see me. She was looking at Matt.’ My face was hot and streaming with sweat. ‘She fell backwards.’ I gulped. ‘We were three storeys up and she didn’t stand a chance.’

  He let go of me then and sat heavily on the sofa. ‘And Matt?’

  ‘After Katie . . . after the balcony broke, Matt started to run. He wanted to go down to her.’ I was filled with shame as I added, ‘He wanted to run away from me, too. Katie’s bag was on the floor. She’d left it there when she came in. He fell over it – his foot caught in the handle – and he banged his head on the television table. You know, that black glass table that used to be in the living room here.’

  There was a silence, then he said, ‘That’s what the police said they thought happened.’

  I froze. ‘The police?’

  He nodded. ‘The nurse told me. His ankle’s bruised from the strap of the bag and his blood was on the table.’

  All I felt was relief. They couldn’t say I’d done that to him. My head was throbbing both from banging it and from stress, but I felt better now. I’d needed to tell someone.

  Eventually James spoke. ‘Katie told me she was away with work tonight. She was very convincing.’

  I nodded. ‘She convinced me too. Though I should have known she was involved with Matt as soon as he left home.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Remember I came round to your house one night not long after he’d left? She told you that Matt had changed the bed linen back to one of my own sets. I hadn’t told her that and she hadn’t been upstairs since he’d gone. The only way she could have known is if he’d told her. Or if she was there.’ I shook my head. ‘There was something niggling, just out of reach all that time. I couldn’t think what it was, but I knew it was there. It’s only today that I’ve realised what it was.’

  We were quiet then. I think both of us were thinking that if I’d noticed what she’d said then, none of this would have happened.

  And then something else dawned on me. I turned to James. ‘How did you get in?’

  Slowly he took a key from his pocket and put it on the coffee table in front of us: a key with a pink plastic hoop through it.

  I frowned. ‘Isn’t that the key I gave Katie when I first moved in?’

  He nodded.

  I’d forgotten all about it, but seeing it now, I remembered us going to get it cut together. I was so excited about my new home, but this was the first time I’d lived alone and I was worried in case I locked myself out. She’d linked my arm and squeezed me tight, promising to keep it safe. Clearly she hadn’t.

  I don’t know whether the blows to my head were affecting me, but I just didn’t understand. ‘But why didn’t you ring the bell?’

  He looked at me. I could see bravado on his face. And something else, too.

  Shame.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No.’ I closed my eyes. I couldn’t believe it. ‘It was you?’

  ‘What?’

  But he knew, and he knew I did too.

  ‘That was you? The flowers? The texts? The note that disappeared?’ The fury returned. ‘You came into my house?’

  He just looked at me.

  ‘None of it was Matt? Nothing at all?’

  ‘Why would Matt come to your house? Why would he send you anything?’ he said at last. ‘He was off having his affair with Katie. He’d forgotten all about you.’

  Now that made me smart, the thought that Matt hadn’t given me a second thought.

  ‘But the texts were from Matt’s number,’ I said. ‘How did that happen?’

  After the longest pause, he said, ‘You can buy an app.’

  ‘What? To make it look like you’re calling from another phone?’

  He nodded.

  ‘That should be illegal!’

  He looked at me and I flushed. ‘You’re not really in the strongest position to discuss legalities,’ he said.

  ‘But why, James? All those things. You made me think I was going mad.’

  ‘That’s how I felt when we were together,’ he said. ‘I thought it was about time you knew what it was like.’

  I stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘As soon as Matt disappeared, I guessed you’d hit him. When I came round that night, I half thought he’d be there, dead on the floor.’

  I flinched. ‘I was never that bad.’

  My words resounded around the room. Katie is dead. She’s dead because of you.

  ‘You were, Hannah. You still are! And I was only seventeen when you hit me. Have you any idea what that was like?’

  We’d never talked about this. Never.

  ‘Have you any idea what it means to be a young man . . . a boy, even . . . and to have a girl who you love more than anything in the world . . . a girl who says she loves you . . . hit you like that? I couldn’t tell anyone! Who could I tell without sounding pathetic? A failure.’ His voice broke and he sounded like a teenager again. I felt as though my heart was being squeezed. ‘It was . . . if you hadn’t said you loved me, it would have been easier. But you told me you loved me day after day. You bought me presents. We listened to the same music, we liked doing the same things. In bed . . .’ He didn’t say anything more about that. He didn’t need to. ‘You said we were soulmates. You said . . .’ He couldn’t go on.

  My throat was swollen with tears. I remembered it all. ‘It was true,’ I said. ‘All of it was true.’

  ‘It wasn’t true!’ he yelled. ‘How could it be? You don’t hit someone you love! And you promised again and again that you’d stop, that you’d get help.’

  I closed my eyes, remembering the same conversation with Matt earlier today. They were right. They were both right.

  ‘But then when I was driving here tonight, I realised something. You’ve been scared for years, long before I met you.’

  I stared at him, wondering how he knew.

  ‘I used to wonder why you let Katie put you down all the time.’

  ‘You knew she was doing that?’ For some reason I’d thought it was a private dance between Katie and me, where we’d each vie for prime position.

  He nodded. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’d see you sometimes, anticipating it. She’s just like your dad. You never stood up to her, just as you wouldn’t stand up to him.’

  I stared at him, horrified. I don’t know why I’d never seen that.

  ‘You told me about him, remember?’

  And then I did remember, one night early that summer when I was seventeen, when I’d run from my house crying because I could hear my dad hurting my mum. I’d been out with Katie, and my parents hadn’t heard me return. I heard what he did to her and I didn’t stop him. I never did. I ran to James’s house. Not to Katie’s; I could never have told her what was really going on at home. I talked to James about everything that night, and in the letter he wrote to me when he finished with me, he told me to move away and to get counselling, otherwise I’d end up just like my dad. And I’d done all that, but . . . well, it was harder than I’d thought. Impossible, really. Blood is blood, you know.

  I shuddered. It was almost easier to think of what had happened today than what had happened when I was at home, blocking my ears to my mother’s cries.

  I stared at the candles, flickering wildly in the draught from the open door. ‘So the phone calls . . . they were you?’

  He said nothing, but I knew I was right.

  ‘Do you normally phone women up and smash something so they scream?’

  He gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I broke that Vera Wang glass by mistake. I tried to buy another but it was out of stock.’

  ‘So you came and took mine?’

  He shrugged. ‘You know how she liked them.’

  Even right to the end, Katie had to have what she wanted.

  Then another pie
ce of the puzzle fell into place. ‘You sent me that photo, didn’t you?’

  ‘Which photo?’

  ‘The one of me in Sainsbury’s buying the candles.’ I felt like I was going mad. So it wasn’t Matt? He hadn’t been in the supermarket with me? ‘I got it on my phone this morning. Was that you?’

  It seemed so long ago now, and really I hadn’t paid it the attention I should.

  ‘Buying wine and candles and flowers,’ he said. ‘And Brie.’ He stared at me. ‘Are pregnant women meant to eat Brie and drink wine?’

  My face flamed and I said nothing.

  ‘But you’re not pregnant, are you? Did you really think you were fooling anyone?’

  ‘I was pregnant,’ I said, but even to my ears it sounded unconvincing. ‘I was, but I lost it.’

  ‘Bollocks!’ he shouted. ‘Stop lying, will you? You weren’t pregnant; I knew right from the start.’

  ‘How?’ I snapped. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Because when you were pregnant with my baby, you looked different.’

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  Suddenly the room was quiet. I could hardly breathe. We hadn’t spoken of this in more than fifteen years.

  ‘You looked softer then. I think I knew you were pregnant before you even said a word. And now,’ he said with disgust, ‘well, look at yourself, Hannah.’ He jumped up from the sofa and grabbed me by the shoulders, pushing me around to face the mirror.

  Tears blurred my vision. His hands gripped me, and when I said nothing, he shook me. And I thought of that last time I’d seen him, before he met up with Katie again, when he’d gripped me in the same way as I told him I’d been to the clinic and was no longer pregnant.

  He’d screamed, ‘But that was my baby!’

  I remember the way my body jerked as though it was yesterday.

  I’d tried to tell him that my dad wouldn’t let me have the baby, that he’d taken me to the clinic and arranged everything, that he was going to disown me completely if I went ahead with the pregnancy and that he’d almost knocked my mother out he was so angry with her for letting me sleep with James, but he wouldn’t listen.