The Murder of Graham Catton

by Katie Lowe

  ‘What are you laughing at?’

  I turn, an old trapped nerve in my neck sparking at the sudden motion. Evie stands behind me, in ancient pyjamas, an empty glass in her hand.

  ‘Hi,’ I say, clumsily. ‘It’s just Sarah.’ I pause. ‘She says I’m being a bitch to Dan.’

  Evie gives me a sardonic smile. ‘You probably are.’

  I shoot her a look. A warning. But I don’t correct her. Instead, I tap the chair beside me. I can’t bear to ask her to join me, outright. I don’t think I can take the rejection.

  She pauses, for a moment, considering. And then, she sits.

  And I am useless. I don’t know what to do next. A decade of training, the best part of two more spent working with troubled kids. And yet, now, with my own daughter, I draw a blank. I take her glass and fill it. I wince at my reflection in the black window, and whip the curtain shut.

  ‘I listened to Conviction,’ she says, finally.

  ‘Yeah?’ I try my best to sound relaxed. To adopt the same tranquil tone I use at work, with my other girls. I turn back and gently place the glass beside her. ‘What did you think?’

  She looks into the glass. ‘I don’t know. I mean … I don’t think it was him. Do you?’

  My heart gives an awful lurch. ‘No. I don’t think so. I did, before, but … it seems unlikely, if everything they’re saying is true.’

  She nods. The silence falls between us, again.

  ‘Anna Byers, though …’

  My stomach drops.

  ‘She’s really annoying, isn’t she?’

  The laugh that escapes me seems to take her aback. It takes me aback. ‘That is definitely one word for her, yes.’ Evie grins, proudly. I’m reminded, for a split second, of her as a child – three or four years old, maybe – purposely misbehaving in ways she knew I’d find too adorable to punish. I’d be too flushed with love to insist that she stop.

  ‘You know,’ I say, carefully. ‘I think – based on what she said at the end of the last episode … I think we probably have to be prepared for her to consider the possibility that …’

  ‘That it was you?’ she says, filling the space.

  ‘Yeah.’

  She seems to consider this; I see it in the tell-tale press of her fist to her lips, through her sleeve. ‘You didn’t, though,’ she says. Like it’s an indisputable fact.

  Because it is, I realize. Even considering the possibility that her mother could have murdered her father would shatter her world into pieces.

  ‘So it’ll be fine,’ she goes on, without seeming to notice my silence. ‘We just need to ride it out.’

  I smile and open my arms, and she rushes into them. ‘Just apologize to Dan. He’ll be OK,’ Evie mumbles through our hug. I breathe in her hair – her strawberry shampoo, the same one I’ve been buying since she was a child, dreading the day she decides it’s no longer cool – and I squeeze her, tight.

  I crawl into bed beside Dan. He’s lying in the same position Graham had, that night, the cords of his throat exposed. I curl into him, grateful for his warmth.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, softly. ‘About earlier. You didn’t deserve that.’

  He turns to face me. In the darkness, the lines of his face seem deeper, more clearly marked. I smooth them with my thumb, and he smiles.

  ‘I know this is hard on you,’ he says. ‘I know that. But … I’m here with you. I will be, through all of it. You need to trust me on that.’

  I look for the lie in his eyes; the doubt.

  But there’s nothing. Only trust and kindness: a love I know I don’t deserve.

  18

  The dead weight of Dan’s arm pins me down when I wake.

  After my weak apology, I’d climbed on top of him, and tried to make him forget.

  But Graham’s face stared up at me, gasping, the entire time.

  I shrug him off and step into the bathroom. I turn the shower on, and disappear into the steam.

  19

  London, 2002

  My calves prickle in the scorching water. A rash of gooseflesh rises on my exposed skin. Slowly – carefully – I lower myself into the too-hot bath. I close my eyes, dry with exhaustion. Evie is sleeping in the next room. And my husband is not home. Three months have passed, and I still haven’t told him what I know.

  I’m not sure I have to. When I came home from the hospital, the house was in ruins; the same scattered mess I’d left when I’d fallen. The same teardrops of blood on the tiles.

  But the laptop was gone. I haven’t seen it since. For a little while, I convinced myself I’d imagined it. No – that’s not true. I told myself I’d imagined it, not believing it at all. But I had a newborn child who needed me. I’d been torn apart by the surgery, which – in saving my baby and me – meant she’d be the last child I’d ever have.

  Now, though, he’s late. Again. His old patterns, resumed after a twelve-week break. So, now, I have to face it. My husband – the man I loved – was having an affair. He was fucking another woman while I stayed home, fat with his child.

  He’s probably doing the same thing, now.

  I pinch my new folds between finger and thumb. Healed to a glossy blue, the scar on my belly dissects me in two, stretch marks patterning the sides. None of this has stopped him fucking me, of course. He’s a man who deserves to have it all.

  The loyal wife and baby girl at home. The nineteen-year-old, bent over, hairless little cunt dripping for him at his desk. Another frisson of goosebumps passes through me, imagining them. I wonder if they ever think of me.

  I slip a little deeper underwater. I let it drown me. And when he comes home, hours later, I smile as though there’s nothing wrong with us at all.

  20

  Derbyshire, 2018

  The hand at my shoulder makes me flinch. I drop the shampoo bottle, the rattle deafening.

  ‘Whoa, whoa,’ Dan says, stepping back. ‘I was just coming to say good morning.’

  ‘Well, I’m awake now – so thanks.’

  He reaches for a toothbrush. ‘I’m taking Evie to football this morning, if you want to come.’

  I glance at him in the mirror. Neither he nor Evie ever invite me to her sports events – it’s their time together, the way they bond. I’ve always been glad of it, not due to any lack of interest on my part – I’m just grateful that the two of them want to spend time alone, without my having to force them to.

  They’re worried about me, I realize with a thud.

  ‘I’d love to, but …’ I wince. ‘I’m really tired. I kind of had my heart set on spending some quality time on the sofa.’

  Another lie. I think of the text I sent, late last night, to Darcy. I’d told her I’d be at Hawkwood House for ten. I’d planned to leave just after Dan and Evie left for the match.

  ‘Is it awful of me to say no?’

  Dan smiles. I think I see relief in it. ‘Of course it isn’t. If anything, I’d be more concerned if you said yes.’

  ‘You know me so well.’

  He spits into the sink. ‘All right. Well, enjoy your day off. I’ll see you later.’

  I lean out of the shower and kiss him goodbye. When I hear the front door close, half an hour later, I slip into my trainers. I watch Dan’s car pull away, Evie chattering in the front seat. I pull on my jacket and leave.

  I see Darcy in the distance as I walk towards the house. She doesn’t notice me approaching, her back to me as she shifts boxes – with surprising strength, given her size – one by one, through the main entrance doors.

  When I reach the courtyard, she’s still inside. I grab a box – unlabelled, ominously groaning, as though the bottom is about to give – and head through the doors.

  ‘Hello?’

  She turns so abruptly it’s clear I’ve startled her. Her hand flutters briefly to her throat.

  ‘Oh, God,’ she says, running towards me, ponytail bobbing in the dusty light. ‘Sorry – let me take that, it’s heavy.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I
smile, though the box pulls the skin taut in my hands. ‘What’s in here, anyway?’

  She laughs, steering me towards the staircase. ‘It’s a toolkit. A proper one. It’s actually embarrassing that I’ve never owned one before now, but … well, I figured if I had one of my own, I could do a few bits here and there. Hang photos, put up shelves, that kind of thing.’

  I glance around the hall, still in the same bleak state of disrepair. If anything, today’s bright sunshine makes the destruction seem worse: a shaft of dusty light points to a pile of rubble in one corner. The moss and leaves are all the greener, as though nature is proving a point, staking its claim on the house, both inside and out.

  You’re delusional, I think. Except the words in my mind aren’t in my voice. They’re in his.

  She looks over her shoulder, as though she’s heard something, and I follow her gaze. There’s nothing there.

  ‘Pop that box there,’ she says, the cheer in her voice ringing hollow, just as mine had moments before. ‘Leave the rest for now. I want to show you something.’

  I slide the box through a gaping hole in the bannister and shake off the weight. A flash of pain – weeks of tension whipping through me – tears through my neck. I pinch it, uselessly, with finger and thumb, and I follow her into the belly of the house.

  She’s quiet as we walk, though the roar of birdsong deafens from the eaves above, and the mouldering beams seem to groan as we pass.

  ‘So,’ I say, my voice a little too loud. ‘How did it go with the contractors?’ I’m not sure I care; she might, in fact, have already told me. It certainly feels like something I already know. But I want to hear a human voice. To bring some normality to the chill.

  ‘Ugh.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘I think they’re trying to rinse me for every penny I’m worth, honestly. You’d think when you’re trying to build a hospital, people would go a little easier on you, but I could all but see the pound signs in their eyes. So … I’m negotiating. Trying to play hardball,’ she adds with a wink.

  I offer a sympathetic smile, though deep down I’m aching to ask for details; to know what, exactly, she’s prepared to spend to bring Hawkwood House back from a ruin.

  ‘Still,’ she goes on. ‘We’ll get there. Even if I have to lay every brick myself.’

  We? I think, with a pang of something I think might be hope: a counterpoint to the envy I’ve felt since meeting Darcy. I’ll admit, it’s part of the reason I’m here, a fantasy that sustains me at the moment: of working with her here, at Hawkwood House. Of staking my claim to this place, and making it my own.

  She stops at an empty doorway, the panel angled jauntily beside it. ‘On that post you made, you mentioned the archives – right?’

  My heart lurches at the memory. She smiles, and gestures towards the door. ‘Go on. Have a look.’

  I step inside, my pulse feverish. The room is pitch black, windowless. I can’t see a thing. There’s a click, behind, and I flinch. A thin beam of light cuts the space in two. Darcy hands me a pocket torch, and clicks on another.

  Slowly, things begin to settle into view: a broad oak desk, its leather scratched and peeling under brittle, yellow pages. Around the walls: bookcases, filing cabinets, cardboard boxes spilling over with papers. The labels on each box are faded, the handwriting unmistakably ancient: a black, liquid scrawl.

  ‘Oh, wow.’ I run two fingers through the dirt on the desk. They press deeper than I expect, the dust a half-inch thick. ‘This is … Wow.’

  As Darcy examines the shelves, opening boxes seemingly at random, I reach for a thick, cloth-bound book open on the desk. The Medical Case Book, it reads, as prescribed by the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1917–1919. I flip the pages, the handwriting greyed by time.

  Miss York, one reads, remains convinced that the nurses are actresses, employed by her husband to taunt her. When staff attempt to explain to Miss York that this is not the case, she winds her hair tightly about her neck and feigns strangulation.

  Another: Mrs Keane feels that everyone is against her. She claims that other patients visit her room in the night, tapping on her door incessantly and pulling the pillow from beneath her head as she sleeps. Staff have attempted to explain to Mrs Keane that all patient rooms, including hers, are locked at night, making this impossible.

  And another still: Miss Levy believes she is being spoken to by unseen visitors to the house. As a result of these supposed visitors, Miss Levy experiences days of uncontrollable weeping, which are not helped by sedation, and are largely disruptive to other patients.

  I feel Darcy’s eyes on me, and look up.

  ‘This is amazing,’ I say. And I mean it. I could spend days in here – weeks, months, even – working my way through these ancient files. Finding my way to my grandmother. Solving, at last, her case; identifying whatever similarity my mother saw between us.

  ‘That’s one way of putting it.’ Darcy slides a box across the desk, the dust rising up in a cloud. ‘Look at these.’

  I reach inside, and feel the distinctive gloss of photographs, the ridges of ancient prints. I hold a handful to the light.

  ‘They’re like the Charcot ones – did you have to study those at uni?’ Her words come quickly, as though she’s unnerved by the silence. I recognize her tone from my own, minutes before – though now, I feel a euphoric kind of calm. ‘I hated them. So these …’ She shivers. ‘I hate these even more.’

  I see, instantly, what she means. I remember the prints from the Iconographie, glossy pages in ragged textbooks: the women treated for hysteria at the Salpêtrière in the 1870s. There’s an eerie similarity in the faces of these women, sepia-toned and faded with age, their expressions turned liquid, movement captured by the camera’s slow glare.

  One, in particular, draws me in.

  A dark-haired woman – a girl really, an adolescent swell in the curve of her cheeks – stares up at the ceiling above as she lies in bed, hair fanned across the pillow.

  Another photo is of this girl, too: upright, open-mouthed, eyes fixed directly down the camera’s lens. I feel a kind of recognition in the look. There’s a movie-star quality to her, the sharp defiance of her pose, her arms folded, chin lowered, a sharply raised brow.

  Each picture is almost perfect, but for the absolute blankness in her eyes. It’s almost as though the pose itself is a thing of habit: but the emptiness there makes her as uncanny as a doll.

  ‘Aren’t they horrible?’

  ‘They’re fascinating.’

  She laughs, and I pick through the others. The girl whose face blurs, though her body appears perfectly still. The ancient woman whose craggy features take on a lit-from-below shadow, like a Halloween mask.

  And then, the one whose eyes I recognize, first. The one who looks like me. Not me, not now. But the woman I see, sometimes, in the mirror: whose eyes, devoid of emotion, look back with a coldness which feels like possession.

  Sweetheart, Graham says.

  I feel his hand at my waist. I flinch and spin around, but there’s nothing – no one – there.

  The house groans, and a crash ricochets through the corridor beyond. I feel Darcy’s cold hand around mine, and he’s gone. Now, there’s only silence, and the terrible, black stink of death.

  I glance at Darcy, half-lit, her torch blinking out from beneath the desk. Her expression is one of pure terror.

  I’m not imagining things, I realize. She heard that, too. I reach for my phone, relieved to see three bars of signal. ‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Let’s go.’

  I am playing a part, now, by taking control. My heart is thudding, violently, in my chest; an ice-cold sweat dapples my skin. The phone in my palm seems inept protection against the terrors running through my mind, the ghosts returned from the dead.

  As we walk through the corridor, silence seems to blanket everything. The birds have stopped singing. They’ve gone. Now, there’s only our footsteps; Darcy’s shuddering breath. In the corner of my eye, I see her: deathly pale, the greenish light height
ening the terror in her expression.

  We reach the door to the main hall, and she steps forward, both hands around the door’s carved handle. She presses her ear to the wood, and looks again at me.

  My breath catches in my throat as she pushes the door ajar.

  Her laugh breaks the silence like a gunshot. ‘Oh my God.’

  In the mess, it takes me a moment to make it out: the jagged crack in the staircase, the cavernous space where I’d placed the box before.

  I follow her, and see the black split in the stairs, ripped like a seam. ‘Oh, Darcy, I’m so sorry, I …’

  She turns to me, wide-eyed. There’s a split-second pause before she laughs. ‘Are you kidding? I’ve been going up and down those bloody things – I could’ve died here, on my own, and …’ She pales, noticeably, at the thought. ‘You did me a favour,’ she adds, seeming to shake it off. ‘God, imagine.’

  I feel a sudden pang of pity for her, here, alone. Recall her mention of her mother, father, and sister – all dead. Her half-joking invitation, before, because she knew no one in the area; had, as far as I can tell, no friends.

  ‘You know,’ I say, feeling oddly nervous, like a teenager asking a date to prom. ‘If you ever want company, or help … I’m happy to come here. Or if you need a break from the place, you could come to mine. I’m only up the road, and … we have electricity, about sixty per cent of the time.’

  She laughs – more of a snort, really – without meeting my eye. ‘You can tell I’m losing it here, can’t you?’

  I feel my cheeks flush, rebuffed. ‘No, no – it’s not—’

  ‘Honestly, you’re not wrong to think it. I read this … this thing. I didn’t think anything of it, at the time, but it really got under my skin.’

  My stomach turns cold. I wonder if it’s something she’s read about me.

  ‘It was in that thread of yours – do you remember it? That reply?’

  I force a non-committal shrug. ‘Sorry, I—’

  ‘It was about why they closed down. More of an urban myth, really, but … basically, the patients started saying they were hearing voices.’