The Murder of Graham Catton

by Katie Lowe

  She looks hurt. ‘Hannah, it’s not an unreasonable request. And for what it’s worth, I’ve had to fight tooth and nail to get it. What they wanted originally was much worse. This is a fair ask, given the circumstances.’

  ‘What circumstances?’

  I know what she means, of course. Given people think you murdered your husband. Given people think you’re a threat to our patients. To us. Still, I feel the anger rising in me, the bitter taste of it in the back of my throat.

  ‘None of this has anything to do with my work. None of it. So I’d like a little more clarity on why the board think it’s appropriate to try and get rid of me, if that’s what they want. I’d like to understand what they think I could’ve done differently, given I’ve got absolutely no control over any of it.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Hannah. Don’t play dumb. And stop taking this whole situation out on me. I’m one of the only people trying to help, and I could really do without you making it harder. I’ve had to work my arse off to keep them from asking why I hired you in the first place, given what happened with that girl at Buyon, so I feel like you could at least give me some credit for trying to be your friend through all this.’

  ‘Through all this?’ I say – hear myself say, really, my tone turning from icy to outright cruel. ‘I’ve got to say, you’ve always been self-absorbed, but I’m really impressed at your ability to make yourself the victim at a time like this – when it’s my life that’s being ruined by my fucking dead husband.’

  The silence that falls between us is deadly.

  I know, instantly, that I’ve slipped. With anyone else, I could get away with it – brush it off as a meaningless stumble. But Sarah really is a good therapist. There’s no way she doesn’t hear it, what it means: that it isn’t Conviction I’m angry with now. It’s not the police who charged the wrong person; or the strangers who’ve vandalized my home; or the patient’s mother who wants to ruin my career.

  All of those people deserve my fury. But the person I’m really angry with – still, after all this time – is him. Graham and I, in a fight that still isn’t done with, though he’s ten years dead.

  ‘By my husband’s murder,’ I say as she stares at me, the look in her eyes turning from doubt, to anger, to fear. ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘OK.’ Her hands grip the desk, one feeling around, uselessly, for something to hold on to, something to do. ‘OK. HR will be in touch, Hannah. They’ll send you the formal details.’

  I try to speak, but I can’t.

  I open my mouth. Close it again.

  I feel her eyes on me as I walk to the door, my heart thudding violently against my ribs.

  I’ve lashed out; I’ve been childish.

  And I’ve made things immeasurably worse.

  All the way home, I keep the scream locked in my throat.

  I keep my face set, resolutely blank, though I squeeze my bruised hand around the steering wheel, the rush of pain flushing my cheeks red hot. It feels like a relief. A tether to the moment; something to keep me present, there.

  I meet the eyes of every driver on the road, every passing face a threat. I wonder if they’re listening to Conviction as they drive; if they’d take a photo of me, if only they could, now. If they’ll go home to their families, tonight, and tell them that they saw that awful woman – the one who killed her husband – and though she tried her best to look the same as anybody else, they saw it: the fierce and bitter hatred in her eyes.

  33

  I climb out of my car, beside Dan’s, which shouldn’t be there.

  He should be at work. I’d banked on that, all the way home, thinking only of a few hours’ peace. The curtains pulled shut, phone off, router unplugged from the wall. A dissolution, just for a little while – the pieces of me pulled back together in time for tea.

  I see him through the open blinds, in the kitchen. He’s lost in conversation on the phone, and pacing. I wonder if it’s Sarah he’s talking to. If she’s pre-empted this, knowing I wouldn’t tell him – or rather, wouldn’t have told him yet. We’ve only just made things right between us. Our happiness – mine, Dan’s, and Evie’s – feels perched on a hill of sand.

  I’m just concerned about her, I imagine her saying. And I know she’s not one for opening up, if you know what I mean … No, Dan, honestly – she was the same with Graham, too.

  I push the door open and slip through my house, stalking silently as a cat, though I feel electric with rage.

  I remember doing the same thing, the night my husband died.

  He turns, and he sees me. He looks like a man caught out.

  ‘Do you mind if I call you back?’ There’s a crack in his voice, I can hear it: a nervousness, almost fear.

  I give nothing away. I can’t. I know whatever expression I fix on my face will seem so false it’ll only prove I’ve got something to hide.

  ‘Yeah – yeah.’ He’s resigned as he winds up the call. I hear the distinctive trill of a woman’s voice on the line. Another crackle of anger tears through me. ‘Yeah. I’ll speak to you later. OK.’ He turns away from me, to the window. ‘All right. Bye.’

  His shoulders slump as he hangs up, and turns back to me. ‘Are you OK? I didn’t think you’d be—’

  ‘I’m not feeling well.’ The lie slips out before I can contain it. I want to see how he reacts; if he already knows.

  ‘Oh no. What’s up?’ He’s as poker-faced as I am. I can’t read him.

  ‘I have a headache.’ I squeeze my temples with finger and thumb. I wonder when it was I became so good at this: at lying to the people I love. It seems to come so naturally, I could almost convince myself what I’m saying is true. ‘Why are you here? I thought you’d be at work.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I was, but …’ He seems to trace something in my expression that cuts him short. ‘I needed to pop back and grab something. I’m heading back out in a sec.’

  Pop psychologists will have you believe there are distinct ‘tells’ that let you know when a person is lying: a cutaway glance in a certain direction, a rapid succession of blinks, a sudden blush. But I’ve always been able to feel when someone is lying to me – it’s what makes me good at what I do. I feel it, now, just as I felt it every time Graham left me for another of his whores; every time he looked at me, and told me that he loved me. That I was the only one for him.

  ‘What did you forget?’

  ‘I wrote a phone number down yesterday.’ He holds up a slip of paper – a number scrawled across it. ‘Someone I’m speaking to for a story.’

  I want to believe him. I need to believe him. But I don’t.

  You’re being paranoid, Graham whispers in my ear. You’re acting crazy.

  Put the knife down, Hannah. Please.

  ‘Hannah,’ Dan says. ‘Are you OK?’

  I stare at him. I feel the weight of the ring on my finger, tightening like a noose. I think of the love I’d felt for him, the day before; the love I still feel, now, as he looks at me, and waits for me to speak.

  I want to tell him the truth: that I’ve been removed from my post at the hospital. That Conviction has taken away another piece of me I could cling to: proof of the person I was. But I can’t. Because to tell him that would mean telling him Sarah – my oldest friend – has found herself doubting my innocence. And I can’t do that without making him do the same.

  ‘I’m fine. I just have a headache. I’m going to sleep it off.’ I turn and climb the stairs. He doesn’t speak, and doesn’t follow. I sit on the edge of our bed, alone, and I wait for him to leave.

  When the door closes, and the car pulls away, I crawl under the covers, fully dressed.

  On the pillow beside me, there’s an indentation.

  I stare at it for what feels like hours.

  Finally, I roll over. I reach for my phone. Nothing. No message from Sarah, though that’s hardly surprising. Nothing from Dan, Evie – or even Darcy.

  It’s a relief, almost – after what’s felt like a constant s
hiver of notifications, of an unrelenting press of bad news, things I don’t want to remember – to find nothing. To be, for once, alone. The relief, though, dissipates as quickly as it had arrived. I know, somehow, that this is the last, slow gasp: the calm before the storm.

  I’d known that before, too. I remember the serenity that had settled over me, the day he died: the knowledge that, though things were about to get worse, whatever came next would be an ending. No more of this, I’d thought, breathing in the sweetness of Evie’s skin, her hair. No more.

  It’s the thought of her that drags me up, and downstairs. I open the hall cupboard, catching, for the first time, my bitten-down nails, the reddening cross-hatch of skin. I’ve been aged by the week that’s gone by, the hands I look down at my own, and yet not. They’re my mother’s hands, I realize, with a shiver. I’m turning into her.

  I reach inside, and drag the box of papers out from under a pile of coats. I’d hidden them after Darcy had left. I knew if Dan saw them, I’d have so much to explain: who Darcy was, why she’d brought them here, my interest in Hawkwood House, why I’d left Buyon, before … So many little lies; so many omissions, each justifiable, in isolation. Together, though, they formed a pattern: they showed a woman habitually covering her tracks.

  I couldn’t do it.

  So I’d slid the papers into the cupboard, and bedded them into the mess.

  Now, I lift the box, my bruised fingers ringing in complaint. I place them on the kitchen table and close the blinds, sitting alone in the half-light.

  I open the lid. An envelope without an address rests on top. I peel it open, carefully, wincing as it rips. From the desk of Dr William Sidney, the header reads. Psychiatrist. Hawkwood House.

  The paper is wrinkled, thin with age; I catch a memory of Evie and me, at this table, five years ago, maybe more, tea-staining office paper, making pretend parchment. A tiny forger, I’d thought then, watching her hands clutch the paper, hold it flat. The concentration in her eyes so pure and fixed, dribbling tea over the page with utmost care. I run my fingers over text, the indentations of the old, typewritten words:

  Thank you for sending Mrs McLelland into our care. It is clear at once that she is, indeed, disturbed, and as yet cannot bring herself to quite accept the truth of what she has done. Though she is always keen to engage our nurses in conversation, the only topic of interest to her is that of her innocence. She claims to have no memory of what happened on the night in question.

  I stare at the page, not realizing, for a moment, that I’m shaking. I put the paper down, slowly, and stand. I pace the room; reach into the fridge and open a bottle of wine, a spill circling the glass as my hands tremble above.

  It’s a coincidence, I tell myself. It’s just a defence. It might not even be true. It doesn’t mean anything.

  I don’t believe a word of this, of course. It has to mean something.

  I’m just not sure I want to know what.

  I look back into the box, warily, from above. I see pages and pages of white space, a scatter of letters torn across each; I imagine Margot herself there, arched over an ancient typewriter (huge and black, in my mind, keys firing off like gunshots, one by one) writing her missives, knowing they’ll never be read.

  r e mem be r m e m be rem em, they read, erratically spaced and breathless, re mem b e r me.

  I pull out one page after another, a hot panic spreading through me, the doctors’ scrawl almost impossible to read, though I catch words here and there: voices, and delusional.

  And then: Suicide by exsanguination.

  I hear Dan’s car pull in outside, and I come back to myself.

  I stuff the pages back in the box.

  I close the door on it all, breathless and sick.

  I know this is denial.

  I know.

  But I can’t face it.

  I thought I wanted the truth, once. Now, I realize I was safer in my lie.

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ Evie smiles as she bursts through the door.

  ‘You remind me so much of her,’ my mum says to me, thinking of her own mother.

  The mother who murdered her husband and child, and did not feel a thing.

  34

  Under the huge, tented scaffold, the metal bars gleaming in the sunlight, Hawkwood House has the air of a caged animal. Something about it sends a shiver of foreboding through me. I’d told myself I wouldn’t come back, after last time – after I’d heard his voice here; after my phone had blocked Dan’s messages, and the clocks seemed to stop. But when Darcy called, this morning, I couldn’t resist. And frankly, I had nowhere else to go.

  I lock the car, and walk towards the house, glancing at a text from Dan: Evie at netball tonight. Semi-final! Will be back about 8. If Sarah’s told him what’s happened, he’s doing a good job of hiding it. I’m increasingly convinced, though, that she hasn’t; that he thinks I’ve been going to work as normal every day since. I send back a heart-eyes emoji, and tell myself: I’ll tell him tonight.

  ‘Good morning!’ Darcy calls across the grass, beaming. In the morning sun, her glossy hair has an unnatural, chocolatey glow: highlights, I suppose. I wonder what it must be like to be so put together.

  I think of the things I’ve read about myself, online, so far this week. A witch with a guilty face. A sociopath who deserves to die. I read them all – every comment, every post – with a strange, tight feeling in my chest. I tell myself that these strangers don’t know me at all. But still, I read every word they say. I see them on the walls of my skull each time I try to sleep.

  I smile as Darcy approaches.

  Fake, I hear in a stranger’s voice. You’re a fraud.

  ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘Good! All the better for seeing you, obviously.’

  The scaffolding gives a crack, the breeze whipping through the tarps between. I flinch, the sound echoing through me like a gunshot. ‘This is … something.’

  ‘Progress, isn’t it? Come on – I’ve got some wine in. And posh crisps.’

  I follow her up the steps and under the metal beams. The light is a soft, dull blue inside, a bad movie’s intimation of a ghost. The staircase is now lined with bright tape, CAUTION emblazoned across it; the tiles swept, those broken carefully removed.

  ‘It feels different,’ I say, a note of loss in my voice. I correct it. ‘You’ve made so much progress already.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ She looks around, proudly, as she replies. ‘I mean, obviously it hasn’t just been me, but … it’s nice to see things moving. It’s starting to feel less spooky, at least.’

  I run my hand along the open jaw of a lion, carved into the edge of a doorframe. I wonder if Margot ever had the same impulse, while she was here. If she ever stood in the spot where I’m standing now, in search of memories lost, listening for voices no one else can hear.

  ‘Thank you for bringing those papers over, by the way. I took a look at them yesterday.’

  ‘Could you read them?’ She tips her head towards the corridor, and I follow. ‘I had to dig through so many pages of illegible – well, crap, really. And when the handwriting isn’t the problem, they’re waterlogged. I think they’re all going to have to go.’

  I think of the words on the page, the others I’d managed to make out, while Dan and Evie slept upstairs. Insists her husband is beside her, and claims to have heard his voice. These are persistent, seemingly unshakable delusions which have only worsened during her time with us.

  I shrug. ‘Some of them – they’re a bit smudged, but … It’s just nice to have a connection to her, you know?’

  She pushes a door, and the darkness breaks. The sun room. The light has the same luminous glow as before, though it’s shadowed by strips of panelling covering the most shattered panes, tape pulling together those only cracked. ‘Have a seat,’ she says. ‘I’ll be back in a sec – just fetching the vino.’

  I look around at the empty pool: tiles stripped away, the ancient sun loungers replaced with a couple of campin
g chairs and an upturned box. There’s something unnatural about it, exposing the house like this: it feels undignified, like watching someone who thinks themselves unobserved.

  A crow (I suppose – some large black bird, anyhow) lands on the roof overhead and taps the glass, once. Then again, and again.

  The door opens, and Darcy returns. The bird bursts into flight, and disappears.

  ‘Voilà!’ she says, a bottle in one hand, two long-stemmed glasses in the other. She holds the glasses in the air. ‘I stole these from the hotel restaurant, just for this.’

  I laugh, though a mean-spirited thought flits through my mind: if I did something like that, now, it’d be held up as evidence of my bad character, my evil in miniature. ‘I’m flattered.’

  ‘Well, I wanted to talk to you about something.’ She twists the cap off the bottle, eyes fixed on me as she pours. ‘I think you know what it is.’

  My stomach drops; worst-case scenarios flit through my mind. She knows what Margot did, I think. She’s going to ask me to stay away. It’s bad for her reputation. I’m bad for her reputation.

  ‘Don’t look so scared, Hannah. It’s about you joining me here.’ She hands me a glass. ‘Sorry – I forget coy probably plays as ominous in this place. But I’d love to have you on board.’

  My first impulse – drawn from some sensible, practical part of me – is to decline. I have a job: a career I’ve built, patients and staff I’m loyal to. But then, I think of Sarah, telling me my presence was ‘a risk to patient safety’. I think of the silence that’s fallen between us since, neither of us prepared to budge.

  ‘Darcy, I—’

  ‘I know you’ve got a family to support,’ she goes on, a faint shake of her head the only sign that she’s heard me speak. ‘And I can’t imagine the NHS is paying you all that much, so don’t worry – I’m not expecting a huge investment.’ She laughs. ‘It’s going to cost millions, so … don’t panic. I’m not asking for anything like that at all. But … look. I thought maybe if you could put in a token amount – fifteen thousand, maybe – we could draw up a contract that gave you a real stake. A proper partnership. You’d be on the board of directors, which would basically be me, you, and whoever else we decide to get in. You’d be responsible for all the young people’s programmes, and … well, anything else you wanted to be involved with, really.’