Special Relationship

by Fox, Alessandra

  She took a deep breath. “So everything at first was fine. We moved to Queen's, into a big house with big garden, paid for by his parents, and I painted the nursery and bought loads of baby stuff. And although by now he wasn't the man who I would have chosen to spend the rest of my life with, I sort of figured that women had experienced worse.”

  She paused and drunk the rest of the whisky. “Megan was beautiful and when she was born I realised what love really meant. She giggled at me as though...as though we had known each other always...you know, since previous lives or something or since the beginning of time. I could never imagine that I had ever been - or ever would be - without her.

  “Nothing else mattered, just me and Megan. She was so happy, smiling, laughing, and found fun in the simplest things. Me and her were just meant to be. I know it's hard telling a man...but it was a bond that existed even before it did and still exists in me today.”

  Nick looked on, terrified about what Alex was about to tell him and fearing that it was him and not her who had made an horrific mistake.

  “So...so about six months after Megan was born I realised he was having an affair. He was probably screwing around from the beginning, keeping his mobile to himself, unexpected business trips...that sort of thing. I could even smell the other women on him at the times he did come home before I was asleep. But you know what? I didn't care...I hated the rare occasions we had sex, didn't want to touch him and when he was at home I just wanted him to leave so we and Megan could be together in our own little world of fun and make-believe.

  “And that's why I fell for you Nick, because despite all your riches you love having fun and you have fun the way most people of your wealth don't.

  “I'm sorry, I'm not sure I can go on. This is like torture,” she sobbed furiously.

  Nick went to the sofa and hugged her. “I need to know, Alex.”

  He pushed her away gently to look at her face. He had never seen someone so tormented before.

  “We can take a break, you know?”

  “No, I want to tell you,” she said before crying some more.

  From feeling the victim, he now felt the abuser as he wiped away more of her tears before sitting beside her.

  “Where was I? OK, so I got more and more bored with David and eventually I couldn't bear him to touch me. He made me physically sick. The crunch came when one night he pushed me down on him and I thought I was going to throw up. I resisted, but instead of asking what was wrong he pushed my head harder towards him until I slapped him. He slapped me back really hard, enough for me to bruise badly, and I knew from that moment that I never wanted to share the same bed as him again, and more importantly, I didn't want him to be Megan's father.

  “So, Megan and myself moved to a house nearby. It was one of his parents houses and they charged rent twenty-five per cent below market value, not out of concern for me, nor even Megan but to placate me, so I wouldn't have their son charged with assault. For me and Megan it was a port in a storm, and I didn't have much choice. I did though file for divorce and couldn't wait to get him out of my life.

  “Megan didn't seem affected and she thrived at school...she was so bright and she loved to learn,” Alex said, before breaking down again.

  Nick knew by now this story was going to end tragically. He hoped beyond hope that Megan had been adopted or put into care but he feared it would be far, far worse, And he felt like torturer in chief for having earlier demanded to know. But he said nothing. He didn't know what to say.

  “I liked being free of him and started to date again, but, you know, when he had me he didn't want me and when he didn't, as the divorce was going through, he did. Manically so. He became very possessive and of course we had to keep in contact because of Megan. But even while taking her to the zoo or somewhere he would call me all the time wanting to know where I was and who I was with. He just wouldn't accept we were over.

  “It was unbearable. I thought I'd got him out of my life but he became more and more obsessed. He sent huge bunches of flowers, love notes and even tickets for two to Paris – ironically enough - although, of course, I didn't go.

  “He followed me often and even attacked a guy – a guy I wasn't even dating, just a friend – when he saw us in a restaurant together, so I got a restraining order. It still allowed him access to Megan – twice a month – but if he hassled me any further he would most likely end up in jail.

  “Then one day, Tuesday, August 7th, he called and asked if he could see Megan at the weekend. I can hear his horrible voice now and it will stay with me until I die. I told him that she was having a sleepover at her friend's, Addison's, at the weekend, as she was - or at least that was what was planned.

  “But Addison's mother called me on the Friday to say that Addison was sick and she didn't want Megan to catch anything. I already had an evening planned at the theatre, and a stay over with a girlfriend, so my mother said I shouldn't let the tickets go to waste and she would come over and look after Megan.”

  Nick looked on horrified. He was about to find out the full story about Alex's past. And if it was traumatic for him he couldn't believe what she was going through. He knew that he had never loved anyone so much.

  “So we went to the theatre, and enjoyed the show, then we went to grab a late snack.

  “We stayed in the deli about an hour, you know, having a good time, and not a care in the world, and then we went back to Katie's. At just gone three in the morning my phone went. It was an unknown number and I thought it was probably David up to his usual tricks. But I answered it and it was the police, asking if I was Leigh Harris and what my address was. They also asked me where I was now and told me not to move.

  “I knew from that moment that something dreadful had happened. I thought at first it was my mother and they were coming to tell me that she'd had an heart attack or something – she'd had heart problems since my father died. I thought Megan must be in their care.

  “When they arrived they wouldn't tell me anything, they just needed me to come with them. So Katie – my friend – and I got in the car and she held me really tight as I was shaking so violently and I just wanted them to tell me what had happened. Even if my mother was dead I'd rather know and why weren't they telling me that Megan was safe?

  “I kept asking and asking them but they said they couldn't say anything 'at this time' and drove me to the police department.

  “As soon as I arrived I was guided quickly into a room where there were two police officers, a woman and a man, and a civilian woman who I found out was a counsellor.”

  Nick could hardly bear to see her suffering. “Are you sure you want to tell me?”

  “It can't hurt any more, Nick. Nothing can hurt me anymore.”

  He cursed himself for putting her through this.

  “So, the police woman asked me to sit down. She said there had been a fire at my home and as soon as she said it I knew that...”

  “OK Alex, don't go on.”

  “No you wanted to know Nick. So fucking listen.”

  She paused.

  “I knew that the beautiful, wonderful, love of my life Megan had gone and I knew that my mother had gone with her. I didn't need the policewoman to carry on – I could see it in her face. I even didn't want her to say anything because until she did I still had hope.”

  “But she did - you know 'I am very sorry to have to inform you'....”

  She looked at him through red eyes. “Happy now?”

  He walked away, not knowing what to say and walked back to her.

  He hugged her more tightly and with more feeling than he'd hugged anyone before.

  “She was only six, Nick, and she was the most beautiful, wonderful, fun-loving little person you could imagine.”

  She pulled out her phone and showed pictures of a smiling, happy little blonde-headed girl, a little girl that Nick knew would find happiness in the most simple things, drawing a birthday card for her mother or helping to decorate a Christmas tree.

/>   “She looks like you Alex, she is so beautiful,” Nick said, looking at the picture of a giggling little girl on a pink tricycle. “I can't imagine your pain.”

  “You had yours too, didn't you?”

  “Chloe, yes. But as horrible as it sounds, she died so young so I never got to know her. It was far worse for her mother who had carried her for nine months of course and and she never recovered.”

  “Do you wonder what she would be like now?”

  “Of course, every day.”

  They looked each other, totally bonded both in the happiness they had shared in their short time they'd known each other and in the grief of their previous lives.

  She took his hand. “I have more to tell,” she said.

  “Do you want to?”

  “I have to.”

  “You have to, why?”

  “So that we can be together and maybe that I can start to live again.”

  “Let's go outside. I need a cigarette.”

  On the terrace, Nick sat on a seat and Alex beside him.

  “I'll light it for you,” she said, taking a cigarette out of the pack she found in the inside pocket of his jacket, puffing once and then putting it into his mouth. Nick smoked with one hand, his other held Alex's tightly.

  “OK, so the rest of that night is a blur. I now know they gave me medication and apparently I spent the night at an hotel. There were three women with me, a police woman, the counsellor and Katie.

  “I felt really drowsy from the drugs they had given me but I still couldn't sleep. I'd never felt so tired – or so ill – in my life. I was battling the drugs in the hope that I could stay awake long enough to kill myself, although first I wanted to figure out what had happened, like what had caused the fire.

  “Then I'd think that I was just having a nightmare and that everything would be fine in the morning and Megan would come in and jump on top of me, like she did every morning.

  “But when I started to come round the police woman who was with me told me they were investigating the fire as a possible case of arson. I wasn't shocked. Not only did I know it was arson I knew who had caused it – David, the evil shit, Harris.”

  “But he wouldn't kill his own daughter?”

  “Don't you see? He didn't mean to kill his daughter – he meant to kill me. He thought that Megan was on a sleepover at her friend's house and he'd decided in his very warped mind that if he couldn't have me then no one would. He meant to kill me, not Megan or my mother.

  “And I think every day that if had I bothered to call him and to tell him that Megan's sleepover was cancelled, she would still be alive. Sooner or later, I'd most likely be dead but she'd be alive.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “She is buried at Cypress Hills Cemetery, Brooklyn. It's a beautiful place, rolling hills and great big trees. Just wish I could find it in myself to return to New York and visit.”

  “And he got life?”

  “No Nick, he's free.”

  “What?”

  “Our great American justice system, the more money you have the more your chance of getting off – and his clever and very highly-paid lawyers financed by his parents selling property managed to convince a jury that he wasn't the one who set the fire. He got away with murder, the murder of my daughter.”

  “Wait.” She went back inside and came back with a page of the New York Times, dated November 2008 and headlined “HARRIS ACQUITTED.” There were pictures of Alex, Megan, her mother and David Harris. Nick read the report.

  “A mistrial was declared yesterday in the case of a man accused of murdering his daughter and mother-in-law in an arson attack on a house in Queen's last August.

  With the jury deadlocked after ten days of deliberation, Judge Milton Chapman said that there was no possibility of a satisfactory outcome after they had told him for the third time that they could not reach a majority decision.

  Six-year-old Megan Harris and Ella Anderson, 55, both perished in the fire which police found was started with the use of an accelerant in a downstairs room.

  State prosecutors produced autopsy evidence which suggested Mrs Anderson, whose body was found at the bottom of the stairs, was bludgeoned prior to her death. The defence claimed the head injury might have been the result of her falling down the stairs trying to escape the blaze and, even if she had been struck, there was no evidence that their client was responsible.

  An accelerant found on the accused and in a wash basin at the home of his parents where he lived was found to be Coleman fuel used in camping stoves and lanterns, but forensic scientists were unable to determine whether the fuel found at both scenes came from the same source. The defence proved that Mr Harris had been on a camping trip two days previously and presented testimony from both parents that he never left the house on the night of the fire.

  Footprints found on the driveway of the house matched shoes owned by Harris but a forensic team could not date them precisely enough to conclude they were made on the night of the fire. The defence team referred the jury to the absence of any shoe marks on the lawn outside a broken window through which the arsonist was believed to have entered the house.

  Two jurors spoke to reporters after the trial. One of them, David Wilkes, 54, tears in his eyes, said he was “sorry beyond belief for a good mother and daughter, and the daughter's mother, for whom they couldn't bring justice.” Another, Jennifer Watson, 25, said: “Did we let off a murderer today? I think we might have done, but we had to be beyond reasonable doubt and we couldn't be with the evidence presented.”

  Prosecutors said they would review the case before deciding whether to press for a retrial.”

  “And there was no retrial?” Nick asked.

  “No, there wasn't.”

  “And your mother likely being bludgeoned?”

  “The defence argued that the smashed window showed it wasn't him who set the fire because he would have had keys access, his parents owning the place, and he wouldn't have needed to break in.

  “But obviously that was a red herring he set. He was lighting the fire when my mother probably heard a noise and went to investigate. She may have recognised him, I don't know, but one thing for sure is she wouldn't have fled down the stairs to escape the fire and leave Megan in her bedroom. So he hits her and starts the fire.”

  “After the trial you left New York?”

  “I went to stay with a friend in Syracuse once all the police stuff was out of the way. I went back to New York for the trial. Then I went back to Syracuse and rented a place. Months went by and the day after I was told there would be no retrial I booked a ticket on the ship to Southampton. It left two weeks later and the only time I returned to New York City was to board that ship.

  “It was the new Queen Mary, and I felt guilty about the luxury of it all – but it was the only ship I could find and, like I said, I wanted to try to cleanse my mind as best as I could, even though I knew that Megan's death would haunt me forever. Everyone else on board was having a great time. I was just escaping. And as we sailed out of the harbour I watched the Statue of Liberty disappear from view. The fucking irony of it - he was free, I was in prison for the rest of my life.

  “When I arrived in England I said that I was just a tourist. Then I battled immigration for a couple of years before finally being given indefinite leave to stay. And I changed my name so no one would find me, not my friends, my sister and particularly the fuck that killed my daughter. ”

  “Not your sister?”

  “She asked me at our mother's funeral why I hadn't told him Megan's sleepover had been cancelled. I told her because I didn't know he would set the fucking house on fire. First time I've sworn in church.”

  “So you had to be sure about me, hence the private detective?”

  “Yes, infidelity ruined my life and, I'm sorry Nick, but I couldn't let it happen again. And then there were the text messages.”

  “Text messages?”

  Alex pressed some buttons on her phone an
d handed it to him. “From the time I first met you I have been warned about you by someone unknown.”

  He scrolled the messages, knowing that Katherine had also received a mysterious text when they were in New York. And he knew that one of Alex's texts he couldn't deny – he had slept with Katherine on that business trip shortly before he'd made love to her. But he realised there was no way he could discuss it now. “I'll find out who sent these,” he said.

  “I need to go now. I want you to think alone, and I'm going away for a short time by myself and with no phone, so I can think too. I do want to be with you, but now trust in you can only come from what you promise me, no halfwit private eye, and I want you to appreciate what a huge leap of faith I would be taking.

  “But one thing - don't come back if the messages are true and you are not the person I hope – think – you are. I vowed to Megan I would never love another man again. Don't take that betrayal of her lightly.”

  Chapter twenty-seven: Nick accuses

  The next day Nick told Katherine that he wanted to see both her and Tavis for a meeting to discuss Alex Anderson. She said that Tavis was at a football game in Scotland but she'd contact him and tell him to come back as soon as he could.

  Alex called Kerry and told her of the previous night's events and that she was going away – she hadn't decided where yet - for a few days, without phone, just to be by herself, think and to recover from recent events. Kerry said she'd look after the office and to take as much time as she liked.

  “I suppose there's not a great deal to do now I've lost us the Hensen contract,” Alex said.

  “We'll have it back in no time, you'll see.”

  “Hope you are right, babe.”

  Alex then spent time searching the internet for somewhere to go. Has to be the sea, she thought. Brighton would be too lively while Bournemouth would remind her of her time with Nick. She considered Stonehaven in Scotland with its dramatic landscape and castles, but was put off by the journey time. Then she discovered Cromer in Norfolk, a blue flag beach, Victorian buildings and a beautiful medieval church. She was not religious, but often sat in St Helen's in London to find sanctuary and calm, and to think of Megan. She took solace in lighting candles for her – and thought the Church was under appreciated, even by atheists like herself.