The Girl Before You
Page 29
I’m there with Ruth, but for the first time I can see her face: I can see it in such detail. She is standing very close to me and though her skin is as young as it was when she left, she looks sadder than I have ever seen.
‘Maybe his wife’s dogs didn’t run off the cliffs,’ she says. She’s talking not to the police, but to me. ‘Maybe he lost them.’ Her eyes fill with tears. She says in a cracked voice, ‘Maybe he hurt them – by accident, but maybe he did.’
‘Why would he hurt the dogs?’ I ask.
But she turns away; she can’t look at me. Ruth who loved animals: burying chicks, rescuing worms from the dirt, screaming for Scipio, who had been felled by a bullet. Ruth, climbing over the halfway line between us; who would have done anything to defend me; who can remember Dai the Poet and Damien the Chef, and who I mean by the girl in the blue bikini and why public school boys are like avocados. Things nobody else in the world could understand.
‘Why would he hurt the dogs?’ I say again, but she shakes her head. The realisation is like the falling of snow: silent and clean. The brightness of it hurts my eyes. ‘That’s why he couldn’t come home,’ I say at last.
She is leaving again, moving towards the door. I want her to know, even though the police are listening: ‘I know you didn’t mean to hurt her.’
Infantile words, as if we are children again and all it needs to push the years back is for someone to say sorry, someone to forgive, for us to go back to that moment on the landing, for everything to be different. Yet, there’s nothing either of us can say, nothing either of us can do.
‘I know you didn’t mean it,’ I say again and I start to cry.
Ruth stops at the doorway. She turns back to me.
And then I wake up.
Back in London, I get the tube to Ealing Broadway and decide to do the twenty-minute walk home to clear my head. The air smells different, like summer’s on its way, and the cafés on Ealing Green are setting up tables outside. There is something hopeful in the air.
I think about what might have happened.
Perhaps she was keeping an eye on me from a distance, watching me on Facebook as Alice did, tracking news of my pregnancy. Perhaps she felt the pull of me, of family, more strongly then than she ever had before. Perhaps after all these years something had changed.
Perhaps she had started to forgive herself.
Perhaps she got in touch with one of the two other people in the world who knew what had happened that night. Perhaps she and Paula started to make plans.
And it could have been that it wasn’t just love that made her consider returning – it could have been something else: news of George’s career change, for example. It could have been that, of the missives she sent in the post, Nunny represented love and the postcards promised revenge. She’d always enjoyed a bit of drama.
Perhaps she simply wanted to prepare us for her return. Perhaps.
As I approach home, I realise I am a different person from when I left a few days ago. The house is different, too – its expression is hard to read: secretive, knowing. Pushing the front door open, I feel a flutter in my belly. A tickling, as if the baby is blowing bubbles. I think of him then, taking his first lungful of air. I think of her, too: not in the water, as I have always imagined, but walking somewhere on this Earth. Not dead. Alive.
There’s the sound of voices at the other end of the house – Carla’s and another. I switch on the lamp in the hall and drop my keys into the bronze letter tray.
I call, ‘I’m home.’ And the voices go quiet. The lamp’s light catches on a pair of red shoes in the hallway. They are pointing towards the kitchen, as if they’ve been put there on purpose. As if they are a sign.
Acknowledgements
Everything changed for me when The Girl Before You was picked as runner-up in the Cheltenham First Novel Competition. As my prize I was fortunate enough to win representation by LBA Books – first by Danielle Zigner, who worked closely with me smoothing out the novel’s ending, and for whose insight and sensitivity I’ll always be thankful, and later by the equally brilliant Louise Lamont. I’m incredibly grateful to both. Thank you, too, to everyone at the Intercontinental Literary Agency and Emily Hayward-Whitlock at the Artists Partnership.
My heartfelt thanks to the team at Avon: to Rachel Faulkner-Willcocks, whose eagle-eyed editing has made it a better book, and to Elke Desanghere and Sabah Khan for their guidance and support.
I would also like to thank Gwen Davies, who worked with me on an earlier draft of the novel, and Emma Bamford and Kim Thompson, my beta readers. My uncle, Richard Gwyn, has been hugely supportive throughout the writing of this book, and many other things besides, and I would also like to thank Siân Humphreys and Lynn Lewis, who read early excerpts.
Thank you to Nicole Alleyne-West, marketing and communications officer at Missing People, Professor Dame Sue Black, Jeanie Cordy-Simpson, Dr Sioned Gwyn, Aimee Parnell, Elen Stritch and Sarah Warwick for helping me with research and answering lots of questions. Needless to say, any mistakes are entirely of my own making.
The kindness and support of the following during the writing of this book meant a great deal to me: Camilla Akers-Douglas, Omer Ali, Nancy Alsop, Zoë Anderson, Di Barough, Micki Biddle, Helena and Hilary Gerrish, Georgina Gordon-Smith, Jonathan Gray, Rhiannon and Rose Gwyn, Daphne Hall, Vivienne Hambly, Steve Handley, Emily Hughes, David and Richard Humphreys, Alexander Larman, Emily and David George Lewis, Carole Mattock, Ruth Meech, Ann Mottram, Tania O’Donnell, Joseph Paxton, Miriam Phillips, Arabella and Alex Preston, Charlotte Rogerson, Marco Rossi, Gerald Schwanzer, Laura Silverman, May Steele, Jo Turner, Jane and Charles Wright and Kerstin Zumstein.
Thank you to the James, Morison and Fonseca families, every single one of you (with a special mention for Emma, who introduced me to St Anthony).
Huge thanks to my writing group for their amazing help: Saneh Arora, Adam Lively and Conrad Stephenson.
Thank you to my dear friend Jenny Wilkinson. I hope she knows why.
This is a story about siblings and I couldn’t have written it without my own – Lucy, Sophie and Mark, thank you for everything. Thank you, too, to Pierluca, Olav, Russell, Leonardo and Nora. And thank you to Carol and Matthew, and Chota, who always ensured I got fresh air and exercise when I most needed it.
I would like to remember three family members who are no longer with us: my father, Russell Rayner, who taught me about the value of persistence, my grandfather, Dr Richard Cenric Humphreys, who passed on his love of books, and my father-in-law, Colin Draper, one of the kindest people I’ve known.
And thank you, above all, to the two people to whom this book is dedicated: to my mother for her patience, generosity and endless love, and to my Jason, who with this project, as in all things, has been on my side every step of the way. I couldn’t have done it without you: I wanted to tell you.
About the Author
Nicola Rayner was born in Abergavenny, South Wales, and works as a freelance journalist, specialising in dance and travel. The Girl Before You, her debut novel, was runner-up in the Cheltenham First Novel Competition in 2018. She lives in London with her husband and Jack Russell.
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