“If this has anything to do with that girl’s murder then ... Oh jeez! I had no idea that it was something like this.”
“It might not be related. But listen Ricky, two more people could die. Do you know anything else that might be relevant?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. How did you get off the island?”
“We all took the boat, after you left.”
“All? You mean you, Dawn and Montgomery.”
“No, I mean everybody else — everybody except you.”
* * *
I tried to make sense of what I was hearing. Dawn, Montgomery, Annabel, Rafe and Danger had all taken the boat back to the mainland with Ricky? But that would mean that they all knew that he wasn’t really dead. It was difficult to get my head around. No wonder nobody else had called the police.
They had all lied to me — Rafe, Annabel and Danger. So much for Annabel being my ‘BFF’. Not one of them had admitted that the handyman wasn’t really dead. Why would they do that? Why would they let me keep believing that a man had been murdered when he was alive and well?
I’d been in bits during the weeks following Biff’s murder. I’d been terrified, paranoid and confused. If I’d known that the victim was just an actor covered in tomato sauce, I could have gotten on with my life.
Then I remembered that whatever the reality of Biff’s murder, Amanda Kenwood was still dead. Or was she? No, she was definitely dead. It had been all over the news. The police had retrieved the body.
How strange, neither Dawn nor Montgomery could write a believable murder novel between them, yet their orchestrated death of Biff had been entirely convincing.
“Talk me through it again,” I urged Biff. “You pretended to die, and you were only allowed to let Dawn and Montgomery know that you weren’t really dead. Then you left the island on a boat and Annabel, Rafe and Danger were there.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“At what point did they find out that you were still alive? Rafe seemed very convincing when he was running around the island looking for your killer.”
“I was very touched. Particularly when you started yelling.” He smiled a little smile, and winked with one of his bright eyes.
“This isn’t funny!”
“I’m not laughing! I was really touched!”
“Why would Dawn and Montgomery pay you ten thousand pounds to pretend to die, only to reveal the hoax to virtually everybody right afterwards.”
“Virtually everybody isn’t everybody though, is it?”
“Everybody except me.” Prickles began to infest my body. Why was I any different? “Do you think this was about tricking me?”
“I don’t know.”
It was too much to take in. First Biff wasn’t really dead, then I’d found out that Dawn and Montgomery had paid him, and now I’d found out that everybody besides me knew about it. Was this all about fooling me? Had those two monsters paid ten thousand pounds just to make a fool out of me?
What possible advantage could there be in making me believe that a handyman was dead? None of it made any sense. I needed to talk it over with somebody smart. I needed to talk it over with Gareth.
Suddenly, I had a moment of clarity. I looked at the man opposite me — arguably one of the most beautiful men ever carved by God — yet he wasn’t the one I wanted to spend my evening with. And it wasn’t just about needing answers. Gareth gave me so much more. He made me laugh, he made me feel safe, he made me happy. The reasons to leave him seemed to have evaporated now. He was no longer lazy, jobless or selfish. Over the last few weeks, he’d been a rock — my rock.
“I have to go,” I said, hurrying up from the table and sending ice flying as I knocked over both glasses.
“But I was hoping we could get another drink. Perhaps go on to another bar? It really is great to see you again, Dee.”
I looked at him, his eyes so steely and intense. Were those lustful eyes? Was this tasty hunk looking at me with lustful eyes?
“No thanks,” I said, giving him a dismissive kiss on the cheek.
He turned towards me and I had to pull away quickly before our lips brushed. He was doing lustful eyes! I had the chance to bed a man who looked like a prototype love robot from a future without biological men. Yet I didn’t want a prototype love robot, I wanted my bumpy, saggy, big-eared, lanky husband.
“Perhaps another time?” he asked.
I smiled politely and deposited myself on the street outside. It was raining heavily and people were running for shelter, but I didn’t care about being dry. There was only one thing that I wanted to do, and I wanted to do it now. I grabbed my phone and made it dial Gareth’s number.
Why had I been so blind? I’d never stopped loving the big, lanky idiot. So, we’d had a rough patch. He got a bit depressed, he spent more time smoking weed and playing computer games than he perhaps should have done, but they were temporary problems. And yes, the amount he went out drinking had annoyed me, and spending my money on a Scooby-Doo costume had irritated me, but that was the man I married, and I loved him, warts and all.
Until she delivered the crushing blow. Penny, or Little Miss Grating Giggles, as she might more suitably have been called, smacked me in the face with a sledgehammer.
A female voice answered Gareth’s phone.
A female voice?
“Who’s that?” she asked.
“I could ask you the same question.”
“It’s Penny!” she giggled, as if I should know who that is.
“Are you one of Gareth’s friends?”
“Um ... I wouldn’t say that exactly. Do you want to speak to Gazza?”
Gazza? “Well, yes, I did call his phone.”
“I’m afraid he can’t come to the phone. He’s ...” then she erupted into more fits of excited giggles, “freshening up.”
Freshening up? What? Gareth freshens up when he’s just ... Oh. The giggles ... the freshening up ... the access to his phone ...
I let my handset drop to the floor, splashing deep into a puddle. It was an expensive smartphone, but I didn’t care. My marriage had combusted. Our separation was no longer theoretical. We were no longer experimenting with ending the marriage, but lowering it into a six-foot hole and layering it with earth.
Freshening up? There were only three occasions when Gareth ‘freshened up’ — morning shower (or lunchtime, as had been the case in recent months), after playing football, or after ... Oh God.
It didn’t bear thinking about. Gareth and somebody else ... Somebody else and ... I felt sick and hungry, and hot and cold, and heavy and light-headed. It felt as though a herd of elephants had trampled on my life. My future turned to sawdust. Irreparable. I couldn’t even be entirely sure that I wasn’t dead and I was too devastated to bother checking for a pulse.
What I did next, I did on autopilot. Perhaps I was dead, because I felt like a zombie. I must have retrieved my phone, but I can hardly remember. I walked, step by step, back into the bar. I grabbed Ricky by the hands and guided him up out of his seat until he stood before me, then I pressed my lips against his and began the process of letting him seduce me.
Chapter 17
I walked home in a hazy daze. Daylight was nothing but a promise from the amber sky, but I had to get away — away from Ricky’s bed. Doing the horizontal hustle with the hottest guy in London had only served to make me feel even worse than I did already.
Ricky wasn’t Gareth. He didn’t kiss like Gareth, he didn’t touch like Gareth, he didn’t cuddle like Gareth. He wasn’t Gareth! There was nothing technically wrong with the sex, but there was no spirit to it either. We may as well have been working out at the gym, for all the pleasure it brought me. I wanted a shower or bath — anything to get rid of that piny Biff stench.
My new status as the most recent sexual partner of a God-like man did not bring the increased confidence you might have expected, but disgust. Why had I allowed myself to have sex with a man I hardly knew, a man who
had deceived me into thinking that he was dead?
And why we had to do it to Chesney Hawkes, I will never know. The irony that the song was called ‘One and Only’ didn’t fail to escape me. The lyrics served as a painful reminder that Ricky was not the one and only, he was the runner up, the booby prize, the silver medal.
I let myself in through the front door that Gareth had once carried me through, wondering which one of us would get the front door in the divorce settlement. I didn’t really care either way. It was just a door, a silly door. A door that had one day opened, allowing Gareth to leave and shag some floozy called Penny. Why hadn’t the door jammed or something? Damned door. Bloody door. You’ve destroyed my marriage you crappy piece of ...
As I slammed the door, a breeze caught my face and my cheeks suddenly felt cold. What was wrong with my cheeks? I touched them and realised that they were wet. I was crying? Flaming hell!
I began wailing. It wasn’t like me. I needed to calm down. I looked around me. Where was my relaxation CD? Where was my yoga mat? Then my eyes fell on something on the table — a flat, metal tin with the Jamaican flag on the lid — Gareth’s weed. He must have left it here accidentally when he unloaded the DVDs.
It had been a long time since I’d touched the stuff — three years, four maybe. I might have dabbled again, but in recent months Gareth’s over-usage had sent me stubbornly anti-drugs.
Now, at what was almost certainly the lowest point of my life, the tin felt like an old friend. Please don’t be empty. I opened the lid. Resin. Well it was better than nothing, and what did I expect? Obviously Gareth had remembered to take the good stuff.
I began skinning up. It’s one of those things you never forget how to do. I sat back on the sofa and caught a glimpse of myself reflected in the television screen.
How had it come to this? Rolling a spliff in the living room, like a student. Just two months before, I had had a husband, a budding writing career and a squeaky-clean conscience. Now, my husband was gone, an unedited story had been published in my name, and I had caused a young woman’s death.
Things had begun spiralling out of control from the moment I had kicked Gareth out. I’d enrolled on the writers’ weekend to distract myself. I’d started a war with an entire species of bird. I’d let some truly disturbed people into my life. I’d trespassed on private property. I’d slept with a virtual stranger. And now I was using drugs.
I had to wonder, would any of these things have happened if I’d never driven Gareth away? If I’d just carried on the way things were? Sure, Gareth would still be a sloth, and I’d still be frustrated up to my teeth, but Amanda might still be alive, Gareth wouldn’t have slept with Penny, and I wouldn’t have engaged in genital exercises with a man I believed to be dead.
We had seemed so close to sorting out our marital differences. Gareth bringing back some of the DVDs had really felt like a move towards reconciliation, when actually he had been on the verge of sleeping with some cow.
I looked at the coffee table in front of me, covered in notes about the writers, printouts from the internet and chopped up news articles. None of it made any sense.
Then, I glanced at the pile of DVDs — American Psycho, Alice in Wonderland, Vanilla Sky. What did all of those films have in common?
Holy potatoes!
Suddenly, everything was abundantly clear. I flopped over the edge of the sofa and threw up in the wastepaper bin.
Why hadn’t I realised the truth before now?
These people, these crazy, stereotypical, inconsistent people were crazy, stereotypical and inconsistent because they were not real! I had imagined them all and I knew exactly why. They were characters in my new book, just fictional creations. I wasn’t the detective in a murder mystery — I was the writer!
* * *
I rearranged the papers on the table. These weren’t really printouts from the internet, they were character notes and plot threads. The reason that I could control the future was that I was writing it.
All these questions, all this speculation ... it wasn’t to save two more lives, it was part of the process of deciding how my story should end. No wonder the police found ears of wheat next to the victims. The wheat was my subconscious trying to get through to me, trying to bring me back to reality.
How could this have happened? How could I have become so engrossed in my own story that I truly believed it was real? Did I have some sort of unspecified mental health problem? Perhaps the stress of ending my marriage had sent me into withdrawal, making me believe that I was living in an alternative fantasy world, thus protecting me from dealing with reality. Only now, my fantasy world was falling apart and forcing me to face the reality that Gareth was gone for good.
I began laughing. Fancy me thinking that Rafe Maddocks was a real person! He was ridiculous! Fancy me thinking I could pull somebody as hot as Ricky! Heck, people as hot as Ricky don’t even exist.
The doorbell rang and I started. I needed a little longer to get used to this new realisation. For weeks, I’d believed that I was a detective trying to solve the mystery of the crazed copycat, and now I had to readjust to being Dee Whittaker, plain old, dull, single ... mad ... Dee Whittaker.
Almost as soon as the doorbell rang, the door opened. It was somebody with a key. It was Gareth.
Why was he letting himself in? How much time had passed since I had asked him to leave? How long had I been submerged in my Pompomberry House delusion?
“Hey Dee!” he said, chirpily. “Woah!”
I was disorientated to say the least.
“What’s up?”
“I had a peculiar dream, I think ... A delusion ... A big delusion.”
“Any news on the copycat?”
“What? You know about the copycat?”
“Are you alright, Dee?”
“A bit disorientated. I think I might have a schizomatic disorder or something.”
How did Gareth know about the copycat? Had I involved him in my delusion? Suddenly, it was all clear. I hadn’t imagined Pompomberry House to protect myself, I’d created it to force Gareth to become the person I needed him to be. I hadn’t only convinced myself that this ridiculous saga was real, I’d convinced Gareth too.
The saga had begun the very week I asked him to leave. It gave Gareth opportunities to be heroic, active and mature — the very things he was lacking. I’d made up a murder story to see if he would rise to the challenge. I’d lied, subconsciously of course, but I’d been deceitful. How many lies had I told?
“I’m so sorry,” I said, wrapping my arms around his neck. Would he ever forgive me? Would he understand that I was unaware that I was lying?
“Dee, what have you been smoking?”
“What makes you think I’ve been smoking?”
“You’re holding a spliff. Besides, the air hit me the moment that I walked in.”
“I need to tell you something ...”
“Okay ...”
“I made it all up. Pompomberry House, The Book of Most Quality Writers, the whole lot!”
“Seriously Dee, where did you get that spliff?”
“Forget the spliff! I’m trying to come clean.”
“What did you put in it?”
“Why do you care?”
“Because you’re talking nonsense.”
“I am not! I know it’s difficult to get your head around. I didn’t realise myself until it got ridiculous. I thought Biff came back from the dead!”
“What are you trying to say?”
“I told you! Pompomberry House isn’t real.”
“Dee, I picked you up from Gulls Reach.”
“Really. When?”
“A few weeks ago, after you fled from Pompomberry Island.”
“I must have driven there, to make the story more real.”
“No you didn’t.”
“I did!”
“I was with you when we went to the farm, the garden centre ...”
“So I took you gnome shopping. What does
that prove? That doesn’t mean the island was real. No wonder the police couldn’t find it. No wonder it’s not on any satnav!”
“But the farmer really had had a pig stolen.”
“I probably took it myself. He said he found women’s footprints ...”
“Now I know you’re talking nonsense. You don’t have any dainty shoes.”
“That’s not fair! I have a pair of sandals.”
“Dee, I was at Café Revive! I’ve met the writers.”
“Oh no, Gareth! You believe it too!”
“What have you been smoking?”
Then he saw the tin.
“Jesus, Dee! Did you touch this?”
“Maybe.”
“Dee! This is strong stuff.”
“It’s resin.”
“Dee, you’re completely disorientated.”
“It’s not the drugs. I think I’m schizomatic.”
“I think you need something to eat.”
“Food! Oh yes!”
We spent the next hour walking around the block, because Gareth felt that being active might help. As time went by, Gareth’s words made more and more sense. I hadn’t really imagined the last five weeks of my life. I’d just smoked extremely strong weed and become a tad paranoid. I felt foolish. What a silly, implausible theory.
Gareth told me five or six times that he’d met the writers, but it still didn’t sound true. After three packets of biscuits and thirty walks around the block, his words sounded much more credible.
We went back inside and Gareth put on an episode of Friends, feeling that it was suitably bland not to set me off again. I sank into his embrace, resting my head on his chest. It felt good and I began to relax.
Then I remembered something that hadn’t been a delusion. Something of crucial importance that Gareth obviously didn’t know that I knew.
“Who’s Penny?”
He laughed. He had the audacity to laugh!
I sat bolt upright. “Funny is it?”
“Hey, chill. What’s the matter?”
“She answered your phone,” I said, giving him a knowing look.
He shrugged. He looked genuinely confused. Oh no ...
“She said you were ‘freshening up’!”
Pompomberry House Page 24