39
The thought of Will and Anna together may have unhinged me for a while, I know that. I wanted revenge that even her death couldn’t satisfy. I wanted revenge on her corpse, her head on a spike, the way they did things in the Middle Ages. Now, that was a great tradition. They should bring it back. I could have stuck her head on the archway leading to Weycombe Court.
Her betrayal and Will’s infected me like a virus in the blood. I staggered through the days and weeks before her murder, blind with rage and confusion. Afterward I wanted her back, just so I could punish her. It was a wildly frustrating time.
The suspect most likely to have killed her, my own dear husband, deserved to die, too. If only the UK had a death penalty.
I knew what it was to see red. I read somewhere that if your blood pressure skyrockets high enough, the eyes will extend from their sockets. That’s what happened to those airmen they used as guinea pigs in those rocket sleds in the desert. They tested them for what the human body can endure in outer space.
Will and Anna put me over the limit of what the human body, and the human spirit, can endure. It’s as simple as that.
The police sent me out to meet Anna’s killer: chin up, brave, biting my lips to keep from trembling or showing any fear. I used Audrey Hepburn in Wait Until Dark as my model. I really was scared, so it wasn’t all acting; I was afraid if I let my nerves show too much, the police would cancel the whole escapade. There was a lot to go wrong—the definition of wrong including my getting caught in the crossfire. Any failure of resolve on my part would be calamitous. If ever I were to be cool and calm, this was the time.
Milo’s final instructions were still running through my head. I’d heard them two dozen times by then and anyway, I already knew what I had to do.
In the end, over much conversation with him and Attwater and an assorted cast of characters specializing in stings, we agreed upon a remote location, chosen for its isolation, darkness, and privacy. A place where Will and I wouldn’t be overheard, or so Will would think.
Before the appointed time on Saturday evening, October 29, I drove past the village shops and turned off just before the High dwindled to a few cottages. I headed south until I reached the turnoff for Riverside Park, about a mile from Weycombe proper. As far as I could tell, I wasn’t followed. These guys were good.
I parked and sat watching as a heron chased away first one, then two egrets from his territory. They put up no resistance; egrets pick their fights carefully. A mother egret will attack her young, and egret chicks will peck a sibling to death. The world of nature is always before us, setting an example.
The park officially closed at sundown so as to thwart lovers and drug dealers, but the rule is unenforceable since there are no gates, only signs with polite suggestions that people obey the posted hours. I mean, it’s a forest and if anyone wants in, there’s no stopping them. I suppose the police patrol here and there, and I would think it a plum assignment for any outdoors type such as Milo. He could get out of the car and stretch his legs, lift fallen trees for exercise, stand with hands on hips breathing in the fresh air. Yodel if he felt like it. He told me at some point as we discussed the sting operation that he’d been raised on a farm and how he couldn’t wait to leave it. He had always wanted to be a cop. He had been happy; he and his wife had been happy, until his son fell ill.
That evening the park was crawling with law enforcement, and any teenage lovers or dealers would have been well advised to obey the closing signs. By the time I arrived the cops had already swept the area, and a patrol car sat by the entrance to bar any newcomers. That car would be hidden at a signal that my special date was arriving.
I’d dressed for the occasion in a heavy jacket over a bulky sweater. Despite the cold weather, I was rethinking this ensemble. I was nervous but I wanted to look pulled together and unflappable, at least up to a point. After that, it didn’t matter if I looked bedraggled and disheveled, because surely I would be. I might be in for the fight of my life.
Tucked into my bra was a microphone. Not a pushup, following instructions from Attwater, who looked as if she could hide a marmot in hers, but a plain sports bra. The mic was attached to a wireless device that could transmit to the backup van the police had tucked deep in the forest. As Milo had explained to me, a system whereby I’d have to remember to punch the record button was too complicated. He didn’t say it, but I gathered that an amateur, undone by nerves, could not be trusted not to fumble for the record button or forget entirely that they had to use one to make the thing work. Good thinking, there. Even though I was used to working with recording equipment, I was anxious: rehearsing what I’d say, and how I’d say it, and praying I could arrange words in the right order and in the right places before they had to charge in, guns blazing, and rescue me.
It was all being done in accordance with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act—RIPA—as Milo had also explained to me. There was no way, he added, that they’d send a civilian out without some way to signal that something had gone wrong with the interview.
I pointed to a button on the device.
“What’s this for?” I asked, although it was clearly labeled.
“That’s the mute button. And if you don’t know what anything is, for God’s sake don’t play around with it.”
“Okay, okay. But listen, what if I can’t get him to talk?”
“I think it’s a given that he will. Why else is he agreeing to a meeting like this? The whole point with these guys is that they want to talk; they want to explain themselves. Especially someone like Will, who was hardly raised to a life of crime.”
“Right. Of course, you’re right.”
“Just get him talking. Open him up and … ”
He didn’t have to finish the sentence. Once they heard Will’s confession, he was done.
The wait for Will to return my call had been one of the longest I can remember. If he didn’t call, if he refused to meet with me, I was stuffed. I’d literally paced the house, front to back and up and down the stairs. Finally, my mobile rang.
“Is this Jill?”
“Yes, it’s me. I lost my phone and had to get a new one. Where are you?”
I sounded pissed off, which allayed his suspicions. I sounded like myself. I wandered into the bedroom as we talked. On my return to the kitchen I nodded to Milo and managed a strained smile.
Game on.
I should tell you right now that the murders of Anna Monroe and Frannie Pope were never solved to everyone’s satisfaction.
As so often happens, the person blamed for the crimes was all that mattered. I’m not sure anyone would believe an alternate version, even now. Especially now that it’s all settled in everyone’s mind.
In life, there is no rewind button.
The relief when it was all over was like a thunderstorm on a humid summer day. The tension, the plotting, the nerves, the trying to remember if I’d forgotten anything, the making sure I’d left nothing undone. No loophole left open, and no way for him to wriggle loose. In the end the clouds burst open, the rain fell, and everyone could breathe a sigh of relief. Everyone but Will, of course.
40
The business with Anna dredged up some old memories about my brother I thought I had put to rest. I found that hard to forgive, too, for once I’d moved to England I was nearly able to forget him. It was all so far away in distance and in time. Surely it’s healthy to have forgotten. How long are you supposed to punish yourself—how many years are you to waste in pointless regret?
Sometimes, though, I thought I could feel him standing at my shoulder. I’d imagine I could feel his breath on my skin, hear that gasping sound he made as he lay dying. Or feel him leap at my back and shriek in my ear as he used to do, horsing around, scaring the bejesus out of me. And while what happened to Anna was fated to happen and was in no way the same thing, her death started up the memor
ies again. It was like taking the dust sheets off old furniture in a haunted house, flinging all the dust motes into the sunlight.
My brother’s allergies kicked in on that final camping trip with the parents, one of their erratic stabs at normal family life. He was allergic to peanuts and bee venom. You would be surprised to know the many products that have peanuts lurking in them. But the bees were what finished him. Unlike with peanut allergies, bee sting reactions can begin in a matter of minutes. I’m a bit of an expert on this.
He knew right away what had hit him—in fact, it was in swatting the bee and making it angry he got stung by it. Self-defense works in the insect world, too.
He began showing all the symptoms I’d seen often enough—his hands, face, eyes, and lips instantly swelling; he was wheezing like a bagpipe and would soon turn a grayish blue. The parents, hovering over him, yelled at me to go get the injector out of his backpack. But it wasn’t there. I shouted this news back at them. My father ran over and grabbed the backpack from me, turned it upside down, dumped out all the contents.
My brother had been fourteen, at the classic age of rebellion, flags unfurled. He thought our mother worried too much and he hated having to carry the injector around like some invalid. He would forget it on purpose. And that was apparently what he’d done, again.
Meanwhile, the sounds of his gasping grew harsher. And then fainter. He would lapse into a coma before long, as his blood pressure dropped to nothing. He would die without help.
“There’s a spare epi in the car,” my father said. That look on his face I’ll never forget. He was senseless with fear, his eyes frozen wide, the whites showing all the way around. His own breath came in harsh gasps. I had never seen him afraid. Drunk, yes, with all the arrogant confidence of the drunk. He was only a little drunk now. “Go get it. Now!” he shrieked at me, right in my face. I turned to do what he said and I heard, from under his breath, “Stupid girl.” I think that is what did it. That’s what finally broke me open.
There was no question of his going to fetch it, drunk or no; he started to run but he was pulled back to his son’s side, his precious only son, and I was more than old enough for the task, I was sixteen, and I could run like the wind, I was fit, my lungs strong. My mother couldn’t tear herself away either. I looked back and saw she’d scooped my brother in her arms like a child. I saw his face and it was blue. I swear it was already too late.
I ran through the woods to the car, where we always kept a spare injector in the glove box, but the thing wasn’t there, the epinephrine injector that might save him; I rifled through the glove box where it should have been, strewing maps and packets of tissue and gum and registration papers everywhere. I tore through the contents, scattering them over the seats and the floor of the car. The pen just wasn’t to be found, as I told my parents later, as I told the authorities. Not at first. He had had an episode recently, so his two-pack of injectors was just a one-pack. I knew it was there, but in my panic it took forever to find, I told them.
And at last there it was, under the driver’s seat, and I sat looking at it for the longest time, breathing hard. Not too long. Long enough. Screwing my courage to the sticking point.
Running back, I knew it was too late. Of course it was already too late.
There was an autopsy, completely unnecessarily given his long history of allergies. But the state got involved somehow. The ME found antibodies to the bee venom in his blood, making it conclusive he’d died of anaphylactic reaction. We all knew that, and personally I never forgave them for putting us through that ordeal. It needed to be over, and quickly. My parent’s marriage went into a death spiral from which it never recovered.
They didn’t blame me, not even my father, who was quick to blame, always. Somehow that made it worse.
The thing about having a sibling who died young is that you get a free pass for years to come. That’s the upside. Teachers don’t ask why you haven’t done your homework. They think they know; they imagine you spend half your time seized up with grief, crying over your math equations, unable to think or focus. Nobody, in other words, expects anything of you, and for a high-flyer, a straight-A student like me, it came as a relief. They never stop to think you might be glad he’s gone.
Then losing your mother practically on top of that? Bonus points in the sympathy department. Plus, my mother was barely in the ground when my father brought Tralee “Trailer Trash” Ashton out of the wings where she’d been waiting. No one knows what to say to a kid who has survived so many losses, who has won this booby prize of a stepmother in the bargain. So they leave you alone.
I think Tralee was a little bit afraid of me, to tell you the truth, and I liked that. It gave me a power over her I didn’t otherwise have.
Life is about evolving. Getting past the religious mania of the Middle Ages, past the invented morality, past the point of people telling you, for their own benefit, how to live your life. It doesn’t matter, nothing matters, the rules don’t matter except the ones you make for yourself. Choose your own path. Live free or die.
A cold winter was creeping in on Weycombe. The roof soon would creak with the weight of snow and ice, making sounds like a glacier rubbing against the hull of a frozen ship. I had to get out. Sell up and go.
I had once thought Will and I would be snug forever against the cold, wrapped in a fleecy white comforter, safe and warm as we read the papers cover to cover, drinking our morning coffee. Sundays in winter, we’d put on boots and sweaters and jeans and venture to the pub for our midday meal, and that meal would stretch until dinner time. We had all day to do nothing much but eat and make love, and knowing we both had to be at work the next day made us cherish those hours, stretch them out, hoard them, make them last as long as we could. When Monday came, already I couldn’t wait until the next weekend. I know Will felt the same. Used to feel the same.
Once I didn’t have a job to go to, Sunday was no different from any other day, and I frequently forgot altogether what day it was. Simple things like a dental appointment would have slipped right past me if they hadn’t rung with reminders. This, I remember thinking, must be what retirement looks like. It’s not that you’re losing your mind to dementia, it’s that one day looks exactly like the last. There are no buoys, no markers.
Of course the miscarriage didn’t help. After all that trying, the worst had happened, right around my birthday. Even worse was Will’s reaction. He barely pretended to be sympathetic. The biggest emotion he seemed to feel was relief, and he was bloody awful at hiding it. And somehow, the guilt or whatever it was he was feeling about Anna made him behave like even more of a shit. I fell into a depression and he grew tired of that too, poor thing. He kept telling me to snap out of it. So helpful.
One day he told me he was no longer in love with me. I ignored this. Children often say things they don’t mean when they’re frustrated, and to me Will was little more than a child.
While I’m in confessing mode: I got pregnant because I went off the pill and didn’t tell him. That was the worst, certainly from his point of view: foisting a pregnancy on him he didn’t want. Well, he had wanted at one time and wanted no more.
I guess that was wrong of me. I would say something like, “I’m going to get my prescription filled” and dash out the door. But I never said what type of prescription and he never asked; he just assumed. It might have been for depression, might it not? But he never asked, so to hell with him.
London: 2037
The Thames rises, creating marshland of London’s millionaires’ rows. I had the foresight not to buy right next to the water.
I have lived not far from Holland Park for nearly twenty years. A woman who reminded me of Anna—bossy, ambitious, hard as nails—brokered the sale.
Most of the neighbors involved in the events of long ago have moved from Weycombe. I think only Macy remains in her mansion. Divorced from Barry now and driving a new, younger
model.
God knows where the rest of them got to. Some, like Rashima, have died, in her case tragically young. An accident. Unavoidable. Some believe she knew or guessed too much about what really happened with Will. That is wild speculation you can safely ignore.
Jason is dead: overdose. Heather: no idea. I did hear Lulu turned out to be some kind of prodigy. Go figure.
Once I came into Will’s money, not without a certain amount of horrified, genteel fuss from his mother, the Dragon Lady, I chose the anonymity of London over life in the fishbowl that was Weycombe. I’ve recently renovated my lovely flat, using money from the sale of production rights to my book based on Will and Anna, their betrayal, and all the rest. I titled it Indigo, for that was the code word I used to alert the cops that Will had gone berserk on that long-ago night in the park. Meta, I know, but the publisher and the folks in Hollywood thought it was a catchy title.
Write what you know, they say. So I did. And now, finally, it’s really paying off.
I live here alone. I like it alone.
Milo came to call the other day.
His kid didn’t make it, despite the gene therapy for which Milo would gladly have sold his soul. It was too new, too experimental. Nowadays, it undoubtedly would have worked, and his son would still be alive. Now we have vaccines for nearly every cancer going, and cures for the various plagues out of Africa, even though new viruses continue to evolve. Space travel is the norm for civilians. To the moon and back, easy, no big deal. To New York in half an hour, jet lag a thing of the past, with more time spent going through security than in the air.
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