What She Left: Enhanced Edition

by T. R. Richmond

  Phil

  Friday nights in Flames won’t be the same without you. Make sure you come back and see us. Make mine a double :)

  Juliet

  Good luck.

  From Anthony Stanhope

  You’ve done your best to play it cool, Miss Salmon, but I have it on good authority that you’re crazy about me so let me know when you’re ready for that date! A man like me won’t hang around for ever!

  Big Tom

  Journalist extraordinaire, queen of bakers, runner, charity worker, champion of the dispossessed, tequila enthusiast, brilliant friend. Is there anything you can’t do? Watch out, men of London.

  Loads of love and big hugs, Michelle X

  Letter sent by Professor Jeremy Cooke,

  29 June 2012

  My dear Larry,

  I went to the river after I’d been to the police station. To the spot where a procession of TV presenters had stood, as if their geographical proximity gave them some unique insight. ‘It was here,’ they’d say in hushed, authoritative tones, ‘that a promising young life was cut short. Here, at this normally peaceful and tranquil spot, that a young woman died tragically. Here, where an otherwise normal Saturday night out – the sort that thousands enjoy every weekend – reached its horrific conclusion.’ They focused almost exclusively on this stretch, titillated viewers with uncorroborated details about the strength of the current on February 5 (medium to fast), how much she weighed (purportedly anything between 9 stone 4 and 10 stone 5) and what she was wearing (jeans, a purple silky top and boots … that they were knee-length, black, from Topshop – one newscaster got very carried away with that particular kernel of detail).

  The scene had been awash with flowers initially: an explosion of winter reds, pinks and yellows – the ideal backdrop for cameramen. Now, just the wilted remains of one small bouquet. There wasn’t a soul around, it was after 1 a.m., and I’d knelt by the water, put my hand in, felt the rush of cold. Initial reports claimed it was a jogger who’d spotted her body, later revised to a dog walker. He’d been shocked when I got in touch, asked if I was official. Yes, I’d reassured him. I’d asked him questions as if I was entirely uninformed, but it seems so important: to fill in all the blanks. He’d thought she was a tree trunk, then it dawned on him they were clothes. ‘I couldn’t take it in,’ he said, this man who I’d met in the Debenhams restaurant. ‘It was as if my brain wouldn’t process it, a dead woman in the water.’ He didn’t use the expression – it’s actually one with which I’ve only recently become familiar – but what he’d seen had been the first-stage ‘immersion artefacts’. Alice’s skin, pimpled like a bad case of goosebumps (cutis anserina, the technical term is), the smooth softness swollen and wrinkled like a washerwoman’s. Putting his coffee down, he’d said she’d had a stick in her hand. Apparently it’s not unusual for objects to remain grasped after death, fixed by a cadaveric spasm. Left in the water longer, fish and other creatures would have nibbled Alice’s flesh, lips and eyelids. The word for that was a new one on me: anthropophagy. Left longer still she would have sunk, before eventually resurfacing, bobbed back up by the gas produced by her body’s bacteria. ‘Bloat and float,’ I saw that ghoulishly described as in one Internet chat room.

  The man in Debenhams was petrified the police would arrest him; put two and two together and come up with five. ‘The council’s replaced a lot of the fences near the bridge,’ he said.

  I explained about Alice’s newspaper campaign when she’d worked in the city. How strongly she’d felt about it; how her single-mindedness and tenaciousness had achieved results.

  ‘They’ve been vandalized, but you’d have had to want to jump to get through,’ he said.

  I’d had my suspicions at first, but I simply can’t see it: her taking her own life. Not Alice. For every page in her diary she devoted to how bad she felt, there were two to how fantastic life was. She’d got through bad spells before. Liz, bless her, is vaulting from theory to theory. I expect she’ll have crept up to the notion of suicide, edging out to it as one would a cliff, but she’s steadfastly refusing to accept or even acknowledge its plausibility and my conclusions thus far bear that out: time and again that girl had soldiered on, beaten back the blackness, persevered, lived.

  By the river, I’d put my hand back in, and there was a faint memory of being in a dinghy, leaning out the back, my hand trailing in water. I dropped down on to my hands and knees. ‘Darling, where are you?’ I found myself calling and saw my reflection – the half-moon glasses, the eyebrows, the wrinkles, the tufts of hair – then I was washed away. I wondered what it would have been like to have stepped in, to have followed her, to have gone after her. It’s not the pain of illness that scares me, Larry; that’s not so impossible. It’s the prospect of decline I can’t abide. The thought of Fliss having to watch it. As if I haven’t hurt her enough.

  ‘You’re not escaping that easily,’ she said when I made a wisecrack about one final holiday to Sweden. Her face had crumpled and she said that life was precious, it wasn’t ours to take and, besides, she cherished every single second with me.

  When the boy with tattoos had mentioned ‘hara-kiri’, I tied the little shit up in knots by outlining its literal translation. Explained how defeated samurai would restore their honour by disembowelling themselves, and the displacement was similar to lecturing; if you focused intently on detail, you didn’t see what you were looking at, didn’t feel anything, there was just the banking up of details and facts, the familiar architecture of knowledge. ‘Imagine a shame so great it compels a human being to take their own life,’ I’d said and he did what he’d done previously: asked me why I talked about human beings as if they were a different species, as if I wasn’t one of them. He’d asked for more money and I’d explained how the less noise samurai made after they’d sliced themselves open with their swords – their wakizashi – the braver they were.

  Staring up at that bridge, I realized something, Larry. It was how utterly useless all this knowledge was. Were I to take up a knife, plunge it into the left side of my abdomen and draw the blade across to the right then turn it upwards, would that knowledge stop the blood pooling around my feet? None of it meant a jot, any more than having learnt such words as ‘brachytherapy’ and ‘zoledronic acid’ could make my illness dissipate.

  ‘There’s nothing like cancer to expand your vocabulary,’ I’d said to Fliss, after one of my hospital visits.

  ‘I love you,’ she said, and I’d decided: I’m going to tell you. When this is done, when I’ve gathered all the information about Alice I can, I’m going to tell you what she meant to me, her and her mother. I’m going to tell you and the whole world, because how will you believe I’m being honest about anything – how will you believe how much I love you – if I can’t be honest about the positions they’ve variously occupied in the recesses of my heart?

  ‘It’s nice how you’re putting this girl back together again,’ she once remarked, as we were flicking through a slideshow of photos of her on my laptop.

  ‘You make her sound like Humpty Dumpy,’ I joked, recalling how all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t manage it with that poor little fellow.

  ‘Presumably you’re not intending to publish any of it, though?’ she’d asked.

  Bless her, she had no idea.

  I’ve worked out what this new feeling is that prompts me to say to the principal, ‘I’m doing this with or without your blessing’, or to the chancellor, ‘I don’t give a toss what your view is’, or to our latest departmental recruit, a square-jawed barrel-chested brute, ‘Are you as boring in the bedroom as you are in the laboratory?’ I felt it after I had the first inkling of what it might be that sent me scuttling four times a night to the toilet. Again, when I spotted the momentary flash of recognition in my doctor’s eyes. Later still, when the consultant uttered the word ‘terminal’. I’ll tell you what it is, Larry, it’s a lack of fear. Finally, a complete and utter lack of fear.

&n
bsp; ‘I’m not giving you any more money,’ I said to the tattooed boy. The faint sound of music had reached me from his earphones. Perhaps this is what it’ll be like after I’m dead, I’d thought: echoes of the world. He’d reached down into his rucksack and I was expecting another Alice item, but he retrieved a glass figurine that should have been on the sideboard in our dining room. I’d bought it for Fliss for an anniversary, when we were in the old house.

  ‘Fuck you,’ I heard myself saying.

  He was momentarily dumbfounded. Why did I never stand up to bullies as a child, Larry? ‘I don’t care what you do with the letter,’ I said. ‘I’ll be dead before long. You’ve got another fifty years to live. Imagine that, another half-century of being you – that must be torture. You’ve got more to hide than me, more to lose. You’ll not get another penny out of me.’

  He always locked the door behind him, but I’d wondered what our tableau would resemble if anyone had come in. A lecturer and one of his students? A scientist and one of his assistants? A father and his son – a young one, admittedly, perhaps from a second marriage who’d dropped by to say hi or extract some cash from his old dad?

  ‘You only hate me because we’re the same,’ he said. ‘You might dress it up, but you’re the respectable face of what I am. You’re me in a tweed jacket.’

  I laughed out loud at that one.

  ‘Fuck you, Iceman,’ he said.

  I wondered if I’d had a son whether we’d have ever spoken to each other like this – whether we’d have fought, got on, admired each other, trusted each other, loved each other. I went to grab the figurine and it tumbled to the floor, smashing. ‘I’m going to beat you to the truth,’ I said. ‘I’m going to put it all in a book and you, you little shit, might even feature.’

  ‘Looks like Mr and Mrs Salmon are going to get a bit of new reading material then!’ he’d replied.

  We’re all going to get some reading material, if I get my way.

  The coroner’s verdict was tantamount to admitting we’re stumped. White froth in her mouth and nose, fluid in her lungs, aquatic debris in her stomach – such observations would have suggested to those examining Alice that she drowned, that she was alive when she entered the water, but that doesn’t explain what came before. Doesn’t it strike you as ironic, that in a world where our every step is watched, monitored and filmed, she took her last few unseen? At least, by the wider world. Should someone be behind bars for this? There are those who would probably argue I should be for what I did that December evening in 2004, although that’s another story.

  When I’d visited the river after my session at the police station, I’d sat there until it got light, scanning the water and debris and the deep, fast-flowing inky-black water whipping by. And I watched Alice Salmon. I remembered my Humpty Dumpty book, its yellow cracked cover, touching the spine, feeling the story, feeling that baby egg himself.

  ‘It’s anthropomorphic,’ my father had said. ‘Do you remember what that means, Jeremy?’

  For the life of me, I couldn’t; all I wanted to do was to say the story out loud, for once to hear him say it out loud, the familiar reassuring shape of the rhymes. ‘We’ve been through this,’ he said tersely. ‘Will the taste of this help you remember?’ he said, unbuckling his belt.

  It’s a single quatrain. But it doesn’t mean a thing, being enlightened about its form. So what that I know that brittle, bulbous egg makes an appearance in Through the Looking Glass, discussing semantics with its protagonist Alice. Wonder if our Alice ever read that book? She’d have loved the eponymous hero. I’ll put you together again, dear sweet Alice, and when you’re convoked in my book – when we’re together in my book – maybe it’ll be the right time for me to have a great fall.

  Thing is, old chap, I saw her on the night she died. I didn’t mention this to the police; they’d only get the wrong end of the stick. Not that anyone saw us when we’d talked, when we’d argued, but it would only fuel further speculation. I’d charted her movements on Twitter: a list of pub and bar names, pins in a map. It was on the aptly named Above Bar Street when I eventually caught up with her and heard laughter pealing from a huddle of smokers in a pub doorway. I recognize that laugh, I thought. Its pitch, its timbre. I turned and gawked. I recognize that hair, I thought. Alice.

  ‘You,’ she’d said, shocked, scared. A few minutes later, a slap across my face.

  Why couldn’t she have been wearing shoes not boots, Larry? Then they wouldn’t have dragged her down so much. There’d been marks on her face, the man in Debenhams had told me. Presumably, he said, from where the current had battered her against hard surfaces. That’ll have been the steps, I thought. The swell of the water had bashed her repeatedly into those.

  In my head, I replayed the scenario: her gliding downstream, yet I knew deep down she wouldn’t have been like Ophelia because of another thing I’ve learnt. Bodies in water always float face down.

  Yours as ever,

  Jeremy

  Text from Elizabeth Salmon,

  4 February 2012, 13.27 p.m.

  Alice, do me a favour, sweetheart: I can’t open my email. Can you log in from your phone …? Am at the garden centre and need a voucher code. Will be on the email that arrived yesterday. Hope your weekend in Southampton goes well. Your father says don’t drink too much. Love you x

  Letter sent by Professor Jeremy Cooke,

  3 July 2012

  Frankly it was the usual ghastly affair, Larry. Shallow, futile conversations. Professional point-scoring. Anthropological one-upmanship. At least there was plenty of booze, which salved the pain.

  We were at a gathering of scientists after a conference. Not creeping around in a tawdry hotel, not grabbing a half-hour assignation in my office with the blinds shut, not in my car by the side of the road in the New Forest. Liz and I were at a party. This is what she’d wanted. Us, out together, in public.

  Every time the front door opened I couldn’t help checking who it was.

  ‘Relax,’ she reassured me, ‘you’re miles from home. We don’t know anyone here. Besides, everyone’s preoccupied with themselves – you’ve said as much yourself. It’s human nature.’

  We stood in the kitchen. A few people were dancing to Abba in the living room. No one was my age; everyone was either in their twenties or middle-aged. Liz was wearing a black dress and the necklace I’d bought her; she looked divine. I was captivated by her neck on that particular night: the long, white curve of it, like a swan or an orchid’s stem or a piece of ornamental blown glass. I felt like a character in a movie – Charlton Heston, say, or Gregory Peck.

  A procession of men homed in on her. ‘Are you two together?’ one asked brazenly.

  ‘Well, I’m not her father, am I?’ I snapped, jealousy spearing me. I put my arm round her, felt her small shoulders. ‘You look beautiful,’ I whispered.

  I could feel the tension in her body. I should have anticipated this: there’d been silences over lunch when she’d poked at her mackerel and when I’d enquired how her food was she’d merely replied ‘dry’. Even attempts to pull the conversation back on to a more satisfactory plane by talking about a topic I knew – or guessed – would fascinate her, the raising of the Mary Rose, hauled from its ocean grave after 437 years, were unsuccessful.

  ‘I can’t go on like this,’ she said.

  ‘This wine isn’t up to much, I’ll give you that.’

  ‘I need to feel I’m on a trajectory.’

  I waited for the moment to pass. When it didn’t, I said: ‘Easy to tell you’re in the English department. You’ll be referring to our arc next!’

  ‘Don’t make fun of me,’ she said. ‘It’s not unreasonable. What we’re doing, it’s all so shoddy and it’s not fair on anyone, least of all Fliss.’

  My wife’s name passed like a shadow across the room. The kids of whoever was hosting the bash – they’d been terrorizing guests all night – ran into the kitchen. Poor little wretches, their parents had made them dress up: tie
s and tank tops. These academics, they couldn’t even leave their offspring out of their obsessions.

  ‘Why is it men always think different rules apply to them?’ Liz asked.

  I waited, hoping it was a rhetorical question.

  ‘Can’t you see? If there is going to be an us, I want it to be something I can be proud of.’

  One of the children, a precocious little fellow – he reminded me of myself at that age – came over and introduced himself. It had been one of the names on my and Fliss’s list, but we’d long since given up talking about names. We’d long since given up talking about children. I knew at home she’d be watching The Two Ronnies, laughing at the bit where they pretended to be newscasters, making coffee in the part where Ronnie Corbett told the shaggy-dog story.

  ‘You’re never going to leave your wife, are you?’ Liz said, when the child had wandered off.

  ‘Steady on,’ I said. ‘We’ve only known each other for a few months.’

  ‘A few months, a few years – it makes no difference. You’ll never leave her.’

  ‘Isn’t loyalty a good trait?’

  ‘Now’s not the time for your facetiousness, Jem. We all need to be in control of our own destinies and I’m no more than a passenger in yours.’

  I glanced at my watch. She took a big swig of gin.

  ‘Do you love me?’ she asked.

  ‘Wow, there’s a question.’

  ‘Yes, there is a question – and now I want an answer.’

  ‘Us anthropologists struggle with that concept,’ I said. ‘It’s generally accepted that love, specifically romantic love, evolved to focus one’s mating energy on one partner as that attachment enabled us to rear progeny as a team. An American’s been doing some fascinating work in this field. This whole area of what love is for is very stimulating.’