Escaping Life

by Michelle Muckley

  As he climbed up into his Explorer, he sipped on the coffee. “Surprisingly good,” he said, as the heat of the coffee brought beads of sweat to his forehead. ‘BEEP BEEP’. He felt his pocket vibrate again. He pulled his arms out of his jacket and pulled out the mobile.

  ‘8pm, Flanagan’s. Don’t be late.’ Kate had relented and finally agreed to meet him. It would be good to have her company; he didn’t want to go home alone again tonight. Just the thought of having to chase up this car accident down in Wellbeck was enough to stir up the memories, the smells, and the taste of the past. He didn’t want to go home alone surrounded by the photographs of the dead body. He didn’t want to eat or sleep alone. As he tapped out a response to Kate, he felt that same pang of guilt that he had felt earlier on in the day and he thought again about Roxanne as she had risen, picked up the money and left behind her nothing but temporary relief and an overwhelming sense of loneliness. He knew that he needed Kate more than ever: it felt as if his fate was catching up with him. Every day he thought more and more about his old car as it burned before his eyes whilst he drifted in and out of consciousness, his skin scalded and his back grazed from being pulled out only half alive. He was beginning to accept the fact that living in the suffocating vacuum of a dead family was slowly but very surely killing him too.

  Ten

  Lyme beach was still cornered off; the blue and white police tape flickered and flapped like the bunting that Mrs. Lyons would string out for the summer fete back in Haven. She would string it in zigzags through the streets attached high up on the lamp posts. Only this was to celebrate the glory of the past summer, not the unwanted discovery of a dead body.

  Jack Fraser didn’t need to show his ID badge to the guarding officer, but he always did anyway as he ducked underneath the flickering tape and stepped tentatively back onto the sands of Lyme beach. He had scanned the site himself every time he came here and today was no different as he looked for any potentially missed clues; he knew how sloppy some cops could be. He spoke with the crime scene investigators, who, after telling him that they hadn’t found anything new, assured him that they would be on site and investigating for at least another week.

  He arrived home that night unsatisfied with the day’s work. The sharp jangle rang out through the cavernous apartment as he threw his keys down onto the glass hallway table. Nobody heard him come home. He threw his jacket down onto the crumpled leather chair as always and walked towards the photographs which decorated his floor. He looked at the dead woman’s face; her eyes were open just a little, as if she had just woken up and the summer light was hurting her rich green eyes. How beautiful they would have been in life, he thought. Her cheeks were sunken too. Her whole face had the mark of death; grey and inert, solid but yet somehow still limp. He didn’t want to work anymore today and besides, he could see from his watch that it was nearly seven-fifteen, and he didn’t want to be late. ‘8pm, Flanagan’s. Don’t be late’. He had his reprieve, and he didn’t want to mess it up.

  He took a quick shower, grabbed some clean underwear from his bedside table and got himself out of the house as fast as he possibly could. Glancing in the mirror in his hallway, the big open space that it was that was really just an extension to the lounge, he thought he didn’t look too bad, save the tired looking eyes. He looked at his watch. Seven thirty-two. He had time.

  It was one minute past eight as he walked through the door of Flanagan’s. He thought for a moment that Kate had already left. OK, I’m late, but only by a minute. There was no parking near Flanagan’s, but she always insisted that it was this bar they came to before they had dinner. He scanned the room, searching for the raven black hair that stood out against any other head, wherever she was. He couldn’t see it. He scanned the room again and then felt that familiar gentle hand as it rested into his shoulder.

  “Sorry, I went to the toilet,” she was smiling at him and he knew he wasn’t about to get a grilling - at least not yet. “Good to see you.” She leant in to kiss him and as he brought his lips to meet hers, she tilted her head to one side ever so slightly, his lips only just catching the very side of hers. It wasn’t much, only millimetres in fact. It was barely noticeable and if you had been standing right next to them, you wouldn’t have thought anything of it. But he felt it. He felt the huge distance between them, never more so than in those few millimetres of facial movement.

  “I’m sorry about last week,” he said, as he raised his hand up to gesture to the barman. “I didn’t mean to not see you.” He turned to face the barman, not waiting for her reply. They both knew he wasn’t finished. He placed the order for one bottle of Corona beer and a glass of Merlot red for Kate. “It’s just been a horrible week. You must have heard about the case?”

  “Yes. I saw you on the television,” she said, as her eyes dropped away from his gaze. It was a simple enough answer, but he knew it hurt her to say that the only time she had seen her boyfriend in the last week was when he was talking about a dead body on the local news. “Did you get anywhere yet?” He shook his head, pursing his lips together as if to say ‘we haven’t got a clue’, and motioned to a clear table, towards the window. Although he always complained about having to come to Flanagan’s - an irritation that multiplied with every step he had to take to get here after parking his car over ten minutes away - he really did like it once he arrived. His favourite tables were those by the window, the small bevelled glass alcoves that gave you a direct view out to the high street. It was especially good in winter when you could sit and be warmed by the log fire which would be roaring only metres away, as the rain pattered down onto the curved glass windows. He had been coming here for years, sitting in these very chairs.

  “All we found were clues that as of yet don’t mean anything. Just clues. No solid leads.

  “She couldn’t have just turned up from nowhere though.” She was whispering, the way she always did when they discussed his work, aware that she was being permitted to hear secret facts about police business. It made her feel like she was in his club. She felt like he trusted her. “She must have a family somewhere?” He thought about what she said, and for a brief moment the stuttering woman with the insane ideas about a dead sister came to mind. What was her name?

  “Not that we know of. She’s a mystery. I think I have located her in Chesterwood on the morning that she was found, but other than that, we’ve got nothing.” Jack pushed the small slice of lime into the neck of the bottle and they both sipped their drinks, Kate’s mind working overtime already as she processed the clues. He knew she would be making up journey times and potential routes. She loved the idea of sleuthing with him on their secret missions, even if it never involved anything more than discussion. As he watched the concentration on her face, brow furrowed and the small wrinkles around her lips tight with the thoughts racing through her mind, he realised that he had missed her. If only he had met her under different circumstances, it would be a lot easier for them to get along. He rubbed at his left shoulder. It was still aching. The humidity of the summer was somehow worse than the dampness and chill brought by the winter. It had never healed properly.

  “Are you having problems with it? You want me to take a look?” He shook his head as he chugged back his beer. “You look tired.”

  “No, it’s fine. I’m fine. It’s just the weather.” She always cared about him. He was thankful for that, especially as he knew he never repaid it. “I missed you.” It was a spontaneous statement he hadn’t intended to tell her, and he didn’t even know he was about to say it. The words just cascaded out of his mouth in a waterfall of truth. He really had missed her. More than he realised. Kate sat, slightly stunned by his display of feeling. She was used to his cold exterior. She understood it and she tried to accept it, believing that in time it would eventually pass. She had just always hoped that she had enough patience to sit that time out. When she had first met him, unconscious and covered in blood, his skin peeling and blackened from the accident when the car had flipped a
nd rolled, she was more concerned with his injuries than anything else. As she had cared for him in hospital, checking his injuries daily whilst she waited for him to wake up, she had grown attached. Much more than she should have. She told herself that it was only because he didn’t have anybody else, that she was just doing a good job, but she knew inside it was more than that. She had wished that she didn’t have to be the one to tell him that his wife and son had died in the car crash, but in reality it was that very act that bound them together in those first few weeks, and as he had sobbed in her arms, barely able to move, she knew that she would be the one who was there for him. She couldn’t have forsaken him. She had wanted to say, ‘Let me be there for you. I’ll make everything alright. I will make you forget’, but she also knew that she would never be able to fulfil her promise.

  “I missed you too.” They sat for a while, silently enjoying each other’s company and the new feeling of unity as it engulfed their little window table. These moments were rare, and Kate hung on to them. She would never be the one to break the silence. To look at them from outside, they looked like any other romantic couple, and he slowly reached across the table to touch her fingertips with his own, reassuring her that she had a place in his life that was otherwise filled by death. She was the only living thing left for him.

  “Come home with me tonight.” It wasn’t a question. He didn’t want to go back alone to sit in the vacuity of the apartment. All it did was remind him of his self-imposed seclusion from the world. “Please.” All he wanted was to sit with her, hold her, and be held by her. All he wanted was her company. It was the most genuine and unselfish feeling that he had ever had for the woman who had saved his life in more than one way.

  “Chinese takeaway?” He nodded and she smiled back at him, feeling that perhaps in this week apart they had found something new. Something new, she pondered. It had to be better than anything they had that was old.

  Kate clung to Jack as they walked from the car back to the old factory building. The heat from the takeaway carried the smell up and into the air, and she thought how much better she would feel once they were up in his apartment, sat with their feet up eating beef in black bean sauce and dropping crumbs of prawn cracker into the leather settee. In the day she felt safer, with the buzz of industry and work being carried out. At night however, she was always aware of the silence outside of his building. There was nobody else about, except for the odd light on the other inhabited factory floors. She remembered once that she had read a story about a woman being attacked in this area when she had been walking back along the riverbank to take a short cut home. The attacker had grabbed her from behind and dragged her into one of the empty factories. There were no street lights here. Jack sensed her squeezing a little tighter on his arm, hanging onto him with both arms. I’ll go into work later tomorrow, he told himself. I’ll make sure I take her to work.

  “Do you mind if I look?” she asked as they walked into the apartment. It felt hot and stuffy in here, and Jack cracked one of the small windows open. It was a wonderful view from his apartment at night, the lights of the city twinkling like a million unnamed stars before them. It wasn’t this view she wanted to see. She was already walking towards the photographs.

  “No. Just forget what you’ve seen afterwards.” She could hear the rattling of plates as he spooned out their food. Sticking a couple of chopsticks into the top of the food pile, he carried their dinner towards the coffee table. Beside it, he set down another glass of red wine, and a bottle of Corona. She was looking at the dead woman’s face; at first she would stand back, then a little closer, as though examining a patient. He remembered her doing the same when he had been her patient.

  “You know the cause of death?” she probed, as she came to sit down on the settee.

  “Well, we are still waiting on the lab report, and toxicology, but it looks like an overdose. We found vomit in her mouth, and in the post mortem there was no other identifiable cause. She was young.”

  “But you have no idea why?”

  “It’s one weird suicide. There is no note. She is on a public beach. There are items placed around her. If I could find anything that linked somebody else to the scene I wouldn’t be convinced it was a suicide.”

  Her brow furrowed again. “Why, what’s so strange about a woman killing herself?” She was aware that her last comment could sound bizarre, but they both spent their days surrounded by death. For them it was normal.

  “Nothing. It’s the scene that’s strange. Her clothes are not from now. They are old, from like twenty or thirty years ago or something. Cigarettes with a different brand stuck on the outside of the box. Photographs in her hand, and a bus ticket. It’s like she has left clues. Suicides don’t do that.”

  “Not unless they have got something to say.” He looked at her hard. She was right.

  “But what? These clues are virtually meaningless at the moment, and I can’t just stick up a picture of her dead face on the ten o’clock news.” They both sniggered, almost embarrassed as they caught each other’s eyes that they could find humour in such a depressing situation.

  “Yeah, even if you could, she has one of those plain faces. Even I thought for a moment that I knew her.” It was true. Her face did look plain on the photographs, but he would bet his own life on the fact that when she was alive she would have been beautiful. When he had looked at the body in the mortuary, he had been taken aback by her height and her frame, the best he could judge as her body lay cold on the white ceramic slab. As the pathologist had pulled back her lazy looking eyelids to reveal the emerald green irises tucked underneath, it was as if it breathed life into her face for just a moment giving her one final breath, and he had had to swallow his surprise at the sight before him. He had never before left a mortuary with the remaining thought that the body had been beautiful. They both picked up their plates, sitting back into the dried up leather of the settee. Kate inched her body in closer to his, and she could feel the warmth emanating from his body. She looked at him, as he held up his plate on the palm of his hand, stabbing aimlessly at the rice with his chopsticks.

  “I won’t judge you if you use a fork, you know.”

  “Yes you will.” They both laughed as he said the words. He picked up the remote control and turned on the television. A re-run of ‘The Weakest Link’ was playing.

  ‘Which C completes the line of the poem, There shall be in that rich earth a richer dust……’

  ‘Covered?’ the contestant answered.

  ‘No. The answer you were looking for was concealed.’

  They stayed up for hours watching the television, their legs draped over each other’s, the skin sticking together from the humid summer night and pulling tight as it stuck to the creaking leather underneath them. Eventually, after falling into bed in a sleepy haze they slept, wrapped up so tight that not the smallest stream of light would pass between their bodies. It was still dark when Kate woke him, shaking him violently as if the house were on fire.

  “Jack! Wake up! Wake up!” She was sat up in bed, eyes wide, and her nose alert for the smell of petrol. She looked wide awake. He glanced at the clock; it was three- fifteen.

  “What? What is it?” He sat up to join her, his empty apartment and the crime scene photography clearly visible from the light of the city as it poured in through the windows. He faced her, rubbing his eyes with the tips of his fingers, trying to adjust to the orange glow. “What’s wrong?”

  “Jack. I know who the dead woman is.”

  Eleven

  “What?” He was sat wide-eyed now. She couldn’t possibly know, could she?

  “I know her. I told you that her face was familiar, didn’t I?” It was true, she had said this, but the dead face could have reminded her of any number of her patients whom she had seen travelling through her hospital ward on the way to another endless and timeless place. How could she know this dead woman?

  “I’m telling you that I remember her face. I have seen her before.
”

  “Where?” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. A week of nothing and now the woman to whom he was lying so close in his own bed was telling him that the dead woman that he could see in the photographs taped to his dusty floor was somebody she knew. “A friend?”

  “No, no. Not a friend. It must be about four years ago. I was visiting a friend in the city; I remember it because I hadn’t seen her in years. On the news that morning, there had been a car crash. It was that face they flashed up,” she said pointing to the pictures. Suddenly he remembered his own picture; the photograph that the newspaper had somehow acquired. Their family memory captured, used simply for another digestible news story which would play out on a quiet Sunday morning for the viewers to forget in a second. Her beautiful face, and the innocent angelic smile of his four year old son. Stop it. Don’t let them into this, he scorned himself.

  “How can you be sure it was her? It was four years ago.” He was focused again. He had put them back where they belonged. Safe and sound in his memory.

  “No, I remember. I remember because of her green eyes. I couldn’t forget them, she looked so different. God, what was her name?” As he processed her words, his conversation from Sunday night slowly came trickling back into his consciousness. He recalled that woman that he had assumed was crazy, desperately trying to find a dead family member upturning every stone possible, searching every face in every crowd. He thought that he knew what she was doing because he had already tried it. He also knew it was impossible. He had looked for his wife and son in every person who passed him by. In every voice. He had even heard them in the night when alone at home. That’s why he had to leave that place. Instead, he moved into the most open place he could find. He didn’t want any dark corners for the voices to hide in.

  He was already climbing over her, his sweat-soaked skin glistening in the soft glow of the city moonlight.