Close to You (ARC)

by Kerry Wilkinson

  The boot creaks as I pull up on the handle. I half expect it fly open as David springs free… except, when I peer inside, he’s still there, mummified and covered. I have to use the light from my phone and it doesn’t look as if any more blood has leaked through the sheets. The two black bags are still wedged into the corners and I can’t see anything different. There’s no escaping the fact that David is dead – and that I killed him.

  I close the boot and look back along the road, wondering if it was roadkill, after all. Or even my imagination?

  I get back into the driver’s seat and continue along the road. My neck is throbbing from the cut but I try to ignore it as I continue on.

  It’s hard not to have the twinge of remembrance as I pass the rugby club. David had a vasectomy in the days before our party and spent the evening limping around, saying it was a running injury. Then he said he wanted to have children. I have to blink it away, because, for now, I can’t personalise what’s happened. I need to act first.

  The gate to the car park at Little Bush Woods is up and it’s apparently too cold for any potential doggers to hang around at this time of year. There’s a big sign saying that the park closes at five during the winter – but it’s not as if there’s anyone to enforce it. The car park is deserted.

  I’m glad for the semi-regular weight training as I heave David out of the boot. His body feels heavier than it did when it went in. I suppose that ‘dead weight’ is a literal thing, not simply a vague saying.

  I end up dropping David’s body on the floor, largely by accident because of his bulk. I grab the end of the sheet and drag him across the car park. There’s a charity clothes bin that I’ve never noticed before, though the lid has been levered apart and is hanging open. Random pieces of clothing are strewn across the weed-ridden tarmac.

  It’s far easier to drag David than it is to carry him. I pull the sheets along the trail, stopping every few minutes to catch my breath. Half an hour on a treadmill cannot prepare a person for this.

  It isn’t long until I get to the bridge. The moon is engulfed by clouds and yet the light is still managing to cast a bluey glow across the water.

  Raindrops start to ripple across the lake as I drag David’s body onto the bridge. It’s gentle at first, the merest of pitter-patters, and then, as quickly as it started, it’s a deluge. My hair is plastered to my face as the water soaks my clothes to my skin. It’s only now that I realise I’m not wearing a coat. Not that it matters – everything I’m wearing will be burnt within a day or so.

  I continue heaving David across the bridge until we’re in the middle. It was only a few months ago that we were here. I can picture David and myself, leaning on the rail, as he said he thought we should try for children. It feels like another lifetime.

  David’s body is left on the sodden wood as I rush back to the car, from which I retrieve the string, scissors and bricks. The bin bag can go in a builders’ skip somewhere, or one of those bins outside a supermarket. It’s not as if anyone’s going to go hunting through it.

  When I get back to the bridge, the signs warning of deep water are being battered by a thunderous blast of rain. David’s cocoon is still in the centre, but I cut away the sheets and toss them to the side, until it’s only me and him. I look at his waxy face and there’s a part of me that still expects him to sit up. When I roll him onto his side, there’s a second in which I wonder if his leg twitched. I stop and watch, waiting for it to happen again. I have to convince myself that my mind is playing tricks.

  My fingers are trembling as I thread the string through the holes in the brick and then loop it around David’s legs. I wrap it around over and over, passing it through the brick each time until the ball of string is half gone. I’ve never been great with knots, so I tie it like a double-knotted shoelace – except that I keep tying it until there’s no string left. I repeat this with the second brick, attaching it to his midriff.

  His skin is clammy and wet and I constantly have to stop because, every time I touch him, I’m convinced he’s still alive. He doesn’t move, no matter how many times I pause. In the end, he’s left with a pair of bricks knotted to his body.

  ‘David?’

  The lashing rain almost hides the words and he doesn’t respond.

  ‘David?’

  There is no comeback, so I prod him with my foot, before rolling him onto his back. His eyes are closed and I can’t bring myself to open them to check whether there’s anything there. I know there’s not – and yet that niggle of doubt won’t leave me. The blood is being washed away by the rain to the degree that I can see the slash close to David’s ear from where the pot hit him. It’s not as large as I thought it could be. I had a bigger cut last year when we went hiking in the Peak District and I snagged my bare leg on a thread of barbed wire. I suppose I have a bigger gash on my neck now – although it isn’t as deep. I thought it would look far worse than it does.

  ‘David?’

  I stand and take a breath, peering out across the rippling lake. The raindrops make it look as if the water is alive, as if something is going to breach the surface with a monstrous roar.

  All it takes is a nudge with my foot.

  That’s it.

  David rolls off the bridge, momentarily snagging on one of the posts before I push harder. He slides under the water almost instantly. There might be a flurry of bubbles, but I can’t know for sure because it’s obliterated almost instantly by the raindrops.

  I watch for a few seconds, still expecting him to burst back up, like the shark in Jaws, or the one we once thought lived in this lake. The rain is so hard that it’s painful to stand in the open; like being smashed over the head repeatedly. The irony of that is not lost as I turn, scoop up the bloodied sheets and then run back to the car.

  Thirty-Four

  THE NOW

  I’ve often wondered where the clarity came from on the evening that I got rid of David’s body. Whether, somewhere deep down, I had been thinking about it for a while.

  His lies were big and small – some that mattered, many that didn’t – and I think there was a part of me that always knew he had a loose relationship with the truth. If he ever had a storage unit full of collectibles, then I never found any information about it within his possessions. The police have never mentioned it, either. There was almost no money in his bank accounts and it was far eclipsed by the amount he owed on credit cards. He came into the world with nothing and he left it in more or less the same fashion.

  I wait in the car park of Little Bush Woods, wondering if I should have come here direct from the police station. I have no reason to think they’re following me, though if they are, I’ve led them directly to where I dumped David. I could be out for a walk, of course.

  There is still an hour or so until the park closes, although I suspect the barrier will remain raised. I wait in the car for five minutes, wondering if someone will follow me in. A marked police car would probably be excessive – but there are no other cars anyway.

  Unlike the last time I was here two years ago with David’s body, there is a smattering of vehicles across the car park. The surface of weeds poking through the tarmac is almost identical to how I remember it.

  As I wait, a man emerges from the path to the lake. He has his hands in his pockets, his hood up, and barely looks in my direction before hurrying across to a battered Ford. A few seconds later and he’s gone.

  I’m as convinced as can be that I wasn’t followed, so get out of the car and set off towards the lake. Almost instantly, I pass a woman with a dog. I’m not sure of the breed, but it’s one of the big, fluffy ones who would probably try to make friends with Godzilla if it came stomping down the High Street. The dog sniffs at my ankles and I stop to ruffle its collar as the owner and I share a quick ‘hello’. They head back to the car park, so I continue onto the bridge.

  When I get to the deep water sign, I stop and lean on the bridge rail, turning and waiting in case a police officer does appear. Mr Patr
ick said they had no reason to hold me as there’s nothing to indicate I was driving the car. That is, of course, because I wasn’t. My DNA will be all over it – but that’s because I drove it not long before it was stolen. It proves nothing. He seemed to think the police were on a fishing expedition because they have no clue who was driving. There isn’t a lot of crime around Gradingham and, perhaps because of that, very few resources to look into anything that does happen.

  Minutes pass and nobody emerges. A breeze is fizzing across the water, sending a gentle flurry of waves across the surface. The bridge is coated with a delicate layer of frost that’s dented by intersecting, scuffed footprints.

  I used to visit the woods most weekends, either for a walk with David, or some sort of training run around the trails. I found the soft soil easier on my joints than the harsh concrete of the pavements around Gradingham. Anything’s better than the monotony of a treadmill. It’s only now that it occurs to me that not coming here for two years is far more suspicious than continuing what used to be predictable. If anyone was watching my day-to-day routine, they would surely conclude that something happened here. I was consumed by those news reports or TV shows, in which experts say that criminals always return to the scene of the crime. I live in the scene of mine – but this place means something, too. I always thought David’s body would be found sooner or later. That didn’t mean it would be linked to me, but I’ve expected a knock on the door ever since I kicked him into the water. It’s not happened.

  As I stand in the centre of the lake, I picture David’s body below me, still weighed down by the bricks. In the aftermath of that night, I thought the string might erode and David’s body would float to the surface, to be found by an unfortunate dog-walker. That hasn’t happened, either.

  Sometimes the thought flitted through my mind that the reason I’ve heard nothing for two years is because David was somehow alive. That the bang from the rear of the car was him and not roadkill or a pothole. That, after I turned my back and headed back across the bridge, David hauled himself out of the water. The thought always evaporated as quickly as it arrived – until I saw him in the back of the photo at the hotel.

  I’m not sure what I expected by returning here. All I have is an eerie sense of déjà vu. I keep thinking it might rain, even though it feels more like it might snow. I’ll always picture this bridge with splattering raindrops and the noise of water crashing into water. I eye the surface of the lake as the ripples continue to ebb towards the bridge, spurred on by the bristling wind. I can hardly jump in and dive down to see if there’s a body there.

  ‘You OK?’

  I spin to see a woman standing behind me with a forlorn-looking dog. I’m not sure how she managed to get so close without me hearing anything. The animal doesn’t seem too keen to be out in the cold and is straining in the direction of the car park.

  ‘I, um…’

  ‘Are you looking for something?’ she asks.

  ‘No,’ I say.

  She looks past me towards the water and then shrugs a suit yourself dismissal. ‘Have a good walk,’ she says.

  ‘You, too,’ I reply.

  She turns and heads along the bridge. The dog continues to watch me, as if it somehow knows the reason I’m here.

  ‘David,’ I say – as with the last time I was here, there is no answer.

  Thirty-Five

  The evening’s Zumba class is enough to take my mind off the police investigation, even if it is temporarily. I’m supposed to be on an evening off, but my body is itching to do something that doesn’t involve moping around. I end up taking a space at the back of a class that’s being hosted by one of the trainers who rent a space at my studio. We all have something of an agreement that any of us can tag onto anyone else’s sessions if there is room.

  I can tell that the trainer is nervous as she goes through the routine. She tells everyone to move left while simultaneously heading right, and then misses the beat on a couple of the track changes. It’s still plenty enough to help me work off the restless energy I’ve felt since being at the police station.

  I shower, change and check my phone after the class – though there are no further messages from the ‘Miss me?’ number. There’s nothing from the police or my solicitor, either. All I have is a text from Andy asking if I’m going to meet him at Jane’s, or if we’re going to go together. I’d almost blocked it out, though there’s no getting out of it now.

  I take the alternative route to Kingbridge, avoiding the country road that would have taken me past the rugby club and Little Bush Woods.

  Andy’s work van is already parked on the road outside Jane and Ben’s when I arrive. I parallel park behind him, all the while cursing him for not pulling further forward.

  It’s only when Jane answers the door and beckons me in that I glance towards the stairs and remember when David and I met. So much can happen in three years. At the time, this house felt like glorified student digs, as if Jane and I had never quite grown up properly. Now, there is a child gate at the bottom of the stairs and another at the top. When we get into the living room, Ben has a framed diploma on the wall. There’s a child monitor on the side, with a blinking green light. The kitchen counter has a soft polystyrene sphere covering what would have been a sharp edge. We act as if everything is the same as it’s always been, but I suppose that’s life. We spend large parts of it telling everyone else we’re perfectly fine, even when the opposite is true.

  I’ve been interviewed twice by the police because they think I drunk-drove and hit an innocent pedestrian in the early hours of a morning – and yet I’m acting as if it’s nothing. I’ve seen my dead husband in a photo – and then gone to bed and got up the next day. Everything is an illusion.

  Jane doesn’t mention being at my flat earlier, or the fact that she says she might have seen David. She’s put on a dress for the occasion, for which I don’t blame her. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her in anything other than loose clothes that are cheap enough to cope with being vomited on. She’s pushed the sofa to the side and set up the dining table in the living room. Andy and Ben are sitting next to one another, although, when I enter, they are silent like kids outside a headmaster’s office.

  Andy stands and we share a misplaced fumble in which neither of us seems sure whether we’re trying to hug or kiss.

  ‘You got here,’ he says.

  ‘What gave it away?’

  It doesn’t feel very funny and neither of us laugh as Jane enters with a plate of breads. As soon as we’re all sitting, she and Andy are chatting as if they’re the couple. She starts off by talking about a typical sort of day with Norah and that evolves into a conversation about his scout group and the football team he coaches. Before long, they’re on to schools, catchment areas, various school governors he knows, a nursery she’s been looking at – and so on.

  I catch Ben’s eye and we share a brief smile that leaves me cold, before we each turn away.

  Jane brings in the main course – some sort of fishy rice thing – but we’ve barely had a mouthful when the baby monitor sputters and Norah starts to cry. Ben and Jane swap a quick glance, but she’s already up and on her way before a word is swapped. It’s at that moment that Andy gets to his feet and disappears off towards the toilet.

  Ben and I are opposite each other. Aside from brief, passing hellos, we haven’t seen each other in a long while.

  I nibble at the rice dish, but my hunger has gone. It was a bad idea to come; I should have said I couldn’t make it. Excuses are easy to come up with – I have to pack; I’m not feeling well – whatever.

  ‘How are you doing?’ Ben asks.

  ‘Not bad. You?’

  ‘I’m fine, too.’

  He mushes his fork into the rice, mixing it all around in a circle. He sighs and won’t look up, although he isn’t eating, either.

  ‘I didn’t ask for this,’ I say.

  His fork pauses mid-stir and then he glances up to me. His voice is a his
sed whisper: ‘You’re the one who keeps calling her and texting. You’re the one who meets her for lunch and coffees.’

  ‘We’ve been friends our whole lives. I knew her long before you. What do you want me to say to her?’

  There’s a bump from the hallway and we both wait, although nobody appears. ‘We’ve got a daughter together,’ Ben mutters. ‘It’s not like it used to be.’

  ‘Again – what do you expect me to do? Even if I wanted to stop being friends, it’s not going to happen just like that. We only live a short distance apart. We’ve seen each other at least once a week for as long as I can remember.’

  Ben clinks his fork into the side of his plate in annoyance. Where once I saw big, blue buttons for eyes, now I see an inferno. He opens his mouth to say something but never gets the words out because Andy breezes back into the room, utterly oblivious.

  He sits, eats some of the rice, and then turns to Ben: ‘How’s life at the bank?’ he asks.

  Ben eats some of the food himself, although, such is his anger, he ends up spilling some of it on the table. ‘I’ve got a conference starting tomorrow,’ he says. ‘I’m going to be away for four days.’

  ‘Where’s that?’ Andy asks.

  ‘London. They’re putting me up at a place near Euston.’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘I’d rather be here.’

  Ben glances towards me, but I quickly turn away, focusing on my own food. He’s made his point.

  ‘How’s your juice bar?’ Ben asks, although he doesn’t sound overly interested.

  ‘I’m looking to expand,’ Andy replies. ‘I’ve been talking to my own bank about possibly getting a loan to open a second bar. We’ve been going over possible properties.’

  ‘Exciting times.’

  Ben couldn’t have sounded less enthused, although I’m not sure that Andy realises. It matters little anyway because there is a series of thumps from the stairs and then Jane re-emerges.