by C. J. Cooke
He eventually quietened down – Mrs Sloan was on hand to help coax him to look at the ducks down at the bottom of the garden – but I felt so very low afterwards. I felt like I’d done the wrong thing, bringing him and Cressida back with me. It had seemed right at the time. Or perhaps it had seemed that I needed to make a point to Lochlan. After all, he had cheated on Eloïse. He had spoken to her horribly in the past, and his decision to work half the week in Edinburgh appals me. It’s taken a lot to bite my tongue. What I want to tell him, what I would love to scream from the rooftops is this: is it any wonder Eloïse has left, if indeed she has left voluntarily? She’s been existing as a single parent. She put every last drop of her very soul into that charity and yet had to give it all up to support their little family. Who wouldn’t have left? Who could blame her?
There was a stack of mail waiting for me at the house. A lot of sympathy cards from the ladies at the WI, the parish and Magnus’ golfing club. There was a card also from the team at Eloïse’s charity, Children of War. I don’t know why the idea came to me, but perhaps it started with the thought that I had never been to the office she set up in Tufnell Park. I had been to a few of her fundraisers, of course, but never to her place of work. It was a part of her life that I realised had perhaps not been looked into very carefully. The police had overturned her home, scrutinised all her emails, paperwork, and finances, but once they’d established that Eloïse hadn’t received any death threats at her workplace, they left it alone.
I didn’t sleep very well last night, thinking about it. I tried everything to put it out of my head, but it wouldn’t leave me alone. This morning I got Max and Cressida dressed and told them that we’d spend the day at London Zoo. I knew Max liked the animals there. He didn’t mention his mother again, thankfully, and so we packed up and drove to London and spent a couple of hours looking at the animals. I didn’t mention any of this to Magnus or Lochlan, but while we were there I rang the charity office again and told the man on the phone who I was.
‘I’m Danny Holland,’ he said. ‘I took over when Eloïse went on maternity leave. We are all truly devastated to hear what’s happened.’
With a great lump in my throat I updated him as best I could: the Crimewatch appeal and newspaper reports. I stayed well clear of anything personal or family-related for fear I’d break down and weep, though he sounded like a fine fellow. I asked him if the police had been in to search El’s office and he said no, they hadn’t.
‘They accessed her emails, I believe,’ he told me. ‘But they’ve not searched the premises. We made sure none of the cleaners or other members of staff touched El’s files. You’re welcome to come and have a look, if you like.’
And so, after we’d fed the lemurs, observed the otters and squirmed at enormous spiders, I persuaded Max to leave, and we set off towards El’s office.
I found the charity headquarters in Tufnell Park – the entrance was very obscure, a little door beside a restaurant down a narrow back alley – and quickly found myself with offers from the staff there to entertain Max and Cressida while I visited El’s office. It was much different than I expected. I suppose I’d thought of it as a project, a kind of cottage industry that Eloïse set up with noble intentions, and instead I found myself in a kind of Tardis, a sophisticated hub spread across three levels that was buzzing with activity. A great number of the staff introduced themselves – there were eighteen of them there, and another ten located in Gaza, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Rwanda, and other places around the world – though I couldn’t quite grasp their names. I was very taken with a large display in the ground-floor reception area, where a digital map of the world marked all the places where the charity has made a difference. Max pushed some of the buttons, and instantly a film projection popped up of different boys and girls telling their stories. It was absolutely magical.
A young man came down the stairs and shook my hand. He was wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, chinos, and had a clean-cut, earnest look about him, a dark tan that suggested he’d recently been abroad. ‘Danny Holland,’ he said, and I remembered him from our telephone conversation as the CEO.
Danny took me upstairs to El’s office while a woman named Shakina – the charity’s finance director, I think – and a receptionist called Jade looked after the children. Danny took out a key and unlocked one of the doors.
‘Like I said, I fully expected the police to come and search this place,’ he said, showing me inside. ‘But it remains as El left it.’
The smell of her was instantly there. I can’t quite describe what the smell is – it’s not a perfume, although she was partial to Poême by Lancôme, it’s a warm scent that I associate with her. The room was modest: a desk, computer, an Ikea chair, some bookcases, a rug, and pictures of Lochlan and Max framed on a shelf. Typical El. Danny directed me to her filing cabinet.
‘I don’t know if any of this will be of use,’ he said sadly. ‘We’ve all wracked our brains in case there was anything we missed. She came in only a few weeks before this all happened, you know. To show us the baby.’
‘Cressida,’ I said, and he folded his arms and gave a nod. I could tell he was starting to become upset, thinking about it.
‘She seemed to be doing well. Looked happy, you know? She talked about coming back to work in a year or so. We were all excited by that.’
He glanced around with his hands in his pockets. I made for the filing cabinet and opened the first drawer. It was full of paperwork, all neatly filed, but I had no idea what I was looking for. Maybe I wanted to be close to something that was so important to her. More and more I felt weighed down by guilt at not taking more of an interest. I had made a terrible assumption that the charity was never anything that was going to take off and that, if I encouraged her, I would be building her up for a fall. I should have encouraged her.
Danny produced a cardboard box full of envelopes and set it on the desk. ‘There’s her mail. She was due to come in for it in a week or so, but …’ He bit his lip. I nodded and rolled up my sleeves in a bid to keep focused and not wallow in emotion.
‘Thank you. I’ll get cracking.’
There was a lot of junk mail in there, some letters from organisations that seemed keen to partner with the charity. I made sure to pass those on to Danny in case he wanted to explore further opportunities.
I found a wad of tatty jotter paper inside an envelope postmarked from Uganda. Inside was a photograph of a little girl holding up a plant of some sort and grinning. She had black hair braided in two tight bunches at the side of her head and an adorable grin. Her name was Phiona and she had recently turned thirteen. The letter was made out to Eloïse, thanking her for Phiona’s birthday gift, telling her what she’d been up to since she rescued her. It seemed that Phiona’s parents had sold her for four cows into marriage with an old man who beat her up. I checked the girl’s age again. Yes. She was thirteen.
I put the letter down. I had no idea, no idea at all of the kind of things El was doing here. She had never once asked Magnus and me for money to fund these children. I think Magnus made contributions, but we were capable of doing so much more. Why didn’t I ask her about her work? Why didn’t I listen?
I came across a letter at the bottom of the pile, however, which put everything else in the shade. It was postmarked from the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust. I opened the envelope carefully. A short letter, dated 10 March of this year, noting that Eloïse had missed her previous two appointments with Dr Goff, and could she please contact the secretary to reschedule.
I read over the letter several times, trying to recall anything that Eloïse had said to me about a hospital appointment. Why would she go all the way to a hospital in South London when West Middlesex University Hospital was much closer?
I called Danny back in and asked if I could use El’s computer. He set it up for me to go on the Internet, though I’m still a bit useless with googling things so I requested politely and casually that he look up the nam
e and telephone number of the doctor in the letter: Dr Tara Goff at South London and Maudsley Hospital.
‘I’ve found her,’ he said after a few moments, and I squinted at the screen. ‘Are you sure this is the right person?’
I checked the details on the letter with the name and details on the screen. It was a perfect match.
‘It says she’s a clinical psychologist,’ Danny said.
‘A clinical psychologist?’
‘Says here she specialises in postnatal mental health, bipolarity and severe personality disorders.’ He glanced up. ‘What’s that got to do with Eloïse?’
Without asking Danny, I lifted the handset on the desk and dialled the number that appeared on the screen.
‘Hello, yes. I’d like to speak to Dr Tara Goff, please.’
31 March 2015
Komméno Island, Greece
I’ve spent all of today on Bone Beach trying to launch the boat, and I’m covered in cuts and bruises. I managed to dislodge the two big stones that were stopping it from being pulled out by the tide, but as I did so the boat swung around and caught me hard on the ankle with one of the masts. It was so painful that I thought I’d broken it. I’m pretty sure now that I haven’t, but I’m still hobbling.
The sun seemed to go down in a tremendous rush. One minute it was a coin high in the sky, the next it was a bar of molten copper across the horizon. Time is slipping and jolting again.
I was so tempted to jump in and sail to Crete right there and then, but my life jacket is back at the farmhouse – and besides, I wanted to try and persuade Sariah to come with me.
Once I’d got the boat into position, I stripped off my clothes and lay flat on the dry sand in my knickers, looking up at the stars. I had no energy left to do anything else. I listed through a muddy kind of sleep, my thoughts distorted and swollen with images. I forced myself to recall the memory of George at the roadside. It was dark and we were outside, somewhere with a lot of mountains. It was a crisp night. We’d hit an animal. I heard George say, ‘You have to kill it.’ And so I did.
But it made no sense. I only met George the night I crashed my boat. That’s what they all said.
As I pressed myself to think, I remembered more details about the other man I’d dreamed about. He was the same man I’d seen at the mouth of the cave, handing me the ball of red wool as I went into the labyrinth.
Who was this man? What was his name?
An image of a lock, and a key in my hand. Lock.
His name was Lochlan.
I drifted off to sleep, and what I dreamt must have been a mix of imagination and memory, the sensual quality rooted deep in my emotions. I dreamt I was in the labyrinth again, clutching my ball of red wool. Odd corridors of stalagmites leading to rooms in a messy house with empty vodka bottles on the floor and bags full of rubbish stacked up in the kitchen. The smell of stale milk and rotting food thick in my nostrils.
When I caught my reflection in a cracked mirror in the bathroom, I saw that I was a child, maybe seven or eight years old, holding a teddy to my chest. Peter. I had fine, white-blonde hair to my shoulders, pale, smooth skin that was marked with a purple bruise on my cheek. My lips were raw, cracked, my eyes haunted.
I heard shouting. A man’s voice calling from one of the other rooms. Eloïse! Eloïse, where are you?
I was stricken by the sound. I knew I had to run and hide but I was in the bathroom and the window was shut. I climbed into the bathtub and tried to hide behind the curtain, but suddenly a hand plunged in and caught me by the hair. I gasped as he dragged me out of the bathroom and across the landing.
Somehow I managed to break free, and I ran into another room which led me back into the labyrinth.
And there, the small, light voice of a young child.
‘Mummy? Mummy, are you there?’
I tiptoed into another corridor towards the voice, my heart racing.
‘Mummy, where are you?’
A little boy. He sounded scared. It was so dark, and the ground beneath my feet was wet and slippery. The last of the red wool slipped out of my hands. As it ended, I came to the heart of the labyrinth.
Inside was a small chamber, with a single stone seat and a slit in the rock overhead where light bled through to reveal the occupant.
I guessed the boy to be three or four years old, his blond hair slightly curling at his soft jaw. His eyes were round and blue, filled with innocence. He was kneeling on the ground and playing with two toy trains on the seat, running them across it as though they were on tracks. He turned and said, ‘Hi, Mummy.’
I knelt down beside him. I knew his face. I knew his name. I said, ‘Hello, Maxie. Are you OK?’
He turned back to his trains and looked sad. ‘I’m OK. When are you coming home, Mummy?’
I said, ‘I’m trying so hard, Maxie. I really am.’
He set down his trains and thought about this. ‘Did you leave us because you weren’t feeling very well?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You need to get better,’ he said, deeply serious. ‘You need milk and a choccy biscuit. When I don’t feel well, you give me milk and sometimes a choccy biscuit.’
I laughed, though my eyes had filled with tears. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, Max.’
He brightened and gave me a deep look, his beautiful, gentle eyes holding mine. ‘Don’t be silly, Mummy. Why do you think you hurt me?’
I tried to explain it in a way that he would understand.
‘I think someone told me that, once. I think someone told me I would never be a good mother, and I felt I wasn’t good enough for you.’
He reached out and touched my arm. ‘You look after me. You look after all of us. Come home now, please.’
I wiped the tears from my cheeks. ‘I will, darling. I need to remember where home is.’
2 April 2015
Smyth & Wyatt Building, Victoria Embankment, London
Lochlan: As I am being ushered out of the Smyth & Wyatt building all the most important figures in the company are looking on from the conference room overhead. The long windows at the end of the corridor overlook the car park where my mangled Mercedes sits, the right headlight shattered, the bumper hanging dangerously low to the ground, like a fat lip on a boxer’s face, and the bonnet crunched in. In all likelihood, this is the last time I will see either my car or my workplace.
At the police car, Canavan tells me he is arresting me on suspicion of lying in a witness statement. I go to ask him what the hell that means – does he think I lied about Eloïse going missing? – but he ignores me.
‘You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’
I am too stunned to utter a word.
I’m informed that I won’t be handcuffed, and we drive to the station in a swollen, braying silence: me, Canavan, and another male detective I faintly recognise. The quiet draws a circle around a new terror, possibly worse than Eloïse’s disappearance. If they arrest me, what will happen to our children? Will I ever see them again?
At the station Canavan hands me over to a uniformed police sergeant who books me into custody. This involves being searched, purged of my belongings and then stood numbly at a desk while the officer makes a record of my detention on the computers. He asks if I’ll be needing legal advice and who I want to be informed of my arrest. I’m so dumbfounded that I tell them to call Magnus instead of my brother. Too late. I have no idea what Magnus is going to make of this.
After a while, another officer asks me to accompany him to the interview room, where I find DS Canavan sitting at a table with a digital tape recorder against the wall. I feel like I’m floating, not quite here. I look deeply into Canavan’s face, his shrewd, silver eyes, and read the future there: they’re going to charge me with Eloïse’s murder. I’ll never see my son or my daughter again.
‘DS Cox and I want to ask you furt
her questions about your involvement with Harriet Ayres,’ Canavan says in a tight voice.
In an instant, I realise that he knows everything about Harriet. I should have been upfront about it. I shouldn’t have lied. How could I have been so stupid?
‘Specifically,’ he continues, ‘we’d be interested to know what you were doing approaching Harriet Ayres at the Dog and Duck pub in Soho after she was released on bail in relation to computer misuse at your property.’
There’s a CCTV camera in the left-hand corner of the room. High-spec babycams, CCTVs, the thousand eyes of social media, yet no one has seen my wife. And the very thing I wanted no one to see has all come out in the wash.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, stumbling over my words. ‘I thought … I had to find out for myself if Harriet was involved.’
The uniformed officer takes notes. As my own words appear on the page, I think of Eloïse’s notebook. Why was there more than one set of handwriting? It was a private notebook. She’d hardly share it, would she? If she wouldn’t share such private information with her own husband, she’s hardly going to share it with anyone else. Would she?
‘Mr Shelley?’
‘Yes?’
‘I think you drifted off there for a second or so. I said, did you or did you not have an affair with the accused?’
A smart person would say ‘no comment’.