The Carrier

by Sophie Hannah

  We went to Switzerland together to meet the Dombeck Zurbrugg people. Same hotel, separate rooms. It killed me, Lauren: the sheer, outrageous waste of it. Tim mumbled something about it not being easy for him. That was on our first night there. I hoped he might see sense in time for us to spend the second and last night of the trip together. It didn’t happen. On the way to the airport for the flight home, I lightheartedly mentioned the ninety midnights plan again, and Tim turned to me in the back of our taxi and said, “Gaby, what we’ve got now . . . I really don’t think I’ll ever be able to offer you any more. Francine would know if anything happened. She’d sense it, I’m sure she would. I just . . . It’s a line I can’t cross. Do you understand what I’m saying?” I understood. No sex, ever: that was what he was telling me. He asked if it was okay with me, if I could handle it. Every cell of my body was wailing, “No!” and, “You fucking hypocrite! ‘Francine would know if anything happened’? But so much is happening, all the time—we stand on the street kissing passionately, our bodies locked together, and Francine doesn’t know anything about it! At least if we had sex we’d be likely to do it more discreetly, in a room with the curtains shut!” I didn’t say any of that to Tim, Lauren. Instead, I said, “Yes, of course.” I said it because a) if you want to tempt a man to leave or cheat on his wife, turning into a wailing harpy isn’t the best approach, and b) I finally woke up and realized I might have to accept Tim’s limits. If he could never leave Francine or be properly unfaithful to her, I faced a stark choice: either lose him altogether or live with the best he could do.

  It wasn’t a choice, Lauren. I couldn’t lose him. I resigned myself to a tortured existence. And then, to my astonishment, less than two weeks later, something momentous happened. On Valentine’s Day. Sean didn’t get me anything, not even a card. He and I had never bothered with Valentine’s Day. I’m so not a Valentine’s kind of person that I didn’t think to send Tim a card either, but a card for me arrived at my work that morning. There was a poem in it by a poet called e. e. cummings, a passionately romantic one. You’ll find it on the Internet if you Google “i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart).” The card contained the words “I love you” and was signed “The Carrier.” It could only be from Tim, I thought. Tim was the carrier of my heart, and he knew it.

  I left work immediately and went to his work, where I’d never been before. We always met at the Proscenium. I walked into his office, sat on his desk and said, “I love you too, Tim. I’m sorry I didn’t send you a card, but yours has made not only my day but my entire life.” He looked terrified. Instantly, I felt stupid and crass and insensitive. I realized that Tim had signed his card “The Carrier” for a reason. To write the words “I love you” and sign the card in his own name would have been too much for him, given his fear of Francine. He’d have been paranoid that any such card with his signature at the bottom might fall into her hands. He needed to hide behind the safety of a pseudonym. Feeling clumsy and painfully exposed, I started to apologize, but Tim interrupted me and said, “Do you really love me, Gaby?” He looked so wary, it made me laugh. I told him I adored him and had from the second I’d met him. I told him I felt as if there was a magnet in my gut, pulling me toward him, every moment of every day. He said, “That’s it. That’s how I feel about you too. We need to try and work something out, don’t we?” I didn’t dare say a word, couldn’t believe he meant what I thought he meant. But he did. I think hearing me say I loved him made a difference.

  The next time we had lunch together, Tim told me about his recurring nightmare. Did he think that was the first step toward us “working something out”? I don’t know. I also don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t mustered the courage to tell me about the dream. Maybe we’d still be having lunch together at the Proscenium twice a week, and dinner with Kerry and Dan once a month. Maybe we’d still be kissing passionately in doorways and car parks. Or perhaps I’d have grown tired of the hypocrisy and demanded to know how Tim was able to tell himself that he wasn’t being unfaithful to Francine when any fool could see that he was. If he’d got drunk every Friday night and screwed a different nameless woman he picked up in a nightclub, that would have been less of a betrayal of his marriage than what he was doing with me. How could he not see that? Even now, years later, the irrationality of it makes me want to howl with rage.

  Tim had (has?) a recurring nightmare in which Francine tries to kill him. Or is about to try to kill him: he always wakes up before it happens. In the dream, he’s trapped in a small room with her, the hotel room they stayed in when they went on holiday to Leukerbad in Switzerland. She proposed to him on that trip, and he’s convinced that she also tried to kill him, because ever since they got back he’s been woken regularly by this nightmare. Francine is crossing the room diagonally, walking toward him. Tim’s cowering in a corner, shaking, unable to keep still. He can’t actually see Francine, only her shadow against the white wall, moving closer. Her arm looks funny, thin as string and with a kink in it, as if it’s been broken and healed badly. She’s carrying a handbag. In the bag is something she’s going to use to murder Tim; he doesn’t know what. He always wakes up before she reaches him.

  After he told me about the dream, I understood a bit better why he was so scared of Francine. If he honestly believed she’d made an attempt on his life and might do so again, then, yes, I could see why he wouldn’t risk leaving her. What I didn’t understand was how it was possible for her to have tried to kill him and him not remember. I know people occasionally talk about trauma and memory loss, but I just didn’t buy it. If your partner tries to kill you, generally you know about it consciously. You don’t rely on hints in dreams.

  I went to Switzerland, Lauren. A bit like you following me to Düsseldorf, I followed Tim’s nightmare. I didn’t think it would do me or him any good, necessarily, but I was in love with him and obsessed with trying to help him. I thought the hotel staff might remember something. Maybe if I asked the right questions, one of them would say, “Oh, yes, Tim Breary—he stayed here with his girlfriend and she plunged a screwdriver into his carotid artery in the middle of the night.” I booked myself into the hotel they’d stayed in: Les Sources des Alpes in Leukerbad. Same room. I had to bribe the hotel staff to trawl through old files to find out which room had been theirs.

  Would you believe me if I told you I solved the mystery, Lauren? Well, I did. There were no clues in the room or in the hotel, but one day I went for a walk and I saw the answer. I saw that nothing was what Tim thought it was, and I realized his nightmare wasn’t a memory. It was a metaphor (something that represents something else). Which meant that, in all probability, Francine hadn’t tried to kill him, which explained why he had no conscious memory of her doing so.

  Thrilled and proud of my discovery, I couldn’t wait to tell Tim. Now my biggest regret is that I didn’t keep my mouth shut. As soon as he heard that I’d been to Leukerbad, his behavior toward me changed completely. I should have spotted it instantly and started to backtrack, but I was too full of myself and my great discovery. I told him I thought I knew what his dream meant, at least in part, and he completely freaked out. He wouldn’t let me tell him, said I should leave him alone, get away from him and stay away, or he might say something he’d regret, which of course was worse than if he’d actually said whatever it was that was in his mind. I imagined the worst possible thing: “I don’t love you and I never have. This was all a terrible mistake. I’ll hate you until the day I die.”

  You’ll have noticed I haven’t told you what I found out in Leukerbad, about Tim’s dream. Since he refused to be told, and felt so strongly that I had no business knowing, it would hardly be fair for me to tell anyone else.

  So, there you have it: my relationship with Tim and how it ended. Since then, my life’s been monochrome. Diminished. I didn’t realize quite how much until I met you and suddenly my past was dragged into my present.

  I’ll be honest wit
h you, Lauren: I’m devastated to think of Tim in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. But at the same time, I’m excited, because it’s an opportunity for me. For me and him, for us. Years have passed, Francine is dead, and Tim needs my help. I have hope burning inside me again. It’s agony, but I prefer it to the numb detached feeling I had before when I thought all I had to look forward to was a life spent watching Sean watch football.

  In order to help Tim and save both our lives (yes, that really is how it feels) I first need your help, Lauren. I don’t know who killed Francine. You do, I think. Please, please, tell me what’s going on. Or tell the police. Please be brave. Do the right thing. Don’t let Tim pay the price for someone else’s wrongdoing. I know you’re too good a person to let that happen. I know you’ll read this and decide that the man I’ve described in this letter—the Tim I know, with all his mysteries and flaws, all his fears and hypocrisies, all the love he feels that he can’t express—deserves better than to be framed for a crime he didn’t commit.

  Yours sincerely,

  Gaby x (07711 687825)

  18

  12/3/2011

  “You’ve never seen West Side Story?” Liv squealed at Simon across the arm of the waiter who was scraping bread crumbs off the white paper tablecloth with something that looked like the blade of an ice skate. “I can’t decide if that’s touchingly quaint or just culturally impoverished. Chris loves it. You have to see it.”

  “He’s not interested,” said Gibbs.

  “‘One Hand, One Heart,’” Simon practiced saying the song’s title, tried to imagine himself reading out the lyrics to more than a hundred wedding guests.

  “It’s the song Tony and Maria sing when they’re imagining getting married,” Charlie told him. “They know it can’t happen for real, so they stage an imaginary wedding in her bedroom and sing their tragic duet. It’s a bit much to make Simon read both parts,” she told Liv. “Is there a reason why I haven’t been asked to sing Maria’s part, or am I being paranoid?”

  “You’re tone-deaf, and I’m not singing anything,” said Simon self-consciously. Theirs was the only occupied table, and the room was small enough for the waiters to overhear them.

  In her message this morning, Liv had described the restaurant as “casual” and “intimate”—two words that, for Simon, didn’t belong together at all, though he could see that they might if you were the sort of person who slept with other women’s husbands. “Like dining in your own home, almost!” Liv’s text had promised. Simon strongly disagreed. His home wasn’t a cellar, didn’t have a low dome-shaped ceiling of roughly spiked white plaster, and didn’t contain men in suits who asked him if everything was all right every twenty seconds.

  “We don’t want it sung, we want it tastefully read aloud,” said Liv. “By your delightful husband.” She beamed at Simon.

  “‘We’?” said Charlie. “You mean you and Dom?”

  “No. Me and Chris. Chris and I.” Liv reached for Gibbs’ hand. Charlie kicked Simon under the table. He kicked back, knowing she’d misinterpret it. Her kick, at a rough guess, had meant, “Look at them squeezing hands in public as if they’re a proper couple.” His meant, “Stop staring, for fuck’s sake.”

  He wondered about Gibbs’ elastic-band ball. It hadn’t made an appearance so far this evening. Was it at home with Debbie?

  A waiter moved toward them, holding aloft the widest tray Simon had ever seen. More food he had no appetite for. What had Charlie ordered for his main course? He couldn’t remember. He hadn’t enjoyed the starter she’d chosen for him: slices of mozzarella with very thin, dark, strong-tasting ham, all covered in yellow-green oil and flecks of something.

  “Dom’s happy for me to sort out the finer points of the ceremony,” said Liv. “He’s up to his eyes in work as usual. I’ve chosen all the other readings with him in mind, and I’ve chosen this one for me and Chris. We’ve chosen it.”

  “But you’re not even going to be there,” Charlie said to Gibbs.

  “Aren’t I?”

  The waiter set down their plates in front of them. Simon was relieved to see a steak on his. He’d have liked chips with it. Instead, he had what looked like a varnished clump of potatoes in a small cylindrical ornament.

  “You and Debbie are coming to Liv’s wedding?” Charlie’s voice radiated disbelief. She kicked Simon’s leg again.

  “Kick Gibbs,” he told her. “He’s the one you’re talking to.”

  “Not Debbie,” said Gibbs. “Just me.”

  “I know what you’re thinking, Char,” Liv said. “Obviously it’s not going to be easy for Chris, but at the same time, how can he not be there? That’d be worse, for both of us. It’d be like . . . look, this is a bit of a horrid analogy, I know, but if I were in hospital, dying, I’d want Chris there.”

  “A bit of a horrible analogy? Liv, it’s a double helping of horrible with a side dish of grim as fuck.”

  “You can say no,” Gibbs told Simon.

  “It isn’t grim, any more than ‘One Hand, One Heart’ is tragic,” Liv said indignantly. “How can a death-defying love song be tragic? We don’t all choose to look at the world through Charlie Zailer–tinted glasses.”

  “You said you wouldn’t lose it, whatever happened,” Gibbs reminded her.

  Simon wondered what they’d expected to happen.

  “I haven’t lost anything,” said Liv. “I’ve found a useful metaphor: glasses with lenses that enable the wearer to see only . . . dead bodies and misery!”

  “Not everyone’s willing to blind themselves in order to be happy,” Charlie said.

  “This isn’t getting us anywhere,” said Gibbs. “Look, Charlie, nobody here’s blind. We all know the score. We see things differently, that’s all.”

  “I can’t see me reading this.” Simon handed the printed lyrics back to Liv. “Sorry. I’m willing to read something else, if it matters that much to you. Something that makes the same point, give or take.”

  “Really?” Liv bounced up and down in her seat. “Heaven on a stick! You’ll really do it?”

  “It can’t just be anything,” said Gibbs. “It has to mean something.”

  Charlie laughed. “Has my sister taught you nothing, Gibbs? You pretend it means whatever you need it to mean. The exact words might be ‘Call me Ishmael,’ but we can all tell ourselves that means, ‘This is secretly the wedding of Liv and Gibbs, even though it looks like the wedding of Liv and Dom.’”

  “‘Call me Ishmael’?” Liv looked worried.

  “Simon’s only going to agree if he can read a passage from Moby-Dick.”

  “I can speak for myself, Charlie.”

  “I’m just trying to save us some time.”

  “You can get someone else to read ‘One Hand, One Heart’—anyone,” Simon said. “If you want me . . . Look, I’ve never read at a wedding before. I’d feel more comfortable reading something I’m used to.”

  “Such as?” said Gibbs.

  “‘Rainbows do not visit the clear air; they only irradiate vapor,’” Simon quoted. “‘And so, through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray. And for this I thank God; for all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or denials, few along with them, have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal eye.’”

  “That’s beautiful.” Liv sniffed and blinked. She looked at Gibbs. “What do you think?”

  He shrugged. “Up to you.”

  “Don’t say that! I hate it when you say that, as if your opinion doesn’t matter.”

  “In no way does that passage make the same point as ‘One Hand, One Heart,’” said Charlie, annoyed that they were considering it. Did it matter that much to them to have Si
mon read at their fake-wedding-within-a-real-wedding? “What about me?” she heard herself say. “Seriously: I’ll read ‘One Hand, One Heart.’”

  “You will?” Liv cupped her hands over her nose and mouth and pressed the tips of her index fingers into the corners of her wet eyes. Simon looked away. Nothing made him feel more uncomfortable than people crying near him.

  “You’re not just pretending to make me happy, so that I’ll be even sadder when I realize it’s a big lie?” Liv asked through her hands.

  Charlie sighed. “Yes, that’s what I’m doing, because I’m the dictionary definition of evil. Are you sure you want me on the guest list at all?”

  “Not evil, just against me and Chris.”

  “Once, maybe. Now the only thing I’m against is both of you staying with people you don’t love anymore.”

  “I think we should have both,” said Gibbs.

  “Evidently,” Charlie quipped. “You’ve got Debbie and Liv, Liv’s got you and Dom.”

  “I meant both readings: ‘One Hand, One Heart’ and Moby-Dick.”

  “Yes!” Liv yelped. “I actually love that quote from Moby-Dick: earthly doubts and heavenly intuitions. Perfect!”

  A waiter was approaching. Simon looked down at his plate. None of them had eaten anything. “Is everything all right? There is a problem with the food?”

  “We’re wonderful, thank you.” Liv’s smile faded as he walked away. “I’ve never tried to explain to you before, Char, but we do have our reasons. I didn’t think you’d be interested.”

  “They don’t need to know our reasons,” Gibbs muttered.

  “They don’t need to, but I think they deserve to.”

  A statement that could be taken in two ways, Simon thought. He wondered if Charlie was thinking the same thing, or if he was spotting things that weren’t there to be spotted. Like whatever had been removed from Tim Breary’s bedroom at the Dower House before Simon and Charlie had searched it late this afternoon. Simon had felt its absence. Had Dan Jose worked out on Friday that Gaby Struthers would have been suspicious of his eagerness to evict her from Breary’s bedroom? Had he disposed of something incriminating as soon as she’d left? If it was that incriminating, wouldn’t he have got rid of it on or shortly after 16 February, the day Francine was killed?