The Beauty of the End

by Debbie Howells

  “You’re so wrong.” His voice is deadly. “About April. You think she wasn’t capable of killing anyone, but she was. Do you know about Theo?”

  “Yes. But no thanks to you. You should have told me.”

  “For Christ’s sake—like it was my place to. She should have told you long ago. By the time I got involved, it was complicated.”

  “Yeah. Right. He was sick,” I flare back at him. “Then he died. Bea told me all about it. And you signed the death certificate. Everyone knows that now.”

  “Bea? Told you Theo died?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you need to call her.” He sounds grim. “She didn’t tell you everything. Theo didn’t die, Noah. April killed him.”

  What he’s suggesting is impossible. Suddenly I can’t think. Why would Bea have lied? Then I realize, it’s Will who’s lying. Again. Manipulating me, as he always has.

  “Fucking leave it, Will,” I mutter. “You’ve done enough.”

  “Ask Bea,” he says quietly. “Ask her what really happened.”

  “Don’t call me again.” I hang up on him before he can reply, then just stand there, reeling. Knowing that before I leave, I have to call Bea.

  * * *

  My burning need gets the better of me. I go out, stop at the first shop that sells whisky, where I buy a bottle. Start walking back, feeling the familiar anticipation, filled with longing for the oblivion it contains. Then I carry on twenty yards down the road to the nearest bin, drop it in. Retrace my steps back to the B&B before I change my mind.

  I missed it the first time, when Bea told me about Will’s obsession with April. How she alluded to, then dismissed her own feelings for April. Her acrimonious divorce, without ever explaining what went wrong. The letter B squiggled in April’s diary, which I’d forgotten about.

  * * *

  “It was in her diary. You met up with her, didn’t you?” I demand when Bea and I meet an hour later.

  Under her makeup, Bea’s face is pale.

  “When, Bea? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I was going to, but in the end, I couldn’t.” Her voice trembles. “She’d been through enough. All I wanted was to protect her.”

  “This is serious,” I tell her. “You’ll have to talk to Ryder. Even if it changes nothing, you should tell him what happened.”

  “Or what?” she says, with an icy calm I haven’t seen before. “April’s dead and Will’s being held in custody, which he deserves.”

  “You may not have a choice.” She may be right, but I’m thinking of the trial, at which she may well be called to give evidence under oath. And it’s tempting, where Will is concerned, to leave him where he is until the legal system takes its course. But there’s a more burning issue I have to ask her about.

  “You were there when Theo died,” I say quietly. “You have to tell me what really happened.”

  Bea swallows, but the set of her chin is defiant. “I’ve already told you.”

  “The truth, Bea.”

  I’m silent; then she turns and sees my face.

  “Will told you, didn’t he?” she says, incredulous.

  I nod.

  “God, Noah . . .” Bea looks fraught. “All right. If you really want me to, I’ll tell you.” She pauses, gathering herself. “That last night was terrible, so bloody terrible. Theo was in the most awful distress. Nothing we did helped him. I wanted to call an ambulance, but April wouldn’t let me. She knew he was dying and she didn’t want it drawn out any longer, with an uncomfortable journey, only to be surrounded by strangers in a hospital—all for the sake of a few more hideous hours of suffering. God, it was your worst nightmare.”

  She’s shaking as she continues. “I’ve told you most of it. April gave Theo the medication the hospital had prescribed the last time. It didn’t make any difference. He was still crying pitifully, and if we picked him up it made it worse. His sobs . . .” She puts her hands over her ears. “I still remember them. It was the worst thing, seeing him in pain. April gave him more medication, then more. Eventually he became drowsy, then unconscious. That was when she panicked, because she couldn’t bear for him to wake up and go through it all over again. I remember she kissed him. I think she’d already decided that this was what she’d have to do.”

  Bea falls silent, then looks up at me.

  “She told him how much she loved him. Then she placed a pillow over his face And I watched her.” Her voice falters. Then she turns to me, her face tear stained, eyes streaked with pain. “He never woke up.”

  As I take in what she’s saying, a maelstrom of emotions engulfs me. Shock, followed by horror, grief, and finally something that can only be love, for the baby I’d never know, as part of my brain tries to put myself in April’s shoes, put all of this into some kind of context. Finding no mental reference to measure it by.

  Bea’s voice is thin. “Will knew, but he could never tell anyone, because he’d broken the law before he’d even qualified. It was the most tragic secret that bound them together.”

  “Bound the three of you, you mean.” Trying to keep my voice neutral, but my eyes are accusing. “You were there, too, Bea.”

  “I know.” She bows her head. “No one needs to know, do they?” It’s more a plea, than a question.

  “That’s up to Will. Now the police have the death certificate, who knows what they’ll ask. . . . But whatever Will tells them, there’s no proof.”

  “Are you going to tell them?” Bea’s voice is low.

  “It depends if they ask me, under oath.” I’m still angry at her.

  But what’s to be gained at this stage? The only person who’d be punished would be Bea—and for what? Watching a desperate mother, whom the system had failed, end the suffering of her dying baby?

  Then I’m thinking about Will’s phone call. “But just because of how Theo died, it still doesn’t mean April killed Norton.”

  “No.” Bea’s silent. “I guess the phone call was just Will being Will. He knew something you didn’t. It was like you said—he couldn’t resist telling you, could he?”

  “So you and April,” I say less roughly. “The truth, this time. Was there something?”

  “The truth?” Bea’s silent for a moment. “Maybe there might have been. We never had the chance to find out.”

  I look at her, just for a moment wondering if Bea could have killed Norton. Her way of redressing the past, of avenging the misery Norton had caused the woman she loved.

  She feels me watching her and I see her eyes widen in alarm. “You’re not thinking . . .”

  But I shake my head and turn to walk away. “I don’t know what to think.”

  * * *

  I check back into the B&B. My landlady raises her eyes questioningly, hopeful, but I hide my turmoil under a smile, pay her for another couple of nights. Tell her nothing. Make it up the stairs, lock the door as a different, more brutal truth closes in on me, because it’s one thing to end a life of suffering. But harder to understand is April’s silence. She’d loved me enough to agree to marry me, but not enough to share the reason for her sadness.

  Only when my anger subsides does the storm inside my head start to calm. But in its aftermath, the landscape has changed. Surrounding me are doubts that previously were absent, that have sprung out of nowhere. No longer am I sure about anyone.

  49

  Only now, with Will remanded in custody, do I finally hear what he’s been telling me. But the doubt it leaves, which screams from inside my head, is just the prelude to the collision of voices that follows. People who have stayed silent for reasons of their own now tell their stories, small tales that alone are insignificant, but collectively hold the truth.

  The second time I go to their house to talk to her, the pleasure that flickers in Ella’s eyes touches me, but Rebecca misses it. She’s flustered. It’s in her darting glance, the restlessness of her petite, manicured hands. Instantly recognizable. Fear. She, too, has kept quiet all this time, for her own
selfish reasons. Thought only of the glittering career that’s everything to her, been terrified of saying the wrong thing.

  Trying to make sense of recent events, Rebecca tells me what had gone on. “April had started calling the house. She was desperate to see Ella. I was petrified she’d just turn up. She seemed distraught.”

  I can’t help wondering if without Norton’s murder and Will’s subsequent arrest would Ella’s parents ever have told her the truth?

  She rests her head in her hands. “He was obsessed with her. He always had been, ever since I met him. I put up with it, hoping he’d change.”

  Talking about Will. I wonder why she’s kept quiet about this, but then I see it. She’s another unwitting victim. Another person who doesn’t love, isn’t loved, by her husband, by her daughter, only by the nameless masses who flock to watch her perform, who adore her.

  “Did Will know?”

  She nods. “He called her. Told her she couldn’t see Ella. It was what we’d agreed, after all. But it didn’t make any difference. I think it was around the time she found out about Will’s selection of patients at the hospital. That was when it started.”

  The instant she says this, I understand. April must have known that despite Will’s obsession, he’d always looked down on her. She was one of the unworthy, undeserving, someone to be bypassed for someone richer, from a better background, who had social standing. She would have detested what Will was doing. Perhaps she feared, too, that he felt the same about her daughter.

  * * *

  When I next talk to Bea, she gives me more insight into how April’s life really was.

  “No one can say for certain if Norton did anything to April. Not recently, anyway,” I say, looking at Bea.

  But she shakes her head. “How can you say that? Between them, he and Will destroyed April.”

  Then her composure slips, her voice wavers. “After losing Theo, not to be able to see her own daughter—I can’t imagine how that must have felt.”

  * * *

  But I’m still missing something. I call round to see Lara, who seemed to understand April so well and it’s she who makes me question everything I think I know. Lara, whom I believed was April’s client, was in fact her closest friend. The holder of her secrets.

  “I know April tried to call you that evening. She was quite upset when you didn’t answer, but then she said it didn’t matter because you’d find out.”

  “Find what out?” Was she talking about Theo? Or maybe Ella? Or something else?

  There’s a quiet determination in Lara’s voice as she goes on. “I didn’t tell you. I couldn’t—not until now. And Ryder . . . he asks all the wrong questions, that man. But the truth is, Will had a power over her that she couldn’t escape. He used it whenever he felt like it, when he wanted sex, anytime he needed to know he could still manipulate her. Then just lately, something changed. She told me she’d found a way to show the world what he was really like.”

  “Yes. Now everyone knows Will’s guilty. All the evidence points to it.”

  “It does? Are you certain?” As she holds my gaze, as the truth flickers there, my skin crawls.

  We can’t, all of us, be wrong.

  Lara’s eyes are unblinking. “There’s another possibility. April didn’t lose her phone. She made it look as though she had. She only used it to make those last two calls to Rebecca—the final pleas of a desperate mother who wanted to see her daughter. Rebecca hung up on her. It was the only time I saw April lose control.”

  I’m floundering. This was no theory Lara was proposing. She’d witnessed April making those calls. “But . . . if it was deliberate, she’d have left everything in order. Paid her bills. Found a home for the cat.” Staring wildly at her, I clutch at hope that she’s wrong.

  Lara shakes her head. “So everyone would know she’d planned it? You’re missing the point.”

  “You knew what she was going to do?” My voice is hoarse.

  Lara shrugs. “I wasn’t sure, but I thought there was something. I tried to get her to talk to me, but she wouldn’t.”

  “You didn’t even try to stop her.” But my accusation is halfhearted.

  “Do you really think she’d have thanked me for that? I’d have condemned her to more years of unhappiness.” Lara sighs. “Stop thinking like a lawyer, just for a moment. Put yourself in April’s shoes. The woman who chose to end her son’s life, for his sake, not hers. Risked her own future to end his suffering. It’s something she’s lived with, every moment of every day, ever since.”

  Lara looks away. “I think . . .” She breaks off. “She was tired, Noah. She’d been fighting just to survive for most of her life. Imagine what that does to a person.”

  As I stare at her, I see what’s been right under my nose. No one framed April. She’d lied about losing her phone. She arranged to meet Will, hiding one of her gloves in his car, then later, after killing Norton, left the other with her phone in his car. All along, it was April, not Will. She set him up.

  “He blackmailed her, stole her child, broke her soul.” Lara’s voice, steady, resolute, breaks into my thoughts, my heart.

  And as she says that, only then do I fully understand how the neglect and abuse of April’s childhood had leached into her future, corrupting it even before she’d got there. There’d been no choice in what had followed. It had been inevitable.

  She was a victim. Exploited, damaged, ultimately destroyed, by both Will and Norton, each of whom paid the price.

  * * *

  A day later, I set off for home, though Ryder tells me I’ll be needed to give evidence at Will’s trial. Will’s career is over, the respect of others destroyed. He may not be a murderer, but there are other crimes for which he must be tried.

  As I drive, I’m still consumed with thoughts of April and Will, then Ella, not yet able to mentally file them away, even hours later, as I pull up outside my cottage. But as I unlock my front door, drop my bag on the floor before closing it behind me, I’m thinking about myself, then about the last five years, during which I’ve earned nothing, living off my savings and my inheritance. About my latest book, which remains unwritten.

  I’ve achieved nothing. Nor have I given anything of myself. Within the walls of this cottage, I’ve become a recluse who cares about no one, my so-called writing part of a spiraling, self-obsessed descent into alcoholism.

  Thinking furiously, I go from room to room. The house is untidy, with a cloying mustiness that pervades throughout. In each room, one by one, I throw the windows open, watching rays of sunlight filter in, lifting the gloom, catching the dust I’ve disturbed, as I properly see my home for what it is. Something neglected and unloved, the same way I’ve treated myself.

  Not surprising then, I imagine I hear Clara’s voice.

  About time you got on with living.

  But even before I turn, I know that the room behind me is empty and she won’t be rushing over, happy to see me back; that on this occasion, her voice is in my head. She talks sense, Clara. Maybe I’ll knock on her door and thank her.

  I sit down heavily, the cloud of dust I disturb making me cough. I’d always known I’d come back, but now I’m here, I’m no longer sure what there is for me, noticing also the cottage is as it was when I moved in.

  I know now, I’ve been stuck far too long. Leaping up, wasting no time, I go through to my study, gather the years of notes I’ll never use, for the book I know is going nowhere, carry them over to the fireplace, where I scrunch them up and throw them into the grate. Hunting around for matches, then lighting a fire, watching the flames leap up. And all without regret, because I don’t need them. Liberated, I’m thinking of the new idea that I’ve had, that’s burning just as brightly in my head.

  As I watch the pages melt into the flames, I remember the pile of mail I’d kicked to one side earlier as I came in, mostly junk mail and bills, with the addition of a cardboard box, which must have been placed there at some point by Clara.

  Picking u
p the box, I notice my address neatly printed on the front. I take it through to my study, sling the junk mail into the flames, and open it.

  There’s a letter, brief, the format familiar.

  Dear Mr. Calaway,

  At the request of the late April Tara Rousseau, I have held in my possession an article she entrusted to me for safekeeping, until the time of her death. In accordance with her wishes, it is duly enclosed.

  Yours most sincerely,

  James Colbert

  Colbert, Eddison and Partners

  Inside, I find a small wooden chest inlaid with brass and mother of pearl. I stare at it. I last saw it in April’s London flat. I’d assumed she no longer had it. After we moved in together, she must have hidden it.

  Lifting the lid, I see there’s a letter, dated six weeks ago. Six weeks since Will phoned here that night, though it feels so much longer. And as I read, slowly walking across the room to sit on the windowsill, at last, I’m able to understand.

  Dear Noah,

  After all this time, where do I start? Perhaps with how sorry I am, because it’s true, even now. I always will be, but the fault is mine.

  I want to start at the beginning—with my so-called childhood, only it wasn’t, because when cruelty and abuse are relentlessly drip-fed into your veins, they become your benchmark. Sex and prostitution were as normal to me as breathing, but if you’re reading this, I’m guessing you already know.

  I wasn’t your goddess. I was the whore my brother sold to his stoned friends, the stepdaughter of the man who sexually abused me, before beating me. Remember the woods, Noah? I only survived because when it all got to be too much, that’s where I went. In my mind. Think I’m mad if you like, but you know I loved it there. You knew the rumors, too, about how each tree was the spirit of a child who had died. I joined their whispers, Noah, heard their names. Saw the faint outlines of their ghosts encircling me. Felt their frail arms reaching out, pulling me back from the edge.

  I don’t know if you know that so much changed because of you. That when I was with you, for a short while, I escaped. I loved your world, Noah. It was a magical place, where there were stars and love, and there was hope. Hope. I don’t think you know how it is not to have that. I stole some of yours. It was beautiful, but there were too many secrets between us, and I always knew I’d have to give it back.