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Just Before I Died

Page 13

by S. K. Tremayne


  ‘Yes. Yes, we do.’ I’d like to agree more sincerely, but I can hear the voice of my daughter in my head. Lyla hates the swaling, she sometimes cries about it: the way it kills the animals, the tinier birds, and the way that for weeks afterwards, whenever you walk through a swaled moorland scene, everything is black, and you get covered in ash, the ash of dead things.

  ‘Kath?’

  ‘Sorry—’

  I am doubly distracted: even as I think about Lyla, I am also scanning the grass for signs of our exuberant yet lethal dogs. I can hear them barking, but I cannot see them. They are probably halfway down a rabbit hole, cornering some terrified doe. On Dartmoor the casual cruelty of nature always intrudes, even on an everyday afternoon walk.

  ‘You wanted to ask me something,’ says Emma, as one the dogs – Randal – canters into view, and disappears again, barking excitedly.

  ‘Yes.’ I stiffen, gathering my weakening resolve. I have to do this. Drain the waters. Reveal the tors and hills. I believe I am getting there. But I need more help, more facts. ‘It’s about that day, the day I …’ I swallow the dry taste of my shame and embarrassment. ‘The day I did it.’

  Emma looks at me, unflinching. ‘I was wondering when you would ask, to be perfectly honest, Kath.’

  ‘All right,’ I say. ‘Can you please tell me what was I like when I came over?’

  ‘Which time?’

  I stop and stare at her. Perplexed. ‘Sorry, what? What do you mean, which time?’

  ‘You came over twice that day.’

  Her eyes widen at my blank look.

  ‘You don’t remember?!’

  Helplessness surges. This is another thing lost at the back of my mum’s endless cupboards. Another jar of Manuka honey I had forgotten I ever possessed. ‘No, I don’t remember. Oh God, it’s freaking me out. Please tell me: I’m trying to fit it all together.’

  ‘All right, ah, shall we sit here, out of the wind? Your lurchers will come back soon enough.’ She points to a ledge of exposed granite, part of a humble tor to the left. We sit on the cold, damp stone and I listen. Hard. As she explains.

  ‘At about noon Lyla came over to our place, by herself, with Felix and Randal. You’d called me beforehand, asked if it was OK. You said you had to do some shopping or something. Tavistock, was it? Anyway, Lyla didn’t want to go with you.’

  I nod: it is logical. Lyla doesn’t like big towns, madding crowds. In the past she would kick up silent tantrums before a big shop, hiding in her den. She would go rigid and foetal simultaneously, refusing to move. Sometimes we had to pick her up, force her into the car.

  ‘So,’ I am keen to fit this new information into the old, though I don’t see how it squares. ‘How long was Lyla there, the first time?’

  ‘A few hours. Perhaps four? We mucked out the horses together. It was nice. George and I had been away for Christmas and we’d only been back a day and we’d missed her!’

  ‘And after I’d been shopping, I came back to collect her.’

  Emma confirms, ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t quite get it.’

  Emma says, very patiently, ‘You left Lyla with us twice that day, Kath. First in the afternoon, then later on in the evening.’

  I shake my head, looking across the gorse. I think some farmer is already swaling down towards Scorriton. I can see billows of white smoke, a long, slender line of burning orange flame. I imagine Lyla staring at this, I imagine her thinking of all the little moorland animals, the fieldmice burned alive, birds trapped in fiery thorns.

  My confusion is deep as a Dartmoor mine. If I dropped Lyla off once, I’m not sure why on earth I would do it again, and ask so much of Emma. The Spaldings are very kind to us, they cut our rent in half when Adam was ill. I hate to impose on them too much. I turn to Emma.

  ‘So I brought back Lyla again, in the evening? How did I seem?’ Another uncharacteristic pause. My friend is silent. I’m not.

  ‘Emma, please, I need to know. I tried to do that thing, that terrible thing. And I can’t remember why. I don’t care how bad it is, it can’t get any worse.’

  She answers quietly. ‘Well, dear. All day you were, um, a little odd. Distrait. Is that the word?’

  ‘I don’t know. What does it mean?’

  The wind whirrs in the bracken, restless and impatient. Waiting for something bad to happen. Emma smiles, uncertainly, reassuringly.

  ‘You were agitated, Kath. I knew you’d been alone with Lyla since Christmas. We knew Adam was away, so I put it down to that. Loneliness and isolation: there was a lot of rain after Boxing Day – we came back to floods in places. Raybarrow was like the Bristol Channel.’

  ‘But, I can cope with rain. I’m alone with Lyla a lot. We like being alone at Huckerby. I don’t see why I would be agitated.’

  The grey-white smoke from the swaling is obscuring the view. I cannot see. I cannot see.

  ‘Emma, there must be more. What did I say, what did I look like? Give me something, anything.’

  ‘All right, Kath, dear.’ She puts a maternal hand on my shoulder. ‘You seemed agitated, but also a tad, well, excited.’

  The perplexity grows. I open my mouth, but say nothing. The silence extends between us until Emma feels forced to say more.

  ‘What I mean is: you looked rather giddy, and girlish, especially the first time, when you walked over to collect Lyla at 4 p.m. You’d had a drink, I think; I saw wine stains on your lips.’ She shrugs awkwardly. ‘But you weren’t drunk. Rather, you know. As I say. Excited.’

  What is she saying? I go on despairingly: ‘And the second time, when I dropped Lyla off again? How did I come across?’

  ‘You looked smarter.’

  ‘I changed into new clothes?’

  ‘Yes, you had a new shirt on, um, smart boots, new jeans.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look, Kath. It’s got absolutely nothing to do with me. You’re my friend. I’m not going to judge anyone, especially not you or Adam. Every marriage is different, every marriage is difficult. God knows George and I have had our differences.’ She stands. ‘We really ought to be going, here are the dogs, right on time.’

  Felix and Randal are galloping back, ears flapping excitedly.

  I won’t let this drop. As we hike back to Huckerby, I press it again.

  ‘Emma, you were going to say something else?’ She remains silent.

  ‘Emma, please, I’m going mad. I need to know what happened that night. No matter how painful, not knowing is worse.’

  She sighs, repeatedly thrashing the bracken with her stick as if she wants to kill it. ‘Must get back,’ she says. ‘Those horses won’t feed themselves!’

  A hearty panting to my left interrupts us, and makes me turn. It’s Felix. He has blood on his teeth. He and Randal must have got a rabbit, chewed a leg or an eye, left it bleeding to death. Or they simply killed it. Everything is bleeding out, and I don’t have much time left.

  Adam likes the fact the dogs hunt. He likes that they kill.

  Adam, Adam, Adam. Is he the man on the moor, or did someone else come to see me? And what did they do to me?

  I do not know. And soon I must face my daughter’s birthday party. The panic and confusion rises, all around me, like black water. I feel as if everything is watching over: the dogs, the birds. No, they are not. I have to get a grip, hold my breath, escape the car as it sinks into the blackness.

  Again I run to catch up with Emma, and take her by the hand.

  ‘Please, Emma. Please. Tell me everything. I have to know. Or I will go mad.’

  Her sigh is enormous, but she nods. ‘OK. Very well. But please don’t take this as gospel, Kath! As I said: you were acting oddly, rather giddy, talking to yourself really – I couldn’t be absolutely sure, but you were muttering.’

  ‘What was I muttering?’

  ‘You seemed distracted. You said you’d talked to Adam, or you needed to see him. Something had happened.’

  ‘Like what?’

 
; ‘I don’t know. But you said you were going to meet someone. You mentioned Two Bridges. The Two Bridges Hotel.’

  The wind dies. At precisely the right time.

  I look at her. ‘Who? Who was I going to meet?’

  Emma is barely able to meet me my eye. She looks over my shoulder as if she can see down to the coast at Brixham and at last says, ‘Your brother. You said you were going to meet your brother.’

  My mind swirls; the wind catches dead bracken and flings it into the air.

  ‘My brother? But he was in London. And Adam was away. Dan. My brother?’

  Emma walks on. I stand here. Thinking.

  Daniel Kinnersley. My brother. Who dislikes Adam. Who got the house. My mother’s favourite. My handsome, rich and generous brother, of whom I am sometimes jealous, despite myself.

  Why would I be excited about seeing him?

  Nothing quite fits, yet the pieces are clearly all here. There is either another man in all this, or there is an aspect of my brother, or of my husband, that I never suspected.

  And now I begin to suspect. Both of them.

  Salcombe

  Tuesday evening

  Tessa watched her husband pour more wine. Daniel Kinnersley watched her watching him.

  ‘It’s an Imperial Reserva. I’m not going to leave it to evaporate.’ He swivelled the bottle on the dining table to show her the label. ‘Look! Compañía Vinícola del Norte de España – 2004! This is the stuff they serve in heaven.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ she said, smiling, and sipping her own white wine. Tessa didn’t like red wine, but she liked Dan’s enthusiasm. She loved his drive, his hunger, his ambition, his appetite for the world, and for her. Being around Daniel Kinnersley was exciting, and sexy. There were a lot of sexless marriages out there: she knew enough to know that she was lucky.

  ‘Here,’ he said, ‘let me clear these plates away. You spent hours cooking a delicious dinner, seems only fair I should spend three or four minutes loading the dishwasher.’

  He disappeared into the distant kitchen, carrying the dessert plates, with their last smears of tiramisu. Whistling.

  Tessa sat back, halfway satisfied. The boys had already gone to bed, ready for the early flight tomorrow; so they’d taken the chance to have a proper supper with candlelight and silver cutlery and good wine and swordfish steaks in caper sauce. She’d never cooked the recipe before, and it was, she thought, a definite success.

  The world seemed a pretty good place. The big house gleamed. Through the dining room windows the pretty lights of Salcombe harbour sparkled brightly in the deep winter darkness. Their holiday clothes were packed: sunshine beckoned in the Canary Islands, and on the way back, a weekend at Disneyland Paris. They were to fly out tomorrow at 10 a.m., so they’d have to start the drive at 6 a.m., but it was worth it. Winter sun!

  The only jarring note was, firstly, the nagging thought that would not go away. Kath. Up there in that rented house, marooned on the moors. Kath. Having to organize a birthday party for her lonely girl. And there was that niggling but persistent lie: Dan’s claim that he drove back from London, when Tessa knew he used the train.

  With a happy whistle, Dan came back into the dining room, sat down at the shining mahogany table and tipped the last of the red wine down his throat with a gasp of pleasure. Languid and relaxed, he reached behind him, for another bottle. ‘Yes, yes, yes. It’s the second.’ He smiled mischievously. Carelessly. ‘You do know Winston Churchill drank sixteen pints of whisky every day, and a bucket of absinthe, and still became pope. After flying to the moon?’

  Despite herself, she chuckled, and felt an urge to kiss him. But then it nagged again. Kath. How could she feel happy and contented, how could she joke with her husband, sitting here in this big house, with nice food and good humour, and a winter holiday barely hours away, when the other half of Dan’s family was mired in confusion, and misery?

  And that poor little girl.

  And that brooding, sometimes menacing, husband.

  ‘Dan.’ She watched him as he flamboyantly uncorked the second bottle, sniffed the cork, carefully half-filled his glass. The wine made a luxurious sound as it was poured: the glugging sound of money, the sound of Dan’s success as a property developer, the sound of their good luck. Too much good luck, perhaps.

  ‘Dan, do you think we could do more, to help Kath? They’re in such a state. Can’t we do more?’

  He flashed her a sharp little glance. ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Pay for therapy. Anything.’

  ‘There is no therapy, you said so yourself.’ He sighed. ‘Can’t we have one evening when we don’t talk about this? Can’t you ever leave it alone?’

  ‘Dan, she’s your sister! I worry about her. And Lyla. I’m trying to help them: Adam asked me to get involved and you said it was a good idea that I should break the news to her.’ Tessa raised her hand in protest, as Dan made to speak. ‘We can’t let it go. These memories will return and it could be horrific. Whatever caused her to attempt suicide. What if it tips her over? What if she is already having another, deeper breakdown? I want to know why she did it, before the returning memory hits.’

  He looked at her, his eyes heavy with alcohol. But still bright. Cynical. ‘OK. Sure. Good for you.’ He yawned. ‘But, Jesus, Tessa, this endless meddling, this endless Sherlock crap gets us nowhere. Why did she drive there, who did what when, how does it help anyone?’ He shook his head. ‘Maybe we should all accept she had a spazz-out. She’s lucky to be alive, move on.’

  ‘I will, Dan, I will stop all my’ – she made air quotes with two fingers – ‘“meddling”. When I’ve exhausted all avenues.’

  Dan sighed. ‘OK, darling. Whatever.’

  He tasted the wine and nodded to himself, happy at the fineness of the flavour.

  Across the table, Tessa watched him. A man relishing the sweetness of life. And fair enough, she thought. After all, he’d earned it. He’d worked insanely hard as a younger man, building the company. Seven days a week, barely seeing the boys. Now he had underlings and the business wasn’t quite so demanding, so he was kicking off his shoes, stretching out, and being a better father, too. Football at the weekends, proper holidays. Off to the Canaries tomorrow, a villa with a big blue pool. They were so lucky. Too lucky. It nagged at her, once more.

  ‘Dan, do you ever feel guilty, about getting this house from your mum? When Kath got virtually nothing?’

  He flashed her a sharp glance. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘This house. We got such a kick-start compared to Kath and Adam. Do you ever feel guilty about it?’

  He regarded her levelly. And he nodded. ‘OK, yes, I do feel guilty about the house. Of course I feel that. Although I also wonder. Perhaps Mum had her reasons.’

  ‘Reasons?’

  ‘Reasons of her own.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Her husband blithely ignored her. He was lifting the beaded redness of his wine to the candlelight to examine the ruby colour, with the light behind it. ‘Exceptional,’ he said. ‘Quite exceptional. Tempranillo, Graziano. Marzuelo. Like a line of poetry, in the form of liquor.’

  Tessa interrupted. ‘Dan? What does that mean? Reasons?’

  ‘What I mean is, who the fuck knows why Mum did it? She could have had any number of reasons. That was Mum, that was her charm. She was scatty. Perhaps she genuinely thought those shares and paintings and creepy antiques were worth as much as the house, who can tell? By the end she was scrambled, Tessa, a real mess, painting herself orange in Goa, dying of cancer, talking about the Devil.’

  He shook his head and set his glass down. ‘Besides, darling, I do try to give them money, I do try to help them, but Adam’s proud: he simply won’t take it. And I respect him for that, and I don’t want to disrespect him. Therefore, in that light, what can I possibly do?’

  Kath nodded in thoughtful agreement. It was true. What could they do, more than they did already? During Adam’s illness they’d quietly
given Kath some cash, to help out, but you could only go so far with that. Kath didn’t like it. And Adam would be furious if he felt they were being subsidized; the antagonism with Dan would get much worse.

  She took another sip of Sauvignon Blanc. Thought about Dan’s mum, his family. Then Kath again.

  Dan reached a hand across the table, took her fingers in his. ‘Hey, babe, look. I know you worry about all this, but Kath is tough, way tougher than you think. Really. She’ll be OK.’

  ‘But that’s it, she’s tough, she’s smart. I don’t get it. Why would she try and do that? That terrible thing?’

  He grimaced, with a hint of irritation, her fingers still entwined in his. ‘Maybe she just had a bit of a meltdown, over Christmas. I mean, who could blame her – the fucking weather up there, the endless winters. I’d have a noose out by November.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘Can we not talk about this any more? It gets exhausting. Shall we clock out, go to bed?’

  ‘It’s ten p.m.!’

  ‘Or I could fuck you in the kitchen if you prefer?’

  Again, he made her laugh. Also, he turned her on. Tessa grinned. ‘Let me finish my wine, you terrible seducer.’

  ‘You’ve got ten minutes.’

  Her mind was hazy. The wine, and the idea of sex, was blurring her thoughts. She remembered she’d wanted to ask one more question. His lie about the drive down to see Kath. When he’d really got the train. Yes. That lie. Why did he lie? But her mind was fuzzy, her mood was good. It didn’t really matter, it could wait.

  Yet it couldn’t.

  ‘Dan, there’s one more thing I’ve been meaning to ask.’

 

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