by cass green
‘I know, right?’ says Neve. ‘I keep thinking it’s him who is doing all this weird shit.’
Will leans towards her.
‘But lovey,’ he says gently. ‘Really, why would he? What would be the motive?’
Neve shrugs.
‘Well, I can’t say I could begin to ever understand the mind of someone like that but it all seems a bit far-fetched to me,’ he says. ‘It’s much more likely that Isabelle drove herself half mad thinking about it. Life isn’t like the telly, is it?’
Neve tries to let this comfort her but she’s finding it oddly hard to concentrate, like her brain is wrapped up in thick cladding.
There is silence for a moment and then Will leans over and places his empty coffee cup on the low wooden table in front of him.
‘Look, Neve,’ he says. ‘The offer still stands about our daughter, you know.’
Neve sighs. ‘I know, thank you. I think I’ll take you up on it. I promise to stop being flaky about it. It’s just …’ she curls her legs up under her to get more comfortable in the chair. ‘I feel some sort of obligation to her. To Isabelle. To find out what was going on before I get rid of it.’
‘Well, I can understand that,’ says Sally gently. ‘But you could say that making you part of her suicide was actually rather cruel. And that you ought to take the money and run.’
Neve’s head feels as though there is a slowly tightening band of steel around it.
‘It’s not going to be easy to sell that grotty old place,’ continues Sally, ‘whatever guff you might hear from estate agents. Its central heating is like something from the Ark, as you’ve already discovered, and,’ she laughs, ‘as you put it so succinctly, it’s a creepy old shithole.’ The words seem made from different angles, coming from Sally’s well-spoken mouth, and Neve can’t help but smile. But her voice sounds muffled and far away.
Her sore throat has come back with a vengeance and the lasagne seems to sit in a cheesy, oily mass in her stomach. A wave of pure exhaustion washes over her.
‘God,’ she says, ‘I’m so sorry, but I think I need to go to bed. I’ve got a virus that’s been brewing and I suddenly feel a bit shit.’
‘Of course, of course,’ says Will hurrying to his feet. Sally says nothing and when Neve steals a glance at her she sees the other woman’s face is expressionless before softening with sympathy.
‘I’m so sorry,’ says Neve again. ‘I don’t mean to be rude. And I do appreciate being able to talk to you. You’re absolutely right about the cottage. I need to get rid of it.’
‘Come on then, you poor wounded soldier,’ says Will and Neve gratefully follows him up the narrow staircase. She glances at more framed pictures of children on the way, mostly, it seems, the Spanish grandchildren, judging by the bright blue skies that are backdrops in so many.
They pass a bedroom from which a low bass thudding seeps out and Will makes a face and directs Neve down another small corridor that leads off the landing.
‘Matty has his music on but it shouldn’t disturb you down here,’ he says, opening a low wooden door and dipping his head to enter.
The spare bedroom is small and neat and the air smells pleasantly of fresh laundry. The walls are a bright cheerful yellow, the curtains pale and sprigged with embroidered flowers. There is a chest of drawers and slightly wonky bookcase painted pale blue; the latter is stuffed with old children’s books, from Enid Blyton to Roald Dahl, plus all the Harry Potters neatly lined up in order.
The duvet is also pale yellow and soft as a cloud; the bed piled with pillows. Next to the bed there is a table containing tissues and a bottle of water in deep blue glass.
Neve wants to sink straight onto it. Will must sense her desire to lie down because he begins to back out of the room, hunching his large frame awkwardly.
‘I’ll leave you to it. Hope you feel better in the morning. Oh, the bathroom is just down to the left,’ he says, then, ‘Night, night, Neve.’
‘Night, Will, and thank you,’ she says and he gives a dismissive wave of his hand as he disappears through the doorway.
Neve finds her toothbrush and walks to the bathroom, barely noticing her surroundings now, such is the almost magnetic pull of that soft, warm bed. She can vaguely hear voices from downstairs when she comes out and she stops for a moment. There’s something quiet and urgent about the tone, which comes from one of the other bedrooms, but, fearful of being caught nosing, she hurries back to the guest room.
Five minutes later, she sinks gratefully into bed. Sally has left a packet of Nurofen on the chest of drawers but she is too sleepy, too muzzy-headed to take them. She just wants to sleep, to sleep, sleep, sleep.
39
She’s on a bike again; riding it around Will and Sally’s kitchen this time. A woman, who dream logic tells her is Isabelle, sits on the kitchen table, cross-legged, but Neve can’t see her face. Isabelle shouts encouraging things to Neve and encourages her to ride faster but Neve doesn’t want to. If anything, she wants to stop but finds she can’t.
Then finally she is slowing down and for some reason she says, ‘That’s lucky,’ when the bike becomes stuck in something that is sticky and black when she dips her feet down to the ground. Isabelle says, ‘Have a drink of water. That’s all you need,’ and Neve is so thirsty. She wants the water badly but can’t reach it …
Her eyes snap open and she stares up into thick darkness. Her heart is pounding.
She thinks about the stickiness in the dream, the dark mass of it on the floor. No prizes for why she dreamed about that. Her mouth is coated and her throat still sore.
She’s desperately thirsty and feels hungover, even though she barely touched her one beer. The duvet feels too heavy and hot now and she throws it back and struggles to a sitting position. She fumbles for the lamp and manages to switch it on. The warm light is the colour of egg yolk against the pale walls. Her phone tells her it is only two a.m.
Groaning, she climbs out of bed to get to the bottle of water. Taking off the lid, she tips it straight into her mouth and shivers when she realizes it is fizzy. It prickles at her painful throat and she puts it down again. Tap water. She needs plain old tap water.
Pulling a jumper over her bed T-shirt, she opens the heavy door, which makes a deep shooshing sound over the carpet. Peering out into the dark corridor, she hesitates. She doesn’t want to put a light on in case she wakes someone. And with all the doors closed, she can’t exactly remember which one was the bathroom. Was it the second or third on the right? The thought of accidentally stumbling into Will and Sally’s, or worse still, Matty’s bedroom is too awful to contemplate.
At least she knows where the stairs are. She decides to go down to the kitchen.
Feeling her way down the short corridor from her bedroom to meet the landing, she is relieved to see the small dome of a nightlight plugged into the socket in the hall. It gives her enough light to get to the stairs and from there she makes her way down, toes carefully reaching for the next step, hand clasping the bannister.
When she gets to the bottom she can see a light is on in the sitting room and the door is open. There’s the rumble of deep, male snores.
Tentatively, she pokes her head around the door. Will is asleep on the sofa, his large bulk not quite fitting into the space, so that one arm with a meaty fist is flung towards the carpet. Her eyes stray down and she sees there is a cut-glass tumbler there and a bottle of what looks like whisky nearby.
Tiptoeing now, she goes into the kitchen and closes the door behind her carefully. The under-lights of all the cupboards give her more than enough light to find a glass on the draining board and to fill it with cold water, which she drinks greedily. Her sore throat immediately starts to ease and, moving her head experimentally, she realizes that she is feeling a little bit better than when she first woke.
The small, warm bedroom and the suffocating weight of that duvet don’t seem as appealing as they did earlier and so she takes her glass and goes to sit at the kitch
en table.
Something is still nagging at her and she can’t seem to catch its tail. Maybe it was the weird dream, she thinks, sipping her water carefully. She’s aware that it could have been much worse. She had been dreading that she would dream about the scene described in that kitchen by Linda Dyer, thirty years ago, or whatever it was. But then, she thinks with a shudder, maybe there are nightmares still to come.
Neve doesn’t want to know what Denville looked like, but maybe putting a face to him might stop him from being the vague but terrifying silhouette of a monster in her mind. He seems to lurk there now, like a shadow.
She forces another sip of water down, to try and distract herself from these thoughts, but pictures Isabelle making her pilgrimage to Low Linney prison. Even the name sounds lonely and grim.
Neve pauses with the glass midway between her lips and the table, and then slowly places it down. This is what it is. This is the thing that has been bothering her, at the very back of her mind. But she felt too poorly earlier to pick up on it.
Will had said it earlier. ‘The poor girl,’ he’d said, ‘going all that way to Low Linney,’ or something like that.
But Neve hadn’t mentioned the actual name of the prison. She’s certain about this.
Is she? Her mind races.
When the door opens with a creak, she starts and almost spills the water. At first, she thinks the large frame emerging into the kitchen is Will, then she sees it is Matty, who visibly starts at the sight of her.
‘Sorry,’ she says in a low voice and hears how hoarse she sounds. ‘I was just getting a drink of water. Didn’t mean to give you a fright.’
Matty grunts something indecipherable and goes across to the fridge. His large pale feet poke out of his pyjama bottoms and she studies him as he leans in and then takes out a carton of orange juice. Glancing at her a bit defiantly, as if she cares, he lifts it to his lips and takes a long slow drink.
Neve’s mind races. She’s aware that Matty needs careful handling and simply won’t bother to answer any question he finds difficult.
When he finishes drinking he burps loudly and Neve raises her eyes. He clearly expects her to be shocked by his rebellious behaviour.
He puts the carton back in the fridge and closes the door forcefully. He shows every sign of leaving the kitchen without saying anything at all and Neve panics.
‘Matty,’ she says hurriedly. ‘You know Isabelle’s car?’
His entire upper body seems to close in protectively and in the pale light of the kitchen he is all frown and shoulders.
‘Well,’ she forces herself on in a friendly voice, ‘did you see that wristband thing in the glove compartment?’
He frowns.
‘What wristband thing?’ he mumbles. ‘I haven’t even looked in there. It’s her stuff. I can’t throw it away.’
Something about this seems, bizarrely, believable. It could be a sort of weird shrine.
Matty lopes back towards the door.
‘I’m sorry about Isabelle,’ says Neve hurriedly. She only wants to stop him from leaving, but as she says the words, she realizes they are true. She is desperately sorry that this poor woman, with her terrible burden from the past, couldn’t find a way to live with herself.
Matty stops and looks at her and it almost feels like the first time he has given her direct eye contact.
‘I wish I’d known her,’ she says and immediately feels as though she has said something wrong because his brow scrunches in scorn. Or confusion. She can’t tell which.
‘But you did,’ he says. ‘I already said that.’
Neve had forgotten about what he’d said that first night. ‘I’ve seen you before.’
She spreads her arms in front of her, palms flat against the cool wood of the table, almost in supplication. It’s crucial that he trusts her.
‘I honestly didn’t,’ she says. ‘What makes you think that I did?’
Matty frowns. For a moment, all Neve can hear is the humming of the fridge.
‘On her laptop,’ he says finally. ‘There were photos. Photos of you.’
40
Neve does what she always does when presented with something so disturbing and strange that her brain is unable to absorb it. She laughs.
‘What? Why on earth would Isabelle have photos of me?’
Straight away she realizes her mistake. She has lost him. She can almost see him drawing back into himself and realizes, too late, that he felt mocked.
‘Matty,’ she starts to say but he talks over her.
‘I didn’t say I knew why. I just said I’d seen them.’ He reaches for the door. ‘I’m tired. I’m going to bed.’
‘Matty,’ she hisses desperately and jumps up but she can see his large feet are already disappearing up the stairs at speed.
Back in the bedroom, Neve climbs into bed, although the prospect of sleeping seems a distant one.
But she’s cold, so she tries to snuggle down into the heavy duvet. Questions swirl and dance inside her mind. Why would Isabelle have had pictures of Neve? It makes no sense. He must have confused her with someone else. But who?
Several people have told Neve she looks a bit like a well-known actress, but Neve thinks this is more to do with the combination of fair hair and brown eyes they share. Could it have been her on the computer? But this is ridiculous too, she thinks with frustration. Why would Isabelle have lots of pictures of an actress on her computer?
And she has the strangest feeling that Will and Sally are not telling her everything they know about Isabelle. It may simply be out of respect for the dead woman. Perhaps Isabelle told them about her past in confidence and it felt wrong to discuss the details of this horrible, intimate event.
But she decides to be more circumspect with them now, all the same.
She must get the laptop back tomorrow, whatever happens.
When Sally comes into the kitchen at seven a.m. and sees Neve sitting at the table, with a cup of coffee in front of her, she starts visibly.
‘Goodness, you gave me a fright!’ she says, recovering a smile. ‘You’re up very early. I thought we wouldn’t see you until much later today, especially as you seemed a little under the weather last night.’ She pauses. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Much better, thanks,’ says Neve and it isn’t entirely untrue. She had popped a couple of paracetamol she found in a blister pack in her handbag, and doubled up with the Nurofen Sally left out for her the night before. Although her head feels a little fuzzy and strange, nothing actively hurts.
That morning she had been awake early and washed her hair using borrowed shampoo in the powerful shower, enjoying the restorative pounding jets of water on her head. Even though she had brought no clean clothes or make-up, she found a comb to drag through her hair, and a small pot of tinted lip balm for her lips.
It all made her feel a little more in control than the ragged mess she had been the night before.
She has a strong sensation that she needs to have her wits about her. To be proactive and in control. A grown-up, for once.
Sally pours muesli into a bowl and then sloshes it with oat milk from the fridge.
‘Sally, I wanted to ask a favour,’ says Neve and Sally turns to her, her mouth full of muesli. She nods as if to say, ‘Go on.’
‘I need to get into Truro and I wondered if you could give me a lift?’
‘Well, yes of course,’ says Sally. ‘I don’t work in the centre but it’s not that big and I can tell you where to go.’
‘That would be great, thank you.’
Sally gives her a puzzled look and then adds, ‘Right, well I’m leaving in about ten minutes.’
In the car, Sally puts on Radio 4 and they listen to the Today programme in silence. Neve can’t think of any small talk and luckily Sally doesn’t seem to be much of a morning person, focusing instead on the thick traffic.
Sally drops Neve off on the edge of town, with full instructions about the buses back. She suggests that, if she
is stuck, Neve can wait until Sally is coming home again at five. Neve thanks her and gets out of the car. Sally gives her a lingering look and then turns back out into the traffic.
Most of the shops aren’t open yet, apart from the odd newsagent and a flower shop. Neve wanders into a shopping centre in search of a café. Inside the various chain stores she can see staff running vacuum cleaners over carpets and sleepily checking window displays. The sky is leaden and the temperature quite warm; it feels like rain is imminent. Neve begins to sweat inside her woollen coat and undoes the buttons, letting it hang open.
She finds a small café that is filled with builders buying bacon sandwiches and takeaway teas and feels several pairs of male eyes running over her as she makes her way to the back of the queue. Idly staring at her phone, she twitches with the desire to go online, to check emails and look at Facebook. But she is all too aware that she is haemorrhaging money right now and is determined to avoid going over her monthly data limit.
It strikes her with an unpleasant slap that bills must be arriving both at Lou’s and, very possibly, still dribbling through at Daniel’s flat. She miserably turns her gaze to the display of hot drinks available.
Seeing both ‘Expresso’ and ‘Cupoccino’ on offer, she decides to order tea.
When she opens the door to the computer shop half an hour later, a couple of bleary-eyed people around her own age glance up at her with a lack of curiosity.
A chubby red-haired girl with freckles and a smiley face pops up from behind the counter, like someone from an old sitcom. Her nose is pierced and her hair is shaved on one side.
‘Oh!’ she says with an infectious laugh. ‘That must have looked funny, me bobbing up like that!’
Neve feels a loosening in her chest and smiles back at the girl. She is acutely aware that she used to be a fun person too, who laughed easily and looked for the humour in situations. Now though, she spends her life either thinking someone is about to murder her, or crying about her mess of a life.
She suppresses an urge to say, ‘I’m not normally like this,’ but for a brief moment envy for this girl burns like indigestion.