Killing Me Softly

by Nicci French

  The doors opened. I felt it was more than I deserved. I sat at one end of the carriage, far from anybody else, and started to cry. Then I looked at my arm. The rubber of the door had left a neat black impression, like a memorial armband. It made me laugh. I couldn’t help it.

  Twenty-nine

  I was alone. I realized at last how alone I was now, and with that realization came fear.

  Of course, Adam hadn’t been there when I returned from the Blanchards although I supposed he might return soon. I hurriedly pulled on an old T-shirt and crept into bed like a guilty thing. I lay in the dark. I hadn’t eaten anything all day and every so often my tummy rumbled, but I didn’t want to get up and go into the kitchen. I didn’t want Adam to come home and find me exploring the fridge or eating at the kitchen table or any ordinary domestic situation. What could I say to him? All I had were questions, but they were questions that I couldn’t ask him. With each fresh deception I had pinned myself into a corner and I couldn’t see how I could escape from it. But he had deceived me too. I shuddered when I remembered hiding in that phone-box while he walked by me. What a ghastly farce it all was. Our whole marriage was built on desire and deception.

  When he came in, whistling softly, I lay quite still and pretended to be asleep. I heard him open the fridge door, take something out, close it again. I heard a beer can being opened, then drunk. Now he was taking off his clothes, dropping them on the floor at the foot of the bed. The duvet was pulled back as he slid in beside me, and I felt cold air. His warm hands slid round me from behind. I sighed as if in deepest sleep and moved away from him slightly. He moved after me and wrapped his body along the contours of mine. I kept my breathing deep and steady. It wasn’t long before Adam was asleep, his breath hot against my neck. Then I tried to think.

  What did I know? I knew that Adam had had a secret affair with a woman to whom, it was now clear, something had happened. I knew that that woman had a sister who had collected newspaper cuttings about Adam and had been fished out of a canal a few weeks ago. I knew, of course, that another of his lovers, Françoise with the long black hair, had died up on the mountains, and that Adam had been unable to rescue her. I thought about these three women while he slept beside me. Five in the bed.

  Adam was a person who, all his life, had been surrounded by violence and loss. But then, after all, he lived in a world where men and women knew that they might die before their time and where risk was part of the point. I wriggled carefully out of his grasp and turned in the bed to watch him. In the light that shone from the street lamps outside I could just make out his face, serene in sleep, full lips puffing gently with each breath. I felt a sharp pang of pity for him. No wonder he was sometimes gloomy and strange and his love came out as violence.

  I woke again as it was getting light and slipped out of our bed. The boards creaked but Adam didn’t wake. One arm was flung out above his head. He looked so trusting, lying there naked and dreaming, but I found that I couldn’t lie there beside him any longer. I pulled out the first clothes that came to hand – black trousers, boots, a high-necked orange sweater that was wearing through at the elbows – and dressed in the bathroom. I didn’t bother to clean my teeth or wash. I could do all that later. I just had to get out of here, be alone with my thoughts, not be there when he awoke and wanted to pull me down to him. I let myself out of the flat, wincing at the bang of the door as I pulled it shut.

  I didn’t know where I was going. I walked briskly, jacketiess and cold, and breathed the air deep into my lungs. I felt calmer now that it was daytime: I was going to be all right, somehow. At a café near Shepherd’s Bush I stopped for a coffee, bitter and black. The smell of grease and bacon made me feel faintly queasy. It was nearly seven o’clock and already the roads were clogged with traffic. I set off again, remembering Adam’s instructions to me when we were in the Lake District. Get into a rhythm, one step at a time, breathe properly, don’t look too far ahead. I wasn’t thinking at all, just walking. Newsagents were open and so were some food shops. After a bit, I realized where my feet were taking me but I didn’t stop, although I went more and more slowly. Well, maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea after all. I needed to talk to somebody and there were precious few people left.

  I got there at ten past eight, knocked firmly on the door and felt suddenly and horribly nervous. But it was too late to run away. There was the sound of footsteps, then there he was and there was I.

  ‘Alice.’

  He didn’t sound shocked to see me but he didn’t sound too happy either. Nor did he ask me in.

  ‘Hello, Jake.’

  We stared at each other. The last time we had met, I’d accused him of putting spiders in my milk bottle. He was still in his dressing-gown, but it was a dressing-gown I didn’t recognize, a post-Alice one.

  ‘Just passing?’ he said, with a glimmer of his old irony.

  ‘Can I come in? Only for a minute.’

  He pulled the door wider and stepped back.

  ‘It’s all changed here,’ I said, looking around me.

  ‘What did you expect?’

  There was a new sofa and curtains, and large new cushions on the floor near the fireplace. A couple of pictures I’d not seen before hung on the walls (green now, not off-white). There were none of the old photographs of him and me.

  I hadn’t thought about it properly, or at all. But I now knew that I had somehow assumed that I would step into my old, rejected home and find it waiting for me, although I had made it cruelly clear that I would never return. If I was honest with myself, I had probably also assumed that Jake would be waiting for me, whatever I’d done to him. That he would wrap an arm round me and sit me down and make me tea and toast and listen to me pouring out my married woes.

  ‘It’s no good,’ I said at last.

  ‘Would you like a cup of coffee, now that you’re here?’

  ‘No. Yes, all right.’

  I followed him into the kitchen: new kettle, new toaster, new matching mugs hanging on new hooks, lots of fresh plants on the window-sill. Flowers on the table. I sat down on a chair.

  ‘Have you come to collect the last of your things?’ he asked.

  I saw now that it was useless to have come here. I’d had some quaint idea, last night, that even though I had lost everyone else, I somehow wouldn’t have lost Jake. I persevered for a few more ghastly sentences.

  ‘I’m a bit out of my depth,’ I said.

  Jake raised his eyebrows at me and handed me my coffee. It was too hot to drink, so I put it in front of me and twisted it round on the table, spilling some. ‘Everything’s got a bit strange.’

  ‘Strange?’ he said.

  ‘Can I use the lavatory?’

  I stumbled into the tiny room and stared at myself in the mirror. My hair was greasy and my cheeks were pasty and thin, and there were great shadows under my eyes. I hadn’t washed last night or this morning, so mascara and grime smudged my face. My orange jumper was inside out, though I didn’t bother to change it. What was the point?

  I washed my face, at least, and as I was flushing the lavatory I heard a scraping noise in the room above. The bedroom. Someone else was here.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, as I came out, ‘it was a mistake.’

  ‘What’s wrong, Alice?’ he asked, with a hint of real concern. But not as if he still loved me – more as if I were a stray cat who was suffering on his doorstep.

  ‘I’m just being a bit melodramatic.’ A thought struck me. ‘Can I use your phone, though?’

  ‘You know where it is,’ he said.

  I phoned directory inquiries and asked for the police station in Corrick. I wrote the number down on the palm of my hand with a felt-tip that was lying on the floor. I started to dial, then I remembered the phone calls that Adam and I had been receiving. I had to be careful. I replaced the receiver.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said.

  ‘When did you last have something to eat?’ Jake asked.

  ‘I’m not hungry.’r />
  ‘Shall I call you a taxi?’

  ‘I can walk.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘What? I don’t know.’

  Upstairs, someone was having a bath. I stood up. ‘Sorry, Jake. You know, sorry.’

  He smiled. ‘That’s okay now,’ he said.

  Thirty

  I bought a phonecard in a newsagent’s, the most expensive in the shop, and then found a phone-box.

  ‘Police station,’ said a metallic female voice.

  I had prepared an opening sentence. ‘Can I talk to whoever is in charge of the Adele Blanchard file?’ I said, authoritatively.

  ‘What department?’

  ‘God, I don’t know.’ I hesitated. ‘Criminal?’

  There was a pause at the other end of the line. Exasperation? Bemusement? Then I heard a dim sound of talking. Obviously she had her hand over the receiver. Then she was back with me. ‘Let me see if I can connect you to somebody.’

  There was a beeping as she transferred me.

  ‘How may I help you?’ said another voice, male this time.

  ‘I am a friend of Adele Blanchard,’ I said confidently. ‘I’ve been away for several years in Africa, and I just wanted to know what progress has been made on her case.’

  ‘Could you give me your name please?’

  ‘My name is Pauline,’ I said. ‘Pauline Wilkes.’

  ‘I’m afraid we can’t give out information over the phone.’

  ‘Have you heard of her?’

  ‘I’m sorry, madam, do you have anything to report?’ ‘I… no, sorry, goodbye.’

  I put the phone down and dialled directory inquiries. I found the number of the Corrick public library.

  As I arrived in Corrick for the second time, I felt a slight unease. What if I met Mrs Blanchard? Then I dismissed the thought from my mind. What did it matter? I would lie, as usual. I hadn’t been to a public library since I was a child. I think of them as old-fashioned municipal buildings, like town halls, dark, with heavy iron radiators and tramps hiding out from the rain. The Corrick public library was bright and new, and next to a supermarket. There seemed to be as many CDs and videos as books, and I was worried that I would have to fiddle around with a mouse or a microfiche. But when I asked at the front desk about the local paper, I was directed to shelves where eighty years of the Corrick and Whitham Advertiser was stored in huge bound volumes. I hauled out 1990 and dropped it heavily on to a table.

  I checked the four front pages for the month of January. There was a dispute about a bypass, a lorry crash, a factory closure and something to do with the council and waste-disposal but nothing about Adele Blanchard, so I went back to the beginning of the month and skimmed the inside news pages for the whole of January. Still nothing. I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t have much time. I hadn’t been inclined to go by train again and had borrowed the car belonging to my assistant, Claudia. If I left at nine, drove straight there and back, then I could be back in time for a two o’clock meeting with Mike and the pretence of a proper day’s work.

  I hadn’t reckoned on the search through the papers taking such a long time. What was I to do? Perhaps Adele had lived somewhere else, except that her mother had talked of Tara as the first to move away from the area. I read through the first February issue. Still nothing. I looked at my watch. Almost half past eleven. I would read the February papers and then I would leave, even if I found nothing.

  Such as it was, it was in the issue of the last Friday of the month, the twenty-third. It was a small story at the bottom of page four:

  LOCAL WOMAN ‘MISSING’

  Concern is growing over the fate of a young Corrick woman. Adele Funston, 23, has been reported missing. Her husband, Thomas Funston, who had been working abroad, told the Advertiser that Adele had planned to go on a hiking holiday while he was away in an undetermined location: ‘It was when I didn’t hear anything that I started to get anxious.’ He joined with his father-in-law, Christopher Blanchard, also of Corrick, in expressing a hope that Mrs Funston was just on an extended holiday. Detective Superintendent Horner told the Advertiser that he was ‘not unduly worried. If Mrs Funston is safe, I would like to appeal to her to come forward,’ he told us. Mrs Funston was best known locally as a teacher at St Eadmund’s primary school in Whitham.

  Missing. I looked round. Nobody was nearby. As quietly as I could, I tore the item out of the paper. Malicious damage, I thought to myself grimly.

  Thirty-one

  Joanna Noble lit a cigarette. ‘Before we start, do you mind if I say something that might sound harsh?’

  ‘Before we start? You make it sound as if you’re a doctor or lawyer.’

  ‘Well, what am I? That’s part of my point. Hang on, wait a second.’ She filled our glasses from the bottle of white wine I’d bought at the bar.

  ‘Cheers,’ I said ironically.

  She took a gulp of wine, and jabbed in my direction with her cigarette. ‘Look, Alice, I’ve interviewed loads of people and sometimes I hated them and a few times I’ve thought we might become friends but we never did, for whatever reason. Now it looks as if I’m becoming friendly with the wife of somebody I interviewed, except…’

  ‘Except what?’

  She took a drag of her cigarette. ‘I don’t know what you’re up to. If you want to meet me, is it because I’m such a nice supportive reassuring person and you can’t think of anybody better to pour out your troubles to? Or is it that you think I have some kind of professional expertise that you can draw on? What are we doing here? I suppose I’m wondering whether the sort of thing I expect you’re going to say to me wouldn’t be better being said to a friend or a relative or –’

  ‘Or a psychiatrist?’ I interrupted angrily, and then stopped myself. It wasn’t fair to blame her for being suspicious. I was suspicious of myself. ‘You’re not a friend, I know, but this is something I couldn’t talk to a friend about, or a relative. And you are right to distrust me. I’m turning to you because you know things other people don’t know.’

  ‘Is that our bond?’ Joanna asked, almost with a sneer, but then smiled more sympathetically. ‘Never mind. I’m also pleased, in a way, that you wanted to talk to me. So what is it?’

  I took a deep breath, then told her in a low voice of what I had done over the previous days and weeks: of the details I had exchanged with Adam about our sexual history, about the letters from the unknown Adele I had found, about the death of her sister, of going to see their mother. At this Joanna raised her eyebrows but said nothing. It felt utterly strange to me to put all this into words and I found myself listening to myself as I talked, as if I were hearing a story told by a woman I didn’t know. It made me realize the hermetic existence I had been leading, going over and over this in my head with nobody to confide in. I tried to tell it like a story, chronologically and clearly. When I had finished, I showed Joanna the cutting about Adele’s disappearance. She read it with a frown of concentration, then handed it back to me.

  ‘Well?’ I said. ‘Am I mad?’

  She lit another cigarette. ‘Look,’ she said in an uncomfortable tone, ‘if it’s all gone wrong, why don’t you just leave the guy?’

  ‘Adele left Adam. I’ve got the letter in which she broke with him. It’s dated the fourteenth of January 1990.’

  Joanna looked genuinely startled and made a visible effort to gather her thoughts and speak.

  ‘Let me just spell this out,’ she said finally, ‘so that we can acknowledge what is being talked about. You are saying that when this Adele broke up with Adam – your husband – he killed her and managed to dispose of the body so brilliantly that it was never found.’

  ‘Somebody disposed of her body.’

  ‘Or she killed herself. Or she just left home and never called.’

  ‘People don’t just disappear like that.’

  ‘Oh, don’t they? Do you know how many people are currently listed as missing in Britain?’

  ‘Of course I don’t.’ />
  ‘It’s as many people as live in Bristol or Stockport or some medium-sized town or other. There’s a whole secret ghostly town in Britain, which consists of the disappeared and lost. People do just leave.’

  ‘Her last letter to Adam wasn’t desperate. It was all about staying with her husband, about committing herself to her life.’

  Joanna filled our glasses again. ‘Do you happen to have any evidence of any kind about Adam? How do you know he wasn’t on a climbing expedition?’

  ‘It was the winter. Anyway, her letter was sent to him at a London address.’

  ‘For God’s sake, it’s not just a matter of having no evidence at all. Do you really think he’s capable of coolly killing a woman and just carrying on with his life?’

  I thought for a moment. ‘I don’t think that there’s anything Adam couldn’t do if he wanted to do it.’

  Joanna smiled. ‘I can’t make you out. For the first time today, you really sounded like you loved him.’

  ‘Of course. That’s not the point. But what do you think, Joanna? About what I’ve told you.’

  ‘What do you mean, what do I think? What are you asking for? I feel responsible for this in a way. It was me who told you about the rape case and sent you off into this lunacy. I feel that I’ve put you under this pressure so that you want to prove something, anything, just so that you can really know. Look…’ She gestured helplessly. ‘People don’t do things like that.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ I said. I was feeling unexpectedly calm. ‘You of all people know that. But what should I do?’