Kiss Me First
Page 26
Another pause. Again, I looked away. On the coffee table was a neat stack of large glossy books and magazines and a small pile of leaflets and junk mail, presumably en route to the bin. They reminded me of my hallway, and finding her letter.
‘How did you find out my name and address?’ I asked.
Marion sighed, as if it was a boring question. ‘A friend of my husband’s has connections with the force, and he made some enquiries.’
‘Oh – you must mean Uncle Frank!’ I said, pleasure at making the connection temporarily overriding my discomfort at being investigated. ‘Frank, who wasn’t really Tess’s uncle, and was a chief inspector until he was forced to take early retirement because he got accused of taking that money …’
‘Yes,’ said Marion, icily.
Just then, there was a noise from somewhere in the house, a sort of low bellow, which I thought must have come from Jonathan.
‘Excuse me for a moment,’ said Marion, as if we had been having a polite tea party, and slipped out of the room. I heard her out in the hall, calling, ‘Helen!’ I looked at the pictures on the walls, recognizing one of Tess’s paintings, concentric green circles slashed with red stripes. There were photos of Marion when she was younger, looking glamorous in an exotic location I guessed was Chile, and some of Tess and Nicholas as children. Most of these I had already seen, but there was one of Tess that was new to me: a school portrait of her as a teenager, with black-rimmed eyes and her hair scooped high off her face. Her smile was similar to the one she had in that first photo I ever saw of her, the one at the party, where she was exchanging a knowing look with the photographer.
Marion returned, and reseated herself in the gilt chair. She crossed her legs at the ankle.
‘Is Helen your new carer?’ I asked. ‘What happened to Kirsty?’
Marion’s eyes slitted.
‘It’s none of your business what happened to Kirsty. Nothing that happens in this house is any of your business.’ Her voice rose, and I noticed that her hands were clenched, but her nails were too long to allow them to fully close into fists. ‘How dare you! How dare you! Tess was my daughter. You may think you know her, but you don’t. You don’t know her at all. I’m her mother. I know her.’
It was on the tip of my tongue to correct her tense – knew her – but I held it in.
‘You know, you haven’t expressed any regret for what you’ve done,’ she continued. ‘For me. For all of us. For her life gone. Have you no heart?’
I swallowed and started to speak.
‘I believe in self-ownership over our bodies, and that it’s our right to …’
‘Shut up!’ screamed Marion, her face flushed. ‘Shut up, shut up, shut up!’
There was a moment’s silence. More than a moment, actually. I think the outburst shocked her as much as me. Marion wiped each eye with her finger, a bright red nail passing under her lashes, and when she spoke, her voice was again steady.
‘Why did she go to Spain?’
I frowned, confused. ‘When?’
‘On – that day. Last summer. The police say she took a ferry to Spain, to Bilbao. Then they can find no further trace of her. Where was she going?’
I tried to digest this new information.
‘I didn’t know she did that,’ I said, finally.
‘Oh, really?’ Her tone implied disbelief.
‘I promise,’ I said, feeling tears threaten me again. ‘We didn’t talk about it. It was the one thing we didn’t talk about.’
‘Where’s her body?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘How did she do it? What happened?’
‘I don’t know!’ I said. ‘Really, I don’t.’
‘I need to know,’ she said, but quietly, as if more to herself than to me. We sat there, not speaking, for a long moment, but it was different to the previous silences – not so much awkward, just weighty.
Then, Marion said, firmly, ‘Can you leave now?’
I carefully lifted myself off the sofa. Her hands were clasped in her lap and her head turned away from me, looking at the wall.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I meant that I was sorry that she was upset, rather than sorry for what I did, and I considered making that distinction clear, but then thought better of it. I walked back down the polished hall, speeding up as I felt my chest heave, and just managed to make it outside and over to the flowerbed before throwing up, just behind Marion’s sculpture.
‘Oh dear,’ said the cab driver, as I got in the back seat. ‘Sure you’re finished?’
I nodded, and he handed me a tissue.
The idea to find out what had happened to Tess came to me on the train journey home. I sat in a window seat, as the train made its slow way through the dreary countryside, and thought about Marion’s face: those twitching eyebrows, that ‘I need to know’. And I decided then that I would use my knowledge of Tess to calculate her most likely course of action after checkout, and try and find the answer to Marion’s questions.
The revelation that Tess went to Spain had thrown me, but I think that any discovery about her movements post-check-out would have done. After all, I had presumed she had committed suicide very soon afterwards, if not on the actual day itself. But I had another reaction on hearing the news which was, I’m ashamed to say, not in the least bit rational: a pulse of annoyance at Tess sneaking off behind my back. After checkout, I was supposed to be in control. I thought her life was in my hands.
I no longer had Tess’s emails to work from, because her accounts had been suspended when everything came to light. Still, I had my memory, and Google. I also had, I realized, another clue, which could narrow down the possible search area: the email Tess had received, ten days after checkout, from her friend Jennifer, who said she had spotted her at the Alhambra in Granada. At the time I had put this down to mistaken identity and thought little more of it, but now, combined with the knowledge of her ferry crossing, it became highly significant.
The more I thought about the time discrepancy, the more it seemed plausible that there might have been an interval between checkout and the actual act.
It made sense for Tess to travel to another country to do it, somewhere where she had more scope for disposing of herself in a manner that meant she couldn’t be identified. And once in Spain, she would have been in limbo, free of her old identity: a non-person, responsible to no one. In that situation, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for her to spend some days alone thinking, coming to terms with what she was about to do.
Of course, the fact that she may have been spotted in Granada didn’t mean she had stayed around that area. The city was on the opposite side of Spain from Bilbao, where she had entered the country; if she had already travelled that far, she might well have then gone further. So, tempting as it was to concentrate only on that city and the surrounding area, I had to keep my options open.
Next, I considered what kind of place Tess would head to in Spain. The basic criteria were simple, as they were the same as I used to choose Sointula: somewhere simple and hippy-ish, the opposite to London. In this instance, though, I thought it was likely that Tess would be drawn to a place which had some personal significance for her, or which was guaranteed to have the kind of environment she desired. In conclusion, I thought it was probable that she had spent those lost, post-checkout days at a location that was familiar to her.
Tess hadn’t, as far as I knew, been to Granada before, but she had had ‘mini-breaks’ in both Barcelona and Madrid; the former with a short-lived boyfriend called Boris, with whom she had argued over lunch on the first day, calling him ‘a pussy’ when he balked at sucking the head of a prawn, and the latter with a group of women for an ‘excruciating’ hen weekend. After Googling those cities, however, I decided it was unlikely she would have headed to either. They were busy and built-up, not obvious destinations for someone who craved peace. Yet Googling quiet + secluded + Spain was clearly not going to get me very far.
With no firm leads, my quest q
uickly ran out of steam, although I continued to devote some time each day to it. Indeed, the breakthrough did not come for several months; ironically, when my mind was not on the task in hand. I was thinking about Connor.
Even after all this time, he still invaded my thoughts, despite the fact that we were no longer in contact. Since our confrontation there had been one final email from him, sent two hours after he walked away from me in Temple. It was there in Tess’s inbox when I switched on my phone after leaving the police station, in what turned out to be the small window between my confession and the suspension of her email and Facebook accounts.
It was brief and to the point.
Here’s the deal. You don’t tell Chrissie, and I won’t tell the police. OK?
I replied, I’ve already told the police, and I’m not going to tell Chrissie.
I paused. I had so many questions. But I decided to ask just one.
Where does ‘kiss me first’ come from? What does it mean?
His reply came thirty seconds later.
I don’t know.
What do you mean? I asked.
I don’t know, he said. Tess said it once, can’t remember the context. It just became a silly thing between us, a private joke.
And that was that. Our last communication. But, as I say, in the weeks since he had never been far from my thoughts. Indeed, it was as if there was a film permanently playing in my head of him going about his daily business, mostly composed of tiny, insignificant details that I had witnessed for myself or could vividly imagine. His hand guiding his mouse as he worked at his computer; his nod of greeting to the man behind the sandwich counter; the way he shrugged on his coat as he left the office. When it came to his life at home with Chrissie and the children, however, the tape went blank.
I re-lived our correspondence, mentally turning over his emails again and again to see if there were any clues that I should have heeded, remembering how I had felt when I received a certain message, or sent what I considered a particularly witty reply. This activity made me feel heavy with sadness, like a sodden towel; then, occasionally, I would experience sharp bursts of anger which had nowhere to go.
That morning I was at my laptop, the usual thoughts circling around my head whilst I ostensibly continued with my quest to uncover Tess’s whereabouts … For some weeks now this had been reduced to Googling various combinations of words related to travel and Spain and Granada, and trawling through the results in the hope that I would stumble across a possible lead or memory trigger. I scrolled past a site advertising easyJet flights to Granada, a site I had seen many times before. That day, however, the name of the airline combined with that moment’s thoughts of Connor to produce just that: a flicker of an association, which I concentrated on until it became a full-blown recollection
In the early days of our correspondence, I – Tess – had sent Connor the standard email describing Sointula, how it was full of ‘alternative’ types and so on. It’s got this really amazing atmosphere, I think it must be on a leyline. I feel so happy here, like I can think and breathe properly for the first time.
And Connor’s reply had been along the lines of: But why Canada? At least before you indulged your hippy tendencies somewhere served by easyJet.
At the time, I thought little of it. Now, I snapped into focus. I started by looking at the list of destinations served by the airline but that didn’t help: Granada was one of dozens in Europe. After another hour of fruitless Googling, I concluded that I had no option but to email Connor and ask him what he knew about this hippy place he referred to.
The prospect of communicating with him again produced a rush of adrenalin, similar in intensity to how I had felt seeing him in the flesh. I couldn’t help thinking back to before, when despite the fact we wrote to each other dozens of times a day, I’d still receive a stab of pleasure when an email arrived from him; there was the feeling that we were members of a tiny club that was impossible for others to get into, that only we knew the rules of. For a moment, I experienced such desire to be innocently back in that time that tears came to my eyes. Then the memories of his betrayal and the lack of feeling he displayed at our meeting in Temple came swarming back. I tried to concentrate on them, so that anger and hurt would harden me up.
Previously, of course, I had communicated with Connor through Tess’s email account, but that was no longer in operation. Meanwhile, my own email address was in my full name and I didn’t want to reveal that. So, the first thing I did was set up a new, anonymous account. I spent a while thinking of a suitable name: it had to be attention-grabbing, as there was the risk he’d write off an unknown recipient as spam. I considered kissmefirst@gmail.com, but thought he might not open it if he knew it was from me, so decided to use the name of a female singer he had told me he liked when he was a teenager: Carol Decker.
The subject line was Hello again and my tone was businesslike, devoid of any reference to what had passed between us.
No, this is not really Carol Decker. This is Leila, Tess’s friend. We met a while ago near your office. Now, I need your help. I am conducting some research into the possible whereabouts of Tess for the benefit of her mother, Marion, and I would like you to elaborate on a reference you made in an email to Tess during the summer. The email referred to a ‘hippy’ place she had once visited that was reachable by easyJet. What was this place?
His reply came forty minutes later.
I have no intention of entering into a protracted exchange with you, so I won’t comment on the immense irony of your noble mission to help Tess’s mother find her daughter. But for what it’s worth: years ago, when we were together, Tess mentioned that she had spent the previous summer at some hippy commune in the Alpujarras. Skinny dipping in the river, getting stoned around the camp fire, communing with Gaia and earnest Frenchmen, that sort of thing. I don’t know the name.
OK?
Do not contact me again.
So exciting was this information, I didn’t feel too hurt by Connor’s hostile tone. The Alpujarras were, I knew from my research, near Granada, and a Google search revealed only one long-established commune in the region. Half an hour later, I had booked my plane ticket.
Then, it had all added up. I felt so sure that she had gone there; that the commune would hold the clue to her death. But it’s come to nothing. Yes, a couple of people there thought they might have seen Tess last summer, but they weren’t positive. That’s not good enough. And even if I had ascertained for certain that she had been there, there was still the mystery of where she went when she left; where she died. I am no closer to finding her body.
I now feel embarrassed for having embarked on this mission; for not anticipating the obstacles. All I can be pleased about is that I didn’t tell Marion that I was coming out here, so she will not have had her hopes raised and then dashed.
We’re in the air now, finally. I had to put away my laptop while we ascended, and when I looked out of the window, for a moment all I could see below was white, as if the clouds had dropped out of the sky. Then I realized it was the greenhouses, a patchwork of white plastic obscuring the land from the mountains to the sea.
Saturday 29th October, 2011
I’m writing this from my desk on Albion Street. It’s 2.10 a.m. on Saturday morning and I’ve just heard Jonty come in. He’s been out at a Halloween party, dressed as a news reader with a cardboard box over his head painted to look like a TV and a square cut out to show his face. He claimed that he was only going to talk in bulletins all evening, but I can’t imagine that lasted too long, knowing him.
When I came back from Spain I was convinced that he would have gone. It wasn’t a rational fear; after all, he hadn’t left when he found out about what I’d been up to, so there was no reason why he should have done so now. But still, I pictured myself opening the front door and my suitcase wheels bumping over his keys on the mat. His room would be empty, reduced back to just a single bed, the walls pockmarked from where he had taken down his pictures,
the two holes in the plaster where he’d tried to put up that shelf, nothing else left of him. My suspicions appeared confirmed when I found the front door double-locked, but then as I entered the hall I saw his duffel coat hanging on the banister, and relief flooded through me like a tap had been turned on.
After twenty minutes, he returned. I was at my desk, re-attaching my laptop to the mains, when I heard his key in the latch and then, seconds later, the door to my room flung open.
‘Oh bollocks,’ he said. ‘I wanted to be here for when you got back.’
He gave me an awkward hug – I found it awkward, I mean – and then proceeded to bombard me with questions about my trip. To my surprise, I realized that I did actually want to talk about it, so we went and sat outside. Jonty liked using the flat’s ‘unofficial’ roof terrace; he had found two chairs in a skip and arranged them on the lumpy tarmac. At first I was reluctant to go out there, but when I did, it was nicer than I expected. The view extends beyond the rubbish tip below; you can see the neighbour’s back garden, almost entirely taken up with a vast trampoline, and balconies of the flats opposite, some of which had been cheered up with flower pots. Anyway, we sat out there and I told him about the trip – everything except for the bit about Synth and mum and the police.
Two months have passed since then. Now, I’m sitting here, gazing at the screen, trying to concentrate. Jonty’s blundering around – I’ve just heard the toilet flush – and attempting not to disturb me but I suspect he’s drunk. I’ve made an important discovery tonight but my thoughts keep straying to things that are totally irrelevant. What was the party like? Why do people get drunk when it makes them act like idiots and then feel terrible the next day? What would it be like to go to a party with Jonty?
I have the urge to go out and ask him about his evening, and tell him what I’ve discovered tonight. He’s bound to be interested, as he’s followed the story so far. But the flat is silent now. He’s probably fallen asleep on his bed fully clothed. I hope he’s remembered to take the box off his head.