Is that pity in her eyes?
‘You don’t think I’ll ever find out, do you? You think I should give up.’
‘I know you’re not going to.’ She smiles at me. ‘I wouldn’t either, if I were you.’
‘Before all this happened, I was like Kit,’ I tell her. ‘I wasn’t real either. Now I have a characteristic: I’m the woman who won’t give up.’
‘You weren’t real?’
I’m not sure it’s something I can explain, but I have to try, however crazy it sounds. ‘In 2003, when Kit and I were looking at houses in Cambridge, I felt . . . non-existent.’
Alice waits for me to elaborate.
‘Most people have a type of house they prefer: townhouse in the centre of a city, stone cottage in the middle of nowhere. Some people always buy new-builds, some would only ever consider a house that’s more than a hundred years old. The house you choose says something about the sort of person you are. When Kit took me to see a cottage in a village called Lode, just outside Cambridge, I thought, “Yes, I could be a rural cottage sort of person.” Then he took me to a penthouse flat on a main road in the city centre, and I thought, “This could be me – maybe I’m a townie at heart.” I didn’t know myself at all, or what I wanted. After three or four viewings, I started to panic that I didn’t have an identity. I was transparent – I saw through myself and there was nothing there. I thought, “I could live in any of these places. I can’t say about any of them that they’re ‘me’ or ‘not me’. Maybe I don’t have a personality.” ’
Alice leans back in her chair. It creaks. ‘You were open-minded. Kit took you to see lots of beautiful houses, and you liked them all in different ways. Perfectly understandable, and nothing to worry about. Perhaps each house spoke to a different aspect of your character.’
‘No.’ I wave away her reassuring words. ‘Yes, it was silly of me to panic about not knowing what sort of house I wanted, of course it was, but I did panic – that’s what’s worrying. Each time I saw a house and wasn’t instantly sure if it was “me”, I felt more and more unreal. As if any self that I might once have had was draining away, drop by drop.’ I chew on my thumbnail, afraid that I’m admitting too much and will somehow be made to suffer for it. ‘And then we found this amazing house, 17 Pardoner Lane – the best of the bunch by far, I can see that now – and I was in such a state, I had no idea whether I loved it or hated it. Kit adored it. I pretended to – don’t know how convincing I was. I felt like I was falling apart. All I wanted was to be able to say, “Yes, this house is absolutely me” and . . . know what that meant.’
Alice bends down, reaches into the open brown suitcase under her desk. It’s where she keeps her remedies; the inside of the case is divided into tiny square compartments, each one containing a small brown glass bottle. ‘You were anxious and depressed, overwhelmed by your family’s unreasonable expectations,’ she says, picking up one bottle, then another, reading the labels. ‘That sense of your self diminishing came from trying to stifle your own needs for your parents’ sake, because they found them inconvenient. It had nothing to do with being flexible about what sort of house you wanted to buy, I promise you.’ She has found the remedy she was looking for. For extra, extra mad people.
I want to say more about the house I should have fallen in love with, but was too neurotic to see clearly. I need to confess to all of it: how I set out to ruin things, chipped away at Kit’s conviction with my paranoia. ‘17 Pardoner Lane was next to a school building – the Beth Dutton Centre,’ I tell Alice. ‘I lost sleep – whole nights – over the bell. How ridiculous is that?’
‘The bell?’
‘The school bell. What if it rang between lessons and was too loud? The noise might drive us mad, and we’d never be able to sell up and move on because we’d have to be honest with prospective buyers – we couldn’t lie about a thing like that. Kit said, “If the bell’s too loud, we’ll ask them to turn the volume down.” He laughed at me for worrying about something so stupid. He laughed again when I got cold feet a few days later for an equally ridiculous reason: the house had no name.’
‘I’m giving you a different remedy this time,’ says Alice. ‘Anhalonium. Because of what you said about feeling as if you were transparent and having no personality.’
‘I’d never lived anywhere that didn’t have a name,’ I say, not listening to her. ‘Still haven’t. First I lived at Thorrold House with Mum and Dad, then I moved in with Kit. His flat in Rawndesley was number 10, but the building had a name: Martland Tower. Anyway, that was different. Neither of us thought of the flat as home – it was temporary, a stop-gap. Now I live in Melrose Cottage, Fran and Anton’s house is Thatchers . . . In Little Holling, all the houses have names. It’s what I’m used to. When Kit was so keen on 17 Pardoner Lane, and I tried to imagine myself living in a house that was just a number, it seemed . . . wrong, somehow. Too impersonal. It scared me.’
Alice is nodding. ‘Change is incredibly scary,’ she says. She always sticks up for me. I’m not sure it’s what I need, not any more. It might do me more good to hear her say, ‘Yes, Connie. That’s really mad. You need to stop thinking in this crazy way.’
‘One night I woke Kit up at four in the morning,’ I tell her. ‘He was asleep, and I kept shaking him. I think I must have been hysterical. I hadn’t slept all night, and I’d worked myself into a state. Kit stared at me as if I was a maniac – I can still remember how shocked he looked. I told him we couldn’t buy 17 Pardoner Lane unless we gave it a name – I couldn’t live in a house with no name. I wanted us to look on the web, find out if it was possible to give a house a name if it didn’t have one already. You know, officially.’
Alice smiles, as if there is something understandable or endearing about my insanity.
‘Kit saw I wasn’t going to calm down or let him get any sleep until he’d come up with a solution to the problem I’d invented, so he said, “Come on, then – let’s go and investigate.” He soon found enough on the internet to convince me there was no need to worry: we could give number 17 a name if we wanted to. It’s easy – all you have to do is write to the Post Office. He said, “How about The Nuthouse?” ’
‘You must have been hurt,’ says Alice.
‘Not at all. I started laughing – thought it was the best joke I’d ever heard. I was so relieved that everything was going to be okay – Kit would get the house he loved, and I’d be able to make it feel like home by naming it. Course, on one level I must have known I’d now have to come up with some other obstacle . . .’ I shake my head in disgust. ‘I wonder what it would have been: that I didn’t like the doorknob, or the letterbox. My hysteria would have attached itself to some other random thing, given half a chance, but I didn’t see that then. Kit was relieved too. We were almost . . . I don’t know, it was like we were celebrating. We didn’t go straight back to bed – we stayed up looking at house name websites on the internet, laughing at the ridiculous suggestions: Costa Fortuna, Wits End. Apparently names like that are really popular – that’s what the website said. I found it hard to believe, but Kit said he could imagine some of his colleagues calling their houses things like that. “It’s a common affliction, thinking you’re funny when you’re not,” he said. “Wits End. Might as well call your house, ‘I’m a Dullard’.” I asked him what he wanted to call ours.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Oh, loads of stupid things – things he knew were stupid, to wind me up. I don’t think he tried too hard – he knew it wasn’t up to him. The name needed to be perfect, and it had to come from me – something that would say “this is home” and make all my anxiety go away. Kit started talking rubbish. “I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Let’s call it the Death Button Centre. Do you think the people at the Beth Dutton Centre’d be pissed off? Or the postman?” I told him not to be ridiculous. Should’ve known that’d only make him worse.’ The memory, absent from my mind for so many years, is suddenly more vivid than reality. I can see myself cle
arly, sitting at the desk in the Martland Tower flat, Kit kneeling down beside me, both of us in our pyjamas. We only had one computer chair in those days. I was howling with laughter, so loud I could hardly hear Kit’s voice, tears pouring down my face. ‘He pretended he was deadly serious, said, “It’s growing on me the more I think about it: the Death Button Centre. We could get a plaque made for the front door. No, I know, even better – let’s call it 17 Pardoner Lane . . .” ’ The words evaporate in my mouth as new fear surges through my body. What? What is it?
The Death Button Centre. The Death Button Centre . . .
I stand up, stumble, steady myself against the wall.
‘Connie? What’s wrong?’
I know what I saw – the missing detail that I haven’t been able to bring to mind until now. Yes. It was there. It was definitely there, in the picture with the dead woman and the blood. But not in the photograph of the lounge, the one without the woman, the one I would see if I looked at the tour of 11 Bentley Grove now. In that picture, it’s missing. ‘I’ve got to go,’ I tell Alice. I grab my bag and run, ignoring her pleas for me to stay, leaving behind the bottle of remedy she has prepared for me that’s standing on the corner of her desk.
*
POLICE EXHIBIT REF: CB13345/432/25IG
VOLCANO
by Tilly Gilpatrick, 20 April 2010
Very hot lava
Over all the land
Like a big hot wet blanket
Covering the world in
Ash
Nobody can fly home from their holiday
Orange hot lava!
Super work, Tilly! Some lovely images!
No, it's an appalling poem, even for a five-year-old.This is a good poem:
When first my way to fair I took
Few pence in purse had I,
And long I used to stand and look
At things I could not buy.
Now times are altered: if I care
To buy a thing, I can;
The pence are here and here's the fair,
But where's the lost young man?
– To think that two and two are four
And neither five nor three,
The heart of man has long been sore
And long 'tis like to be.
Chapter 16
23/7/2010
Ian Grint was early. Simon had guessed he might be; he’d sensed the detective’s anger within seconds of meeting him, the impatience of a man who needs to prove people wrong, and quickly. Grint headed for the bar, making a pint-lifting gesture at Simon, who nodded. Actually, he hadn’t needed as much time as both he and Grint had thought he would. He’d finished reading everything half an hour ago, and had gone for a stroll. The pub Grint had chosen, the Live and Let Live, was in a residential area, so Simon hadn’t seen any of the historical college buildings that Charlie had told him he had to see because they were so beautiful, only houses and another small pub: the Six Bells.
Walking around, Simon had drawn the conclusion that Cambridge was a more imaginative place than Spilling. More tolerant too. The front door colours had surprised him: yellow, orange, lilac, pink, bright turquoise. Evidently the inhabitants of Cambridge believed that all shades were eligible for consideration; in Spilling most people opted for something sombre and dignified: black, dark red, dark green. Simon doubted there was a single orange door in the whole of the Culver Valley.
The names of the pubs in Spilling were stodgily traditional: the Brown Cow, the Star, the Wheatsheaf, the Crown. Never in a million years would a Culver Valley landlord choose to call his establishment the Live and Let Live. Live and Carp About Anyone Who Doesn’t Live the Way You Live, perhaps – the Live and Carp for short. The Liv and Chris Gibbs, Simon thought surreally – that was one pub Charlie wouldn’t be setting foot in.
He moved the papers off the table, put them down on the chair next to him as Grint approached with their pints. ‘I hope none of my esteemed colleagues has been in here and spied those over your shoulder,’ he said. ‘Much as I’d love to get sacked at the moment, I probably ought to try not to. Don’t think my wife would appreciate it.’ The word ‘esteemed’ was loaded with sarcasm.
‘I’m going to disappoint you,’ Simon told him. ‘I haven’t found much. Nothing you could put in front of your DI and say, “This is a new angle, a way of taking things forward.” ’
‘You’ve found something, though?’
‘Something and nothing. The statements Kit and Connie Bowskill signed – did you take them separately or were they—’
‘Separately.’ Grint took a swig of his beer, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘The official statements, they were both alone with me. Later I put them in a room together and took them over it all again, brought Sam Kombo in as well. I wanted to see how they changed in each other’s company, if at all.’
‘Did they?’
‘Not in any way you couldn’t predict. He looked more uncomfortable when she was there, but so would I have done, in his shoes – she was spitting accusations at him left, right and centre. She was a bit more high-octane in front of him than on her own, but only marginally.’
Simon sorted through the pile of papers, looking for Connie and Kit Bowskill’s official police statements. ‘When you interviewed them separately, did you spot anything odd?’
Grint laughed. ‘You mean, apart from everything about them?’
‘Factual contradictions.’
‘Where do you want me to start? He’s convinced she must have programmed the address into his SatNav, she says he did it. He reckons she might be a psycho killer, she thinks he’s the psycho. They’re each ready to suspect the other one of murder on the basis of a picture and not much else – a picture he didn’t even see.’ Grint shakes his head. ‘Bizarre doesn’t begin to cover it.’
‘There’s a smaller point of disagreement between them that might be significant.’ Simon passed the two statements to Grint. ‘The house they nearly bought in Cambridge in 2003. In Connie Bowskill’s statement, she gave the address as 17 Pardoner Lane. In Kit’s, it’s 18 Pardoner Lane.’
Grint frowned. Stared as Simon pointed out the relevant paragraphs. ‘Can’t believe I missed it,’ he said eventually. ‘Still, at a distance of seven years, it’s an easy mistake for one of them to have made. I doubt it means anything.’
Simon disagreed. ‘They both mention that the house was next to a school called the Beth Dutton Centre. Both go into detail about why this particular house appealed to them: original Victorian fireplaces, original iron railings outside . . .’ Simon shrugged. ‘Whichever one got it wrong, I can’t see why they’d remember all that and not the number of the house.’
‘I forget trivial stuff all the time,’ said Grint. ‘Don’t you?’
Simon never forgot anything. He dodged the question. ‘Connie Bowskill’s phone’s going straight to voicemail – I must have tried her fifty times since I got back from Spain. I never spoke to the husband, so I didn’t have his number. Your files did, though, so I made use of it.’ He waited for Grint to remonstrate with him. When it didn’t happen, he volunteered more information. ‘He’s agreed to meet me this evening at eight.’
‘Where?’ Grint asked.
Not your business. Simon told himself to stop being a tosser. Grint had a right to know.
‘In a pub – the Maypole. I was going to ask you for directions.’
Grint made a dismissive noise. ‘The Maypole,’ he muttered, as if even the name offended him. ‘I won’t be coming with you, in that case.’
I didn’t ask you to. Simon was better at talking to one person alone than he was in a group, even a small one.
‘You can ring me later, tell me if you get anything worthwhile out of him,’ said Grint. ‘If not, I’m going to have to stop pretending I’m a superhero. I’ll make the guv happy by following orders and pretending nothing ever happened – not much else I can do, is there?’
He was disappointed, Simon realised. Sam had talked up Si
mon’s talents, and Grint had expected him to come up with a plan of action, to see something in the files he’d given him that wasn’t there to be seen. Simon was the one who had turned out not to be a superhero.
‘According to Kit Bowskill, Connie’s phone’s broken,’ he said. ‘She threw it into a main road.’
‘Yeah, I can see her doing that.’ Grint looked at his watch. ‘You’ve got just over an hour to kill. Fancy grabbing a curry? You can tell me your unlikely theories and I’ll tell you mine. I’ve always found it’s the shit ideas that lead to the good ones.’
Simon felt uncomfortable eating with people he didn’t know well. He and Grint weren’t friends. Why did they need to have a meal together? What was the point? ‘I wasn’t thinking about food,’ he said. He was thinking about Pardoner Lane, that it couldn’t be too far from where he was now. He had time to find it, see whether the Beth Dutton Centre was next to number 17 or number 18. A small discrepancy, true, but there was no reason to think it wasn’t important all the same.
No reason to mention his plans or his thoughts to Ian Grint, either.
‘Do you remember that night in the Brown Cow a couple of years ago, when you nearly got into a fight?’ Olivia asked Gibbs. They were in bed together at the Malmaison hotel in London. They’d tried a few hotels this week, but this one was Olivia’s favourite. The walls and floors were dark – reds, browns, purples, black in places; it was like walking into the inside of a human heart. Liv had told Gibbs her theory several times: the hotel must have been decorated with secret passion in mind.
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