Last Seen Alive

by Claire Douglas

  I’m just about to ask Jamie if we can go back and grab a coffee when I hear him cry out and he stumbles into my side, knocking me forwards. It happens so quickly, I lose my footing on the uneven ground and trip. I’m so intent on trying to protect my broken arm that I find myself careering down the hill towards the cliff’s edge. Blood pounds in my ears as I imagine plummeting onto the rocks below but I can’t stop myself; it’s like I’m on a treadmill and I can’t get off. I hear somebody scream and I’m not sure if it’s me. Then the next thing I know I’m being pulled backwards by the scarf around my neck and I feel familiar hands grabbing my waist.

  ‘It’s OK, Libs, I’ve got you,’ says Jamie, his voice breathless with fear. ‘I’ve got you.’

  We’re on the lip of ground before the land falls away; if I’d gone any further it would have been too late. My legs are weak and my throat hurts where Jamie has pulled the scarf. I let him lead me back up the hill so that we are safely on the pavement, then we sink to the ground together, like we are conjoined. I’m trembling all over. Horrified tourists gather around us, asking if I’m OK. An older man returns from the nearby café and thrusts a cup of tea wordlessly into my hands. I take it gratefully, my teeth chattering as I stammer out a thank you. His kindness, along with the shock, makes my eyes fill up.

  ‘My God, Libs, you nearly went over the edge,’ Jamie says, a tremor in his voice. ‘I’m so sorry. I felt a shove in my back, pushing me into you.’ He looks distraught.

  ‘Don’t worry, I don’t think you were trying to kill me.’ I try to smile as I sip my tea, warming my hands against the cup.

  ‘Not funny,’ but he gives me a watered-down grin. ‘Shit, that was scary.’

  The tourists begin to disperse now they can see we’re unharmed.

  ‘Did you see who pushed you?’ I say, feeling sick.

  He frowns. ‘Not really. A guy was standing by me. Big fella, broad, tall. But I’m not sure if it was him.’

  ‘Was he wearing a beanie?’

  Jamie frowns. ‘I’m not sure. Why?’

  ‘Before you fell into me I noticed a guy. He had a camera around his neck and he was taking photos.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Of you. He had his camera trained on you, Jay.’

  He shuffles and looks uncomfortable, his eyes sliding away from mine. ‘Why would he be doing that?’ he mumbles.

  I let a beat or two pass before saying, ‘I don’t know.’ I sigh and hand him my cup. He stands up and helps me to my feet.

  ‘Look, Libs, it was an accident. There were too many of us standing together. You’re not telling me you think this bloke did it on purpose, are you?’

  I stare at the ground, my mind racing. ‘I’m not sure. No, I don’t think so. It’s just … this guy was interested in you.’

  Jamie smirks. ‘Maybe he fancied me. Like Ruth, huh?’

  I can’t help but laugh. ‘Don’t be an idiot.’

  He wraps his arms around me. ‘You feel freezing. Come on, let’s go and get something to eat to warm you up. Then we’d better get back to Ziggy.’

  I nod and allow him to guide me towards the café. But I feel uneasy as I scan the crowds and the stragglers who are making their way towards the lighthouse and the car park. It doesn’t matter what Jamie says. I know I’m not being paranoid. There was something strange about that man and the interest he’d taken in my husband.

  6

  It’s dusk by the time we get back to the Hideaway. From the lane I can see that the security lights have come on in the back garden, bleaching the lawn and throwing shadows over the trees and bushes so that they look as though they have been painted black.

  Why are the lights on?

  Jamie steers the car into the driveway, and immediately the front security lights come on. He switches the engine off and turns to me.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asks when he sees I’m not making any effort to get out of the car.

  ‘The lights are on in the back garden. I saw them from the lane …’

  His brows knit together. I wonder if he’s going to criticise me, tell me I’m being skittish. But he doesn’t. ‘Probably a cat or something,’ he says. He opens the car door and Ziggy jumps out, kicking up the gravel as he scampers towards the house.

  I follow, trying to ignore the sinking feeling I have inside. I pull my coat further around my body to stop the wind yanking at the fabric and look around me; at the bushes and trees that encircle the property, at the high walls. Was somebody in the garden? I go to the gate, the only access to the back, running my fingers along the rough wood as though I’m a forensic scientist. There is no lock. Somebody could easily have got in. Or come from the beach? I suddenly feel nauseous and can’t work out if it’s car sickness or worry.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ Jamie’s by my shoulder.

  I shrug. ‘I have no idea. Evidence, I suppose …’

  Jamie snorts with laughter. ‘Evidence. What are you, Miss Marple? There hasn’t been a bloody murder, Libs.’ He sounds so unconcerned I find myself believing that there is nothing to worry about. He takes my hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. ‘Come on, let’s go around the back and then you can see for yourself. Mum’s got security lights in her garden and they’re always coming on; it’s usually because of the neighbours’ cats.’ He’s talking in that fake jovial voice again, as though I’m an elderly person or a child that needs chivvying along. He leads me around to the back of the house, now in total darkness, the lights only coming on as we approach the bifold doors. He pulls the key from his pocket and unlocks them, sliding them open and going into the kitchen. I stay where I am. From here I can see the sea, grey and angry as it drains the last of the light. Everything looks a little drab in the twilight. I scan the garden, the rattan furniture, the patio. Nothing seems out of place. I wish, not for the first time, that the next house wasn’t so far away.

  I can see that Jamie is making us a cup of tea from the tap, the steam visible in the cool air. He looks so at home, so relaxed in the Heywoods’ state-of-the-art kitchen. Ziggy is by Jamie’s side, tapping his leg with his paw, wanting his tea.

  I inhale deeply. Everything is as it should be. The light was set off by a cat, not an intruder. No more, no less. Stop overthinking it, Libby.

  The next morning we are strolling along the beach, Ziggy at our feet, discussing Jamie’s younger sister, Katie, who is having boyfriend troubles yet again. Jamie is the middle child of three, the only son, and his sisters are always giving him grief in one way or another; one minute they are overly protective and the next they are leaning on him when they’re going through rough patches with the various men in their lives.

  Jamie’s father died when he was at university, before he met me. He’d been with Hannah then, his childhood sweetheart. The girl whose heart he’d broken, so his mother is constantly telling me. I sense Sylvia wishes her only son had married Hannah instead of me, which she proves by inviting Hannah – now a single mother with a little boy – over at every available opportunity, as if she is one of the family and not some ex of Jamie’s from ten years ago. The fact that she’s been Katie’s best friend since they were about seven doesn’t help.

  Katie has never taken to me. I can tell by the way she speaks to me, cutting and disinterested; the way her eyes follow me around a room, silent and disapproving. I try not to let it bother me, I know Jamie loves me, that any feelings he might have had for Hannah have stayed firmly in the past. And I feel sorry for her, she’s had a rough time; she married a man who was a player, walking out on her when she was pregnant. She’s quiet, with large, watchful eyes. It’s obvious she still adores Jamie; it’s written all over her face every time she looks at him. Sometimes, when I spot Jamie and Hannah together at gatherings, her four-year-old, Felix, wedged between them so that they look like a family unit, I experience a pang of insecurity and hurt that Sylvia can be so insensitive. It doesn’t help that they all live down the road from us; sometimes the sheer force of their collective personal
ities and histories can be stifling. I can’t help but feel an outsider. I don’t have my own close-knit group. Jamie is all I’ve got.

  But in Cornwall we are away from all that. It’s just me and Jamie. I can breathe again.

  It has rained in the night and the sand is still so damp that our trainers leave prints in our wake. We amble along hand in hand, Ziggy lolloping in front of us. The rear of the Hideaway is visible from the beach, although it’s so high up that you have to navigate about a hundred steps cut into the rock face to reach our garden from here. I glance up towards the house and freeze, dropping Jamie’s hand. My heart quickens. There’s a man standing there. In our garden. Watching us.

  ‘Jamie!’ He’s a little way ahead now, oblivious that I’m no longer by his side.

  He turns towards me and retraces his steps. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘There’s someone in our garden. Up there, look!’ The man has a camera around his neck. He holds it up to his face. I feel a burst of anger. How dare he!

  Jamie looks up and squints. ‘What the …?’ He frowns. ‘Who the fuck is that?’

  The beanie. The camera. I realise with a jolt who it is. ‘It’s the man from yesterday!’

  Jamie sprints towards the steps, his feet kicking up wet sand. ‘Hey!’ he yells, although his voice is snatched by the wind and it’s doubtful the man will be able to hear him from this distance in any case.

  ‘Jamie!’ I call after him. ‘Don’t! Come back!’ I’m unsure what to do. Should I ring someone? I fish my phone out of my pocket. But of course, there is no signal down here on the beach. Who would I call anyway? Who can help us? I lean down to hug Ziggy’s neck. He’s watchful, his ears forward, alert. The man, realising that Jamie is running towards him, suddenly backs away out of view. What if he attacks Jamie when he reaches the top?

  Ziggy suddenly leaps into action, charging after Jamie, making light work of the steps so that he’s beside him within seconds. I feel better knowing that Jamie has the dog with him. Ziggy is placid but he’d attack if Jamie was in trouble. They disappear into the garden.

  I stand, rooted to the spot, mumbling a prayer to a God I’m not sure I believe in; please God, please keep Jamie safe. I’m too scared to move. So much for being a heroine, the irony. I feel exposed, standing on the empty beach by myself, with just the backs of a few houses high up on the hilltop for company. The imprint of Ziggy’s paw marks dotted between Jamie’s footprints is the only sign that I haven’t been alone. Everything is too quiet, just the sound of the waves brushing the shoreline.

  Eventually, after what seems like hours but can only have been five minutes at the most, Jamie reappears. He makes his way down the steps, Ziggy barking behind him, and I dart across the beach to meet them.

  ‘Are you OK? Was it the same man as yesterday?’ I rush into his arms and he kisses the top of my head. ‘I was really worried.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be running with your broken arm,’ he admonishes into my hair. ‘By the time we reached the top he’d gone. I checked the grounds, nothing. He hasn’t tried to break in or anything. I reckon it was a tourist, chancing his luck. The views are spectacular.’ I can feel him grinning against my head.

  I pull away. ‘Why would it have been a tourist? It’s too remote here for tourists, surely? It’s got to be the same guy as yesterday. He was wearing the same hat.’

  ‘Lots of people wear beanies, Libs …’

  ‘Yes … but …’

  He frowns. ‘And we’re tourists. Anyway, he might have driven past and wanted a better view. I don’t know. But there’s no sign of him now.’

  ‘He can’t have just disappeared! Where would he have gone? There isn’t another house for at least a quarter of a mile. You would have seen him. Maybe he’s still there, lurking in the bushes …’ My voice rises with each word.

  Jamie shakes his head and holds up his hand to stop my tirade. ‘He might have been in a car and thought the place was empty …’

  ‘But our car is parked in the driveway. Listen, Jay, if it was the same man who pushed you yesterday …’

  ‘It can’t have been.’ He sounds calm but I notice a pulse throbbing in his jaw. ‘Lizard Point is miles away from here. And nobody pushed me …’

  ‘You said you felt a shove.’

  ‘Yes, I did. There was a crowd. We were all standing close together. I don’t think anybody deliberately tried to hurt me.’ He has pity in his eyes as he looks down at me. ‘I know why you’re thinking this, Libs. I understand.’

  I push him away. ‘Please don’t tell me you think this is all down to PTSD again, Jay!’ I fling my arms up, exasperated, and then wince in pain.

  ‘You should be wearing your sling.’

  ‘I don’t want to. And you’re changing the subject …’

  ‘There’s nothing to worry about.’ His tone is final.

  I want to say more, so much more, but I’m aware I’ll just sound like a nagging, neurotic wife so I keep my mouth shut as I shadow Jamie through the garden and into the house. Even though Jamie doesn’t say it, I can sense he’s disappointed that my neurosis since the fire hasn’t stayed behind in Bath but has followed us on holiday. He was hoping this break would be a therapy of sorts. And maybe this is all down to post-traumatic stress. Maybe I am imagining that it’s the same man from yesterday. I don’t know what to think.

  I’m not normally an edgy person. I’ve always thought of myself as a risk-taker, driven, independent. Capable.

  I didn’t have the best childhood. The truth is, my father was an alcoholic. He’d always had a problem with drinking, preferring to spend most evenings down the pub, frittering away my mother’s hard-earned cash. I’d sit with her in front of the television in our sparsely furnished living room, eating meat pie and chips off trays on our laps while we both pretended we weren’t waiting on tenterhooks for him to come bursting through the door, unnaturally jolly and smelling of booze and fags.

  Then, when I was fourteen, Mum died and everything was just that little bit worse. My grief-stricken father stopped working altogether and I had to support us both with my meagre earnings from weekend jobs. When the drink eventually killed him I left it all behind to go travelling alone. All I had wanted was to get as far away from Yorkshire, my village and my old existence as possible.

  When I returned from Thailand after the hostel fire, I moved to Middlesex and worked hard to get my PGCE, funding myself by stacking shelves in supermarkets and pulling pints behind the bar. Anything to have a better life than the one fate had dealt me, and determined not to end up like my put-upon mother. What would she think of where I’ve ended up? I like to imagine she would be proud of me.

  I hardly ever talk about that time. Jamie doesn’t know the half of it. He doesn’t need to. It would be too depressing for him to hear about my childhood, so different from his. He probably wouldn’t understand. How could he?

  I lost touch with everyone the day I took that flight to Thailand nine years ago. A fresh start.

  By the time I met Jamie in a pub in Bath when I was nearly twenty-five, I felt I’d already lived a long life. I’d recently moved to the area after getting a teaching job and I hardly knew anybody. I’d stood at the bar with my colleague, Cara, scowling at any man who dared look in my direction, barriers firmly up, when Jamie came over and asked to buy me a drink. He wasn’t put off by my surliness, and with his floppy blond hair and kind eyes he reminded me a little of my first love. Jamie later told me he saw straight through my no-nonsense attitude to the scared little girl underneath. ‘You looked so fragile, trying to make out that you didn’t give a shit, that I wanted to protect you,’ he said.

  I’d found his confidence, his optimism, reassuring. Jamie Hall, with the large, boisterous, bickering family in that sprawling house, with his private-school education. Such a different life to the one I’d had. Everything began to fall into place. Despite my upbringing I was one of the lucky ones. I was a survivor.

  7

  I can feel Jamie
’s eyes boring into me as I dry the wet sand off Ziggy’s paws with one of the old towels we’d brought with us. I try not to look at him, concentrating instead on dealing with the dog.

  Eventually I can bear it no longer. I snap my head up. ‘What?’

  ‘You,’ says Jamie. His arms are folded across his chest, his jaw set as though preparing himself for a fight. He’s still wearing his coat. He leans against the kitchen island. ‘This can’t go on. I’m going to speak to Mum. Get her to recommend a therapist.’

  ‘I don’t want you talking to your bloody mother about me,’ I insist, releasing Ziggy and standing up. The thought of Sylvia knowing about my problems and using it against me later on makes my blood boil. I brush past him to hang the wet towel over the radiator.

  ‘Libby,’ he begins, with that determined look on his face I know so well, ‘something isn’t right with you. I know I’m not a shrink. But you’re seeing danger everywhere – you have been since the fire. Take that man today. It could have been anyone, yet you’re assuming it’s the same guy that was at Lizard Point yesterday. The security light is on in the back garden and you automatically believe there’s an intruder …’

  ‘But someone was in our garden!’ I interject. ‘Today. That person could have been there yesterday too.’

  He raises his hand. ‘I know, but this house is usually empty. The man ran away as soon as he saw us. It doesn’t have to mean anything sinister. He was just using the garden to get a better look at the beach.’

  Or at us?

  Jamie’s not convincing me but I can’t say anything without sounding paranoid. Instead I shrug off my coat and drape it over the back of one of the kitchen chairs.