Last Seen Alive

by Claire Douglas

  ‘I’ve received a call. It’s from a concerned parent. And –’ she adds when I open my mouth to ask their identity ‘– I can’t reveal who, as you well know. They are saying that you are under investigation at the moment and they don’t feel comfortable about you continuing to work in the school.’

  I feel as though somebody has punched me in the stomach. ‘They?’

  ‘There are a few. They’ve been talking. You know how it is.’

  I most certainly do. There’s a cliquey bunch of mothers I’ve often seen hanging around the playground, standing in a huddle, gossiping in their Lycra. I bet it was them.

  ‘I’m not under investigation. A body was found in my garden. We’d recently done a holiday house swap …’ I throw my arms up in the air. ‘It’s a very long story. I don’t even know where to start.’

  She folds her arms across her chest and peers at me over her glasses. ‘Well, I suggest that you try, Libby. Because from where I’m sitting it doesn’t look very good and this school has its reputation to protect.’

  ‘Suspended! She’s suspended me,’ I cry as soon as I walk into the conservatory, where Jamie is tapping away on his laptop. I notice he has three empty mugs in front of him. Somebody has obviously been keeping him topped up with caffeine.

  He looks up. ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Parents complained. They knew about the body we found. They don’t want me teaching their kids until it’s all been resolved and I’m found to have had nothing to do with it.’ I sink onto one of the chairs in disbelief. ‘Shit, Jay. This could ruin my career.’ My mouth is so dry I can hardly swallow.

  Jamie jumps up and comes to sit beside me. He grabs my hand. ‘Don’t worry, they’ll find out you’ve got nothing to do with it soon enough and then you can go back to teaching. It will be fine.’

  ‘Or my reputation will be in tatters. We found a dead body in our bloody garden! They’re not going to think it was Evelyn, are they? Even if she was still alive. She was eighty years old. Oh God …’ I clutch my chest. I can hardly breathe. Not being able to teach feels like my soul has been ripped from my body. I’d changed my life to make it happen. I defined myself by my job. And I’d do anything for the school. I had put myself in danger to protect a child without giving it a second thought. They said I was a hero. They’d wanted to give me a bloody award but I’d shied away from it, not wanting any more attention. And now this. If I can no longer teach I don’t know who I am.

  I wonder if this is what it’s like to have a heart attack; it’s what killed Evelyn. DS Byrnes had telephoned to inform us after specifically requesting the information from Avon and Somerset Police. Had this been what it was like for her? This tightening, as though being squeezed in a vice, this pain? My heart is racing so much that I’m convinced I’m going to drop down dead. ‘I can’t breathe …’ I say, gripping Jamie’s arm. ‘My chest, it hurts …’

  ‘Mum!’ Jamie cries. ‘Mum, it’s Libby!’

  Sylvia darts into the room and pushes Jamie aside. ‘Put your head between your knees. No, your knees!’ she urges, forcing my head down. ‘Breathe through your nose, and out your mouth … through your nose … out your mouth … nose … mouth … that’s it, good girl.’ Her voice is soothing as I concentrate on what she’s saying and my heart rate slows, my extremities stop tingling.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, reclining against the cushions. ‘I don’t know what happened.’ Jamie’s face, from behind his mother’s shoulder, is pale and full of concern.

  Sylvia pats my hand but says, sternly, ‘You had a panic attack. You need to look after yourself.’ She turns to Jamie. ‘You both do. The sort of stress you’ve been under in the past few weeks is going to take its toll.’ She rubs my arm affectionately. ‘I’ll go and make a cup of tea.’ She gets up and brushes down her skirt. I watch her go, wishing that a simple cup of tea really would make everything OK.

  It’s ten days after we found the body when the police turn up.

  That morning, the sound of someone mowing their lawn filters through the open windows and the breeze smells fresh, of flowers and cut grass. For the first time this year it feels as though we are on the cusp of summer.

  I’m about to take Ziggy into the garden when there’s a rap on the front door. Two policemen stand on the step, the sun shining on the hills of Lansdown behind them. DS Byrnes shuffles awkwardly, looking slightly sweaty in his mac. He introduces the man standing next to him as DI Hartley from Avon and Somerset police. He holds up his badge with an air of authority. I stand back to allow them over the threshold, clutching hold of Ziggy’s collar to stop him darting out the door. Byrnes looks grim-faced as he perches on the arm of the sofa. Hartley is younger but more serious-looking, with a craggy face, closely cropped hair and eyes that suggest he’s seen it all over the years.

  Sylvia, never normally one for tact, makes herself scarce. Luckily Katie is out, and Hannah and Felix are ensconced in the coach house. Jamie drifts in from the conservatory, a sheen of sweat dampening his fringe and a distracted expression on his face.

  ‘DS Byrnes. Good to see you, do you have news?’ he says, his eyes lighting up. He thrusts his hand at DI Hartley and introduces himself. Hartley shakes it warily. ‘Would you both like a drink? Water? Coffee?’ They both decline. Byrnes is avoiding eye contact, which puzzles me. My heart starts to thump.

  ‘We’ve not come with great news, I’m afraid,’ says Hartley. He hasn’t joined Byrnes on the sofa, but is standing very formally by Sylvia’s drinks cabinet. He’s wearing a jacket that is much too heavy for such a hot day. It gives him an intimidating air, which is probably why he wears it. ‘We have an identity on the man found in your garden.’ His eyes find mine. They are cold. ‘His name was Sean Elliot. He was one of the builders working at Philip Heywood’s Cornwall property. He was murdered. He was struck over the head with a blunt instrument.’ He pauses, his eyes narrowing, the flicker of a sneer on his lips as though he’s taking enjoyment in this. ‘Does the name mean anything to you?’

  ‘I’ve never heard of him,’ says Jamie, frowning. ‘You don’t know him, do you, Libby?’

  I shake my head and address Byrnes, who’s sitting silently. ‘My maiden name is Elliot. But I don’t know a Sean Elliot.’

  Hartley smirks as though expecting me to say this. I make up my mind there and then that I don’t like him. ‘I think you’re lying, Mrs Hall,’ he says.

  I can feel myself blushing with indignation. ‘Now wait a minute …’

  Jamie is unusually quiet. I can sense him watching me.

  Hartley consults the piece of paper in his hand. ‘It seems, Mrs Hall, that you knew Sean Elliot ten years ago …’

  ‘Ten years ago?’ I do a mental calculation. In 2007 I would have been twenty.

  I notice Jamie frowning.

  ‘According to this,’ he holds up what looks like a marriage certificate, ‘you married Sean Elliot in 2007.’

  I turn to Jamie. All the colour has drained from his face. I shake my head. ‘No … I, no, that’s not …’

  ‘Elizabeth Hall, I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder,’ he says. ‘You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

  ‘No, you’ve got this wrong,’ I cry as Hartley takes my arm. ‘Please, Jamie, you’ve got to believe me.’

  Sylvia comes rushing into the room. ‘What’s going on? Take your hands off my daughter-in-law,’ she insists, her face flushed. She puffs herself up to her full five foot five inches and blocks the doorway that leads to the hall. I’m heartened to see that she’s trying to stick up for me.

  ‘Please get out of the way,’ says DI Hartley coldly, and Sylvia’s face falls. Without a word she moves from the doorway.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I try to assure them as Hartley frogmarches me from the house. ‘I’ll explain everything when I get back. Please, it’s a mistake, that’s all …’

  �
��I’ll drive to the station and wait for you,’ says Jamie, the colour coming back into his cheeks as he springs into action. ‘It will be fine. Just tell the truth.’ But I can see the disappointment in his eyes when he looks at me, can almost hear his thoughts. My wife is a bigamist. A liar.

  The last thing I see as the police car speeds away is the shocked faces of my husband and mother-in-law huddled together on the front step and, despite Jamie’s words, I know that nothing will ever be the same again.

  I sit alone in a small, stuffy room, waiting. All this waiting and on the hottest day of the year. I haven’t even been offered any water.

  What will become of me? How will I explain it all? One way or another I’m sure to get prosecuted. I’ve tried, I really have, to be a good person, to make up for what happened in Thailand, to live a good life. To reinvent myself. But now it’s all going to come out and I’ll lose everything.

  That backpack. I tried to find out, without telling Jamie, googling all those people I’d travelled with: Lars, Harry, Emma and the others. It had crossed my mind that they could have been messing with me, that maybe they had found out my secret and were trying to blackmail me.

  There is still so much that doesn’t make sense to me but one thing is obvious: this isn’t about Jamie at all. This is about Thailand. About me. And about Karen Fisher.

  Part Two

  * * *

  THAILAND

  23

  Karen Fisher was dead. That’s what I’d always believed. Last seen alive in Thailand nine years ago.

  It was May 2008 when I fled grey, drizzly England and arrived in the colourful city of Bangkok. The air was hotter than I’d ever imagined, the type of heat that rushed out from an oven when you opened the door, humid and all-encompassing, hitting me in the face as soon as I stepped off the plane. And the smells: food cooking on the pavements, sweet and pungent; the river, stale with an undercurrent of fish; animal dung and traffic fumes. It was like another world. I was used to living in North Yorkshire, with the moors and the trees and the quaint city of York on my doorstep, even if I had spent a few years living in a high-rise tower block stained with graffiti and despair. Before Sean took me away from all that. I’d been to university in Sheffield and thought that frenetic. But Bangkok was something else.

  I remember the first few days after I’d arrived, walking around as though in a daze, gazing in wonder at the palace and the huge golden reclining Buddha, at the busy river ferries crammed with people, at the traffic that zoomed past in six different lanes, tuk-tuks weaving in and out of cars and vans as though the drivers had a death wish. I even spotted an elephant trudging along a pavement, led by a man who smiled toothlessly and gestured to people as he passed. I took it all in, giddy with happiness and relief. I had escaped.

  After spending a week in Bangkok, I’d decided to try my luck in the south. I fancied lounging around on the beaches, taking a dip in the warm, jade-coloured sea, snorkelling among the coral, or diving off a boat in the middle of the ocean. I could do anything now, and that thought alone propelled me forwards. I wanted to experience everything, I wanted to live.

  The overnight train was stuffy, with cramped seating that converted into beds. A guy was lounging on one of the chairs, earphones plugged in, his foot tapping to some tinny dance music I could just about decipher. He had blond dreadlocks and a T-shirt with stains around the armpits. It was going to take all night to travel down to Trang and I wasn’t looking forward to the journey, but it was a lot cheaper than a flight and I had to make my money last as long as possible. I didn’t relish the thought of sitting next to someone who looked like they might not have washed for weeks. Behind him a couple in their thirties sat munching on egg rolls.

  The carriage was airless despite the little rectangular windows that were flung open. I could see knots of people congregated on the platform, most of them with backpacks and maps and perplexed expressions on their faces. As I ambled along the aisle I stopped to let a teenage girl heave her backpack into the compartment overhead. Somebody was pushing into me, forcing my own bag into my kidney, and I spun around irritably. A blond, preppy guy with a smug face stared back, his mate’s head popping up over his shoulder like a jack-in-the-box. ‘Get a move on,’ said the guy in a plummy accent, his friend gurning at me. I swore at them, using the c-word, enjoying the way they shrank back in alarm. They hadn’t expected such vile language from a girl my size, I thought, as I walked further down the carriage. They didn’t know that I’d lived on the type of housing estate they only saw in gritty urban TV dramas. I was used to looking after myself. Act like a hard nut and people will leave you alone – that was Sean’s motto. I’d learnt a lot from him.

  I spotted a space at the end of the carriage. A girl about my age was already next to the window, facing forwards, flicking through a magazine. There was an empty seat opposite her. I contemplated it, but it meant I’d be going backwards when the train started to move. I’d rather have her seat. She glanced up from her magazine with clear hazel eyes as I approached. She looked like she’d just arrived in the country; there was a freshness about her in her cotton blouse and denim shorts. Her skin was pale with a few freckles across her nose and she had mousy hair that came just past her shoulders. The perfect companion to share this journey.

  ‘Do you mind if I sit here?’ I indicated the brown leatherette seat opposite, acid-yellow stuffing bursting out of a rip in the arm. It didn’t look particularly comfortable for such a long trip.

  She beamed. She had dimples in her cheeks on each side of her mouth. ‘Sure. You’re English, right? Yorkshire?’ She had a similar accent, although her tone was harsher than mine. I nodded. We had that in common, at least, not that I wanted to make small talk. I planned to spend most of the journey sleeping.

  I hoisted my backpack up onto the shelf above our heads. It weighed a ton; my spine felt like it had been crushed by it over the past two weeks.

  ‘I’m Karen,’ she said, extending a slim, pale hand rather formally. I shook it before sitting on the chair facing her.

  ‘Elizabeth,’ I said. ‘Although everyone calls me Beth.’ At least at home I was always Beth, and that’s what Sean called me. I reached into my pocket, pulled out a hairband and gathered what was left of my dark hair away from my sweaty neck. The window was open, yet I couldn’t feel the benefit.

  Karen raised her head from her magazine. ‘It’ll get cooler once the train begins to move,’ she said as if reading my mind. She must have noticed the beads of sweat that had formed around my hairline, trickling into my eyes. It was six o’clock in the evening and yet the heat was relentless. Karen went back to her magazine and I studied her; her slender neck, her protruding collarbones. What was her story, I wondered? Maybe I would speak to her after all. But first I needed her to swap seats.

  I cleared my throat to get her attention, while fiddling with the corner of my T-shirt in what I hoped was a self-conscious but endearing manner. She looked up. ‘I get terrible travel sickness,’ I said. ‘I’ve taken a pill but it would really help if I could sit forward facing. Would you mind?’ I smiled sweetly.

  I noticed a trace of surprise in her expression which she tried to cover up. ‘Of course, no worries.’ She got up quickly, clutching her magazine to her chest. So obliging. That was a good sign. I stood up too; she was tiny, even smaller than me. We did a kind of side shuffle to change places. I could tell she wasn’t entirely happy with our swap, but she was either too well mannered, or too cowardly, to say. She had an aura of containment about her, as though she was used to being on her own. She settled into her new seat. My leg knocked against something and I was irritated to see her backpack by the window. She’d need to get rid of that. ‘Ow,’ I said, rubbing my leg theatrically.

  ‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry. I’ll put it in the overhead compartment.’

  I smiled in thanks and watched as one of the guys I’d sworn at earlier offered to help her lift it. She epitomised a damsel in distress with her large doe eyes and he
r petite stature. I assessed her critically. She was pretty, I had to concede that, but her mouth was slightly too large and her nose too long to be considered beautiful. And of course she had those cute dimples. That helped. She sidled back into her seat, flushed but not smiling. If anything she seemed embarrassed and a little infuriated by the attention. I reappraised her. That was interesting. I got the sense that she was running away. Like me.

  I needed to find out more about her. We could be kindred spirits, her and me. I was happy to travel around Thailand by myself but it would be more fun to have a companion.

  ‘So, Karen,’ I began, ‘what’s your surname?’

  She lifted her eyes from the magazine, looking puzzled. ‘Fisher. Why?’

  ‘Just wondered.’ I pretended to consider her name. ‘Fisher? Hmmm, I don’t know any Fishers. Are you meeting anyone at the other end, Karen Fisher?’

  She smiled, but it had a hint of reservation behind it. ‘No. I’m travelling alone.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘And you’re Beth …?’

  ‘Elliot.’ I prayed she didn’t know Sean – his family were notorious in my part of town.

  She frowned. She looked like she longed to get back to her magazine but I sensed she also didn’t want to appear rude. She fixed a smile on her face, trying to mask the effort it was costing her. ‘Whereabouts in Yorkshire are you from?’

  ‘Not far from York,’ I replied. ‘Except with none of its quaintness …’ I hesitated. I didn’t want to tell her too much.

  It transpired that we had grown up only twenty miles from each other and we chatted about our home towns for a while. I could almost see her unfurling like a flower at the beginning of spring and, as the train pulled out of the station, I found myself relaxing. The heat was less oppressive now that the train was moving and I could, at last, feel the warm breeze from the open window. I closed my eyes, liking the way the air fluttered against my face.