The lecture – scheduled for mid-afternoon which said a lot about Anthony Carmichael’s timetable – had been on Bach and mathematical theory. Five students had turned up and they didn’t seem very bothered by the great man’s failure to appear. Gill had been looking forward to it on a number of levels, herself. Looking forward to seeing his face when he saw how few of them there were in the big auditorium, four lads and a girl with a twitch and thick glasses all sitting with respectful distance between them. To that wondering look when he tried to place Gillian Lawson, who had, you might say, followed his career with interest.
She’d thought it would be harder to get in. Students came in all shapes and sizes, these days, though, there were plenty of hairy types – masters’ students – her age and older, and a university like this was more catholic than most. Of course: that would be why he had come here. Camouflage.
She sat at the back, trying not to be noticed. After ten minutes passed, then twenty, and there was still no show, it occurred to her that he might have peered round the door, seen how small his audience was and fucked off home. Not considering it worth his very valuable time. Gillian Lawson knew him. He didn’t know she knew him, but she did.
The girl with glasses, two rows below Gill, might have been his type. His tastes weren’t catholic but neither were they based on any specific look, only on vulnerability. The chattering grew louder as he didn’t appear, and next to the girl someone took out a bag of crisps. Gill leaned forwards in her seat and said, ‘Is he usually this late?’, trying to engage with them but no one answered, and the looks she caught represented more or less contempt. As if she was the pervert. A lanky boy just stared and edged along his row and off without a word.
In the lobby where they gravitated Gill approached the girl, apologetic. ‘I’ve come to interview Dr Carmichael,’ she said, hoping she wouldn’t have to name the paper, because you could rely on this lot to put the word about and it would get back to Steve even if it only appeared on page nine of the Socialist Worker. She wasn’t sure any more if the Socialist Worker had as many as nine pages.
The girl was fiercer than she looked, a lapel full of incomprehensible badges. One of them had just read, Fish? Question mark.
‘Who are you, then?’ she said to Gill rudely. ‘Gutter press?’ And turned on her heel. The lads sniggering, although it hadn’t been clear if at her or the girl or just because human interaction brought that out in them. Mouth breathers to a man. How was the human race to survive if this was what kids were like, these days? Gill thought. Scuttling back off to their screens to interact, rather than IRL.
Not that Gill could talk. No kids, and plenty of screen action.
The tech guy shifting the projector when she went back in to the lecture theatre had been as wary, leading her away from the students to a dim office at the foot of one of the towers. A photograph of a wife and son on the desk: something had made her look at the woman, but then he had gently steered her away, not touching her, just stepping between her and the desk. She had taken his name: Matt Webster. Seemed like a nice bloke, but very correct, very guarded, you’d think universities were nuclear power plants, full of dangerous material and official secrets. You couldn’t tell, straight off, if they were hiding something or if they just didn’t trust journalists.
So the college bar it would have to be. Gill had seen them across the piazza between the towers when she came back out of Webster’s office, the girl hunched over her folders hurrying ahead of the boys, and then she had killed the rest of the afternoon drinking buckets of nasty tea at a chain café with wifi, computer open, for ‘research’. Not the research she was supposed to be here for – well, not here, exactly, given that the Royals’ Christmas story was forty miles north. Could you even call it research? Staring at the signage in a Starbucks that was probably for the chop for lack of custom – not much call for an almond milk latte in the shadow of Rose Hill, it would appear – and turning Google search terms over and over in her head. Anthony Carmichael. Tony. Self-harm. Talented young musician. She could hear Steve’s voice, torn between knowing what a story it would be and wondering about her mental health. It’s a compulsion. It’ll get you into trouble.
It had got dark quickly. The bar sat at the foot of one of the big ugly towers, rammed inside, a glimpse of orange walls beyond packed tables and figures between them. Big doors opening and closing on the windswept darkness outside and a handful of smokers standing on the doorstep. And then one of them had turned in the orange light and seen her.
In the corridor beyond her purple room now someone laughed a machine-gun laugh and there was an exchange in a foreign language she didn’t recognise, followed by the high buzz of a hoover coming on. Gill groped on the side table, found the blister pack of paracetamol with caffeine: her drug of choice. That and horrible white wine. There were two left in the packet: she sat up and necked them with the glass of water she’d left helpfully beside the bed and had then promptly ignored. It tasted dusty. She leaned back against the shiny lavender headboard and let her eyes close again.
You couldn’t get anything useful out of students. Sober they were self-righteous, drunk they were kids. Had Gill ever been that young? Affirmative action, she remembered that. Collecting for the miners, rent strike. They thought they had all the answers, but they were headed down the wrong road, somehow. Boycotting lectures at the drop of a hat – no platforming, it was called. Whatever happened to free speech? Bleary with the hangover Gill thought she believed in that, and she’d better, hadn’t she? She was a journalist.
They were all about big, colourful issues, kids were. Massive injustices, their right to their sexuality. Safe spaces for transvestites – well, fine. But there were little grey issues too. Muddy, dirty issues, places where there wasn’t much in the way of safe space. It was called the home. It was called childhood. They got to university and they thought they could leave all that behind.
It had been the girl from the lecture with the bottle-bottom glasses – a smoker, it turned out, hunched against a concrete pillar out of the wind and nervously dragging on a roll-up like her mother might catch her at it – who’d recognised Gill. Well, that’s it, then, Gill had thought, as the girl, squinting round the smoke, launched herself off the pillar towards her. And said, just as Gill was about to back off and go home – if you could call a Premier Inn home, and sometimes you had to – Want a drink? A turn-up for the books: you couldn’t always tell, it turned out, when someone liked you. Or perhaps the kid had just been lonely.
In the corridor the loud hoover – something stuck in its intake, whining – knocked carelessly into the door. Housekeeping: a term so old-fashioned it didn’t seem to fit in this place, with the faceted mirrors and acrylic carpet. They’d want to be in here in a minute, and Gill hadn’t hung the Do Not Disturb on the handle. She threw back the purple covers.
See if she could get his home address out of the office. Look over someone’s shoulder.
None of them round here really seemed to know who Carmichael was, was the point. Did his colleagues know? Someone must: someone must have given him the job. Must know about the legendary career as a virtuoso violinist that began by performing Ravel’s Tzigane in front of the Queen when he was eleven and ended abruptly and without explanation when he was twenty-five, regularly put down as a sign of his genius; the celebrated monograph on Bartok; the essays for the TLS.
She needed to get out of here. Places to go, people to see. Someone rattled the door handle.
‘Give me a minute,’ said Gill wearily and reached for the shirt she’d worn yesterday and saw a grimy line at the collar and the sad thought it put in her head, of her washing machine, lonely and unloved in her flat in Eltham, almost brought a tear to her eye. There was another life out there, where home smelled of freshly washed sheets and Windolene and even dinner, at a pinch.
Not even the students who’d turned up for the lecture seemed to have much of a clue any more who Anthony Carmichael was. Perhaps that was why he
was here.
If he was here.
Chapter Twelve
Breakfast had been accomplished downstairs without Bridget: a normal Thursday. Matt and Finn moving in the kitchen downstairs, the rattle of cereal into a bowl.
She had pretended to be sleepy, turning over in bed when Matt set down the mug of tea so that he wouldn’t turn the light on. She wasn’t sleepy: she was bone-tired but wired at the same time, she had to concentrate very hard on keeping still or she might start to tremble. The time when she would be able to rest and catch up on sleep seemed impossibly distant. She didn’t trust herself to sit up and look him in the eye.
By the time they had left the house, Matt and Finn together, she had migrated to the bathroom. ‘Bye, darling,’ she called down through the locked door and there had been a little pause, tiny but significant, before Matt had called back up the stairs, ‘Have a good day.’ She could hear them on the front porch, talking in lowered voices as they set up their bikes, adjusted backpacks, zipped their outdoor jackets, same brand, Matt’s dark green, Finn’s pale blue. Matt pausing to check something for Finn, a loose chain or a bottom bracket. Their morning ritual.
There had been a hard frost: looking out of the bathroom’s little window Bridget could see a sparkle on the long winter grass, the field sloping down to the estuary where the water was grey as pewter in the early light. She remembered waking up here, their first morning and looking out of this window heavily pregnant with Finn and she had stopped, her toothbrush half raised to her mouth as she had felt a bubble of unexpected joy expand inside her. For a second it was as if it had been yesterday: if she closed her eyes she would remember the weight of him inside her, the way you had to adjust for balance. Watching her belly move as she lay in the bath, bubbles sliding off it, a wonder. A miracle.
Unlocking the bathroom door and stepping cautiously out on to the landing she saw the spare room’s door closed and with a small shock she remembered Carrie. She listened: a small, snoring breath. Bridget’s little sister might be lean and wiry but Carrie always had snored: she’d broken her nose falling out of a tree aged eight and had been a snuffler and nose-bleeder and snorer ever since. Bridget wondered if Ella knew how to deal with the nosebleeds: sometimes they went on for an hour. She leaned her cheek against the door a second, listening to that sound: the sound of her childhood.
Back across the landing Bridget got dressed quickly, pulling on jeans, fleece, thermal socks. Trainers. Not workwear but then she couldn’t do what she had to do in a silk blouse and pencil skirt. Softly down the stairs, she paused in the kitchen for a sharp knife and rubber gloves. Hesitating with the knife in her hands, but all she needed to think about was, would it do the job? She came out through the kitchen door because it was on the opposite side of the house to where Carrie slept. There wasn’t much she could do about the noise the garage door made beyond pulling as gently as she could on it and stopping when it was up enough for her to edge under at a crouch. The garage door was at right angles to the house, facing along the front gardens of the neighbouring houses. She didn’t open it fully also because she didn’t want anyone looking in at her inside.
Once inside she straightened in the cold half-dark, feeling her heart pound: the light from outside only illuminated a little way in, up to her knees, but she didn’t turn the light on that Matt had installed, a bare bulb hanging at the far end. There were Matt’s tools along the wall beyond the van, the shelving unit he had got out of a skip. It was bitterly cold and Bridget shivered, not just at the cold but at the thought that came into her head: good. The body wouldn’t have deteriorated.
As she edged around the van her fleece caught on the wing mirror: looking down at the shred of fabric, all the other traces she might have left unfolded in her head, multiplying. She’d have to burn it all, everything she was wearing. Or boil wash? That would do.
The box was still there, half hidden under the old carpet. it came as a small shock to Bridget to realise it was not, after all, something she had imagined, or dreamed. Though she had had that dream, too, of shoving him, watching him disappear into a hole that opened up for him, a cesspit, a well, a sinkhole. Bridget paused a moment, leaning against the van, working out where that hole might be found, now. Then she knelt, set down the knife, put on the gloves and pulled back the carpet.
Nothing smelled: warily she lowered her head to sniff. Dust, oil, damp: there was something else, after all, under it. A denser smell, more complex, more animal, a sour cheese smell, salty, sweet. She felt her throat contract. The cardboard of the clothing box had softened, its corners collapsed a little, a bulge at one side. Bridget took the knife and quickly drew it down one edge, prising open staples. That animal scent bloomed under her nose, rotten: methodically she kept on, unpicking, pulling open. She was used to this: she had to dismantle these boxes for recycling. It came open: layers of polythene underneath and something pressed against the transparent plastic. Skin.
Quickly Bridget turned her head a moment to look somewhere else, her eyes searching the shelves for something, anything. Paint cans, tools hung in orderly rows, jamjars full of screws. Breathe.
Inside her it reset, as she had known it to in the past; she knew a panic attack when she felt it, and she knew how to dodge it, quick. Go through the motions: when it happened in the supermarket you just kept pushing the trolley, packing the bag at the checkout.
She lifted his arm. The limbs weren’t stiff any more, they were heavy, but that needn’t slow her down. All she needed to do was check his pockets: she was looking for the phone. That was all. Trousers, front and back: as she pushed him up she felt his deadweight. Cold.
The jacket was easier, one, two: start with that. Wallet – she didn’t bother to examine it. Handkerchief, folded: she remembered his handkerchiefs. Used to wipe himself, dropped for his wife to wash. Who washed for him now? The handkerchief was ironed. She pulled him over, on his face. A stain on the trousers at the back, spread almost the width – she turned him back over, heaving.
His face was there, a blur.
And then suddenly she needed to stop. The smell seemed like a cloud around her head suddenly, a cloud full of bees. She heard the humming, she saw it, it had a colour. It was black and sparkled. She heard voices.
They murmured, talking to her. Were the voices in her head? Then something whirled, the light changing and the glittering cloud was gone: Bridget shifted on her haunches, turning her head towards the garage door.
It was Carrie talking, it wasn’t in her head, after all. Bridget heard the challenge that was always present in her little sister’s voice, the scrappy little dog in her. And the low murmur of an answer: Bridget knew that voice too. Their postman, mild-mannered Keith, bright and early.
Bridget almost laughed, hysterical: scrappy little dog meets postman. Five yards from her. Between her and them was the van’s bonnet and the half-open garage door. The light was brighter through it, the sun higher in the sky. How long had she been in here? She couldn’t tell.
She couldn’t move.
Thanks, then. That was Keith. She heard the slam of his door as he climbed back into the van. Keith over whose shoulder she had seen the little black car and Carmichael beside it. Call me Tony. Had Keith seen him?
‘Bridge?’ Carrie was calling her name, carelessly loud. People would come, people would come out. Carrie called again, her voice lower, questioning but that wasn’t good, because it meant she’d seen something. She’d seen the open door, the van through it. She was coming closer. A shadow passed across the light shed inside the garage.
Bridget heard Keith start his van’s engine and the sound brought her to her feet, she could move, after all. Stiff, stumbling, she came round the van just as Carrie tugged the door up high in one careless movement and Bridget stood there, blinking in the light. As she raised a hand to shield her eyes she realised the knife was still in it. Saw Carrie look at the knife, and the gloves and sidestepped vainly, trying to block her path.
‘What?�
�� said Carrie, standing there in a frowsty old tracksuit, bare feet in the frosty morning. Carrie didn’t do slippers. Staring at her, the gloves, the knife.
Pushing past her.
There were explanations: recycling. Cutting up carpet to get it in the car. As long as Carrie didn’t walk around the van.
But in the early morning frosty garage it was as if Carrie’s passage from the light into the dark had created a vacuum, a wormhole – out of nowhere Bridget was somewhere else.
She heard an intake of breath.
She was at her mother’s bedside. Their mother’s: she was dying. Herself and Carrie in the dim room. And for a second Bridget stared out through the open door with the knife in her hand, into the world outside, where postmen delivered parcels and cars got cleaned on Sundays and lawns got mowed, but she was in here, in the dark.
‘Bridge, what the— Bridge, what the fuck—’
And Bridget turned at last, from the sight of the empty, early, outside world and Keith’s van disappearing round the corner.
Too late.
The two of them had sat at their mother’s bedside in hospital, avoiding each other in the corridors. Their mother no longer able to speak, just looking at them imploring. Carrie stony and dry-eyed, Bridget faffing around trying to make her comfortable, to persuade her to eat, pleading with the nurses, the doctor to adjust her drugs.
Carrie snapping at her outside: it’s too late. Bridget losing it and shouting back. Who are you angry with? She did her best.
Sometimes it isn’t good enough.
And now Carrie was beside her, grabbing her arm, shouting in her ear. Her hands were strong, her grip was so tight it hurt and Bridget pulled away. Her mind was blank.
‘She’s dying,’ she’d said to Carrie, in that hospital corridor. ‘Come back in and pretend, if you have to.’ Carrie’s face closed and angry. ‘Come back in or I’ll never forgive you.’
What We Did_A gripping, compelling psychological thriller with a nail-biting twist Page 11