Carrie had gasped beside her. Out of nowhere Bridget had managed to smile at him. And to gesture, down the turning, to indicate as she passed him.
‘What are you doing?’ Carrie had hissed, white-faced.
‘I’m giving them a reason we’re here,’ Bridget had said, not sure where she found the calm. She hadn’t recognised the man at all. But she calculated: it must have been when she came with Matt to look at the dinghy, he must have been someone they talked to. And of course, they always remembered a newcomer, round here.
As she and Carrie crunched along the unkempt gravel lane the little clapboard building came into view. Six thirty, the time illuminated on her dashboard jumped at her. They’d both left their phones at home, so Bridget couldn’t call Matt to say they’d be late. There was a glow in the window of the clubhouse’s bar, where the die-hards were having a leisurely drink after a winter sail, or a spot of maintenance, just Matt’s cup of tea. The innocence of it.
Climbing out Bridget paused a minute to look over the water. The temperature seemed to have dropped ten degrees. The light had gone from the sky but the uneven tree line bordering the reservoir was just about visible. Could you see the light of a small pocket torch from this far off? And if you did, would you make anything of it?
Carrie climbed out. ‘Jesus, it’s cold,’ she said. Looking around. ‘Anyone with any sense’ll have been holed up in there all afternoon,’ she said, nodding towards the clubhouse. As if she knew what Bridget was thinking.
Bridget put an arm through hers to stop her shivering and steered her toward the steps. ‘We’re buying Matt a boat,’ she said.
There’d been a brief lull in the hum of talk when they came through the door but it soon picked up again. A handful of men round a table and an apple-cheeked woman in dungarees with wiry hair at the bar. The old man selling the dinghy was there in the corner, merry with a pint in front of him and hadn’t shown any surprise when Bridget had approached him. A Christmas present, she said, sitting down beside him, offering to buy him a drink and he had nodded, nodding even harder when she’d said, ‘Cash all right?’
She’d given him what she had in her wallet, a couple of hundred, as deposit while Carrie stood quiet, looking round the warm room. There was a bit of discussion about the trailer, and when she’d be back with the balance. Carrie always seemed in her natural habitat in a bar, any kind of bar. They’d slipped out again, the hum of conversation resuming behind them.
‘Respect,’ Carrie had said as they climbed back into the van. There was colour in her cheeks. ‘That was quick thinking.’
It wasn’t until they rejoined the road, Carrie apparently so relaxed now that she had sat back, eyes closed, that it all began to clamour in Bridget’s head. What if they’d looked in the back of the van? What if anyone asked the young bloke in dungarees which direction they’d been coming from?
They wouldn’t. That was the mantra that had got her through the evening. That, and the glass of wine before dinner. She’d drunk another, quickly, in the kitchen while Carrie played a computer game with Finn in the living room, while Matt read the paper. The whoosh and crump of virtual weaponry.
And it was Carrie who had made it work, as they came through the door. ‘Where have you two been?’ Matt had said, ready, Bridget could see even as she hung back, to be anxious. Carrie mischievous, tapping the side of her nose. ‘Christmas shopping,’ she said cheerfully.
The wine was supposed to help her sleep, and it had put her under, at least, so quickly she had barely managed to get her clothes off. Struggling out of the jeans, the sweatshirt: they had smelled strange to her and she had pushed them away, into a little heap. She must have been asleep when Matt came up. She reached for her phone in the dark to check the time: it was twenty past three.
No one had suspected anything. Not the man on the verge, nor the sailors in their clubhouse, not Matt, not Finn. By infinitesimal degrees the dark of her bedroom felt warmer, more protective, and Matt’s breathing beside her told her, all right. All right.
The next thing Bridget knew the light was hurting her eyes and Matt was sitting on the side of the bed holding a mug carefully in both hands, examining her. She sat up in a hurry.
‘What?’ she said, taking the mug.
‘What was up with you last night?’ he said, worried. He put a hand to her forehead.
‘Well, I—’
He thought she was still ill, she realised with relief. And she did feel it, queasy with the lack of sleep, and flushed from last night’s wine, and somewhere far back in her head, locked in its own little box, was what they’d done, her and Carrie. Their hands on his contaminated body. Bridget looked into Matt’s worried face.
‘Dodgy sandwich at lunch yesterday, I think,’ she said, grimacing apologetically. ‘Tea’ll sort me out.’ Smiling, grateful, ridiculously grateful, when the frown disappeared and Matt nodded. He stood up, relieved, then leaned to plant a quick kiss on her cheek.
‘I’m off, then,’ he said. ‘See you this evening,’ and clattered downstairs, suddenly cheerful. The back door banged.
It wasn’t even eight: early, even for Matt. Bridget could hear Carrie and Finn downstairs in the wake of his departure: no one was lying in bed today, she should get up too – but her body felt heavy, still, after the sleepless night, her head felt thick. She leaned back against the headboard and before she knew it, she was asleep again.
Something woke her less than half an hour later, but sitting up Bridget couldn’t identify what it had been. Someone was talking quietly downstairs, but that wasn’t it. She got up. The small pile of clothes from last night was half hidden under the little chair beside the bed: ignoring it she went to the window, leaning her cheek against the cool glass. Looking down the soft, silvery field to the estuary; she couldn’t see the towers from here. There was only the grey water, embroidered by muddy inlets and creeks, a sandy point gleaming far off where the estuary opened to the sea and for a second a bubble of something almost like euphoria was there in Bridget’s chest, before she squeezed it small. The towers would still be there, when she came out of the front door. Towers One, Two, Three.
Where Carmichael had friends. And where a journalist had come to listen to him speak.
She heard Finn coming up the stairs: she knew his cheerful clump.
‘Mum?’ Peering anxiously round the door. ‘Dad said—’ he didn’t finish the sentence but came in and sat on the unmade bed, fidgeting. He had his waterproof jacket on and his bag on his shoulder.
‘You off?’ said Bridget, trying not to look at the pile of clothes half under the chair. She’d have to burn them. ‘Made your sandwich?’
‘Dad said you weren’t feeling great,’ he said. He seemed nervous.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, pulling her dressing gown together, cheerful for Finn. ‘How are things with Phoebe, anyway?’
Just to change the subject: on the bed Finn studied his hands, uneasy. ‘I think she’s worried about meeting you,’ he said eventually, looking up. ‘Like you might – not like her.’
‘Of course I’ll like her,’ said Bridget, giving him a little shove. He smiled uncertainly. ‘If you like her she must be lovely.’ Hoping she sounded convincing.
‘I told her about your shop and she thought that was cool,’ said Finn, sheepish, fiddling with the lanyard of his backpack on his lap. She wanted to take him and squeeze him and tell him not to worry, even though the thought of him telling Phoebe about her shop made her unaccountably anxious herself.
Why? How many times had Matt sighed when she said, No, I don’t want to sell online. He knew why – at least Bridget thought he did, without ever having been told. Finn looked up at her from under his eyebrows and she smiled.
‘I saw Isabel yesterday,’ she said. ‘She told me how pretty Phoebe was.’
Finn looked blank and Bridget thought, Mistake.
‘Isabel?’ She made herself speak patiently. ‘Fluffy hair, slim? Year below you at school? We saw her the other Sun
day with her mum and dad, out walking.’ Leaving out the bit about her coming into the shop with Anthony Carmichael.
‘Oh,’ Finn said, still bewildered.
‘I think she likes you,’ said Bridget and he frowned, uncomfortable.
‘She’s just a kid,’ he said and Bridget made herself laugh.
‘Oh, a whole year younger?’ And thought with resignation, if she wanted the part of bothersome nosy mum, she was playing a blinder. Change the subject. ‘Was that the landline?’ she said, and she realised why it had taken her a while to register it. No one used it these days, only occasionally the university secretaries and the sound of it had become unfamiliar, exotic. ‘That woke me up?’
Finn shrugged, uninterested, halfway through the door now. ‘Auntie Carrie answered it,’ he said. ‘I think it was for her.’
And then he was off, clumping back down the staircase: she thought about calling after him for a kiss but there was the heap of clothes at her feet. There’d be Carrie’s too. And the cardboard. And the rest.
When she got downstairs Carrie was at the kitchen table with a mug of black coffee, pale but steady. The room was startlingly tidy.
‘You’re going,’ said Bridget immediately. ‘Good, that’s good. I want you out of this.’
Carrie didn’t move, but her knuckles were white around the mug. And suddenly Bridget felt like she was on the edge of a cliff: all the tools she had used to get herself here didn’t seem to work. Be practical, be good, be polite. And now she had to fight.
‘Carrie?’ she said. ‘Did you hear me?’
‘I’m going nowhere,’ Carrie said, and then as if the word had broken a spell she lifted the mug to her lips. ‘You can’t make me.’
Bridget sat down and sighed. ‘You need me,’ said Carrie. Then, ‘He raped you, didn’t he?’ Then. ‘Was it just him?’
It was as if the words hadn’t been spoken. ‘Who was that on the phone?’ said Bridget, her head full of white noise. Carrie stared at her a moment, then shook her head once, twice, as if she needed to clear it, then said, ‘She wanted Matt.’
She pushed the mug away, her mouth set. Bridget recognised that stubborn mouth, it was so familiar it made her want to grab Carrie’s head and press it hard against her chest, like she used to, somewhere between a hug and a fight.
‘Something to do with work.’ Staring down at the mug. ‘A woman. Gillian something? I said he was on his way in. She asked if I was his wife. Are you Bridget, she said.’
‘It’ll be one of the secretaries,’ Bridget said automatically but she could feel her heart step up, faster. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d spoken to one of the admin staff.
‘Don’t think so,’ said Carrie, indifferent.
The hairs rose on Bridget’s neck. ‘But she knew my name?’
Carrie looked at her, getting up to stash her mug in the dishwasher. ‘Come on,’ she said over her shoulder, ‘every school leaver who calls trying to sell you solar panels or cheap internet knows your first name. It’s a ploy. There’s a word for it, probably. Personalisation or whatever.’
Bridget stood, abruptly from the table.
‘We’ve got to get rid of some stuff,’ she said. ‘You up for that? Carrie nodded, waiting. Bridget reached for her coat. ‘And we’ve to get to an internet café.’
In the lavender light of her hotel bedroom, Gillian Lawson hung up and chucked her mobile on the bed.
It had come to her in the small hours, four o’clock or thereabouts, when she always woke up when she was like this. Her mind running even while she slept, asking questions, answering them. A hunch? A face in a frame on a desk. Could it be? One way to find out, because she had his number. Matthew Webster.
If she wanted to, Matthew Webster’s wife could call back: Gill never withheld her number. But something told her that wasn’t going to happen. There would be a way of Gill getting to her: for the moment through her husband looked like the quickest route: her nice husband who happened to be the computer officer at Rose Hill. There was something Gill didn’t like, about that coincidence, it ticked away in her head, implications stacking up.
A coincidence – unless it wasn’t. Had Carmichael come after her? Got a job on the same campus as her husband? She doubted it. But abuser and victim could wash up in the same sort of backwater, a place like this.
She got out her phone and googled Bridget Webster, and the town’s name. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Tried images – and there she was. Small businesswoman, looking strained at a civic gathering.
The bed was untidy, a man’s tie forgotten over the back of a chair. She stared at it, cursing: she’d already forgotten him. The stocky bloke who’d been in the back of a taxi with her last night, arm careless along the back of the seat and her shoulders. He hadn’t groped her, though, and he’d paid for the taxi. And when she’d woken up at first light through those vile polyester curtains he was still there on the pillow beside her, just the hint of a snore: he hadn’t scuttled off before she woke up, they did that often enough. They didn’t always leave their tie behind. He had been crumpled, cheery. Nice enough. She’d kicked him out when, with his back to her and blearily fumbling with the little plastic pots of horrible milk at the tea tray, he had started to ask her about herself.
Gill jumped out of bed, twitchy at the memory, tugged perfunctorily at the bedclothes. Why did you do that, when someone was being paid to make your bed? Still worried about what people thought of you, after all these years: a bit late for that. She refilled the kettle from the bath tap.
Clicking it on to boil, Gill sighed, reset. It was bad for your sex life, having an obsession with a predatory paedophile. Sometimes you needed a bit of mindless normal sex to clear things out a bit. He hadn’t distracted her for long from the faces in her head, though. He hadn’t got her to sleep. Could she ever live with someone, listen to them breathe or snore beside her without it driving her nuts?
Not all men are the same. You couldn’t suspect them all. He hadn’t complained that she hadn’t had a Brazilian or tied her to the bedposts. There were no bedposts, she registered with the same thought. The kettle hissed and creaked to a boil.
Matthew Webster, now. Was he normal? (And what was normal anyway? Not her, not Gillian Lawson.) Men who married victims of abuse were practically a secondary industry, clearing up the mess, or feeding off it. She poured the water on top of the teabag in the too-small, too-thick china cup. Why didn’t they ever give you a bloody mug in these places? Burned her fingers trying to extract the bag: she could hear Chloe tutting, her mother tutting, whole generations of Lawson females sighing over her.
At which point Gill had to tell herself, Stop it. You’re pissed off because you’re lying to your editor, you’re living out of a suitcase like a slob, and you can’t see a bloke without suspecting him of being a pervert. But nobody made you do it. You made you do it.
Besides, Matthew Webster had seemed like a genuinely nice man, and her radar was set pretty high for sleazebag husbands. He had looked tired, there in the big auditorium with the handful of students whispering to each other, with his laptop in his arms, the overhead projector set up and unused, exasperated and bemused by the waste of his time. She could have told him, Carmichael never did care about the little people. Disdaining the UHT milk thimble Gill raised the thick china cup gingerly to her lips, and burned her mouth. She thought perhaps she would go back and find Matthew Webster today, after all.
Was she putting off Carmichael, or saving him up? The thought of seeing him made her flesh crawl. When had the last time been? Four, five years back.
The wife, though. Matthew Webster’s wife. Had that been her on the phone, pretending to be someone else? The voice had been rough and suspicious. Just answering, no, when Gill had asked, is that Bridget? Confirmation though that Bridget was who it was, Bridget in the picture frame. Bridget Webster, Bridget O’Neill as was.
Had Anthony Carmichael come after her? All the way over here from his gleaming spires, to hang o
ut among what he’d no doubt classify as inbreds and provincials, just to track a child he had once taken under his wing, a one-time violin student who had turned out – and so many of them had – not to have made the grade and who would, besides, now be pushing forty. And therefore no longer his type.
It would depend on whether he was more a predator than a paedophile, and that one, on the evidence Gill had, was a toss-up. Could it be coincidence? Another depressing explanation, of course, would be the statistics. That Anthony Carmichael had abused so many of his pre-pubescent protégées – nervy, skinny, vulnerable girls, girls with a weak point, needy, hopeful, romantic children – that there were simply so many of them that, wherever he pitched up, there would likely enough be one. One grown to anxious adulthood, in hiding. Passing for normal.
Shit. Shit. Had she – she panicked, on her knees, not left it in the wine bar? The bulging nylon briefcase that held her laptop, her notebooks, her life. Back of the taxi? – no. She crawled towards it. On its side under the TV table. And in it, Carmichael’s address. She pulled out the notebook to look at it.
He’d refuse to talk to her, of course he would – if he was even there.
Webster had said Carmichael wasn’t well. Sitting on the floor with her briefcase clutched against her chest Gill’s imagination leaped, spiralled, wishful thinking: on his deathbed. Something horrible, I hope.
She set down the cup with its dusty dregs, and walked into the shower. Time to get clean, just so you can get dirty all over again.
Chapter Seventeen
The town’s last internet café was behind the bus station, between a boarded-up gaming arcade and a print shop. Once there’d been ten at least, but now everyone did everything on their phones. Most people didn’t wonder how safe their phones were. A bearded man was begging outside it, hunched over his knees. He could have been any age from twenty-five to fifty. He had a card, homless, it read, and a greasy cap with some coppers in it. Bridget hesitated, then dropped in a pound coin. As she always did: they could see her coming. She and Carrie pushed their way inside.
What We Did_A gripping, compelling psychological thriller with a nail-biting twist Page 16