After five minutes Carrie nudged her to turn round and handed the phone back to her, folding her arms across her front. Bridget didn’t ask her anything. She just climbed out, wiped it down, put it in Carmichael’s car’s glove compartment and locked the car.
‘OK,’ she said to Carrie at the passenger door to the van. Held out the keys by their fob. ‘Your turn.’
She stood at the end of the street and watched as Carrie ran, wheeling across the cropped grass that was more black than green in the dark. She disappeared down between the beach huts’ pointed roofs.
Alan Timpson had wanted to talk to her. Did he know? Could it be a coincidence? Her heart beat steadily, but too fast, too fast. She knew she was grasping at straws: this was no coincidence. Why did he think his friend had disappeared? She wouldn’t call him.
Carrie reappeared, panting, smelling of the sea. Her jeans were splashed with water. ‘Gone,’ she said, climbing in.
As they turned for home Bridget took one last look in the rearview mirror, at the car sitting there in a strange street, ending in shifting darkness.
At the base of the towers the campus was deserted in the early dark. Lights had come on against the electric blue dusk, higher up in the student rooms, where there were floor-length windows. Gill saw a figure hunched over a desk halfway up the nearest one – sixth, seventh floor? – push back the chair and stand suddenly, stretching. Looking out down the hill towards the town where more lights twinkled. It looked almost welcoming from up here.
In the cold, grey piazza the fountain dribbled and spat and the low-lit student bar was empty, except for a tattooed girl wiping tables. It was still only just after five and Gill had time to kill. A bit early for drinking, but the sun was no more than a distant glow inland, and to the east the estuary was dark. Gill knew which tower held the music department, and drifted that way, quickly past the windows of the admin office, although its blinds were down and the lights were out behind them.
At the base of Tower Three, she hovered, diffident, monitoring movement. Across the piazza she could see the light on in Matthew Webster’s office but she didn’t want to be early. Never look desperate. The campus wasn’t quite deserted after all, figures came out and flitted quickly across the chilly space between the big buildings, heads down in the wind, disappearing back inside as quickly as they had emerged. It wasn’t a place to hang out, not in November. Perhaps summer was different, though Gill couldn’t imagine it.
Something moved from out of the shadows, lumbering, a big, awkward shape she couldn’t quite work out straight away, and then it came into focus, a gangly boy lugging some big instrument. Cello? Bigger than that, double bass maybe, though Gill was ignorant, still, maybe wilfully not wanting to be in his world, of orchestral instruments. The boy held a card to the entry panel and as the door opened she was behind him, holding the door for him, so helpful. He didn’t make eye contact as he mumbled thanks and Gill hung back, pretending to look at the noticeboard as he waited for the lift.
There was a handwritten page pinned up. Dr Carmichael will not be available this week. No more than that, no explanation, no signature, no substitutions.
The lift door shushed behind the boy and his coffin-sized instrument. What a pain, lugging that thing around: Gill, with not a musical qualification to her name though she’d had her share of misspent youth on the dancefloor, felt a grudging admiration for the sheer physical effort. Their world was different, wasn’t it? A secret language, listening for different sounds, their private music playing in their heads. And the rehearsal rooms, with doors closed against the philistines. The chippy kids like Gill. She took the stairs.
Carmichael’s office was on the fifth floor and Gill was wheezing as she got there. A little lobby with two upholstered chairs in it and an engraving of Beethoven or someone. It was warm up here: stuffy, even. Although Carmichael’s door was locked, of course, it had a glass panel in it, and she could look inside. The room was dark but a wide window was uncurtained and there was a gleam from somewhere, an invisible moon. It looked neat, not as though anyone had left in a hurry. There was a view out across the estuary.
They installed glass in the doors and open-plan offices for student protection. Gill knew very well what steps educational institutions had implemented, and why. The institutions themselves liked to keep it all very vague, very positive: they didn’t talk about what might or might not have happened, why certain staff had taken early retirement, they just talked about student welfare, and openness and feedback.
So Anthony Carmichael had to put up with an office anyone could peer into, at any time. No green baize here, no sandstone college room with double doors for extra privacy. She bet he didn’t like that much. But he had a job, didn’t he? A job where people covered for him when he got bored and headed off somewhere where more reverence was paid to him perhaps, and where the doors didn’t have windows in them. He had a job, when he should be in prison.
The little lobby felt stifling suddenly, the stiff mustard-coloured fabric on the chairs, the rug, and Gill pushed her way back out on to the concrete stairwell and down. There was an institutional smell here, and the cold air whistled up from the ground, but she could keep moving.
She’d talked to the police, over the years, she’d talked to teachers and social services and the body that provided police checks on all those working with young people. There were still so many cracks for them to fall through, though. Children’s brains didn’t work like hers, like the standard reasonably adjusted adult brain. She had seen that in the half dozen victims she’d seen, girls hiding in their rooms, skinny adolescents crushed into a corner of the settee in their mum’s sitting room, under the framed photographs of them holding the instrument, blank and awkward. They could be moulded, they could be lied to, they believed in stories.
Gill clattered on the stairs, in a hurry now. Uneasy. She was a storyteller herself. She’d lied, hadn’t she? She’d lied only this afternoon, more than once, to get what she wanted. Carmichael’s cleaner had been a tougher nut to crack than an English blonde in a backstreet boutique, rushed off her feet, even if she did have a few instincts left, a wariness, a nail bitten down to the quick on one hand. A bit late to be wary of strangers once you’re pregnant. Too much to lose.
And then Gill was outside, in the damp, cold, fresh air, breathing it in in great gulps. Rose Hill was nothing like its name. It was dark and cold and windswept, it was concrete and glass. Suddenly across the piazza students were crowded into the bar now, in the twenty minutes that had passed the place had filled up. There was light and warmth in there but Gill couldn’t go in again. It would be to draw attention to herself and she needed to take this carefully.
A girl broke off from the crowd, opened a door and came towards her. Bottle-bottom glasses and a centre parting, hair fluffy in the wind. Gill had ten minutes before she was due to meet Matt Webster, and she waited for the girl to come to her.
Chapter Twenty-One
In silence on the way back they didn’t mention it: just her and Carrie side by side, staring ahead through the windscreen into the dark. They talked about Finn, and it shifted in Bridget’s head, further and further back. The flashy little black car incongruous on the back street; the seaside town’s high street decked with union jack bunting, celebrating freedom: a place he’d never have gone, with the windfarm and the charity shops.
‘He’s turned out so lovely,’ said Carrie with wonder. ‘Little Finny.’ They’d got past Rose Hill, and were descending towards the town that twinkled against the dark estuary. This must be how you do it, thought Bridget, just don’t look round. ‘I hope that girl looks after him. Whoever she is.’
‘She’s got to,’ said Bridget, indicating, turning into the close. Her Finn. Their safe little place, houses at their neat respectful distance, all with lights on now. Only downstairs at theirs, so she calculated Matt still wasn’t home. ‘He’ll be all right, won’t he?’ she said, coming to a halt. She turned off the engine.
> Carrie turned in her seat to look at her, sardonic. ‘You mean with a pair of screw-ups like you and Matt for parents?’ She shrugged, shoving the door open with her shoulder. ‘Well, you never know. He might overcome his disadvantages.’
The table was laid, at the centre of it a vast salad with everything Finn had found in the fridge, it looked like: peppers and onions and lettuce, and chunks of grilled tuna. He peered round the door from the living room, proud and sheepish at once.
Carrie was already leaning over the table to filch a bit of tuna with grubby fingers and they both descended on her at once, slapping her away.
‘Where’s Dad?’ said Bridget. Carrie had got herself a beer, rooting in the drawer for the opener, and was off for the living room. They heard the TV come on.
Finn shrugged. ‘You told me he was going to be late,’ he said. They both looked at the kitchen clock together: it was just after eight. It was a long time since Matt had been home anything like that late.
‘I’m going to have a quick shower, then,’ said Bridget, to cover the silence, and he just nodded, giving her the Finn frown that no longer told her anything, if he was happy, or sad, or worried, that just covered his thoughts. Did he sense anything? Was she different, to him?
She showered in five minutes flat then left the water running as she dialled Laura’s number.
It took six rings for her to answer, but she sounded bright when she did, and determined.
‘Bridget.’ She used the name as if she was announcing it to someone else.
‘Just checking timings for tomorrow, you’re in at eleven, right?’ said Bridget. Clearing her throat. ‘Everything OK?’
There was a tiny intake of breath before Laura spoke. ‘Oh yes, yes—’ Then she broke off and there was a man’s voice in the background, muffled. Bridget didn’t like that: what kind of person interrupted someone when they were on the phone? She didn’t like it.
She didn’t like her own anxiety either, though. It was as if everything was getting tangled up: her and Laura; her and Carmichael; Laura and Nick. And if she got too involved she might give herself away.
But still. Nick had made Laura have sex. That hadn’t been her imagination, that hadn’t been Bridget projecting anything. Maybe he hadn’t known she didn’t want it. Maybe it was a one-off, maybe he’s a good guy, maybe it will settle down.
It was still rape.
If you say it over and over. Carmichael gone, nothing to do with her, the world should be a safe place after all.
It was still rape.
‘You need to ring that helpline,’ she said. ‘You’re frightened. He could do it again.’
And Laura was speaking again, her voice calm and level. ‘Sure, that’s fine. I’ll open up again if you like.’ Was that an answer? Maybe it was all the answer she was going to get.
‘OK,’ she said, hesitant. ‘As long as you’re sure you’re OK.’ A pause. ‘With that.’
‘See you tomorrow morning,’ said Laura, and hung up.
* * *
When Bridget got back downstairs towelling her hair Matt still wasn’t home, Finn was on the sofa with his feet up, and Carrie was outside, on the phone. Bridget could hear an intense mumble advancing and receding as if she was pacing up and down in front of the living room window. Bridget looked inquiringly at Finn as she plumped herself down next to him. ‘Ella, I think,’ he said. ‘She’s been out there ages.’
‘You OK?’ she asked and his head dipped a little towards her, leaning on her shoulder. He nodded against her. ‘Let’s eat, then, shall we?’ she said, resting her chin on his head, smelling his boy smell. ‘I bet Dad’ll turn up the minute we start.’
Carrie came back in as they were sitting down. She looked miserable. ‘Sorry,’ she said, pocketing her mobile. ‘That was Ella.’
‘What is it?’ asked Bridget. Carrie just shook her head, and pulled the salad towards her. Bridget looked at her sister’s shorn head, bowed over the plate, the sharp angle of her white chin. Wishing she could just beam Carrie back to Ella, get her out of all this. But that didn’t look like it was on the cards.
Their plates were still full when Bridget heard the sound she’d been waiting for, and felt something inside her that had been running too fast subside, at last. The creak and rattle of the garage door, up, then slowly down.
She didn’t know if Carrie or Finn noticed that Matt had been drinking, but she did, before he even came in. It might not even be much, just something fractionally off about his footsteps down the side of the house, the rattle of the door handle, the way he looked around the room and smiled as he came in, setting his backpack down inside the door.
Beer: she smelled it as she leaned up to kiss him. ‘Look what Finn made!’ she said.
It wasn’t that he was pissed, nothing like. It was probably just one beer: that would be his limit. But one wasn’t normal.
Matt smiled, tiredly, and sat. ‘Thanks, Finn,’ he said, but he was pale and preoccupied. They ate quickly: Carrie recovered herself enough to praise Finn’s cooking and talk to him about the game they’d been playing together, and Bridget stood quickly to clear, ushering them out so Finn wouldn’t notice how little they’d eaten. He seemed eager to return to his computer, anyway, a quick squeeze round Carrie’s shoulders and he was on the stairs back to his room.
As she put the leftover salad in the fridge she heard Matt go up after him, slow and weary and for the first time since she’d met him, for the first time in almost twenty years, she was afraid to follow him.
Carrie just nodded from the sofa when she put her head round the door, raising another beer to her lips, Arnold Schwarzenegger on the screen popping muscles. ‘’S’all right,’ she said, tipping her head back. ‘Don’t worry, sis.’ The glaze of booze over her.
All right. As if.
The light was already out and Matt a humped shape on his side, unmoving. Bridget took off her clothes and slid into bed beside him, her hair still damp, everything suddenly unfamiliar. Her own body, on the verge of trembling because she didn’t want to get it wrong. To give anything away.
‘Are you OK?’ she whispered, her hand creeping over his chest. He made an indistinct sound: his back was to her. Always lean, he felt skinny to her now. She laid her cheek against his back: she could feel the beat of her own heart, too loud, but came closer anyway. Raised his T-shirt and pressed her breasts against his bare back. His hand came up quickly and took hers across his body: not asleep, then, or anything like it.
A murmur from Finn’s room across the landing as he talked online. Downstairs the TV sound, the thumping crash of film explosions.
It would be safer to do nothing: safer to pretend to sleep, as he had been doing. But Bridget put her mouth to the back of his neck, she breathed his smell, familiar with an edge of something new. The beer, or something else, a sharp sour smell. Kissed the delicate skin, pressing closer to get back to what she knew, to Matt’s sweet smell, of sweat and soap. At his chest she extracted her hand gently from his and moved it down, across his abdomen: she bypassed his cock, not daring. She stroked his thigh, down between his legs where she felt him warm and strong, and he moved. This was new. Rhythmically she stroked, she knew this was deliberate, but she didn’t want it to be calculating, she wanted it to be them, to be theirs: she wanted love.
But if she got it wrong.
Her fingers feathered between his legs and then, moving a little she felt his erection, surprising against her wrist, hot and hard. She made a sound, in spite of herself, and with the sound he moved with sudden, quick ease and was over her. He was inside her. Not rough but determined, and saying nothing: this was different. Matt always said something. All right? Is that – do you? They always did this to be in touch with each other. But this was the opposite: she could only hear the regular pant of his breathing, quite separate from her, telling her nothing.
Her Matt, the Matt she knew who was so safe and kind and good.
She had started this. Had she thought it would lull
him, quiet him? That wasn’t what was happening. And then as she was on the verge of panic something else happened: he thrust hard into her, so hard he grunted and she came, gasping loud before she could stifle it. He paused for just a second and then he came too, with his own sound that she knew. They hung there a second, his face over hers in the darkness. Then he rolled off. She stayed in stunned silence for a heartbeat, another that stretched into minutes waiting for him to say something. Then she realised he was asleep.
Numbly she understood what this meant. It wasn’t just for her that things had changed. Matt was different too.
Her Matt. Safe and kind and good.
Listening to him breathe in the darkness with weird detachment Bridget turned the thought over that there was something wrong with them, her and Matt both. Had it always been going to come out like this, because she was damaged? But her body disagreed. It hummed with pleasure, a steady warm feeling. From downstairs came the crackle of gunfire on the TV, music rising, and somehow it all receded, her head motionless on the pillow, her thoughts diffused to nothing.
Sometime later she heard the front door, a soft click and after that small sound the house fell quite silent at last. She slept.
In dreams things came to her, she imagined whole scenarios unspooling, the man from the boat club by the quarry, the girl in cleaner’s overalls on Carmichael’s doorstep. A man called Timpson, peering in through the window of her shop with his hands cupped either side of his face.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Saturday
Matt was beside her on his back with an arm flung across his face, dead to the world and Bridget was sitting upright beside him, barely awake but her mind already spinning, spinning.
He’d be at home all day: the thought set up a hammering. If they hadn’t got rid of the body, if they hadn’t taken the car last night – Matt at home all day, pottering about, in and out of the garage, he would have found something.
What We Did_A gripping, compelling psychological thriller with a nail-biting twist Page 21