by Tim Weaver
‘Thanks for calling back. How are you?’
‘I’m fine. I hope it’s not too late?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, not at all. I’m sorry it’s been so long.’
‘It’s fine. I mean, it’s lovely to hear from you.’
‘How are you? How are Mick and the kids?’
‘Yeah, we’re all good, thank you.’
‘That’s great.’
I asked Tanya a little more about her husband, about their kids, about where she was working these days, and then said, ‘Listen, I’ve been going back over a few things.’
‘Okay.’
‘Would you mind if I asked you a couple of questions?’
‘Sure.’
‘About Derryn.’
‘Oh. Okay.’
I cleared my throat.
‘You, um …’ I stopped. ‘You remember the funeral?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course I do. What’s up?’
‘Do you remember anything unusual about it?’
‘Unusual? Unusual how?’
Unusual like I imagined the whole thing, or there was no body in the coffin, or Derryn told you to play along with whatever I said because I was ill.
‘Unusual how?’ Tanya repeated.
‘The, um …’ The funeral definitely took place, right?
‘David?’
‘Do you remember where we held it?’ It wasn’t the question I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t ask that because it made me sound utterly insane.
‘Yes,’ Tanya said. ‘The funeral was in Holloway. What did you mean by “unusual” earlier?’
‘I was just, uh …’ I ground to a halt again.
‘No,’ she responded, starting to sound concerned. ‘No, I don’t remember anything unusual. It was a terrible day, I know that.’ A pause. ‘Is everything okay, David? Is there anything I can do to help?’
‘It’s fine,’ I said, trying to sound unruffled.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. Everything’s fine. I just …’ I faded out.
‘Just what?’
‘When was the last time you saw her?’
A long pause this time.
‘Are you sure everything’s all right, David?’
‘Fine,’ I said again. ‘Honestly. I just have some questions. Some things I need to square off.’
‘Okay,’ she said, but didn’t continue.
‘So when was the last time you saw her, do you think?’
‘I don’t know. A few days before she died, maybe.’
‘And you and Mick popped by a lot after the funeral, right?’
‘Of course we did. You were our friend – are our friend.’
‘I seemed okay? I mean, other than the obvious.’
‘What do you mean, “okay”?’
I mean, was I sick? In denial? Was I grieving for an empty box? Did I really have a condition where I believed Derryn had been replaced by some kind of twin?
And was everyone in on it but me?
‘I know I was grieving,’ I said, ‘but was Derryn actually …’
I stopped. Was Derryn actually what?
Dead? Was I really going to ask her that?
I stared at the television screen, at Derryn’s face. I knew Tanya best of any of Derryn’s friends, and she was probably going to be the most patient and least judgemental of anyone I might think to call. Yet alarm bells had already started going off in her head, so how could I phone around anyone else – people I didn’t know as well and wouldn’t cut me as much slack – and ask them these kinds of questions?
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said finally.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely,’ and I started to wrap the conversation up.
Tanya said she’d call me sometime soon, that I should come over for dinner with her and her husband, but afterwards, as I sat alone in the silence of the living room, all I could think about was how I must have sounded to her; how the lies being told about me, and about my wife, had got into my bloodstream, lodged so deep that I’d become irrational.
I turned back to the television, studying Derryn’s face, and then ejected the first tape and slid in the second. I could see that this video was from much later on. A date in the corner read 25 December 2008.
The Christmas before she died.
She didn’t know that then; neither of us did. We’d just got back from the US in the November, and she wouldn’t find out that the cancer had come back until the following April, so as I filmed her in the kitchen of our house – the house that we’d barely had a chance to live in – she was dancing around in front of the oven, a party hat on, checking on the meat. She had no idea she was on video, her shoulders swaying from side to side, the radio playing Christmas songs from the worktop.
‘Ho, ho, ho,’ I said from behind the camera.
Derryn looked around and broke into a huge smile.
‘How long have you been there?’ she asked.
‘Long enough.’
‘If you filmed me dancing, there will be beatings,’ she said, and came towards me, mock-threatening me with a baster. ‘You didn’t record me dancing, did you, D?’
D. My heart started to hurt.
‘No,’ I said onscreen.
‘Liar.’
‘Wait, was that dancing you were doing?’
‘Ha ha, very funny.’
I came further into the room and put the camera down on the worktop, then grabbed her by the shoulders and brought her into my chest. She pretended to try and wriggle free but eventually gave up and, although we weren’t perfectly framed and I hadn’t left the camera at an ideal angle, it was good enough. I shuffled us both around to face the lens and told her to wave to the camera.
‘Merry Christmas, dance fans,’ I said.
She gently slapped my stomach. I kissed the top of her head. And alone in the dark of the living room, as I watched it play out nine years on, I started to cry.
15
Just before midnight, something woke me.
I’d been sleeping lightly, despite feeling exhausted, and as I lay there, I’d been aware of noises from inside the house: the tick of the central heating; the hum of the fridge in the kitchen; a vent in the en suite that snapped open and closed whenever the wind picked up. But the noise I heard wasn’t any of those.
I sat up in bed, tossed back the duvet and grabbed a T-shirt. Slipping it on, I went to the bedroom door and looked along the hallway. The house was dark: my office was on the left, the spare bedroom was to the right, and at the end was the living room. There was a cloakroom off that, in a narrow cove between the living room and the kitchen, and an amber pool was coming from it, cast through its small window by next door’s security light.
I checked the spare room and office and then moved through to the living room. To my right was the TV cabinet, sofas and a back door, leading out on to the rear deck. In front of me were the sideboard and the dining table, one of the chairs askew where I’d not pushed it back under. My notes were spread out on top – I’d been too drained to tidy them before bed – and my laptop was still charging.
I padded through to the kitchen, went to the sink and poured myself a glass of water, trying to see what had set off the security light. Our row of houses backed on to a footpath that ran north to south, and about five minutes’ walk away was a giant swathe of allotments. That would occasionally bring animals in – field mice, shrews, badgers, most often foxes – with the braver ones straying beyond the sheds and vegetable patches to the gardens and driveways along here. Often, in the days after Derryn died, I’d sit at the kitchen window in the early hours of the morning, or at the side door looking out at the drive – unable to sleep, the grief like a knot in my throat – and watch the same fox returning, trying the same tricks to get into the same bins.
But there was no fox this time. No cats, no dogs. The spaces between my house and Andrew and Nicola’s were empty, two driveways side by side, garages next to one another, our metal bins upright, our cars untouched,
their interiors dark.
I finished the water, placed the glass in the sink, and went to check that I’d definitely locked the side door. Halfway across the kitchen floor, I stopped again.
The door handle was all the way down.
I walked over and yanked it back up, resetting it. It had been stiff for a while, in need of some oil. The door was still locked, the slide bolts all in place; it was just the handle. I tried to remember if I’d used the side door at any point during the day, or since I’d got back from Chalk Farm. Could I have left the handle like that before I’d gone to Annabel’s for Christmas?
Or had someone been trying it from the outside?
I looked out to the driveway again, then out of the front window, over the lawn, towards the street. Everything was quiet. The parked cars were all ones I recognized. The same internal lights were on in exactly the same houses as always: people who didn’t sleep much, shift workers, a young couple a few doors down who’d just had twin boys. The gates to my driveway were both closed, the latch still in place. When I returned to the side door and looked the other way, down towards the rear, I could see the gate connecting the driveway to the back garden was locked up safely.
A few seconds later, the security light snapped off.
I was tired and drained, and I didn’t want to add paranoid to the list. I didn’t want to be sick – at my strongest, believed profoundly that I wasn’t – but moments like this, standing alone in the dark of my house at midnight wondering if I’d left the door handle down, didn’t help. So I made my way back along the hallway, taking a long breath as I went, trying to relax myself, then climbed back beneath the covers.
That was when I saw it.
In the space between the two curtains, where I hadn’t quite pulled them shut, the window had fogged up. I could see traces of the decking, of furniture, but they were only vague – grey hints, angles and shapes. It was what was on the outside of the window that had got my attention.
Something was drawn in the condensation.
It was a heart.
16
I got out of bed and went to the window.
The garden was quiet, the skeletal bushes closest to me shifting stiffly in the faint breeze. Further out, it was harder to see anything, the rest of the lawn shrouded in shadow, the only source of light the pale glow from a street lamp out on the path beyond the fence at the bottom of the garden. Down there, built into the furthest panel to the right, was a door: access to the path. I kept it bolted from this side, but it was too dark to see if it was still locked; too dark to see if the door was open.
Too dark to see anything but the heart.
I grabbed some clothes, hopping into some old tracksuit bottoms, a hoodie, a pair of trainers, a warm coat. When I was dressed, I looked again at the window.
The image was starting to fade.
Someone must have breathed on the glass in order to create the fog, but – when I stepped in closer – there was no hint of a smear, no trace of grease from a fingertip.
Nerves scattered across my back and along my arms, into my neck, as I moved to the rear doors, unlocking them and heading out on to the deck. It was icy, slippery underfoot, the wood creaking as I moved across it and then down the steps, on to the grass. The lawn was hard, already glistening with frost, the skies clear, the air bitter. I switched on the torch I’d brought with me, then directed it towards the corner fence panel, at the door there: everything between sparkled, as if dusted with glitter.
The door was still closed, but something was missing from it: a sign that normally hung from a notch in the wood, three-quarters of the way up. I’d bought it for Derryn the year we moved into the house, because she’d always loved being outside, had a flair for landscaping, and knew more about flowers than I ever could have learned. The sign said, THIS IS THE EXIT IF YOU DON’T LIKE GARDENING.
Now it wasn’t there.
My pulse quickened. Sweeping the torch left and right, searching the shadows that remained in the garden, I found nothing – no one waiting for me, no one hiding – and moved forward again, inching towards the door. The further away from the house I got, the more the temperature plummeted and the harder the frost became. It sounded more like glass beneath my feet, cracking and fracturing. When I got to the door, I snapped across the slide lock and opened it towards me.
Where the hell was Derryn’s sign?
It wasn’t near the door, in the grass, or on the ground anywhere nearby. Had I taken it off for some reason and forgotten to put it back up? Had I mistakenly left it in the house somewhere or out in the garage? Why would I do that? Why would I forget it?
Maybe because they’re right.
Maybe because I’m sick.
I shook the thoughts from my head, refusing to accept any of them, but as I did, I found myself glancing back in the direction of the house, looking for the heart symbol on the bedroom window, trying to reassure myself that it had definitely been there. It had disappeared now, or at least I couldn’t see it any more. Was it because I was too far away? Or was it because it had never been there in the first place? I’d been tired as I’d wandered through the house. Was it possible I’d imagined it?
I squeezed my eyes shut.
No, I hadn’t. It was real.
All of this is real.
A sound – out on the footpath.
I opened my eyes again, pinging back into focus, and moved through the doorway, out on to the narrow lane. There was nothing to my left. I couldn’t see the allotments from here, but because of the street lamp I could see enough: the path was empty, a lonely avenue of trees and identical fences.
In the other direction – south, towards the Tube station – the pathway was darker, more opaque. When the wind picked up and the fir trees lining the left-hand side moved, it seemed like the whole night was coming alive: branches shifted, pine needles fluttered, the trees rolled and lurched and shivered. And it was only when everything settled again, when the breeze had washed through and the stillness of the night had returned, that I saw it.
A sliver of white, stark against the blackness.
‘Hello?’ I said, my voice betraying me.
I took a step forward, then another, and then stopped, my heart hammering in my chest. I tried to use the torch, to spread the light further, to reveal what was waiting for me, but it made little difference.
‘Hello?’ I said again, my tone stronger and clearer, even though I felt none of that poise.
I took another step forward.
There was nothing there now – no sliver of white, no hint of colour. All I could see was blackness, a swirl of shadows so impervious it could have been a wall.
‘Hello?’ I repeated, moving forward again.
I swung the torch, trying to get a better angle on what was out there, but if it was a person, they were too far away, the beam not strong enough to reach them. I listened for footsteps, for a sign they were making a break for it – stones kicking up, spitting against the garden fences – but there was nothing. Instead, there was just the faint hum of the traffic nearby.
I carried on south – further and further along the path, further and further into the dark, the cold, the silence – but there was no one there, no hint of anyone or anything. It was as if I’d imagined it.
I stopped again.
Had I imagined it?
I thought about the heart symbol on the window. I thought about the door without Derryn’s sign on it. Now this. Another soft breeze began to roll through, coming from the north, and as the trees erupted into life again, I pushed on, passing under a ceiling of tangled branches, past endless back gates – on and on until, finally, I came to a halt.
I was following nothing, no one.
I was out here alone.
Turning around, I headed back to the house.
There was no evidence of the heart now, no hint it had even been drawn there. I stood motionless, the torch at my side, and stared at my own reflection. I didn’t like what looked back.
It was the person I always saw when I was at my lowest – pale, eroded, hunted.
I moved from room to room in the house, trying to find Derryn’s sign, opening drawers, searching boxes, and then marched up the driveway and unlocked the garage. I pulled the door up on its runners, the hinges wheezing, and looked around. I didn’t expect to find the sign because I felt absolutely certain I’d never removed it – I’d had no reason to, and I had no memory of doing it.
But I was wrong.
It was sitting with some tools on the workbench.
#0509
In the days after we first met, you asked me if there was anyone special in my life. I felt, by that point, we’d really hit it off. Our conversations were always natural and interesting, not filled with the bland patter you had to deal with from some of your other patients. With them, you’d be forced to talk about the weather, ask rehearsed questions about their family, whether they were coming in during visiting hours or not, that sort of thing – but with us it was more profound than that, almost immediately. I’m not saying we talked about politics or religion or philosophy, although we may have, but when we talked, we learned things about each other, important things; I was able to build a picture of you, and you of me, and what we had just grew out of it naturally and elegantly.
‘So is there?’ you asked.
‘Is there what?’ I replied, but I was smiling.
‘Is there someone special in your life?’
I shrugged.
‘Are you too shy to tell me?’ you said.
‘No.’
You were changing the dressing on my head. I watched you work: you were always slightly slower than the other nurses, but you were meticulous and gentle.
‘There was someone once,’ I said finally.
‘Sounds like it could be a sad story.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it is.’
We ended up talking about something else after that – the saddest films we’d ever watched – and you didn’t ask me again. For the rest of the day, I felt confused, because you not asking either meant you didn’t want to get into a conversation about my past – and you weren’t as interested as you’d made out – or you wanted me to make the next step now you knew that I was single. I didn’t want to misread the signs, but at the same time, whenever I thought of asking you to go for a drink with me, my heart would skip a beat.