Friend Request

by Laura Marshall

  ‘I told her I’d remembered something from the leavers’ party, something that might help her, suggested we go for a walk outside to talk about it properly. She was desperate for answers, couldn’t agree fast enough. I said…’ His voice falters. ‘Louise, you have to understand, I only did what I did because I needed to protect my family. I didn’t want my children to have a father who was in prison. I didn’t want this one bad decision I made when I was sixteen to ruin their lives. I couldn’t let that happen.’

  I nod vigorously, desperate to appear supportive.

  ‘I said we should walk down to the woods where we couldn’t be overheard,’ he goes on, his voice quieter now. ‘It was really quite cold by then, so we got our coats, and I put my hands in my pockets, and I could feel that there were gloves in there, so I put them on, just to keep my hands warm, you know?’

  Oh God. Poor Sophie.

  ‘We walked down the path to the woods, and I was still hoping that she would leave it alone, still trying to think of something I could tell her that would satisfy her curiosity. But then she started saying we should tell the police, and… that was when I panicked, Louise. Why did she have to drag the police into it? I couldn’t have her telling the police about seeing me with Maria that night, could I? I couldn’t let this one mistake ruin the rest of my life, my children’s lives.’

  ‘So you…’ I whisper, not able to finish the sentence.

  He puts his face in his hands.

  ‘I didn’t mean to. Didn’t want to. You have to believe that, Louise.’ His voice is muffled, the sound only just escaping between his fingers.

  ‘But all those years… you let me believe that I was responsible for Maria’s death… you encouraged me to keep it a secret too.’

  I can see now with frightening clarity how much it suited Sam, encouraging me to feel guilty, not to tell, all the time subtly reinforcing the idea that what I had done meant that no one else could ever understand me, or love me. He didn’t want anyone poking around in the circumstances of Maria’s disappearance any more than I did. He needed to keep me close, and to keep me quiet.

  I look now at this man who I loved for so long, who I still love, the father of my child. It’s as if someone has twitched away the veil I have kept so carefully suspended between me and the reality of what he was becoming after Henry was born. I worked so hard to pretend to myself that things were OK, but now I force myself to face the truth. Motherhood didn’t turn me into a prude. It was Sam who changed, not me. He resented the time and love that Henry took from me, and the energy that I poured into making my business a success, and so he pushed harder, needed more. He pulled me ever further down the road that led away from the fantasies we had played out together, games that I can’t pretend I hadn’t enjoyed, towards something darker, more sinister. Something real. Is that what happened with Maria? Did she do what I never did? Did she say no? I have to know, I owe it to her. I can feel the chain that binds me to Maria stretched taut between us. She deserves to have somebody know the truth about what happened to her.

  ‘What happened, Sam? At the leavers’ party?’ I try to sound matter of fact, concentrating on steadying my breathing, keeping my voice low.

  ‘I wanted to tell you so many times, Louise. You have to believe that. But I couldn’t risk losing you and Henry.’

  But you threw us away, I want to say to him. If you were so scared of losing us, why did you leave us?

  ‘I saw her fall, so I ran down the path and took her hand to help her up. Told her we’d walk a bit to clear her head. She was panicking, clutching onto me, didn’t know what was happening to her. We took the path through the woods. It was darker in there, the moonlight couldn’t reach us and she held me even closer in the darkness.’ The words are rushing out of him now, as if they’ve been waiting inside his mouth for years, locked up, squirming to get out.

  ‘I talked to her about other things,’ Sam goes on. ‘Tried to take her mind off how she was feeling. We came out of the trees and walked down to the cliff edge, the sound of the sea crashing against the bottom of the cliffs. We sat down. I started to stroke her hair, just gently. She was enjoying it, all her senses were heightened anyway because of what you had given her. She tipped her head back, and I stroked the side of her neck, like I had done to yours earlier.’

  I can see Maria, her throat white and exposed in the starlight. Moonlight dancing on the water, the taste of salt in the air.

  ‘She turned to me then, her pupils huge, asking me why she felt like this, saying she hadn’t had all that much to drink. I knew why, of course, but I couldn’t tell her.’

  Oh, Maria, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

  ‘And then I leaned in and kissed her. She kissed me back at first, she really did, Louise. She wanted it. You have to believe that.’

  I want to believe it, to believe him.

  ‘And then… we were lying on the ground, me on top of her, and she… she was wriggling, trying to get out from under me, but I thought… I thought she was enjoying it. I thought it was a game. Like with you, later, you know? Just pretending.’ Yes, like me. But I had lost track of where the pretending began and ended.

  ‘So I carried on.’ Sam’s words bring me back to the room, back to myself. ‘She wanted it, I’m sure she did. The things she’d done – you heard about it, didn’t you? We all did. She was trying to push my hands away, but it was a game, it must have been because in the end she stopped and let me do it.’

  I think of Maria, so small and slight, surely no more than eight stone in weight, pinned beneath Sam who was nearly six foot by the time he was sixteen. No wonder she stopped fighting, all alone on the cliff, the roar of the waves drowning out her screams.

  ‘And then afterwards, I thought she would lie there for a minute like I needed to, to compose myself. But as soon as I rolled off her she scrambled to her feet, pulling her dress down and staggered off in the direction of the school. She was all over the place. I ran after her, asked her where she was going. She said she was going to tell everyone what I’d done to her.’

  Even though I know with a creeping sense of dread how this story must end, a small part of me rejoices at this tiny act of defiance.

  ‘What I’d done, Louise? What about what she’d done? She went down there with me. She wanted it as much as I did. But then she started going on about her wrists and her mouth, she said there were marks and blood. I hadn’t meant to hurt her, of course, but sometimes there would be marks, wouldn’t there? On you? It didn’t mean you hadn’t wanted it.’

  I remember a girl I used to work with noticing a weal on my wrist once and asking me about it. Unprepared, I stammered something about burning myself on the oven. She looked at me strangely and avoided me ever after.

  ‘I told her no one would believe her, not with her reputation, but she just walked off, and then she started shouting ‘Rape!’ at the top of her voice. She was walking into the woods, shouting it over and over again. I ran after her again and this time I stood in front of her and took hold of her arms. I said it wasn’t rape, she had to stop saying that word, but then she spat in my face and called me a rapist, asked me if I knew what they do to rapists in prison.’

  I want to weep and rage and cheer at her strength.

  ‘And that was when I knew she meant it. She was going to tell, no matter how bad it made her look, no matter whether anyone believed her,’ Sam says. ‘And even if they couldn’t prove it, there would be people who would never look at me the same way again. That would have been it for me, Louise.’ His voice breaks, tears threatening. ‘It would have been the defining event of my life, always and forever the boy who was accused of rape. I couldn’t let her do that to me, Louise, couldn’t let her ruin the rest of my life. You see that, don’t you?’

  I am so used to believing him, so used to seeing him through his eyes rather than mine, that I am almost sucked in, lulled by his version of himself: the innocent victim, falsely accused, terribly wronged. But he’s telling me this at the
wrong time. If he’d told me years ago, before he cheated on me and left me and our son, when I was still under his spell, I might have believed him, felt sorry for him. I might even have understood. But I have seen unbearable pain in a mother’s eyes, and a golden heart on a slender chain. I have taken off my blindfold.

  ‘I had no choice; you have to believe me. I couldn’t have her going around saying these things about me. I had to… had to make her… be quiet.’

  Oh, Maria, forgive me. I think of Bridget, the pain of what she thinks happened to Maria etched on her face. Finding out the truth will finish her. But, of course, I realise as I look at Sam next to me, she’ll probably never find out. I think of Sophie’s broken body. I know what happens to people who know too much about Sam.

  ‘It took a long time, longer than I thought.’ His voice is small, and again I am reminded of Henry confessing to a childish crime – stealing sweets from the cupboard or breaking an ornament he wasn’t supposed to touch. ‘But in the end she was quiet. I couldn’t leave her there, so I decided to try and get her over to the edge of the cliff. It had started to rain by then and she kept sliding out of my arms – I was shaking so much, and she was so heavy. But I managed to get her there in the end, and lay her down on the grass. I was crying by now, Louise, really sobbing, so I nearly didn’t see.’

  He stops and takes a swig of wine, the glass slipping between his fingers, his face covered with a light sheen of sweat.

  ‘As I knelt beside her, I saw something that nearly changed the whole thing: her eyelids flickered. She was still alive.’

  Ice floods my veins. He had been given a second chance, and even then he had not taken it.

  ‘I looked out to sea and thought about the rest of my life, and what it would be like if I stopped now, ran back up to the hall, called an ambulance. It would be OK at first, I could say I’d found her like that – I’d be the hero. For a while. But then I thought of her face as she spat at me; when she woke up, I knew that the first thing she would say would be that lie again: rapist.’

  I clutch the sides of my chair. All the years we spent together, our wedding day, the heartache of IVF, the joy of having a child, it’s all been swept away. I had thought that him leaving was the worst thing he could do to me: ruining everything, wiping away all our previous happiness, sullying my memories of our time together. How wrong I was.

  ‘I could see her necklace glittering in the moonlight, winking up at me. I had this idea that it could identify her, if they found her body much later, that it would still be there, around the… the bones of her neck…’ His voice peters out and he covers his eyes with his fingers, rubbing them as if trying to erase the memory.

  ‘So I took it off and put it in my pocket,’ he continues, his eyes still hidden.

  My God, Sam has had Maria’s necklace ever since. Where did he keep it? I shiver at the thought of it, that I could have come across it by accident at any time, clearing out a drawer or rummaging at the back of the wardrobe.

  ‘And then I… pushed her over. She… I couldn’t see very well, but I heard the splash as she hit the water. Then she was gone.’

  The tides must have been his friend that night. Maria’s still out there somewhere, just bones now, or what’s left of bones when they’ve been in the sea for all that time. My God, I let her down so badly.

  He looks up, eyes pleading.

  ‘I couldn’t have people thinking those things about me, could I, Louise? I don’t know if anyone would have believed her, but mud sticks, doesn’t it? I couldn’t go through the rest of my life as the one who was accused of rape. Nobody would ever have looked at me in the same way again.’

  I think back to that night: I remember speaking to Sophie, to Esther; I remember Bridget arriving, the revelation that Maria was missing. But what I realise now is that Sam wasn’t there. He wasn’t there when I was dancing, oblivious to everything except the beat of the music and the chemicals surging through my bloodstream; he wasn’t there when the lights came up; he wasn’t outside as Mr Jenkins took Bridget to the office to call the police. No, he was weaving his way through the woods, through the rain, sodden and mud-soaked; running through Sharne Bay, keeping to the back streets, until he reached the safety of that little house on Coombe Road; he was taking off his clothes and shoving them into a bin bag; he was showering until the brown water streaming off him ran clear.

  Sam reaches out and strokes my hair, entwining the strands around his fingers, a chilling reminder of our previous intimacy. I sit motionless in my chair, desperately trying to order my thoughts.

  ‘But… Nathan Drinkwater… why…?’

  ‘I had to find out who was sending those Facebook messages. Sophie called me after you went to her flat, told me about the friend request from Maria, and your visit to her flat. Why didn’t you come to me, confide in me?’

  I shrug as if I’m not sure, but I know why. I was trying to make sure his strong fingers couldn’t reach into my life any more. I didn’t want him to assume the role of confidante, take charge of my life again. I wanted to deal with it on my own.

  I think of that day with Pete in Dulwich Park, and of my dark suspicions when Esther told me she’d seen him with a woman and a baby. I had just assumed that if Pete was lying to me about his domestic situation, he could be lying to me about something else too. If only I had known that I was looking for Nathan Drinkwater in entirely the wrong place.

  ‘I thought that whoever had set up the Facebook page must have known the truth about what I had done,’ Sam goes on, the words coming thick and fast now, as if he’s been waiting for a chance to confess. ‘I needed to find out who it was. I figured that if they cared enough about Maria to set up this whole Facebook charade, then the name Nathan Drinkwater would make them sit up and take notice. Matt Lewis’s cousin had told us all about Nathan and I’d never forgotten his name. And I was right, of course; she couldn’t resist a message from Nathan. I just didn’t know until tonight that it was Bridget. When “Nathan” told her that he knew something about the night of the leavers’ party, and that he had something to show her, she couldn’t agree fast enough to meet him. I didn’t tell her what it was, this proof. I wanted to wait and see who I was up against before I showed anyone the necklace. It was her suggestion to meet at the reunion, around the side of the school. So I waited, but no one showed up. When I realised no one was coming, I went back inside. Dropping the necklace in the woods was a mistake. I still don’t know how it happened. It must have fallen out of my pocket in the… scuffle. It was only later that I realised it was gone, and it was too risky to go back and look for it.’

  I know why Bridget didn’t show. She bumped into her son, who assumed she was there to make trouble or to torture herself even further by looking at the class of 1989 who made it to adulthood, and he persuaded her to leave. Thank God he did. I wonder with a shiver what Sam was planning to do to whoever showed up, if they had. In his version, what he did to Sophie and Maria were desperate acts, a pair of terrible mistakes borne out of sheer panic in the heat of the moment. This is who he is, the man I married, the father of my child. Up until now it has been that which has horrified me, that the man I loved could do the things he has done. But he arranged to meet Bridget in cold blood. That was no mistake, no temporary moment of madness. I can see him now, standing in the full glare of the truth, outlined against it in stark relief. And I am afraid, not just of who he is and what he has done. I am afraid of what he is going to do next.

  Chapter 40

  2016

  My whole body is tensed, like a bow drawn, ready to fire. Every fibre of my being is on alert, not only trying to work out my next move but also listening for Henry, terrified that he’s going to wake and come into a scene he’ll never be able to leave behind him. I daren’t even think about the other possibility, the one where he never gets a chance to remember. With Henry asleep in his room, Sam has me trapped here as effectively as if he had tied me to the chair with iron chains.

  Sam u
ntangles his fingers from my hair and I struggle not to flinch as he runs his hand briefly down the side of my face.

  ‘I remember when we first got together,’ he says. ‘I used to wake in the night sometimes to find you staring at me like you were trying to imprint my face permanently in your brain. It was so easy, being with you, especially after the years before. I’d never been looked after the way you looked after me, cared for me. I was the centre of your world. And we were happy, weren’t we? But when Henry came along, I can’t pretend it didn’t change things. I got shifted out from the centre, replaced. I was left hovering somewhere around the edges, peering in. I loved Henry, of course I did, but I didn’t love what he did to you, to us.’

  Tears start in my eyes for the first time tonight. I knew things had changed after Henry was born. Once the obligatory six weeks were up, Sam had expected things in the bedroom to return to normal. Except what he wanted to do wasn’t normal, even for us. It was as if someone had flicked a switch in his brain, and the games we had played before were no longer enough for him. It was as if the illusion of hurting me no longer satisfied him. He wanted to see real fear in my eyes.