The Lives She Left Behind

by James Long

  ‘A week,’ she said. ‘We’ve got a week to sort it out before my mother gets back.’ She got up. ‘I’m going to talk to him.’

  ‘Be careful. Don’t let him drag you into his world again.’

  He walked with her to the southern edge of the village then he climbed to the hilltop and she went on towards the house. When she got there, she saw two cars parked in the yard.

  CHAPTER 21

  Mike knew he had got it badly wrong as soon as Gally ran from the churchyard, but he was in a state of such complete confusion as he walked home, replaying the scene word by word, that he had no idea what else he could have said to change the outcome. There was already no room for doubt by the time she called him by his name in the churchyard. He had known who she was with a lurch of his heart as soon as she had come to his gate. Her strange new shape did not matter. The eyes were all it took, but her eyes had only shown pity and then fear at his response.

  He sat in his kitchen, hoping she would come back so much that he thought he had conjured the knock on the door out of pure imagination. He opened it to Rachel Palmer, who looked at his expression and stepped back.

  ‘Is this a bad time?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘No. Come in.’

  ‘I think we really need to talk.’ She looked grim. There was no trace of the foothold of friendliness they had established before.

  ‘You got there in time?’ he asked.

  ‘In time for what?’

  ‘For your daughter.’

  ‘Yes. Look, we haven’t got long.’ She stared at him. ‘I did leave you a message? You must listen to your machine, Mike. It was important.’

  ‘There’s been a lot going on.’

  ‘They want to interview you under caution this afternoon. They’re still trying to find the boy. They might come back looking, you know. They mustn’t find him here. Do you know where he is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’s not helping by hiding.’

  ‘I don’t suppose he’s hiding. He’s just . . . being himself.’

  ‘Himself? Well, that’s the other thing, isn’t it?’ Here it comes, he thought. She sat down at the kitchen table. ‘You left things on a pretty strange note last time,’ she said. ‘We do have to talk about that.’

  ‘Perhaps we should just pretend I never said it.’

  ‘In many ways I wish we could, but I have to deal with it because I think you meant it, didn’t you?’

  He opened his mouth to answer and closed it again.

  ‘I’ve thought about it a great deal, Mike. I want you to understand something. I have to be able to rely on you and your answers to my questions. The whole thing falls to pieces otherwise. If I can’t rely on logic, we’re both lost. Now, look – I realise it’s not uncommon when people have been bereaved for them to take comfort in believing all sorts of things they would never have considered before. There’s no shame in that. When you’ve had a great loss, you have to find ways of dealing with it. I come across it surprisingly often. Sometimes people just need to kid themselves a bit and there may be no harm in that. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘I would suggest the best way forward would be to talk to somebody about it, someone with a bit more professional experience.’

  ‘I’m very happy with you. You’re very professional. I don’t need another lawyer.’

  ‘I don’t mean another lawyer. I mean a counsellor or perhaps a psychotherapist even. Someone who would help you come to terms with everything.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t need that,’ he said in surprise.

  ‘I think you do. What are you going to say in court? If I could tell there was something odd going on, then believe me, the court will spot it just like that. What will you say when they ask why you were spending time with the boy? You can’t tell them all that stuff you told me, can you?’

  ‘But what difference will it make if I go and see someone? It won’t make any difference at all, will it? Oh, no – now I get it.’ Mike spoke in mild surprise as he realised where this was going. ‘It will, because then you’ll be able to say to the court that I wasn’t right in the head because of grief and—’

  ‘No. Stop. That’s not why I’m suggesting it. At least it’s not the main reason. Please don’t think that. I’m suggesting it for your own benefit.’

  ‘Not the main reason?’

  ‘The main reason is that it would help you. You’ve put me in a very difficult situation – you must see that. If you just go and talk to someone, I will at least have done my professional duty.’

  ‘That’s it, is it? You have to do the right thing?’

  ‘No, but I have to think about your interests and I need some firm ground to stand on. It’s really not fair to tell me something as crazy as that and then expect me just to go plodding on as if it hadn’t happened and yes, I’ll be honest, it would give us a defence of some sort, which at the moment would be a very good idea.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing to defend myself against. I’ve done nothing wrong.’

  ‘Those two aren’t the same thing at all.’

  ‘But they’ll soon see I’ve done nothing, won’t they?’

  ‘Mike, you need to understand this. I’m a big fan of the court system. I didn’t use to be before I came to sit in courts day in, day out. When I was a student I was quite sure that money talked louder than truth and that fuddy-duddy judges screwed up all the time. I thought juries were rigged and racist and middle-class and blinkered. That was before I saw the machine working. What courts are really, really good at doing is sorting out the good guys from the bad guys. They can smell someone who’s not telling the truth. They just can. If you go into court not telling the whole truth, then they’re going to know. They’re going to sniff you out and put you in with the bad guys and I wouldn’t want to let that happen to you.’

  ‘You wouldn’t?’

  ‘Of course I wouldn’t. As a client. I get some really tricky people. You’re not one.’

  ‘So you want me to see a counsellor and then you’ll be happy?’

  ‘Then you’ll be happy, or happier anyway. At least I hope you will. I’d love it if you could get your life going again instead of sitting here waiting for your wife to come back.’

  ‘Waiting for Gally? I’m not waiting for Gally.’

  ‘I’m very glad to hear it, but I don’t think I believe you,’ said Rachel, leaning over to look out of the kitchen window towards the little terrace at the back of the house. ‘Have you got a gardener?’ she asked.

  ‘No. I wish I had. It’s an awful mess.’

  ‘But I just saw someone.’

  ‘No.’

  She got up and looked through the glass. ‘There’s a girl out there, clearing up. Who is it?’

  Mike stood up, leant over the table and peered out. He saw Gally, quietly pulling out dead plants from the little terrace, and he had to catch his breath. ‘Oh. That’s – that’s the girl who’s . . . um . . . who’s come to do the gardening.’

  ‘The gardener you haven’t got?’ Rachel stared at him.

  ‘She’s new,’ he said.

  The lawyer was out of the front door before he could gather himself. He went out after her and saw her disappearing round the end of the cottage. Forcing his way through the undergrowth in her wake, he heard her voice ahead of him.

  ‘Hello?’ she said. ‘You’re working hard. I’m Rachel. Who are you?’

  As he caught up with the two of them, standing facing each other on the terrace, he heard the girl answer, ‘Oh hello, I’m Gally.’

  ‘Well, now I’ve heard everything,’ said Rachel, looking at Mike with a fixed expression of forced brightness. ‘Shall we all go back inside?’

  Gally looked at Mike. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I saw you were busy so I came round here. I couldn’t bear it. When did the tree fall?’

  He saw beyond her the long wreckage of the trunk swathed in bramble bandages and only realised then that it was he
r tree, the tree whose hollow had provided that first breakfast. He looked at her and could see her as she would be at his age. She seemed to be any age he wanted.

  Gally came into the kitchen slowly then stood, rooted to the spot, staring all around her, and her eyes filled with tears. Rachel guided her to a chair.

  ‘I’m Mike’s lawyer,’ she said. ‘I’m here to try to help because he’s in a bit of trouble. You say your name is Gally? Gally what?’

  That threw her for a moment. ‘Driscoll,’ she said in the end.

  ‘Gally Driscoll?’

  ‘Jo Driscoll. Jo for Joanna – that’s what I was christened.’

  ‘But now you call yourself Gally?’

  ‘That’s my name.’

  ‘Do you live here in the village?’

  ‘I came yesterday. I live in Devon.’

  ‘You came yesterday, for the first time?’

  ‘In a way.’

  ‘Mike’s wife was called Gally, but you knew that, didn’t you?’

  The girl nodded and tears started rolling down her cheeks. Mike stood awkwardly watching.

  ‘I’m sorry, pet,’ said the lawyer. ‘I’m not trying to be horrible. Mike’s already told me some things that I’ve found hard to take on board.’

  ‘Ferney said I should,’ Mike added quickly.

  Rachel looked from one to the other and sighed. ‘Can I ask you both a big favour?’ she said. ‘Will you just suffer me for five minutes so I can sort my head out?’

  Mike nodded and looked at Gally, who did the same.

  ‘I think of myself as a rational person,’ said Rachel. ‘If someone told me the moon was made of green cheese, I would only believe them if I could go up there and taste a bit. That’s the way I am. So I want to do a test. You should be flattered because I should simply walk out of here and never see you again, but I look at both of you and I know that would just leave me wondering about it for the rest of my life, so do you mind if we do it this way?’

  ‘I’ve only just come back into this,’ said Gally slowly. ‘This time yesterday, I was somebody else. This morning, I still knew so little. Now it’s all changed. I’ve woken up to myself. Right now, I can hardly remember being Jo but it’s still quite a shock being me. What I’m saying is I might fail your test.’

  ‘Is it all right to try?’

  ‘It might be.’

  ‘You don’t look certain.’

  Gally studied her. ‘This is a private thing. It always has been.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We mustn’t become some sort of spectacle.’

  The woman nodded. ‘I see that. Well, I’m Mike’s lawyer. I am absolutely bound by professional rules. This will stay between us unless you say otherwise.’

  Gally looked at Mike, who said, ‘I trust her.’

  ‘All right,’ said Rachel and opened her bag. She took out a pad of paper and tore off two sheets. There was a mug with a broken handle on the dresser, full of pens, pencils, screwdrivers and other refugees. She sorted out two ballpoints that worked.

  ‘Gally, you sit there. Mike, you sit over here. I’m going to ask you some questions and I want you both to write down the answers without saying anything. All right? Okay. Oh God, I hope this is a good idea. First one. Mike, I remember you said you and Gally first saw this cottage together. When was that – nineteen or twenty years ago? You must have driven here. What sort of car did you come in?’

  Mike thought, nodded, and wrote something down. Gally just stared at Rachel.

  ‘Can’t you remember?’ said Rachel kindly.

  ‘I’ve never been good on cars,’ the girl said.

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘I can remember the colour and what we called it. I think I know what it was.’

  ‘Write that all down. Mike, you write down the colour and whatever name you called it, if you know.’

  ‘Oh yes, I know,’ said Mike and started writing again.

  ‘All right,’ said Rachel. ‘Now, I also seem to remember Mike said you met Luke here. No – I suppose I don’t mean Luke, I mean Ferney. Can you describe what happened and maybe what he was wearing?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Gally. ‘That’s easy.’

  ‘Is it?’ said the lawyer. ‘Is it indeed?’

  ‘What else?’ Gally asked when they had both finished writing.

  ‘Let me see what you’ve written. Then I’ll know if there’s any point in going on.’

  She took the two sheets of paper, read Gally’s first and raised her eyebrows, then she read Mike’s and as she did so, her whole posture changed. She stared at his page, then at Gally’s, then sat down at the table.

  ‘Now I wish I hadn’t started this,’ she said. ‘Well, here we go. Mike. You said the car was a Ford Orion. Gally said it was a dark blue colour with black seats and you called it Humphrey and it might have been a Ford. Mike, you added that it was blue and that you called it Humphrey.’

  ‘An Orion,’ said Gally. ‘Yes, that’s right. I said it was a three-star car. Like Orion’s belt? It always smelt of cigarettes.’

  Rachel stared at her.

  ‘What about the second one?’ Gally asked.

  ‘Oh. The second one. We have a car called Humphrey, and we still need a second one, do we? All right. Gally, you said you were looking round the house and you’d just seen there was water filling up the cellar when Ferney came in. He was wearing a tweed suit and a green tie. Mike, you say you were in the kitchen, looking down the steps at the flooded cellar when you heard him walk in. You asked if it was his house, and he said, “No, not now.” You think he was wearing an old-fashioned jacket and a tie.’

  ‘Is that close enough?’ asked Mike.

  ‘Oh, I should think we could say that,’ said Rachel. ‘Yes, at some risk to my sanity, I think we could say that. I suppose there is just an outside chance that you two are much more devious than you seem.’

  ‘How would that work?’

  ‘Well, casting around for some sort of logic, I suppose I’m starting from some of the very few things you’ve told me. You could have worked up something around that just to fool me.’

  ‘You can ask us about anything else you like.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You believe us?’

  ‘You’re not devious. More important perhaps, I might prefer to keep a little bit of space in my head for my rational mind to reject this later on when it all seems further away, if that moment ever comes.’

  ‘And you’ll keep it to yourself?’ asked Gally nervously.

  ‘Dear girl,’ said Rachel, ‘I most certainly will. In fact it’s rather the other way round. If you ever dare tell anyone I took part in this conversation, I will hunt you down. It’s more than my professional life is worth. Are you going back to Devon?

  ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘So where are you staying?’

  ‘I’ve been camping,’ said Gally. ‘With friends.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘I’ll . . .’ Gally looked at Mike and then around at the kitchen. ‘I don’t know. We’ll sort it out.’

  ‘If either of you should see Ferney, he needs to ring the police.’ Rachel wrote down details on a sheet from her pad and held it out towards them. Gally took it and Mike looked at her sharply.

  ‘I must go,’ said the lawyer. ‘I’ll pick you up for the interview, Mike. It won’t do to keep them waiting. They’re still taking this very seriously.’

  She turned to Gally. ‘I’m going towards Mere. Do you need a lift anywhere?’ she said, as if it might be better for her not to stay.

  ‘No. I need to talk to Mike. It’s all right.’

  Mike followed her to her car. ‘Do you still want me to go to a shrink?’ he asked as he opened the door for her.

  Rachel studied him. ‘Is that a joke?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘I’ll be back in two hours. Be ready.’

  Back in the kitchen, he found Gally wiping the worktop.

  ‘You don’t need to do that,’ he sa
id. ‘There are more important things.’

  ‘It’s sticky.’

  ‘You’ve seen him then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘Did angels sing? Did bands play?’

  ‘Don’t.’

  There was a silence. ‘Is there any Jif?’ she asked.

  Mike opened a cupboard, looked vaguely inside and fished around at the back. He held out a plastic bottle. It was ancient, encrusted with a stalactite dribble of whatever was left inside.

  ‘How long’s that been there?’ Gally asked, then realised she knew exactly how long and that this domestic conversation in the house they had inhabited as man and wife was a bad mistake.

  She put the cloth down and washed her hands under the tap.

  ‘Mike, I hurt you back there by the church.’

  ‘Not as much as you hurt me before.’ He felt like a bully as he saw her flinch. ‘Do you know what you did?’

  She held out both hands as if to push his words away. ‘There’s a lot I can’t reach yet.’

  ‘It’s pretty fresh in my memory,’ Mike said flatly. ‘Let’s sit down next door.’

  ‘I know it is.’

  In the sitting room, she went to the mantelpiece and took the framed photo in her hands and stared hard. ‘Me and you,’ she said.

  ‘Our wedding.’

  She nodded and picked up the photo next to it with her other hand, looked from one to the other and sat down as if her legs had given way. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Please, no.’

  ‘You and Rosie.’

  She laid it face down on the table, her eyes averted, and he felt uncomfortable and unsure of how to deal with her distress.

  ‘We don’t have children,’ she murmured.

  ‘You and him?’

  ‘Me and . . . him. It just leads to trouble.’

  ‘Rosie was ours,’ he said as gently as he could.

  She took a deep breath. ‘I’ve seen the grave. I can see what happened. I don’t know quite how.’

  ‘Poison. The coroner called it an accident.’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘Come on, Gally. You did it. You should know.’