Keep You Close

by Lucie Whitehouse

  Marianne’s face had stopped the words in her mouth. She’d never seen her look like that before, not when she’d had a bout of real flu in the Lower Sixth, not even the afternoon of Seb’s party. She’d been feverish, wild-eyed. White.

  ‘What have you done, Rowan?’ she said. ‘What have you done?’ She was trembling. Shaking.

  ‘Mazz, come and sit down. You’re going to give yourself a heart attack.’

  ‘Get your hands off me!’

  A shadow shivered across the patterned glass behind her: someone on the pavement, only feet away. They must have seen her frenzied knocking – what had they heard?

  ‘Tell me it wasn’t you, Rowan. Please,’ she begged. ‘Tell me it was an accident – that it’s all just an outlandish coincidence. Say it wasn’t you.’

  Rowan looked at her, confused. She seemed really to be asking. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said slowly.

  ‘Tell me,’ her voice was rising, ‘that you didn’t go to that boat and …’

  ‘Quiet! The neighbours.’ She glanced to left and right as if they might even then be listening. ‘I thought it was what you wanted.’

  Marianne’s eyes widened and she shrank away, pressing back against the wall. ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘But it was. I was with you – we went there together, remember? You made me go with you.’ She lowered her voice again. ‘The gas tank, the stove. Your drawing – I …’

  ‘It was a fantasy, Rowan. A way of … expressing the anger, getting some of it out. A vent, not a … a plan.’

  ‘But it was a plan. A good one: it worked. It’s early days, obviously, we’re not out of the woods, but everything they’ve said on the radio makes it sound like they think it was an accident, just like you thought.’

  Marianne stared.

  ‘Mazz, look: all I did was go there and turn on the gas on the cooker. One knob. It was so simple – that’s why it worked. She came home, turned the light on … I did it for you because it was better like that, safer: I don’t have a motive. Who would suspect me? It’s perfect.’

  Marianne started to cry and Rowan felt the stirrings of impatience. ‘Come on, I know it feels bad at the moment but it’ll pass. Lorna’s gone and it’s all going to get easier. Your dad will get over it and forget about her like he always does and everything will be fine again. He and your mother will be happy and …’

  ‘You’re insane.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve gone mad,’ Marianne said. ‘You’ve lost your mind.’

  ‘Oh, just stop it. Pull yourself together.’ Her voice was stern and decisive, calm in the face of Mazz’s unexpected inability to deal with the situation. Rowan had thought she was tougher than that. ‘You can’t pretend this was nothing to do with you.’

  ‘But it wasn’t. It wasn’t,’ she sobbed.

  For the first time ever, Rowan felt a stab of contempt. Contempt, for Marianne – even in the moment, it was shocking. ‘Don’t be a coward,’ she said. ‘She was going to destroy your family so you made a plan to get rid of her and it worked. You should be pleased.’

  When Mazz spoke again, her voice had changed. The panic and disbelief were gone and in their place – ridiculous – was fear. ‘You’re a monster,’ she said.

  ‘I only did it for you.’

  Marianne shook her head. ‘This is nothing to do with me – nothing. It’s about you. What would you do without my family, Rowan? Without my mum and dad pandering to you, saving articles for you out of the paper, taking you out, feeding you? Is that why you stayed in Oxford to do your degree? I can’t think of any other reason – there was nothing else to keep you here.’

  The words had cut her. ‘I love them.’

  ‘No, you don’t, you’re not capable of it,’ Marianne had thrown at her. ‘You’re … damaged. Fucked up. You’re a murderer, Rowan.’ Her voice was rising again. ‘Do you even understand what you’ve done? You’ve killed someone – killed.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, keep your voice down,’ she’d hissed. She took a breath, tried to think. One of them had to keep a clear head if they were going to make this work.

  ‘Do you think my family would want anything to do with you if they knew what you’d done? Do you? Do you?’

  Rowan had felt the first breath of cold air, the gust of wind before the door slammed shut. She saw suddenly that there was another way this could all go wrong.

  ‘What you have to ask, Mazz,’ she said carefully, ‘is how the police would see it. A jury, come to that. Would anyone – apart from you, it seems – think I had a reason to want Lorna out of the way? I really doubt it. You, though – watching your parents’ marriage break up, your mum going to pieces … And the drawing is so obviously yours. No one else draws – could draw – like that.’

  Marianne looked as if she were about to vomit. ‘Where is it? The drawing – where is it?’

  ‘I’ve taken it. I’m going to look after it until I’m sure I can trust you to keep your mouth shut. I’m going to keep it safe.’

  —

  Except in the end, after a decade, she hadn’t. Of all the stupid, stupid mistakes to have made. If everything fell to pieces now, she had no one to blame but herself.

  What if Adam hadn’t been driving yesterday when Cory called him? What if Cory had told him about the drawing, Marianne’s plan for Lorna’s death? It would have changed his view of his sister forever, torn his world apart.

  And what if Cory had told him more than that? Her heart made a strange double beat, two punches against her chest wall. Cory’s lie about the call had confirmed it: he was still digging. Compromising as her story had been, as much damage as it could have done her, he still hadn’t believed it. He’d still thought there was more. How much had he discovered?

  She’d been right to do what she’d done; the proof had come almost immediately. Before pushing his body away from the bank, she’d searched his pockets. His phone was locked and of course she had no idea of his code but as she’d held it, it had vibrated in her hand like a frightened mouse. A text message appeared on the blank outer screen:

  J Spelman

  Hey Mikey. Looking 4wd to Tues. Usual spot? Btw, asked re yr friend Rowan but Jon P didn’t know her. Sure it’s Queen Mary? Maybe diff college within uni? xJ

  When she turned off the studio lights, Rowan had the fleeting impression of herself as a mother; Marianne the child she was leaving curled up in bed. Good night, sleep well.

  No more mistakes. Everything depended on meticulous attention to detail now. The moment she’d picked up the stone, she’d felt her brain shift gears. She remembered what Marianne had said about the times she knew she was doing her best work, how the world became brighter; everything was relevant. It was as if her senses had sharpened. The temptation had been to take the phone with her, destroy it, but no, she’d calculated at once that it would look suspicious if it were found elsewhere. The water would ruin the handset, buying her time, but whether they found it or not, the police would be able to get Cory’s data. She’d tossed it into the river. The stone was much heavier, it travelled only ten or twelve feet, but she’d thrown that in, too.

  As she’d made her way through the undergrowth along the bank at the meadow’s edge, staying below the eye-line of anyone walking a dog or looking out of a window in the houses across the field, she’d felt like a fox, keen-eyed and pricked of ear, nose alive to every new scent in the air.

  She’d come out on Bedford Street, headed up to Iffley Road and then into town. The walk back to the house was several miles but it had been safer than taking a taxi with a driver who might remember her or a bus with a CCTV camera and a timed ticket. She’d had to leave Cory’s car where it was. It would attract attention, a Mercedes like that abandoned in an empty car park, but that was still preferable to the risk of being seen driving it. And where would she have taken it? Plus, if his death was going to look like an accident, his keys were better in his pocket. When the body was found, the police wou
ld use someone with knowledge of the river to work out where he’d most likely gone in and the location of the car would help confirm it. Everything had to add up.

  Down in the kitchen, the washing machine was still churning away with her jeans and shirt and socks. The trainers, drying on top of the radiator, emitted a smell part pond-water, part hot rubber. They were dark so their wetness hadn’t drawn attention on the way back but when she’d taken them off, her feet had been clammy and deathly pale, rubbed sore at the heel. She hadn’t felt a thing while she’d been walking.

  As she turned them over, her own phone vibrated with a text from Adam: Wish I could teleport myself to North Oxford this evening. Tomorrow … The familiar buzz was tempered this time by a new awareness of how much she had to lose.

  She made a cup of tea, lingering in the window for Martin’s sake while she waited for the kettle, then went upstairs to Seb’s study. After Cory had gone that day he’d broken in, she’d taped up Marianne’s drawing carefully and brought the box here. She couldn’t risk putting it back in the wardrobe where he could have gone straight for it again, but here in the study, on the stack of other boxes and packs of printer paper at the side of the desk, it was hidden in plain sight. She should have kept it here all along. She slid it out again now and put it on the desk. Then, finding the drawing and Marianne’s card, she carried them to the bathroom.

  She dropped the card into the basin and took the matches from her pocket. Marianne’s heartbeat handwriting pulsated up at her from the basin. I need to talk to you. Rowan felt a flare of anger. This was all her fault. If she hadn’t felt the need to talk, to start unburdening herself to Cory and digging into a past that had lain peacefully for ten years, none of this would have been necessary. Marianne had made her do what she’d done today – she’d left her no choice. With another burst of fury, she remembered how she’d prevented her going out with Adam years ago. Well, not this time, not twice. Opening the box, she struck a match and, in the mirror, she watched it burn. When it was almost at her fingertips, she dropped it onto the card. A dark circle ate Marianne’s words, then burst into flames. They flared and died in seconds; Rowan turned on the tap and washed the embers away.

  She picked up the drawing and dropped it in. She paused to look at it one last time. Thousands of people – hundreds of thousands, probably – would look at Marianne’s paintings and drawings in years to come but only she and Michael Cory would ever see this one: the barge, the fire licking out through the shattered glass, the prow window filled with the tiny agonised face.

  The crunch as the stone hit his skull … As Rowan had gone through his pockets, she’d been struck by the enormity of it. Two minutes earlier, he’d been alive, talking to her – lying to her – and then he was dead, face down in that icy water. It had been easier last time, less personal: there’d been no physical contact, she hadn’t even had to see Lorna, just check the windows were closed and turn on the gas. And this time, she’d had to do the whole thing on her own; whatever Marianne claimed afterwards, really, last time, they’d done it together.

  Looking up, she caught her own eye in the mirror and felt a burst of painful longing. I need to talk to you, Mazz, she thought. Despite all this, Cory, the trouble, I really wish I could talk to you.

  She’d missed her so much over the years; every time anything had happened – whenever she’d met someone or been promoted; when she’d had to leave the BBC – it had been Marianne she’d wanted to tell. She’d made do with talking to her in her head, imagining what she’d say. And of course, once a year at Christmas as she had posted her card, she’d let herself hope that this would be the year she’d get one in return.

  She’d tried very hard to keep the lines of communication open. Despite the state Marianne worked herself into that afternoon at Vicarage Road, she’d finally managed to make her see a degree of sense. ‘What would people think?’ She had asked her. ‘How would it look if suddenly, after all these years, you and I stopped being friends the very same day your dad’s girlfriend died? Think, Marianne – try to be logical. The police are going to find out they were having an affair, there’s no way it’s going to stay a secret. Everything’s got to look as normal – as uneventful – as possible.’

  She’d seen the reason in that, at least, but the burden of carrying it out had fallen almost entirely on Rowan. In the fortnight that followed, during those horrendous days when the police seemed to circle Fyfield Road like vultures, Marianne had sequestered herself in her bedroom and left Rowan to keep up appearances, drinking tea and talking to a shell-shocked Jacqueline in the kitchen or sitting upstairs watching black and white films while Seb worked his way through a bottle. Jacqueline’s reaction had taken Rowan by surprise; she should have been relieved, at least.

  At first, Rowan had had sympathy for Seb. He’d loved Lorna, after all; it would take a while to come to terms with her being gone. But if anything, as the days passed, he’d got worse, not better. In those first two weeks, she’d been to the house five times and, though Jacqueline had tried, surreptitiously removing the bottle or clearing his glass away to the dishwasher, he’d only ever really been without a drink when the police were there.

  And then, a month after Lorna died, Rowan had bumped into him in town. It had been a Saturday afternoon, she remembered, she’d texted Marianne to see if she could go over but, when no reply came, she’d decided to walk up to Waterstones. She’d needed to get out of the house: there were viewings lined up. Her father had made a big song and dance about how he wouldn’t sell Vicarage Road until she’d finished her degree – her ‘home base’ in Oxford, he’d managed to say with a straight face – but a fortnight to the day after she’d sat her final paper, he’d called to say he was putting it on the market.

  Books bought, she was thinking about heading up to Fyfield Road anyway when she’d seen Seb coming round the corner of St Michael’s Street. He was one of those people who appeared sober long after anyone else would have been on their knees but even so, she’d seen straight away that he was drunk out of his mind. He was weaving along the pavement, lurching left and right in his exaggerated efforts to avoid people coming in the other direction. As he got closer, she heard him talking to himself, not words that she could make out but a sort of highly inflected mutter punctuated with emphatic stops. His hair was dirty and one side of his denim shirt was soaked. As she’d stepped into his way, she smelled the booze at once.

  ‘Seb.’ She put a hand out, touched his arm.

  It had taken him a moment to recognise her but then he’d thrown his arms around her. ‘Rowan!’ The hug turned into a lean and she’d staggered a little with the effort of supporting him. ‘I was just at the pub. Come and have a drink with me.’ He’d turned and scanned around. ‘This way. The Three Goats’ Heads – just round the corner.’

  ‘Why don’t I take you home?’ she’d said. ‘You look a bit …’

  ‘No, no, no, don’t you have a go at me, too. I just want company. That’s all. Company and a drink. Is that too much to ask?’ Taking her arm, he’d started pulling her in the direction of the pub and, trying to think, she’d gone with him. What should she do? Call a cab and take him home herself? Or call the house and tell Jacqueline? There was no point calling Marianne’s mobile; she wouldn’t pick up.

  As they’d approached the pub, however, a large man standing on the pavement outside to smoke a cigarette had seen them and started shaking his head. ‘Sorry,’ he’d said to her, ‘I’ve told him already: he can’t come in. He’s wasted, isn’t he? We can’t serve people in that state.’

  ‘Fascist,’ Seb had muttered.

  ‘What was that, mate?’ The barman had taken a long pull on his cigarette and looked at him, stony-faced.

  ‘You’re a fascist. Why do you have power to decide if …’

  Over his head, she’d mouthed an apology. ‘I’ll take you home, Seb. Come on, we’ll get a cab.’

  But with a sudden burst of energy, he’d pulled his arm away. ‘No. I do
n’t want to go home. I want Lorna. I want Lorna.’ Like a petulant child crying for its mother, he’d burst into tears. She’d watched, stunned, as he’d stumbled back in the direction of Cornmarket. Weeping audibly, he’d fallen against the wall of Austin Reed and slid slowly to the pavement.

  The barman had been watching, too. ‘Do you need a hand?’ he said. ‘I can phone you a cab, help you get him in?’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, ‘but don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.’

  She’d waited until he’d gone back down the stairs into the pub then walked to where Seb had by then been sitting, legs straight out in front of him like a ragdoll. She’d gone down on her haunches. ‘Come on, Seb,’ she said. ‘Pull yourself together. For Jacqueline. For Adam and Mazz.’

  He’d looked at her, bleary-eyed. ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Pathetic,’ said Rowan, and the look in his eyes said he agreed with her. She’d left him there.

  When he’d had his accident, Marianne had blamed her. She’d never explicitly said it – she hadn’t talked to Rowan for a month by that point other than to tell her to get lost whenever she went to Fyfield Road to try and sort things out – but she hadn’t needed to. The afternoon that Rowan had gone to the house and found the police car on the drive, the door open, she’d felt it in the air before she’d even seen Marianne’s face. It wasn’t my fault, she’d wanted to say to her, I didn’t make him drink, I didn’t force him to get in the car, he was weak, he didn’t deserve all this – you – he brought it on himself. But she knew it would have been pointless. By then, Marianne had stopped listening. She’d tried that one final time, the day Mazz had made Turk choose between them, when she’d shrunk from Rowan as if she were a monster, and that was it, the last time they’d seen each other.