by Nicci French
He held open the door and I sat in the passenger seat but didn’t close the door in spite of the chill. I sat there and listened to the wind in the trees and felt Todd’s strong fingers rub the back of my neck. A few yards away, the officer was examining the car Holly had nearly died in. We could see the strong beam of his torch moving around its dark interior. For a while neither of us spoke. At last the officer left the car and went slowly back to the house, a pool of torchlight marking his way. He was wearing white gloves and carrying something I couldn’t identify, something that flapped, like a rag or a small piece of cloth.
‘One day,’ I said at last, ‘we’ll look back on this and it will seem like a dream, something that happened to someone else.’
We watched as the same police officer came out of the house and walked towards us.
‘I’d like you to come with us,’ he said, when he reached my open door. ‘There’s something Mr Carter would like you to see before we take him to the hospital.’
‘I want to go to the hospital too,’ I said.
‘Please come with me.’
We followed him back to the house and into the living room, where the glass from the smashed window still lay in gleaming shards on the floor. Charlie was sitting in an armchair, his legs splayed apart and his head at a funny angle. He looked half dead with exhaustion, and when he glanced at me his expression didn’t change.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘what’s this thing we’re supposed to see?’
‘There was a note,’ said the older officer. He looked at me kindly.
‘What?’ I said.
‘We’ve examined the car. There was a note on the seat beside her. It clearly announced her intention to kill herself.’
‘That’s not possible,’ I said. ‘It’s a fake. I want to see it.’
‘Show it to her,’ said Charlie.
The officer stepped forward, removed a piece of paper from a transparent folder and laid it on the table. I recognized Holly’s flamboyant handwriting as soon as I saw it. We used to joke about it. She was left-handed and wrote with her hand curled up as if she were trying to stop anyone reading it. It was always hopelessly illegible. After years of experience I was one of the few who could decipher it. I often had to act as an interpreter.
‘We could hardly read it,’ said the officer.
‘I can,’ I said, with a sigh. I leaned over. It was a short message, just a couple of lines. The paper had been torn across and the words were written close to the top, as if she had begun what was intended to be a long message, then just stopped, with nothing left to say. ‘I’m so sorry,’ it said. ‘So very very sorry. I just want all this to stop. Forgive this, my best and truest friend. All my love, Holly.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘This isn’t true. There’s something wrong.’
I felt Todd’s reassuring hand on my shoulder. ‘This is a mistake,’ I said. ‘Something’s happening. I don’t understand.’
‘You did the right thing,’ said Todd. ‘You saved Holly’s life.’ He looked over at Charlie, and spoke fiercely. ‘She did, didn’t she?’
Charlie’s face was frozen, like a mask. He looked at the police officers. ‘I would have got back,’ he said. ‘I would have saved her.’
‘You’re a liar and a murderer.’
‘Please take your girlfriend away,’ said the police officer to Todd. ‘She’s distressed.’
Without saying any more, Todd led me out and we got into the car. He put the key into the ignition. Before he turned it, he leaned over and kissed me. ‘Ready?’ he said softly.
‘Wait,’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘There’s something,’ I said. ‘Something… I can’t… it’s…’
‘Meg–’
‘Shut up. Sorry. But shut up for a moment.’
I held my head, pressing tightly on my temples. Something was coming. I knew it was coming, but I didn’t know exactly what it was. I thought of that moment standing on the platform in the Tube in London when a train is due. At first you don’t hear anything. You feel it. A breath of warm air from the tunnel, a few scraps of paper lifted and blown forward, and the train is still half a mile away. There was something in my head and I couldn’t quite get at it. And then I could. Yes. Yes.
I pushed my hands into the pockets of my jacket, the one I’d been wearing over the last few days. Yes, it was there. I didn’t even need to look at it. I could see it without looking. ‘I’ve got to go back in,’ I said.
‘No, Meg, don’t be ridiculous.’
‘I’ve got to.’
Todd actually ran after me. I think he thought I had gone crazy and he may even have made some attempt to stop me, but I shrugged him off. When the officer opened the door, it was clear from his expression that he was not in the least pleased to see me. They were about to leave. Charlie still had his coat on, the grieving husband, all ready to sit at the bedside. The note was still lying on the kitchen table.
‘Miss Summers, did you forget something?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I remembered something.’ I looked at the police officer. ‘You found the note?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I thought we were done.’
‘You found the note?’
He gave an impatient sigh. ‘That’s right.’
‘Where did you find it?’
‘It was on the passenger seat,’ he said, with some irritation.
‘It was her suicide note.’
‘Yes.’
‘But not for this suicide.’
There was a pause.
‘What do you mean?’ said the officer.
I took the torn-off slip of paper from my pocket, the one with the phone number on it, the one I’d found under Charlie’s desk. I joined the slip to the note on the table. It fitted perfectly.
‘“Meg, my dear and loyal friend”,’ I said. ‘That note was written to me.’
‘What the hell is this?’ said Charlie. ‘This is rubbish.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ I said. ‘Holly told me she’d written a note to me when she attempted suicide but the note was never found. I assumed it got mixed up in all the chaos and lost. But it didn’t. Charlie kept it. You kept it,’ I said, looking directly at him. ‘It was your Get Out of Jail Free card, wasn’t it? Whenever you got round to staging Holly’s suicide, you just had to leave that note – of course with my name torn off – and no questions would be asked. But now it does the opposite. It proves you did it.’
There was a long silence. Very delicately the officer took the note by the edge, then my fragment and placed them in the folder.
‘Do you hate her that much, Charlie?’ I said.
Charlie looked up. ‘Hate her?’ He sounded almost as if he were talking to himself, dazed and tormented and listening to the sound of his own words as if he could barely understand them. ‘I’ve been clearing up after her for a year. I’ve been sober when she’s drunk, I’ve dealt with the people she’s fucked around. Or just fucked. She used to say she’d do anything for me, and she meant it. But what did she do? She spent all our money and then she spent money we hadn’t got and then she gambled a bit more away just for fun. Every day she did things which if I’d done them just once I would… Well, I don’t know how I could get over it. She’s done to me what my worst enemy couldn’t have done. When I met her I was somebody, and in everything she’s done since then she’s stamped on that. She’s destroyed everything I was, everything I thought I was good at. Hate? Love? I don’t know the difference any more, Meg. They’re just words, after all. I just wanted it to end. I couldn’t bear it any more. I wanted to be set free to be myself again.’
I felt any pity ebb away, replaced instead by a kind of disgust: Charlie had enough pity for himself.
‘Mr Carter,’ said the brawny police officer, ‘at this point I need to warn you that anything–’
‘Let me see her,’ interrupted Charlie.
I turned towards Todd. ‘Let’s go,’ I said.
Hand in
hand, we left the room.
40
I heard a voice, a voice I knew, and I stood quite still, letting the memories from that time flood through me.
‘I’ll take these white roses, please,’ was all that she said, but I knew at once who it was.
It was a Friday afternoon in September, one of those gloriously crisp blue autumn days, warm in the sunshine and chilly in the shadows, where summer and autumn meet. I was in Soho, buying things for the party, taking my time, relishing the smells and sounds all around me. I had stopped in front of the flower stall and was hesitating between the bronze chrysanthemums and the freesias. My mind was on a host of other things – the cheese stall, the fruit stall, the people who hadn’t replied to the invitations yet, what we were going to eat for supper, the headline about a far-off volcanic eruption I’d just glimpsed in someone else’s newspaper – but as soon as she spoke those six words everything disappeared and I was back in the story that I had thought was over for good. Almost reluctantly, I turned round.
I hardly recognized her. She was wearing a thick pink tweed coat and black suede boots with narrow toes and spindly heels. Her hair was longer and straighter. Her clear skin glowed. Everything about her looked expensively and self-consciously chic. She was not like a nurse with an overdraft. But there were her strange, pale brown eyes, staring at me over the flowers. For a tiny moment, I saw a flicker of alarm or hostility, but she forced her mouth into a smile.
‘It’s Meg, isn’t it? Meg Summers.’
‘Naomi,’ I said. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m well. At least, as well as can be expected. You don’t get over something like that in a hurry, but I told myself I had to be strong and move on, not be dragged down, not be his victim too. It was awful, wasn’t it?’
Now she was looking solemn and sad.
‘I tried to contact you,’ I said. ‘Afterwards.’
‘Did you? If only I’d known. I couldn’t stay in that place, though. I’m sure you understand. I had to get away.’
‘Can I buy you a coffee?’
‘Well, I would have loved that, Meg. Another time, perhaps, and we can catch up on everything but today I’m in such a hurry and–’
‘It won’t take long,’ I said firmly. I put my hand under her elbow and practically forced her off the crowded street into the nearest cafe´ where I ordered coffee for me and herbal tea for her. We sat at a table near the large plate-glass window. With the sun shining straight in on us, it felt oppressively warm so I took off my coat, but Naomi remained firmly buttoned into hers.
‘How’s Holly?’ she asked. ‘I would have gone to see her but I thought it would be too painful for her. I heard that she’s better, that she’s back at work.’
I wasn’t going to give her even a whisper of information about Holly. ‘Have you heard from Charlie?’ I said instead.
‘Charlie? No. He sent me letters from prison at first but I didn’t open them.’ She shuddered. ‘You don’t think I’d want anything to do with him after what he did to Holly and me, do you?’
‘What did he do to you?’
‘He used me. He betrayed me. Can you imagine how I felt when I discovered? The man I loved and thought I would be with for the rest of my life.’
I didn’t reply and there was a long, painful silence.
‘I know what you told the police about me,’ she said. ‘It was understandable. You were upset. That was only natural. I know you’ve always adored Holly. Hero-worshipped her, even. I’m sorry, Meg. My relationship with Charlie might not seem… The fact is that I pitied him. I thought he was a man at the end of his tether. I thought he needed help. And I let myself fall in love with him.’
‘Charlie got seven years,’ I said. ‘That means he’ll be out in four or something ridiculous. If I’d arrived five minutes later, he’d be in for fifteen. When I drove up from London and pulled Holly out of that car, I didn’t just save her life, I saved Charlie from eight more years in prison. And when I asked you if you knew where Charlie and Holly had gone, you looked me in the face and said no. Because you knew what Charlie was going to do and you knew he needed time.’
‘That’s not true.’ Naomi took a pair of gloves from her bag and pulled them on, finger by finger.
‘What I want to know,’ I said, ‘is if you ever wake up in the middle of the night and think about it.’
‘I sleep fine, thank you.’
I thought she was going to leave, but then something occurred to her and she leaned forward. ‘Do you ever think about this?’ she said. ‘Everyone was doing fine until Holly came along. Charlie was fine. He was a good, kind, talented man and he was happy in his life until he met her. Now he’s serving a prison sentence for attempted murder. That woman Deborah was a successful career woman. Now she’s lost her job, her flat and most of her sanity, as far as I know. Her boyfriend, Stuart, I read about his trial in the local paper and how Holly behaved as a witness, charming everyone. Still the same old Holly, eh? Stuart only got a suspended sentence but he’ll always have a record because of her.’
‘Not entirely because of her, surely.’
‘No one was bad before they came across Holly. No one was violent or wicked. They were all ordinary people getting on with their lives. They were just unlucky that they were in her way, like being in the way of a tornado. And I was unlucky too.’
‘You look as though you’re doing all right now,’ I said.
She looked at the ring on my finger. ‘I can see that you are too,’ she said. ‘Congratulations. And snap.’
She held up her left hand and I saw a glistening of gold.
41
Todd left the arrangements for the wedding party in my hands. ‘I want whatever you want,’ he said.
I wasn’t quite sure whether to be utterly charmed by that or just a little bit irritated. I decided to be charmed. I was quite clear about what I wanted. I wanted it to be nothing at all like a KS Associates event. It wasn’t going to be like a fun-fair or an SAS assault course or the carnival in Rio or the Glastonbury Festival. It was going to be a chance for our friends and family to gather from the corners of the globe and talk and eat and drink and wish us well.
I had some moments of concern about Holly’s role in all of this. She had been my witness at the register-office wedding – how could I have chosen anyone else? –and I’d been a little nervous about that as well. I needn’t have been. She was perfect. She didn’t arrive by parachute. She wasn’t dressed as a harlequin. She wore a short blue dress and a pillbox hat with a veil, and she looked demure and almost as happy as I was. She insisted on arranging the lunch after the ceremony for the small group of us, Todd’s family, my family, his best friend, Francis. It was perfect, a Spanish restaurant in a small street round the corner where they cooked fish and steaks on an open fire and served too much wine in jugs. At one point in the meal I looked at her chatting to one of my cousins and thought, Well, why not? and she caught my eye and I blushed and she giggled.
She had ideas for my party. She couldn’t help herself. She knew some spectacular places. One of the towers of Tower Bridge. A huge glass-fronted room overlooking Oxford Street. An old weaver’s workshop in Spitalfields. A canal barge. A closed-down Underground station. The biggest bouncy castle in the entire world. She knew a clown, a magician, a juggler, a hurdy-gurdy man, a puppeteer from the Transvaal. They all sounded wonderful, she was wonderful, but I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘This is my day and I want absolutely nothing to worry about. There aren’t even going to be any speeches. Todd made me promise. It’s going to be a grown-up party. People can drink and people can dance and nothing at all can go wrong.’
‘What about food?’ she said, and she started talking about a chef she’d met who did something involving every single bit of a pig.
‘Todd’s parents are arranging all that,’ I said. ‘They insisted.’
‘I just want to help,’ she said.
‘But you’ll ask first?’ I said. ‘I mean, before helpi
ng.’
I worried that I might have upset her but she laughed and gave me a hug.
∗
One of Todd’s friends had a house in Hackney with a large garden that backed on to an even larger garden. There was a gate between them that could be opened to make it into one, improbably large, secret walled city garden, and that was where we held our party. The girls in the office worked on it for a whole day and when I arrived I almost burst into tears. There were garlands of flowers hanging from the branches of trees, and wind chimes tinkling in the breeze and candles everywhere, their soft light growing stronger in the dusk.
There’s so much else to say about the party. About how I was worried whether anybody would come, and how I was then worried about whether there was enough to drink, and in the end about whether anyone would ever leave. About how I saw my whole life there in that walled garden, from people I hadn’t met since I left primary school to people I saw every day by the coffee machine, from ancient great-aunts to old boyfriends. About how I saw a cross-section of Todd’s life, people I would get to know properly over the next months and years, people I would like because he liked them. About meeting Todd’s previous girlfriend, who irritated me by being almost six feet tall and then even more by being rather nice, and then soothed my ego by being with a new boyfriend who was clearly, at even the most cursory glance, much less attractive than Todd. But those are other people’s stories and this is still a story about Holly.
I mustn’t give the impression that I was worrying about her all the time because I didn’t need to. Starting again at work had taken enormous courage. She was right back at the bottom of the hill and she had to climb it wearing concrete boots. So much damage had been done. There were clients who came back but quite a few didn’t and we had to go out in search of new ones, and even some of the new ones had heard strange rumours on the grapevine. And I could hardly believe it but she had done it: she had got down and dirty and done the grindingly awful work of getting KS Associates back on its feet.