A police car was sitting directly opposite with its lights off. As we paid the fare I heard the door of the police car slam and, heart lurching, I watched two officers make their way towards us. Jake turned to me for reassurance, information, whatever. I wasn’t able to give him any. When they reached us, one of them introduced himself as PC Simon Ramilles, ‘Can we come in?’ he asked in a solemn voice which told me it wasn’t a question.
The WPC followed him up the path and gave me a pitying smile as I let her in. Once in the living room I sat down and tried to focus to stop the room spinning. From the kitchen I could hear the sound of the kettle boiling and Jake crashing about, opening cupboards to find mugs and tea bags and sugar.
The moment before PC Ramilles spoke stretched out for so long I thought it would never end. A suffocating silence bore down on all of us. Finally, perched on the edge of the sofa, with his hands clasped together, he took a deep breath and told me that they had found a body.
Brighton’s mortuary looked like a seventies chalet bungalow with a carport fixed on to the side as an afterthought. Inside a synthetic blue carpet lined the floors of the waiting room. Cheap paintings of the sea and the beach hung on the wall. They looked like they’d been picked up at a car boot sale.
An elderly woman offered me a cup of tea as if tea had the power to make everything better. But tea can’t prepare you for being taken into a side room with red velvet curtains and flowers and being cold, so cold you think you might never ever feel heat in your bones again. It doesn’t prepare you for what you are supposed to say when they remove the cover and you see a person that you once knew but who is now grey and waxy and still. So still it’s like they’ve never been alive. Like you only imagined the life they led. I looked at the toes first, which were yellow but blue underneath the nails, and then slowly up the legs, which were thick and strong and lifeless, and to the groin, a source of pleasure once, now flaccid, limp. The chest where I’d lain, where a loud heart once thumped out. And then the face, that beautiful face I first saw almost two years ago. It wasn’t you, was it, Clara. It was Jonny. Cold and dead and gone forever.
They’d asked me to identify him at Sandra’s request. She couldn’t bring herself to do it. To see her baby, her boy, lying there like that. His hopes and future cut short on a slab in the mortuary. She was waiting outside, with a cold cup of tea. And when I came out she looked, a begging look that will haunt me all my life, pleading with me to tell her something I couldn’t. That it was a mistake. That it was some other unfortunate soul in there. I have never wished that I could do something so much. Instead I shook my head and held her as she crumbled in my arms.
Chapter Fifteen
IN MY NOTEPAD I still have the words I wrote down when I was told how Jonny died. My handwriting is unsteady and would be illegible to anyone but me. I think I can see the words without actually reading them. Their imprint will stay in my mind for the rest of my life.
I remember the WPC, our family liaison officer, relaying the details softly softly with her head cocked in sympathy, looking at Sandra, then turning to me and saying a million times over, ‘I understand, I understand.’
She told us that Jonny’s body was found not far from Preston Park in a wooded area which ran off a path. It had been covered for days, they presumed by heavy snowfall, until Monday when it melted and a dog walker came across it.
‘When we found his body, he wasn’t wearing a coat, just jeans and a T-shirt. It was minus six over the weekend.’
He was out there alone and needing me and now he was gone.
I told them Jonny would never be that stupid, he wouldn’t have just got drunk and fallen asleep. ‘He was supposed to be flying out to Afghanistan the next day.’
Sandra was sobbing next to me. The WPC took her hand and gave me a look that said, This isn’t helping.
‘I understand it’s a traumatic time,’ she said again, as if she had just seen the person she loved most, cold and blue on a mortuary slab.
On the train back to London I sat alone, staring out of the window as the empty, frozen countryside zipped past. Daylight was falling; a dark gloom settled over the carriage. I wondered: what if the sun never rose again; if the world stopped turning on its axis and we were forever trapped in this grey half-light. Would the trees and plants be the first to shrink and die? Then we would surely follow.
Because we all need to feel the warmth of the sun to survive, don’t we? Just as we need to be loved and wanted, to be the focus of someone’s attention and adoration. If we don’t have that, how do we know we even exist?
I had basked in the heat of your attention once, Clara. I’d sprung to life like a flower under your gaze, and then you let it drift elsewhere and I was left to shiver in the cold. I remembered the pain of it so clearly, like a knife slicing through me, hollowing me out. Oh, I’d recovered, Clara, I’d found a way through it, but it wasn’t until Jonny came along and made me the centre of his universe that I realised how cold I had been, how much I had missed the warmth. Now he was gone I could feel the freeze gripping my bones again and a suffocating blackness rolling in like sea mist. I was sinking into it, disappearing once more.
The invisible woman.
I heard the sound of the drinks trolley trundling through the aisles and looked up just in time to see it pass me without so much as a word from the steward. Had I vanished already? Only when I ran my fingers through my hair, pulling hard, did the strands of red in my hand convince me I was still there.
I didn’t want to be alone again. I didn’t want to go home, slip through my front door and disappear. I needed someone to see me and talk to me and reassure me I was still living and breathing.
Jake.
He was the only one I could turn to.
I arrived at his flat early or late, I can’t remember which. The concept of time had evaporated. I was caught in a drift. Minutes and hours belonged to another world. The one I was stuck in had no beginnings and no ends.
His flat was on the ground floor and when I buzzed he came out to meet me. I remember falling into him, as if the effort of holding myself up became too much at that precise moment. He held me for what seemed like a long time, still and silent, before leading me inside.
I took my shoes off and curled my legs beneath me on the sofa as he went to the kitchen, emerging with a bottle of wine and two glasses.
‘Here,’ he said, handing me one of them.
I glugged at it and waited for the heat of the alcohol to warm my throat. But my body had been cold for so many days now it had forgotten how to absorb heat.
We didn’t say anything for a while, just listened to the music playing and a man singing with a deep velvet voice, a soothing sink-into-yourself kind of song. I let it wash over me, taking sips of wine.
It was then it occurred to me.
‘I haven’t cried since I saw his body, not one tear. I feel like everything has dried up, like I have nothing left.’
‘Everyone reacts differently,’ Jake said. He put his wine glass on the table and got up to change the CD. I watched him scan his collection, fingering the cases, pulling one out only to put it back again until he found what he was looking for. There was a Banksy hanging on the wall, a picture of people in a bowling club playing with bombs instead of bowls, along with a faded Star Wars cinema poster. The walls were a dark neutral and the light was low, inviting, a kind of effortless cool that would have impressed me normally, but not that evening when my senses were numb.
I heard the music playing softly again and then he was sitting next to me, his arm round me. ‘Go easy on yourself, Rachel,’
‘Everything’s disappearing; sometimes I think I might have imagined it all,’ I said, my voice flat, emotionless. His hand touched my chin, lifting my face up to his, surprising me with the heat of his touch.
‘You will get through it. I promise. You are the strongest person I know,’ he said, pulling me towards him in an embrace. Against my chest his heartbeat vibrated, thud, thud
, thud. I wanted to stay there long enough so its beat could jump-start my own heart, so the heat from his body could thaw mine. So the cold in my bones and the numbness in my head would ease. Finally he pulled away, his dark eyes shining into mine. I think I must have closed mine at that point because I didn’t see him lean into me again. All I felt was the touch of warm lips on my cheek. When I looked again his lips were all I could see, red and warm and full, and I was drawn to them, pulled in by a desire to touch something that wasn’t cold and blue and dead. And for a second I didn’t think about how wrong it was, all I thought about was that kissing his lips might be the only thing that would keep me alive that night.
When I snapped back to my senses I flinched, the shame hitting me like cold water in my face.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I didn’t mean …’
‘Don’t apologise, Rachel,’ he said and he got up to fill our wine glasses.
I awoke the next morning in his bed. The duvet pulled over me, still fully clothed. Jake must have carried me there when I passed out on the sofa. I got up and looked in the mirror. My hair was a wild mass of red. I pulled it back from my face into a ponytail. My eyes were bloodshot and smudged with mascara, if only from crying I thought. My mouth was dry, in desperate need of water.
‘What time is it?’ I said, emerging from the bedroom.
Jake was sitting at the island in the kitchen, coffee and papers laid out on the wooden worktop. ‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’ I asked, seeing the clock on the wall. Half-past nine.
‘Rachel … I … you need to see this,’ he said. He pointed to the newspaper and then with one hand rubbed his eyes as if something was causing him pain.
Three steps across the open-plan living room and I was leaning over his shoulder, reading the same newspaper he was reading. I scrunched my eyes, not wanting to believe what was in front of me. The darkness, the doorway. Jake and I embracing. An image stolen from us the night before, now shared with the world. The front-page picture in the Daily Mail and underneath the strapline:
TV girl seeks comfort with colleague after discovery of boyfriend’s body.
‘I’m sorry, Rachel,’ he said, ‘I’m so so sorry,’ and I saw his mouth open to say something else but I didn’t hear any more because I was running out of his flat into the icy morning.
Running, running through the streets. The cold cutting into my face. Cars and buses and horns and people. People everywhere. I wanted to click my fingers and make them disappear. To make space for me, to leave me alone to think and breathe. The cold burnt into my lungs but still I kept going, I couldn’t stop; if I stopped it might catch me, this avalanche roaring in my ears. It might scoop me up and bury me alive.
Ahead, an expanse of green. Queen’s Park. Through the gates still running. Mercifully free of kids. Too cold for kids today. The space became mine. I was free to fill it with my breath and thoughts. A bench, over there, I saw it and sat down. My knees pulled tight into me, then tighter again so I was small enough to disappear. For a moment, stillness. The traffic and the people and the workmen, everyone quiet all around. A window of silence. Then a searing pain in my stomach as if I was being ripped in two. They came, then, the tears, warm on my freezing face, slipping down to my lips with their salty taste. So many I thought they might never stop. And the images flickered like the old cine films Niamh used to play, of Jonny, of his body, lost to me forever. I had loved him in a way I never thought possible. My tears were for him, but mostly they were for me. For the future I had lost. Jonny had been healing something that was broken inside me. He had offered me a way out. And now he was gone there was no one left to fix me.
Chapter Sixteen
THE INCESSANT DRILLING was loud and reassuring. For days I had worried that behind every noise and shadow lurked someone uninvited. Now the locksmith was here and the click-click of every lock and bolt being replaced told me I could be safe once more, that my flat was being sealed up, watertight, so no one without a face or a name could slip through doors and windows unnoticed again.
The air smelled of bleach from the hours I’d spent cleaning and hoovering and washing when the police finished their search a few days earlier. I had scrubbed until I wore holes in my Marigolds and my arms ached, stopping only when I was convinced every fingerprint, crumb, every germ and scent of the people who had trampled through my home had been removed. With a certain satisfaction I looked around, coffee in hand, and saw my reflection in the shining surfaces. Nothing out of place, only a pile of mail to deal with.
I can keep this at bay, I can hold it back.
The flash of a message on the answerphone caught my attention. I wanted to block everything out but I knew it would flash at me all day long and give me no peace so I pressed play.
‘Rachel, it’s Laura here,’ said the voice so like my mother’s. ‘I’m so so sorry for everything. I’ve been trying to reach you since Clara went missing and then I heard the news about Jonny. Please call me and let me know you’re OK.’
I pressed the stop button. She wanted me to reassure her I was OK.
I am not OK. My boyfriend has died, my friend is missing. Nothing will ever be OK again.
My call to Aunty Laura could wait.
On autopilot I moved over to the kitchen table, eyeing the pile of post that had grown little by little over the past ten days. Mentally, I needed to tackle it, if only to wrest back control of the little things in life that were slipping away from me. I’d opened one letter, an invitation to join an exclusive health club, when my mobile phone rang, Sarah’s name flashing up on the screen.
‘Hi babe.’ (No one had ever called me babe before or since thankfully.) ‘It’s me,’ she said like she was the only person who ever called.
‘Hi.’
‘I didn’t know whether to phone, I mean I just wanted to let you know I’m thinking of you.’ She stumbled over her words. ‘It’s so awful, I can’t imagine how you must be feeling.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, barely able to hear her above sound of the drill.
‘Fucking hell, what’s that? Sarah asked.
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘Just a locksmith doing a few jobs.’ I didn’t have the energy to go into detail.
‘I understand,’ she said though I wondered how she could. ‘Listen, I’ve got to go, there’s a gang of us going around town today putting posters up of Clara. You never know, it could make a difference.’
I doubt it.
‘Good luck,’ I said and hung up.
I got back to the pile of letters, starting with the official-looking ones, the bills, my credit-card statement, which I put to one side – most of it I would claim back on expenses. A tasteless card with butterflies on it from my Aunty Laura, obviously sent before Jonny’s body was found. Inside, in her scrawly handwriting, a note:
Darling Rachel,
I’m so sorry to hear about Clara, I know you must be going out of your mind. I’ve called your flat several times but I can’t seem to reach you. Do get in touch.
Love as always,
Laura x
I threw it on the pile along with the predictable letters from estate agents promising us (me) they had hordes of imaginary buyers waiting to snap up our flat. Then I came to a large brown envelope with my name typed in capitals and my address underneath. It was hand-delivered, no stamp, but it was so light I wondered if it contained anything at all. I waited for a moment, listening to the locksmith’s drill growing louder and louder as he worked his way around the flat to the kitchen windows, before I took a knife to it and sliced it open. I tipped it upside down and watched two pieces of paper float slowly to the floor. The drilling tunnelled into my brain. I wanted it to stop. I bent down to retrieve the contents of the envelope and saw a newspaper clipping with a typeface I recognised instantly as the Daily Mail’s. I shook my head to stop the pain. The front page was facing down; all I could see was the day’s weather forecast and a nib about Gordon Brown. But I knew that wasn’t what I was meant to read. Slowly I turned it o
ver and saw myself and Jake embracing in the dark of his doorway. And when I looked at the sheet of A4 that had fallen from the envelope I saw it was blank, save for the words:
DON’T YOU FEEL ANYTHING, RACHEL WALSH?
The drilling stopped but the pain in my head was fierce, red-hot. Next to me I felt a presence, a breath on me that made me jump. I turned to see the locksmith who, noticing my surprise, took a step back. His lips were moving but I couldn’t hear the words, so he repeated them, this time louder.
‘Didn’t mean to give you a fright love, but I’m done now,’ he said. ‘How many keys do you want?’ I watched him pull his saggy jeans up over his waist only for them to fall back down again. His name was Mickey, he owned the locksmith’s round the corner. That was as much as I knew.
It could be him, it could be anyone.
I looked at the letter in front of me, my name written in angry capitals.
DON’T YOU FEEL ANYTHING?
I slid it under the pile. ‘You sure you’re OK?’ he asked.
‘Fine,’ I said, hoping he couldn’t hear the thud of my heart.
‘How many sets of keys you after? Just you here is it?’ He had a friendly face, a ruddy complexion. But that didn’t count for anything.
‘No,’ I said. I didn’t want anyone to think I lived alone. ‘I’ll need three. Two for me, one for my boyfriend.’
‘Right you are.’
I reached for a cheque, wrote his name and the amount and handed it to him, breathing with relief as I watched his bulky figure fade through the door into the afternoon.
The curtains were closed to shut out the day and I was wrapped cocoon-like in my cream cashmere blanket. With the remote I flicked through the TV channels until a programme about Great White Sharks on Discovery caught my attention. I let myself drift with it, imagining I was cutting through the deep waters with the sharks, as graceful and powerful with nothing to fear.
The voiceover was deep and gravelly and suggestive of danger. It told me Great Whites could smell a drop of blood from over a mile away. ‘There is no hiding from the Great White Shark, they can detect and home in on small electrical charges from hearts and gills.
Precious Thing Page 14