‘Have you got the letter with you?’ Hannah asks lightly.
‘No. I burned it.’ I don’t look at her. ‘The one thing I was grateful for was that he hadn’t read it before he died. But he had, you see. He must have reached Gulls earlier than he said. He must have been there. You see? He reached the bungalow – that’s how his laptop got there – and he read the letter. He was so angry, he broke up the studio.’ I turn to Jane. ‘It was in pieces, Jane. And OK, not blood – but paint on the walls. Like someone had gone wild in there. But then he must have pulled himself together. He lied to me on the phone. He left me a private message on a painting.’
‘On a painting?’
‘A “private” message?’ Hannah adds. ‘You mean in code?’
‘In charcoal. He’d drawn himself setting off on a new life without me. He knew I’d see it. He knew I’d understand what it meant. And then he locked up the house . . . And then he . . .’
There is an expression on Jane’s face, like it’s being tugged. Her eyes are full and her cheeks have flushed. I look across at Hannah and her lips look funny, twisted. Jane’s taken her hand away from mine and is holding it across her mouth. Her eyes are full of alarm. Neither of them says anything.
‘So you see,’ I say again.
Hannah nods very slightly. ‘He read the letter and was devastated. He drank too much to drown his sorrows. And then he set off towards London. It explains the direction of travel. He hadn’t doubled back. He was driving home to confront you, a bit angry, a bit too fast. Maybe . . .’
Jane takes her hand away. ‘Oh, poor Zach. He—’
‘NO,’ I shriek. ‘I know what you are about to say. He didn’t kill himself. It wasn’t suicide. He wasn’t in the car. It wasn’t him.’
Jane pushes her chair back and crouches next to where I am sitting. She puts her arms around me. I’ve started crying properly now.
‘No body,’ I say. ‘There wasn’t a body.’
‘But there was,’ Jane says. ‘Sweetie, there was.’
‘No. No.’
Hannah stands up too. I’m aware of her moving around the kitchen. She opens the back door. She must have let Howard in, because he noses around at my feet, rests his face on my knee. His beard is wet and grainy. I hear the kettle being filled. Eventually, Hannah sits back at the table, and puts the teapot down.
‘We didn’t need to do a DNA test, did we? Listen, Lizzie. That’s because we were sure, weren’t we? His mobile phone was in the car. There was CCTV footage of him getting petrol earlier in the afternoon. You told us he was in the car that night. We only authorise a test when there is doubt. And there was no room for doubt.’
I think about her coming to the door. The questions she said she had to ask, standing there with her neat ponytail, her clean uniform. Who did the car belong to? Did I know who was driving? Was I sure? I know now she was seeking proof, confirmation. But her words died in the air. I put my hands out to stop them from coming. She held out a CCTV picture of Zach taken at a service station. ‘Is this him?’ I crumpled it up, tried to push her out of the door.
I blow my nose. Jane dips her head to check I am all right. She pushes her chair a bit closer to mine.
The funeral was at Putney Vale crematorium. The car crawled along the grid of roads between the graves. It poured with rain. We were late – the next lot were already there, milling in black outside the chapel. Flowers heaped. Half-empty pews. Peggy and Rob, a few artists from the studio where Zach worked. The smell of sandalwood, the swish of a polyester curtain. The coffin seemed so lightly borne. His pitiful remains were so easily shouldered. It was a willow casket, but it might have been a child in there.
‘Who was in the car, Lizzie? If it wasn’t Zach, who was it?’ Jane is talking very quietly.
‘Teeth and bones,’ I say brutally. ‘Not even bones. Fragments.’
‘Somebody,’ Hannah says, ‘was in that car, Lizzie.’
‘I think he faked the accident. I don’t know how. It was thick fog. A fireball. He was clever, so much cleverer than me. He would work it out.’
Jane moves away from me very slightly. ‘Are you saying he killed someone?’
‘No. Of course not.’ My mind is racing now. ‘He might have lent the car to someone and when they had that terrible crash, he grasped the opportunity. He was like that. He was always taking risks. He had this thing about being different, about breaking the mould. There are precedents, aren’t there? Those people who used the Twin Towers as an opportunity to start new lives?’
‘So where do you think Zach is now?’ Jane asks.
‘He could be anywhere, living rough or . . . He spent his childhood camping. By the sea probably. He had a thing about the sea. He took things he’d need if he was going cross-country. A torch, his boots.’
‘Not in the bungalow, though?’ she says. ‘He hadn’t been living there?’
I think for a moment. Gulls had smelled stale, uninhabited. A thread of spider’s web had run from the kettle to the window. ‘No. I think he’s closer to me than that. Hannah, Jane – it fits, doesn’t it, with all those things that have happened, the sense I’ve had that he’s watching me? It hasn’t been my imagination, has it? That break-in, Hannah – when the burglar just came in through the front door as if he lived here. That could have been Zach.’
‘Didn’t we decide perhaps you hadn’t locked the door when you went to bed? That you’d left it on the latch, or even open?’ Hannah says.
‘That was the only explanation I could come up with at the time – but if Zach had his key . . .’
‘I don’t understand,’ Jane says gently. ‘Lizzie. This is Zach we’re talking about. How can you possibly think that your husband who adored you would put you through the agony of the past year? Watch you?’
‘The message on the painting. He might have been telling me he was all right. It might not be a taunt, it might be a reassurance. Or both.’
‘Even so. To abandon you. What sort of person would do that? Torture you like this . . . ?’
‘He . . .’ I can’t even begin to explain. ‘He was complicated . . .’
‘I know.’ She gets up and gives me another hug.
Hannah has been busy with the remainder of her biscuit, snapping it into pieces. She nibbles one and leaves the rest a distance away from her on the table. She says in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘He wouldn’t be able to get a new identity. You used to be able to quite easily – send off for the replica birth certificate of someone who was born in the same year as you and subsequently died. Undercover coppers used to do it all the time.’ She swallows. ‘But that loophole’s closed – all the information is computerised now. It’s not easy, Lizzie.’ She shakes her head, wiping her mouth with the tips of her fingers.
‘He used to talk about it, living off grid,’ I say.
Jane gets to her feet. She pats my shoulder as she passes the back of my chair. She starts filling the dishwasher with our tea mugs and my breakfast things from yesterday. She finds a cloth and wipes the crumbs off the surfaces, has a go at the table.
Her gestures are careful. She is one of those energetic, fast-witted people who usually does everything in a hurry, but there’s no urgency to any of these movements. It’s as if she is slowing them down on purpose. Hannah, meanwhile, is smiling gently.
I think back to all those early sessions we had. She used to record everything in a notebook, every word, each tiny detail. She hasn’t written anything today. I know that neither of them believes a word of this. They think I’m making it all up. It’s my state of mind they’re concerned about, not Zach’s whereabouts. My doubt. They need to be extra careful for me. And for a moment I feel bereft. I sit here and let the realisation seep in. Of course they don’t get it. They don’t know him like I do. He isn’t in their bones, or under their skin. He isn’t between their lips or on the lids of their eyes. I am alone in this. I was wrong to expect their help. I’ll never be able to convince them. This is between me and Zach.
A silence falls in the kitchen. When the key rattles in the front door at the end of the passage, all three of us start.
Peggy has brought two of her three children – Alfie, who is five, and Gussie, three. ‘You’re home!’ she says, ushering them into the kitchen. ‘I’ve been so worried about you since Jane rang. It’s such a long drive.’ She throws her arms around me. I exchange a quick, panicked glance with Jane. I didn’t tell her to ring Peggy. I don’t know how much she has told her. She shakes her head slightly.
Gussie has climbed on to my knee, and is cupping my face with damp hands. She is giving me little bird pecks on the lips. Her hair – her mother’s thick curls, not my frizz – flutters against my cheek. Alfie, dressed in a Batman outfit, is playing with Howard. I love them all, but I want to lay my head on the kitchen table and close my eyes.
‘Hello, Jane,’ Peggy says, hugging her, too. ‘And dear Hannah. How sweet of you to come by. Loving the bob. Très chic.’ The slightly mannered gush shows Peggy is put out by the presence of both Jane and Hannah.
She hoists herself up on to the kitchen worktop. Her hair is bunched into two Heidi plaits. ‘I’m so, so glad you’re back, Liz. I hated to think of you down there, missing Zach, all by yourself. You need your family around you.’ Another small dig.
Gussie is demanding ‘horsey-horsey’ and I jolt my knee up and down, clasping her tight, resting my cheek on her back. Missing Zach: how simple that sounds. She squeals with pleasure. ‘More. More.’
‘Gussie is quite keen for a sleepover,’ Peggy says. ‘With her favourite auntie.’
‘Only auntie,’ I add.
‘Not tonight,’ Jane says.
‘Maybe . . .’ I say.
‘No,’ Jane says firmly. ‘Lizzie has had a tiring day.’
‘My bad,’ Peggy says, smiling sweetly. ‘Another time, poppet.’
Alfie, who has been upstairs, comes back into the kitchen clutching Zach’s clear plastic box of Rotring pens. He pulls off the lid, holds the box upside down and scatters them on the table.
Peggy says, ‘Oh, well done. Felt tips. Ask Auntie Lizzie if she has any paper.’
‘Where did you find those?’ I say. Each pen has a different-sized nib. Zach took such special care not to blunt them. He was obsessive about them. The box has a compartment for each pen. ‘They’re not really for playing with.’
‘Lizzie,’ Peggy says. ‘He’s only a child.’
‘Can I have them?’ Alfie asks, flicking off the lids.
‘Maybe . . . when you’re older,’ I say, not looking at Peggy. I think I hear her tut and maybe she’s right to.
‘Right, I must go.’ Hannah gets to her feet. ‘I still haven’t rung my nan. It’s her birthday in a week or two and we’re organising a bash.’
I tip Gussie off my lap and follow Hannah out of the house. It’s a relief to be in the street. I can feel the cold air on my neck, penetrating my jersey, flicking against my bare legs. Hannah has parked her moped in the car park at the bottom of my road by the pub. It’s a cul-de-sac, at the junction by the main road, where the traffic is a constant roar. The street lamp trembles in the vibration. Hannah, unlocking her helmet from the pannier, has her back to me and my eyes scan the scrubby stretch of common ahead – grass and trees and brambles. Beyond it Wandsworth Prison looms. One thousand six hundred inmates – all those crimes, bad instincts, mistakes – living next door. It’s the building, though, that seems evil. It’s at its most malignant now, lit up, shadowy and weird, full of dark hollows, like a torch held up to a face on Halloween.
Hannah fiddles and grimaces, attaching the clasp of her motorbike helmet under her chin. Then she looks me in the eye and says, ‘You eating? You look like you’ve lost weight.’
I tell her I am eating, although actually I can’t quite remember when I last did.
‘All right then. So that letter you wrote?’
‘We had our ups and downs, like most people.’
She’s still looking at me. I think about divulging some of his idiosyncrasies – how he didn’t like me reading, would flick for attention at the outside of my newspaper, or hide my book so I couldn’t find it, how such simple gestures – the closing of the dishwasher – were sometimes thick with anger. How careful I would have to be about what I wore, or how I acted, how I began to dread certain situations, like parties, where I would get it wrong, where he would find my behaviour insensitive. ‘Trivial things,’ I say. ‘Nothing important.’
‘This notion you have—’
I cut her off, make a gesture with my hands to indicate my own foolishness. ‘I know. Madness.’
‘Good.’ She gives me a meaningful look. ‘Stay strong.’
She waves as she pulls out. I watch her drive, with that comically upright posture of a person on a scooter, to the end of the road, indicate right to pass the prison and disappear. If she’s not going to help me, I’ll do it alone.
I stand for a minute, sensing Zach in the darkness of the trees beyond the railings, watching me from the shadows, from the clump of undergrowth behind the sycamore. I feel a quiver in the air, like electricity, or the brandishing of a sheet of paper-thin metal. I strain my ears above the whistle of an accelerating car for the sound of his breath. I close my eyes and open my arms. ‘Come to me,’ I whisper. ‘If you’re coming. Go on. Do it.’
After a few moments, I turn and go back into the house.
Zach
November 2009
Initially I assumed Carefree201, date number four, was a saucy little puss. She gave me her phone number the first time I asked. None of the others had obliged. The moment I heard her voice I realised it wasn’t self-assertion but naivety. She was diffident, bit of a stammer actually. Lower middle class made good. A librarian of all things. I asked her where she lived and she said Wandsworth, near the prison. Flat share or . . .? A pause. ‘On my own,’ she said. I got the area up on screen while we were talking. A little further west from where I witnessed that public demonstration from the amatory couple, but in the same general area.
I suggested that, rather than the conventional drink, we meet for a nice long walk. A silence while she processed the idea, and then a note of coy delight. ‘That’s so much better,’ she said. ‘How clever of you to have thought of that.’
It was. I had heard a dog bark a few minutes before, her voice more distant, as if it had been wedged under her chin, the sound of a door opening.
First appearances, not propitious. Funny colourless little thing, bird-like, wearing baggy jeans and a fleece, tugging on a huge animal she could hardly control. She may have described herself as ‘a world traveller’; she didn’t look as if she had ever been further than Orpington. She blushed to her roots when she saw me. I’d dressed carefully – no Paul Smith this time, some random items that I’d picked up in Age Concern and thought might appeal to a bookish person. Slightly overwarm. Annoying, too, to have to carry that bag of art materials – bloody heavy for a ‘nice long walk’.
As we set off for Wandsworth Common, I worked hard to put her at her ease. I kept looking at her out of the corner of my eye, and then realised she was doing the same to me. I was oddly touched. When I was able to look at her more closely, I saw she had quite a sweet face, nice little figure too, all the more appealing for the fact she seemed totally unaware of it. She was biting her nails and in the end I took her hand to stop her doing it.
She asked about my life and I kept it vague. I told her, staring ahead to indicate how difficult the subject was, that my father had been a violent alcoholic, that I’d moved around a lot as an adult, worked abroad, found it hard to settle. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. Her own childhood had been easy, she told me, golden, though she later mentioned that her father had died of a heart attack when she was five. Cup half full then: interesting.
Finally, after we had trudged up and down and around the railway line, past a pond and a kids’ playground, I asked whether we could go back to her house for a drink. I could see she was torn – Enc
ounters gives you a good old talking-to about things like that. I let her fret as I steered her in the direction of the prison. I had seen its grey turreted roof, its huge barricaded doorway, a mouth with teeth, across the cricket pitch earlier. She looked at her watch a couple of times. We left the common, had walked the length of a street lined with Victorian mansions and were standing on the pavement of a noisy road that widened just to the right of us into a dual carriageway. ‘It’s over there,’ she said, pointing to a small road opposite, ‘but I’d rather we went to the pub if you don’t mind. They do coffee.’ She gestured to an establishment across the road.
I said I did mind, trying to be flirtatious, but no dice. Also, excuse me: coffee? Is that what she thought I meant by a drink? Christ. Some of us have self-medication to attend to. She wasn’t to be budged. She went pink to her ears and said we could go next time, ‘if there is a next time’.
It didn’t matter. I’d had a chance to scout the location. She lives in a pretty row of flat-fronted Victorian cottages, probably built to house prison officers or market gardeners. Attractive brickwork, nicely planted, heritage lamps. A cul-de-sac, too, blocked off this end, so, although the noise from the main road might be invasive, at least there’s no through traffic. Expensive area, hard to break into. A seller’s market, as we know.
Saying goodbye, I leaned forward and kissed her. I rested my hand on the small of her back and she released a small moan from deep in her throat. I got the impression she hadn’t been touched in a long time. I thought she might die of pleasure.
As we parted, I realised I was smiling. She had tasted of sugar mice, the ones they used to sell in the village shop, pink and sweet. Addictive. I had bitten her lip gently as I pulled away, felt the soft tug of it between my teeth. Delicious.
I can’t stop thinking about it, that kiss.
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