by Julie Corbin
I park, lock the car, take a deep breath and ring the bell.
Monica opens the door and stares at me. She looks as if she’s been crying, as if she’s suddenly aged ten years. ‘You’d better come in,’ she says.
The house smells of burned toast. I follow her through into the kitchen and sit down on one of the stools. The kitchen is a mess, an ordinary family mess, piled-up plates, bottles of ketchup and relish, sticky knives and forks. I have never seen it like this before.
I want to blurt out, What’s going on, Monica? What happened to Rose? What, Monica? What? But something inside me says to slow it down, slow it right down. I am in finger-touching distance and I don’t want Monica to clam up on me. ‘Is everything okay?’
She stares at me. Her eyebrows are raised as if it’s a stupid question and she’s waiting for the next one. She might just deign to answer that.
‘Is this about what happened when we were all sixteen?’
Nothing. Just that look.
‘That year, 1984?’ She still doesn’t answer so I answer with another question. ‘This?’
I bring the bracelet out of my pocket and lay it on the breakfast bar.
She glances at it and then walks over to the kettle. ‘Coffee?’
‘If you like.’ I look around the room. There is a picture on the wall that I drew four years ago. It’s a simple pencil drawing of Murphy and Muffin when they were both puppies. Sarah loved it and stuck it up there between the door and the window. It’s always surprised me that Monica hasn’t taken it down again. I know she doesn’t think much of my drawing – a hobby – not real work like doctoring. In most ways we are opposites: Monica is disciplined, driven, ambitious and controlling. My ambition is limited, I’m more laissez-faire than driven and I don’t have her issues of control. But something is upsetting her and I’m determined to find out what.
She puts a cup of coffee down in front of me. ‘We never really escape our pasts, do we?’
I stretch my hand across the breakfast bar, don’t quite reach her but leave it there anyway and say, ‘What’s troubling you?’
‘It’s not me so much . . .’ She drifts off, sips her coffee and sighs.
‘We all have regrets. Things we would change.’
She laughs. ‘What regrets can you have, Grace? You always seem so perfectly well-adjusted, perfectly happy with Paul and your girls and your painting.’
‘We all have our dark times.’ I tap my finger next to the bracelet. ‘This bracelet. I’ve come about this.’
She looks at it again. ‘I don’t know anything about that.’
‘Pick it up. Look at it closely.’
She does. She lets it dangle on the end of her fingers, holds it up to the light and watches it move. ‘It’s tarnished but still very pretty.’ She puts it down next to my hand. ‘However, there are much more pressing matters on my mind.’
‘It was in your loft,’ I say lightly. ‘Ella said you let her have it.’
‘Did I?’
‘Yes, you did.’
She shrugs. ‘So?’
‘It belonged to Rose.’
‘Paul’s Rose?’
I nod.
She gives it another cursory glance. ‘Well, I have no idea how it came to be with my stuff.’
‘She had it on the camp.’
‘Well, there you go then. It must have got mixed up in my camping gear.’
‘But you weren’t even in her tent.’
She looks exasperated. ‘What do you want me to say? That I took it?’
‘Paul always wondered what had happened to it. She was never without it. It belonged to her mother. When her mum died, she kept it on her at all times.’
‘Well, I will go and see Paul and apologise to him.’ Her tone is impatient. ‘But in the meantime can we please talk about Orla?’
‘I have spent the last twenty-four years thinking that I was the last person to see Rose alive,’ I say quietly. ‘Thinking that if I’d only listened to what she was saying I might have been able to prevent her death, thinking, Monica, thinking, that when I pushed her away, she fell into the water and drowned.’
She goes over to the sink and looks back at me. ‘What are you talking about?’
I stand up and come alongside her. ‘Orla and I had an argument that night. Rose came to me for help. I pushed her away. The next day I found her in the water exactly where I had pushed her.’
Monica’s arms are folded and she is tapping her foot. ‘Have you been drinking?’
‘No!’
‘You think you killed Rose?’
‘Yes.’
We stare at each other.
‘This is what Orla has on you?’
I nod.
‘Christ!’ She topples backward, catches hold of the worktop and looks at me as if I’m mad.
‘I know.’ I hold up my hands in acknowledgement. ‘It’s horrendous. But just recently, well, something isn’t adding up and I need to get it clear in my head. The sequence of events. Did you see Rose that night? Did she come to you?’ I point to the bracelet. ‘Why did you have her bracelet?’
Monica’s eyes look past me as she winds back the clock. ‘So around midnight when I was putting away the supplies and you came back to the tent—’
‘I had already pushed her.’
She gives a perfunctory shake of her head. ‘Then you didn’t do it. Rose came back to the tent about ten minutes before you did.’
For a second I am completely still and then I grab Monica by the shoulders and say loudly, ‘You’re absolutely sure about this?’
‘Yes! Otherwise I would have told you that one of your patrol was out of bed.’
Ever practical Monica. Of course she would have made sure the girls were in their tents before she settled down for the night. She took her role seriously. While Orla and I were off fighting over Euan, Monica was being responsible.
I start to tremble. My knees give way and I sit down hard on the stool. I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill Rose. It wasn’t me. I need some air and I push past Monica to the back door, breathe slowly and deeply. After a few minutes I go back inside and pour myself a glass of water. ‘Are you absolutely sure?’ I say again and immediately visualise Rose’s body, bloated and blue by the time I found her. I put my hand over my mouth, clench my teeth and concentrate on letting the wave of nausea recede.
‘Yes. For heaven’s sake! I told the police that at the time.’
‘You did?’ On the one hand I feel a lifting, an elation, a lightness, a disbelief, a need to laugh, a need to cry, a need to shout my innocence from the rooftops. On the other, I feel a crushing, debilitating sense of loss. Years of guilt and reproach and all for nothing. If only, at the time, I had gone to the police, they would have told me that it couldn’t possibly have been me.
‘Grace, you married her father! You couldn’t really have believed you pushed her to her death! She must have got up later and then she fell in the water. These things happen.’ She sits down opposite me. ‘Now please! Can we talk about Orla?’
‘She has nothing on me,’ I say. ‘Nothing.’
‘Yes, well . . . you’re lucky then, aren’t you?’ Her face is pinched. She leans on the breakfast bar and stares at me. ‘Orla must not be allowed to stay in the village.’
‘Why not?’
She hesitates, doubt flashes across her face and then she says, ‘Do you promise this will just be between you and me?’
I nod, hardly breathing. I hear my phone beep with a text message but I ignore it, primed for what’s coming next.
She looks beyond me. ‘I love Euan, Grace. Even when we were at school, I loved him. I know I didn’t rate. I know I wasn’t one of the in-crowd but he has always been, and still is, the only man I’ve ever wanted.’
I say nothing. I am grateful that she is not looking at me because guilt is written all over my face. I can feel it, shining like a beacon.
‘History repeats itself. When I was young, Angeline wrecked my family an
d now Orla will do the same to my children.’
‘I don’t understan—’
‘She’s come back for Euan,’ she says quickly.
‘She’s come back for Euan?’ I almost laugh. I think of his face at the convent. He is not attracted to Orla. Not at all. I know he isn’t. Sure, he had sex with her once, age sixteen, but never again. He said so and I believe him. I hold Monica’s shoulders. ‘Euan and Orla? Never in a million years! If that’s what you’re worried about then I honestly think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick.’
She breathes deeply. ‘I know we’ve never really been friends but I need you to help me look out for him.’
To my shame, I nod. The irony of Monica asking me to look out for her husband is not lost on me but I want this conversation to be over. I want time to accelerate a month, six months, whatever it takes for me to get past this moment. I want to think and to appreciate and to bask in the knowledge that I didn’t kill Rose. I want to make it up to Paul and I want to live in Melbourne and enjoy being with my family.
Monica is still talking. ‘She could ruin Euan’s life. And for what?’ Her mouth is trembling. I watch as she forces her lips steady. ‘It was Mo who told me. She said to me, I have a bad feeling about that girl. This isn’t the last you’ll see of her. And Mo was right, just as she always was.’
In a distant part of my brain a bell goes off. ‘What was Mo right about?’
‘Orla being a threat. Coming back for Euan. Not letting it drop.’
‘What drop?’ The house is so quiet I can hear the sound of the sea through the double-glazing.
‘When she was sixteen—’ She stops. Tears spill on to her cheeks. She lets them fall then pushes her shoulders back and says loudly, ‘When she was sixteen, Orla had an abortion. The baby was Euan’s.’
I am too shocked to speak. My mouth is open. At first I don’t believe it, everything inside me says that this can’t possibly be true and then connections start to form in my head: Euan being so sure Orla’s intentions were spiteful, their heated exchange in the convent, Orla spitting in his face. Why didn’t he tell me? Slowly it sinks in. This isn’t just about me. She is taking her revenge on Euan too. ‘When did she have the abortion?’
‘The end of August 1984.’
Euan told me he’d only slept with her the once when they went potholing for geography O-level. That was towards the end of April. By August, she would have been more than sixteen weeks pregnant. That would explain her erratic behaviour at Guide camp. She must have known then. And I suppose that’s what was in the letters. The ones I never read.
‘Euan has always been convinced that the baby wasn’t his,’ Monica says. ‘That was one of the things that set Orla off. The fact that he wouldn’t believe her. You know she attempted suicide?’
I nod.
‘Remember when Euan went off to live with his uncle?’
I nod again.
‘Orla was causing him loads of problems, phone calls, letters, turning up at the door. They moved to England but still it carried on. She sent him pictures of dead babies in the post and wrote to the headmaster at school. So Euan went to live in Glasgow where she couldn’t reach him.’
I am speechless. How could I not have known about this? Euan and I were closer than most siblings but I was oblivious to the fact that he was in trouble. I was so wrapped up in what happened to Rose that I didn’t see any of it. I can hardly believe it and yet, at the same time, it rings true. Orla is out to punish both of us because neither of us helped her and the fact that we’re now having an affair has made it all the richer.
‘You will keep this just between us, won’t you?’ Monica says.
‘Of course.’ I wish Euan had told me about the abortion but I am the last person to condemn anyone for keeping secrets.
I put the bracelet into my back pocket and stand up. I need to find him, tell him that Orla has nothing on me and in truth – what does she have on him? Perhaps he didn’t support her the way she wanted him to but so what? Even if she publishes the truth in the newspaper it can’t damage him much. He’s a grown-up and, me aside, the way he’s behaved since then has been exemplary. He is well respected and well liked. Orla can’t put a dent in that.
17
No secrets. For the first time in twenty-four years I have nothing to hide. There won’t be a knock on the door. I won’t be marched off to the police station. I no longer have to protect my family from what I thought was the truth.
I didn’t kill Rose.
I sit on the step outside Monica’s house and stare straight ahead. The air smells salty and wet. The wind is whipping in from the sea and I pull my coat around me. Random thoughts and pictures pass through my head: Rose at the bottom of my bed, lily of the valley soap, Mo’s voice telling me that my eyes are green as summer grass, seeing the jacket in the water, holding my girls for the first time, running after Euan along the beach, Paul on our wedding day.
I didn’t do it. My adult life has turned on an event that didn’t happen. I walk back to my car and settle into the seat. ‘All these years I thought I killed her and I didn’t,’ I say out loud. ‘I didn’t kill Rose.’
It’s impossible to describe how much of a weight has lifted and I’m enjoying the feeling of light and air inside me. My marriage is still in trouble – I haven’t forgotten that – but adultery is the lesser crime.
Euan. I can’t believe that he didn’t tell me about the abortion. I don’t understand it. He was only sixteen: the age for mistakes. I would have helped and supported him. For almost two weeks now, I have been banging on about Orla and motives and the fact that this was my problem, not his, and all the time he was keeping a hefty secret of his own.
A ginger tom jumps on to the bonnet of the car. Silent and sleek, he sits licking his paws then rubs behind his ears. He is perfectly in sync with himself. He stops washing and stares through the windscreen at me. ‘My marriage is in meltdown but at least I didn’t kill anyone,’ I tell him. ‘It’s all relative.’
For the first time since Orla got back in touch, I have lost the sense of impending doom. I watch the cat. He’s walking backward and forward across the bonnet looking ahead into the street. Every so often he gives a plaintive meow then suddenly he jumps off and slithers through the hedge into the neighbouring garden.
Before I start the engine, I remember to look at my phone. There’s a text from Euan. I check the time he sent it and then look at my watch. Forty-five minutes ago. I try to phone him but his mobile is switched to message service so I drive to Orla’s house. Euan’s car isn’t there but there are lights on inside. It’s only three in the afternoon and yet the sky is dark with clouds. It’s raining a few miles out to sea. Wind heralds the rain’s approach and the waves are jumping skittishly as if they know what’s to come. The air vibrates as gulls flock together, beaks open, wings flapping and gliding, before coming to land, feet perched precariously on inches of ledge.
I knock on the door. Orla answers it. ‘Well! Look who’s here!’
She is dressed up to the nines. She is wearing a red satin dress that grips tightly over her breasts and hips and has a thigh-high split up one side. There is a black, beaded choker around her throat and matching earrings that drop almost as far as her collarbones. Her hair is piled up on her head in a seemingly random manner but curls escape at just the right places to highlight her cheekbones. I wonder whether she knew Euan was coming.
‘I’m not here to see you,’ I say. ‘I need to speak to Euan.’ I can see him standing beyond her.
He doesn’t look pleased to see me. He comes outside and we move away from the house a few feet. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I found something out just now. It was Monica who told me. I couldn’t possibly have killed Rose,’ I say breathlessly. ‘She came back to the tent before I did. She was in her sleeping bag when I climbed into mine.’ I expect him to be pleased but he shows no emotion. It’s as if he hasn’t heard me. ‘Euan?’ I shake him. ‘Did you hear me
?’
His face is expressionless. ‘Is Monica sure?’
‘Absolutely! She was there. She remembers it clearly. And you know Monica; she doesn’t get stuff wrong. Isn’t it brilliant?’ I shake him again. ‘Euan?’
‘Yeah, it is.’ He says it without enthusiasm and looks beyond me to where the storm is gathering pace, coming across the sea towards us.
I feel the first spots of rain land on my hair.
‘Don’t you see what this means?’ He is still staring at the horizon, preoccupied. ‘We can both walk away from this.’
No response.
I reach for his hand. ‘You could have told me.’
His eyes snap back to mine.
‘The abortion,’ I say. ‘I wish you’d told me.’
His jaw relaxes. If I didn’t know better I would think it looked like he was relieved.
‘I didn’t think we had any secrets from each other.’ In this light his eyes have darkened from cornflower blue to the lilac-blue of verbascum. It makes him look sad. ‘I’m the last one to criticise anyone for keeping secrets but I never had any from you.’
He clears his throat. ‘It was a long time ago and I never really believed the baby was mine. I wasn’t the only boy she had sex with. You know how much of a liar she was.’
I nod. ‘I understand. It was a heavy price to pay. Like you said, you only slept with her once.’ I pause and try to catch his eye again. I have a feeling there’s something he’s not telling me. ‘It was only once, wasn’t it?’
‘When we went potholing.’
‘You know . . .’ I hesitate. The rain is falling steadily now and I’m tired and I’m desperate to go home. I want to get right away from Orla, but first, I need to tell Euan that it has to be over between us. ‘I have always loved you and a part of me always will.’ I hold his hand. ‘I want to stay married, Euan. I want Paul to forgive me.’ And we’re moving to Australia. ‘I want to make things right again.’
‘This sounds like goodbye.’ He tries to laugh. ‘What’s going on?’
‘We have to move on.’
‘From each other?’ His expression merges hurt and scepticism. ‘We’ve tried that before.’