The Life I Left Behind

by Colette McBeth

  ‘Why would you do this? It’s not like you have to.’

  I stared at his face. The reason for his reticence, the holding back all shot into focus. Hope costs. It’s what breaks you. David Alden didn’t part with it easily, if you were him you wouldn’t either. If he was going to hand it over to me, he needed to be clear on my motives.

  ‘I believe you,’ I said.

  And for the first time I knew that I did.

  For a long while after I died, I hated myself for taking David’s hope. Where had it got him? Questioned and bailed again, now shrunken and huddled in his flat, listening for the knock at the door, the inevitable murder charge. Any hope I had ignited had burnt out. The substance had been gutted from him. He abandoned any notion of clearing his name, threw Annie out of his flat when she suggested continuing: ‘Can’t you see the damage it’s done already?’ He considered a range of suicides, pleased to find that in this respect his mind still offered creative solutions. He studied buildings and cliff faces, calculated the scale of the drop, considered terminal velocity. Mainly though he just thought of the end. Of his body hitting a hard surface and being obliterated. It was all his fault. It was pride, conceit, he told himself, that had pushed him to clear his name. If only he could have settled for the scraps that life had doled out to him I would still be alive.

  It broke my heart to see his body crushed by the weight of blame. I wanted to tell him not to give up, how I still held on to a piece of that hope I had taken from him.

  Chapter Five

  Melody

  *MELODY DOES NOT remember anything about the night of her attack??

  She reads the words in the file, the asterisk by her name, the question mark that suggested doubt. What was it that Eve doubted? That someone could have every last remnant of an attack suctioned from their mind? That not even the smallest shadow of memory, an imprint, a sound or shape, would remain?

  Two conflicting statements battle it out in her head: a) Melody remembers; b) Melody can’t remember. They are diametrically opposed and yet she knows each of them to be true.

  When it comes to the attack itself she draws a blank, like someone has cloaked it in a thick blanket to block out even the thinnest spill of light. She doesn’t know who was driving the car or what kind of car it was. If there were words spoken between them, she can’t recall them. Statement B is therefore true.

  According to the story handed down from the police, the official verified version, she was attacked soon after she got in the car. In fact she recalls it differently, like a dense fog rolling over her, her body drifting apart from her mind. A weightlessness. Sleep – she remembers it like the deepest of sleeps, lasting hours, days. The motion of the car. The sound of wheels on gravel. Statement A is also true.

  She remembers more, too, much more. And it’s not true to say she has kept this all to herself. She tried at first to explain, to the police, to Sam, to her parents. But here’s the thing. Her memories didn’t fit into the boxes provided for them, they were awkward in shape. Circles in square holes. Within days of her waking up, Detective Inspector Stirling arrived to tell her they had arrested someone.

  ‘I’m afraid you know him,’ he said. ‘I assume you are familiar with the name David Alden?’

  She was sipping from a glass of water when he told her. She thought she was choking on it. Sprayed it everywhere. The coughing hurt her throat, muscles tender from the attack.

  ‘Take your time,’ he said, fetching her paper towels. Each time she tried to speak, she coughed some more.

  ‘No,’ she said eventually. Her breaths were rasping. ‘No, you’ve made a mistake.’ She knew David, he was a great friend. She knew he wouldn’t do that to her, or to anyone for that matter. The thought of it was grotesque, absurd. You don’t spend nights getting drunk on shots of Jägermeister and having dance-offs to Run-DMC with a man who then tries to kill you.

  The DI smiled, an unpleasant, patronising smile. ‘I’m afraid the case against him is compelling,’ he said. ‘His car was in the vicinity at the exact time you were last seen. It was picked up on CCTV near Ham Gate.’

  Melody was shaking her head so furiously she thought it might come loose from her neck. Did she have to listen to this nonsense? She felt dizzied, hypnotised by the intensity of his pale, lightless eyes. She could feel him wresting her experience from her, taking it into his ownership.

  She wanted to shout, ‘Back off, you’ve got half of it arse over tit.’ But instead she remained polite. ‘You are making a terrible error of judgement,’ she said, surprised by how calm she sounded. DI Stirling raised his hand to hush her, the way her teachers used to when she got too excitable.

  ‘We have found matches for your hair and fibres from your clothing on his coat. A coat he bought four days before you were attacked. You’ve already told my officers you didn’t see him in the days leading up to the attack.’

  She turned her head away from DI Stirling. She had nothing more to say.

  It was this moment, more than the attack itself, that changed her. She could recover from her physical injuries but the knowledge that it was someone she’d trusted corroded her insides like acid. When she picked over their friendship, searched for a damning clue or a sign that would have pointed her towards this, she couldn’t find a single one. But the police had shown her the evidence and it was compelling. Her monumental failure of judgement undermined everything that had gone before. Everything she had taken for granted, the absolutes in her life disintegrated. She couldn’t trust her own thoughts. When forced to make even the smallest decision – fruit salad or crumble? walk or a swim? – she found herself paralysed. ‘You choose,’ she would say to whoever happened to be with her, because this one single thing, the knowledge that David Alden had attacked her, almost killed her, had overridden every natural instinct and reflex she had.

  Mel sits back in her chair, surveys the scene around her. She is alone. Sam left for work hours ago, before she got up. She has been reading the file for a good hour; her eyes are beginning to sting from concentration. She glances over to an empty cereal bowl on the counter that has been there for as long as she has been reading. She knows this because she is daring herself to leave it in situ along with the cereal box. The effort of doing it is making her limbs twitch. She is fighting the impulse to clean every trace of herself away. She sits still, reads Eve’s description of meeting David Alden in the café again and for once allows her own memories of him to break out and tumble into view.

  They flare up with surprising ease, except that she struggles to remember what he looked like, the exact arrangement of his features. When she was told he was found guilty, she began the process of superimposing his mug shot over every image she had of his face, obliterating the laughing, happy friend she knew. Instead she remembers him in smells and sounds, a barbecue in the first instance, its association with summer. First impressions? She thought he was trying a bit hard to be cool. But subsequent encounters reset her opinion. She found out he was a DJ, a semi-famous one in clubbing circles (she’d googled him of course). A DJ who played to hundreds, sometimes thousands of people and grew marrows and courgettes and peas in his vegetable patch. Vegetables he delivered to her when there was a surplus, and there was always a surplus. A chain smoker who ran five miles every day and juiced vegetables for breakfast. A man with the biggest record collection she’d ever seen who admitted to having a soft spot for Wham!. He made her playlists, had a knack of knowing which records she’d love before she heard them herself. Whenever there was a leaking tap or a picture that needed hanging she’d ask him, providing Patrick wasn’t around. She was fond of both of them but they weren’t keen on each other. They clashed over loud music, the fact that David routinely put his rubbish out on the wrong day. The foxes must love him, Patrick would say in disgust. Equally his habit of repairing his car on the pavement so no one could get past aroused Patrick’s ire. They were minor transgressions, all of them, but their combined effect meant the two men barely pass
ed the time of day.

  He wanted to have sex with her, thought she wanted the same; hadn’t she led him on after all?

  Her eyes scan the words in the file again, the words that Eve wrote as part of her summary of the case against David Alden. The prosecution must have argued this was David’s motive during the trial, not that she had been there to hear it. Melody had only spent one morning at the Old Bailey giving evidence. There wasn’t a whole lot you could ask a woman whose memory had failed her. Only now, five and a half years on, is she acquainting herself with the full argument that was used to convict him. It doesn’t ring true.

  As proof, she digs out her memories of the weekend they spent together in Barcelona. It was 2005, early summer if she’s not mistaken. He was playing at a big music festival, Primavera, just outside the city. ‘Fancy coming?’ he’d asked three days before he was due to fly out. ‘New Order are playing and I know how much you love them.’ He gave her a cheeky wink. She hated New Order.

  Still, she didn’t have anything planned. ‘Why not,’ she said. An hour later she’d booked her flight.

  Melody wasn’t prepared for the scale of the festival. There must have been fifty thousand people massed in a giant leisure complex. She remembers the hairs on her arms standing up in excitement as she looked out at the music tents and stages and the crowds of people, and the sea beyond, dazzling in the sun. It sure beat staying in Shepherd’s Bush on a Saturday night. The day, she recalls, was pleasantly hot. Warm enough for her shorts and the floaty white top she’d chosen not to look out of place. She’d accessorised with a straw cowboy hat and big glasses. They spent the afternoon wandering around the site, catching bands here and there, the silver bracelets on her wrist chinking against the cold bottles of San Miguel David plied her with. It was gone eleven by the time his set came around and the relaxed daytime atmosphere had shifted up a gear into a more hedonistic party vibe. As he started playing, Melody, who sat close to him in the booth staring out at the sea of faces, was aware of her stomach clenching with nerves. It was a huge crowd to please and while his taste in music was impeccable, quirky and eclectic, she hadn’t seen David perform in public before, never mind to this many people. What if he fucked it up? What if he played Wham! by mistake?

  ‘And there was me thinking you were out of your depth,’ she laughed to him later. She couldn’t take the smile from her face. Was it really David, her next-door neighbour, provider of home-grown marrows, who had just performed that feat, playing to the crowd, reading their mood and translating it into tunes, finding the exact mix to lift them and stir them, to bring it down when it was getting too frenzied. The layering of softer tracks with big bold anthems, the casual mastery of it all had entranced her, she’d lost herself to it for a good half hour.

  ‘Glad to hear you had confidence,’ David said. He was beaming, the energy drawn from the crowd snapping through him, sparking in his eyes.

  They found a bar just off the Placa del Sol in Gracia, the hip barrio where they were staying, and settled down with G&Ts.

  ‘I hadn’t realised how bored I was at home until you dragged me away,’ Melody said.

  ‘I didn’t realise I had dragged you anywhere.’

  ‘Willingly. If you can drag someone willingly. It’s made me think that I need to get away, travelling or something. I always wanted to do it, I just didn’t get around to it.’

  ‘You mean you don’t want to sell breakfast cereals and live in Shepherd’s Bush for the rest of your life?’

  ‘I do not sell breakfast cereals. I do PR. Once, only once did I have a client who sold breakfast bars, not cereals. There is a difference.’

  He held his hands up. ‘My mistake. So why don’t you do it, then? Go travelling, take off, what’s holding you back?’

  She thought about it for a second. ‘Nothing really, I guess I’ve just got caught up in the day-to-day and forgotten to look beyond. What about you? What does the future hold? A mobile disco? I can just picture you doing requests at weddings and bar mitzvahs.’

  ‘Very funny. If you want to know, I’m salting my money away to buy a place out of London, a hotel. The idea is to hold gigs and small festivals there.’

  ‘Admit it, you just want a bigger vegetable patch.’

  ‘That too. I’m all out of space for courgettes.’

  ‘Well we should hold each other to it, make sure we don’t let life get in the way of dreams.’

  ‘Deal.’ He tipped his glass towards hers. If he’d kissed her then she wouldn’t have hesitated. The truth is the reverse of what everyone believed. It wasn’t David who fancied Melody, it was the other way around. Surely if he was going to make a move he would have done it then?

  Melody springs up from the chair, crosses the kitchen to grab the cereal bowl from the counter. She puts it in the dishwasher, then takes the cereal box and returns it to its rightful place in the cupboard. There is nothing else to do in the kitchen so she runs up to her room taking the stairs two at a time. She has to keep moving, but even in this cavernous barn there is not enough square footage to cover. She could force herself to go out in the garden, but she wants to see the day in its entirety; instead of a view interrupted by the huge fence that circles their land. For once she wants to shrink under the immense sky and not stop until she has outrun the thoughts that are chasing her down.

  There’s no need to change; her loungewear is nothing if not versatile. She pulls on her trainers, locates her keys, her phone and finds a ten-pound note in Sam’s wardrobe, just in case. In case of what, she has no idea, but she’s not stopping to think. Pacing to the front door, she unlocks it, slips out and hears the heavy weight of it crash behind her.

  It is Erin who plans the routes normally. Melody follows. Melody follows in such a way that she doesn’t pay a huge amount of attention to where they go. They moved here more than four years ago and the roads and paths still have the ability to disorientate her, as if she is just passing through for the day.

  The village, she thinks. Head down towards it and then to the river. She knows the path along the river and knows she can turn back when she’s had enough. She looks up to check for traffic as she crosses the road, and feels her heart flap in her chest, her stomach spasm. There is no one next to her. There will be no one next to her all the way. The prospect both exhilarates and terrifies her. She used to seek out situations that scared her: public speaking, snowboarding down a black run, a new job that she thought was beyond her abilities, a relationship that should have been off limits. She’d go for them all, because if she was never scared, she wasn’t pushing herself, she wasn’t growing and learning and experiencing life. She was standing still. And if there was one thing Melody Pieterson hated, it was standing still.

  The thought propels her forward. At first she keeps her gaze low, eyes fixed on her feet kicking out in front of her. It’s a good way to avoid the puddles and dog shit but after a while it makes her dizzy and she is forced to look ahead. There are three people on the pavement, all walking towards her though not together. Of course she sees people when she’s running with Erin, but this is different. Today she views them as enemies in the field of combat. The closest is a man, in his fifties at a guess, carrying a jute shopping bag with a leek poking out from it. She holds her breath, picks up her speed and passes him without making eye contact. The next is coming at her quickly, a mother pushing a buggy with a toddler slumped asleep inside. Thank God Melody doesn’t recognise her. Every time she passes someone, more people emerge from corners and shadows. Faster and faster she runs, sprinting through town. Shops and buildings cram her at either side, people gather in groups, marauding, laughing. Car doors slamming, workmen shouting. She is under attack. It was a mistake to come out, a huge miscalculation to allow herself to be so exposed. Space. Quiet. That is what she needs, although not so quiet she will be completely alone. Picking up the pace, she runs at full pelt. The sudden increase in speed makes her head spin. She sees flecks of light dancing in front of her eyes, as if som
eone has just released ticker tape over her head. Don’t faint, whatever you do don’t faint. She has a sense that she is drifting outside of herself, no longer contained by her body. She is considering a good spot to pass out when she turns a corner and the road opens ahead of her to reveal the river. A familiar sight. If she carries on for a few more minutes there is a patch of grass, a bench. She can rest.

  Finally she stops, feeling like her lungs are raw and bloodied. Bending over, her hands on her hips, she heaves up the cereal she had for breakfast.

  It doesn’t ring true.

  However fast she runs, she cannot escape it. The possibility has already invaded her mind. All this time she has believed that David Alden took her dreams and stamped all over them. Her own pain and suffering, her survival has been her sole focus. But what if David is innocent? Then he’d be as much a victim as her, a victim who has had his own dreams crushed.

  She looks around. If he is innocent, it would mean that whoever attacked her is still out there, probably the same person who murdered Eve. If it is not David then she has no face to pin to the crime. He could be anyone, anywhere. He could be close by. He could be getting out of that blue Ford S-Max just across the road right now.

  But if it wasn’t David it would mean she could look at that blue Ford S-Max and believe it was blue, not silver or red. Her gaze extends across the river; a flock of geese have grouped on the bank opposite. She counts seven of them. If David Alden was innocent she would trust herself that there were seven and not ten or five. Being told that David attacked her was like looking at a blue sky and having everyone tell her it was yellow. And somehow she had to train her mind to believe it was yellow even if every part of her screamed that it was blue. It is the reason she doesn’t go out alone, because she can no longer trust what she sees. She needs others to direct her and instruct her, she allows them to interpret the world for her because she was proved to be so inept at doing it herself.