The Life I Left Behind

by Colette McBeth

  ‘You thought locking her in would calm her down?’

  He sighs, like a weight is crushing him. ‘She was in a state. Accusing me,’ he taps his chest with his index finger, ‘of hurting her.’

  ‘You can see how she might draw that conclusion since you were the one she was supposed to be meeting on the night she was attacked. And you went out to find her. Not only that, but you had lied to her.’

  ‘Hmm …’ He mulls this over for a moment before shaking his head. ‘Well no, actually I can’t. Mel knows me, for God’s sake. Why would I hurt her and then live with her? You do know we are getting married, don’t you?’

  This time it’s her DS who sniggers. One third of all female murder victims are killed by their partner; ten per cent of emergency calls are domestic violence related. Statistics like these lodge themselves in your head. And here is Sam Chapman suggesting that his desire to marry Melody is proof he wouldn’t harm her.

  She ignores the question, wants him to know that these arguments will not gain purchase here. There are already two offences she can and will charge him with: perverting the course of justice and false imprisonment. What else did he do? And there’s Honor to speak to. She was the one who saw Melody just before she disappeared, the only person who has now admitted to it. Could she have attacked Melody? Could she have done it with Sam?

  Honor Flannigan is currently being driven from Dorset to Richmond in a police car. She’ll speak to her tomorrow.

  It doesn’t take long before Sam starts to cry. Victoria could have predicted this. She’s seen it all before: the realisation that his normal methods of persuasion and manipulation are not going to get him anywhere; the mask of confidence that’s a millimetre thick, easy to shatter, and when it goes, everything underneath collapses. Like a tearful schoolboy rumbled for a misdemeanour, his speech is faltering and shaky, heavy with contrition. His eyes keep darting to the door; he’d love to be anywhere but here in this room with its recycled air, with her. But he’s not going anywhere. See how you like it now, she thinks. He is not pompous today, just pathetic.

  ‘I freaked out, that’s what happened. We were having an affair, my girlfriend found out, and Mel goes missing at the same time that I’m trawling the streets looking for her. I was scared. I knew I would be a suspect, and if I was, you wouldn’t have caught the person who did do it.’ She can barely keep up with him. In comparison to his previous slow and measured speech, his words come out fast, like he has one speed for the truth and another for everything else.

  Victoria sits back, arms folded across her chest, allowing the new version of his story to buffer the old one. She’s not convinced that either one takes her any closer to the truth.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Melody

  HE WON’T TELL her where they are going, except to say he planned to take her once before, when they had organised a weekend away: ‘But something better came along and you ditched me,’ he says, deadpanning.

  They’re on the M3 now and Melody is grateful he is giving the road his full attention. That way he can’t see the colour rise in her cheeks. She remembers the weekend in point, years back, and the reason she cancelled on him. Honor had decided to go to Dorset at the last minute. She had Sam all to herself.

  Patrick switches on the radio. They’re just far enough out of town that the London stations slip out of signal. He tries Radio 2. ‘Folksy shite,’ he announces before fumbling for a CD and inserting it. He turns it to track four and waits for the first few bars of the song to play. ‘Remember this?’ he asks, one hand tapping the steering wheel in time to the music.

  ‘Oh God, no … I thought we had agreed all copies of that would be destroyed.’

  ‘I lied,’ he laughs.

  It’s not a bad song; it was one of her favourites at the time, which was the reason it was in her car on their camping trip to the Lakes in 2006. Patrick had forgotten to pack his music so they listened to it for three days solid. She could sing the lyrics in her sleep, even now. Paolo Nutini.

  ‘Let’s see how good your memory is; can you guess the track?’

  She doesn’t even have to think. ‘“Rewind”.’ The sound of it takes her back to boggy fields and the smell of damp air trapped in polyester; wet feet, the sky, a uniform sheet of grey that stubbornly refused to lift. Only once in three days did she spy the sun, one horizontal strip where light burst through, as if someone had ripped the fabric of the cloud. Vodka, she remembers that too, notable by the volume they consumed.

  ‘I’m surprised we can actually remember anything about it. Thankfully the vodka helped blot it out.’

  ‘It wasn’t all bad.’

  ‘No, you’re right, the bit where we left and came home, that was OK.’

  He shoots her a look; something burns in his eyes. Sadness, anger? Her assessment of the trip can’t have upset him, surely?

  ‘Oh come on, Patrick, it was awful. The tent leaked, it didn’t stop raining, not for a single moment. I actually worried we would never see the sun again. We packed up at six in the morning because there was rain running down my neck.’

  She waits for him to surrender and agree. His hand has stopped beating in time to the music and is firmly clenched around the wheel. His brows are knitted together, straining in concentration at the road. He’s a looker, she’s always thought that, thick dark hair that he wears cropped now, and startling light blue eyes. He’s never been short of suitors; even back at university there was always a steady stream of blondes of varying shades: strawberry, bleached, golden. He’s got the patter, the charm he turns on, she’s seen him in action. But the few that he hasn’t dumped have tired of him. Melody suspects they found his petulance every bit as irritating as she does.

  ‘So are you going to tell me where it is?’ she asks to break the mood.

  ‘We’ll be there in an hour,’ he says and turns the music up.

  Sod him, she thinks, and closing her eyes she reclines the seat and pretends to sleep.

  At some undefined point the pretending ceases and becomes the real thing. Occasionally she opens her eyes only for her lids to droop again. The strain of the past few days has caught up with her, she is carried off, relieved of her thoughts for however long her dreams last. They are rich and vivid. She is walking through tight, once familiar streets, assaulted by food smells and colours: the pink of bougainvillea, white of jasmine, the deep blue of morning glory. She hears the distant rush of the sea, feels its breeze catch her face. She follows her senses and walks towards it, down the path where the sound of the waves grows stronger and the salt air thicker. When she feels her toes sink into the soft sand she opens her eyes. Ahead the azure sea ripples and winks in the sunlight. She turns and sees her friend by her side. It could be Tarifa, it could be anywhere, all the places she can go. There is nothing to stop her now.

  She wakes. Jolts. The car has slowed down a gear and then another. She doesn’t understand it at first, the sensation she has woken to, sprung from the heat of her dreams to a chill, the slow slide of an ice cube falling down her back. It takes a few beats to hear the crackle of wheels on the driveway, and even then she hasn’t grasped it. Only when they finally come to a stop and the engine falls silent does it make sense.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Eve

  HEADING UP THE road, the pleasantries were quickly exhausted. How are you doing? Fine, quite pissed actually. How are you? Fine, stone-cold sober and on call. We carried on for a few moments in an uneasy silence, which he broke with the obvious question. ‘How’s it going then?’

  ‘It is going very well,’ I told him.

  ‘Really? I thought you would have thrown in the towel by now; not the easiest case to disprove.’

  ‘I didn’t say it was easy.’ My tone was mocking. I shot him a look: it’s all about skill and persistence. At least that was the sentiment I wanted it to convey. In reality I probably looked a bit bog-eyed and drunk.

  I waited because I knew he wanted me to tell him more but I
was quite enjoying being the keeper of information for once. If he wanted to know, he could ask. I wasn’t going to offer.

  I wasn’t expecting what came next. ‘Look, Mel’s a good friend, one of my best, and for all my reservations, which …’ and he laughed, ‘I think I made clear to you a few months ago, if it wasn’t David Alden, we’d all be better off knowing.’

  The glow of the street lamp bounced off his face. His eyes waited, expected.

  ‘Well it wasn’t David Alden. I’m sure of that now, but I haven’t found out who it was. I’m not that good, not yet anyway,’ I said.

  He stopped. ‘This is my house, you’re welcome to call a cab and wait here. I can make you a coffee to sober you up. Not that I’m suggesting you need to.’

  I thought about walking the distance home. ‘Black, two sugars,’ I said, stumbling up the steps to his house.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Melody

  ‘WE’RE HERE,’ HE says. Her eyes remain closed. She can’t open them. Won’t. ‘Come on, Mel.’ He gives her a gentle prod. ‘Let’s get inside, I’ll show you around.’

  She prises them open. He’s smiling at her with the same light blue eyes, the same face she’s picked out in crowds and concerts, in bars and airport arrivals for eighteen years, always there, solid, dependable. He looks at her quizzically. ‘Sorry, did I give you a fright?’ This is Sam’s legacy, this fear: doubt everyone, trust no one. Fuck Sam.

  ‘Where the hell are we?’ She’s disorientated. When she last looked there were cars and lights all around them. Now she can’t see more than five feet in front of her: a few trees, a small stretch of path illuminated by the yellow glow of the car’s headlights.

  ‘Remember the place I told you about, the one I wanted to bring you to. Well this is it. Don’t expect too much inside. It’s basic, and that’s being kind.’

  ‘It’s yours?’ He’s talked about it once or twice before, a sanctuary where he used to escape with his mum when he was a child and fly kites on the hill behind the house. It had been her mother’s before. Mel had no idea it was here he had planned to take her. The weekend she’d spent screwing Sam instead. Some friend.

  ‘I’d hardly bring you here if it wasn’t. I got it after my dad died. But that shower you’re after …’

  ‘A shower is not a luxury, it’s an essential.’

  ‘It was in 1975 when this place was last updated.’

  ‘Is this your way of telling me I’m going to have to bathe in a tub?’

  He shook his head and grinned playfully. ‘Don’t be stupid, there’s a bath. You’ll just have to boil the water to fill it.’

  There’s a torch, somewhere, either lost in the footwell of the car or left behind in the cottage last time, so he leaves the headlights on and they stumble up the path. ‘Don’t they have street lights around these parts?’ Mel asks, and she trips and rights herself just before she tumbles face down on to the gravel.

  ‘They don’t even have streets,’ he jokes.

  It’s brisk, at least ten degrees colder than when they left London. She listens out … to what? Nothing, apart from the gentle sound of the wind singing through the bushes. She should be used to this, the intense quiet, having lived in the depths of Surrey. But being here, the air so empty of sirens or dogs or the distant rumbling of trains, she realises that the house was only remote in her mind. They were six miles from Guildford, a mile and a half from the village, where there were cafés and cake shops, a Tesco Metro for God’s sake.

  She looks up, sees the black sky pierced with throbbing stars. Vast, uninterrupted.

  They reach the front door, shrouded in darkness. Close up she can see it is warped. Deep crevices run down the wood. What little paint remains is bubbled and peeling. She braces herself for her first view of the interior, can’t imagine it will be the refuge she had in mind. ‘I hope you’ve got wine,’ she says, trying to sound upbeat, ‘because I plan on drinking heavily.’

  ‘Wine I can do.’

  ‘Just no vodka, and no Paolo Nutini.’

  Patrick flicks on the light and she gets her first glimpse. He was right about it being basic. It is authentically old as opposed to cutesy vintage old. She feels like she’s stepped on to the set of one of those TV docudramas: A 1980s Family. Off a dark hallway is a large living room with a moss-green velvet sofa and two matching armchairs. A teak coffee table sits in the middle of the room, which is dominated by an oversized stone fireplace. There are a few empty wine bottles on the mantelpiece with candles stuck in them, tears of wax dried down the sides. A bare bulb hangs from the ceiling. Its glare is brutal and unforgiving. The air is misted with dust particles. She coughs. It’s damp and musty. She feels like a child who hasn’t been given what they want.

  He must read her thoughts. ‘Wait till I get the fire started and it warms up, it’ll be transformed.

  She smiles and nods. ‘I’ll take your word for it.’ She heads out to the hallway to retrieve a fleece from her bag. The bath can wait. It’s too cold to remove any layers yet.

  He must have been here recently: the basket next to the fire is piled with logs and kindling. There’s a newspaper on the coffee table, a Times from a few weeks earlier which she starts to leaf through for want of anything else to do, only to have him snatch it from her grasp. ‘For the fire,’ he says. ‘Old news anyway.’

  He rips the sheets out from the paper and balls them up in the grate, piling the kindling on in layers before striking a match. Within seconds the paper is alight, flames surging up towards the wood. The kindling snaps and hisses as the fire takes hold, flecks of orange spiral and twist in the air above. When he’s satisfied, Patrick lights candles, turns on a lamp and switches off the ceiling bulb. He was right. The room pulls them into its warm glow, like a cuddle. The air too is revived by the earthy smell of wood burning, which drives away the dampness. Melody feels her body relax as the heat reaches her to thaw her bones.

  Patrick disappears, returning a good ten minutes later. ‘I’ve run you a bath. I even removed the spiders and the cobwebs. Not everyone gets this kind of service.’ He hands her a towel – it’s stiff and smells clean – and points her in the direction of the bathroom.

  Cold air bites as she undresses. Tentatively she dips her toe in the water. It’s hot, almost scalding. Within seconds she has submerged her whole body. Emptying her mind of everything else, she concentrates on the heat searing through her. Just when she thinks she can’t take it any more and will have to get out, the pain abates. She always marvels at this, her body’s unfailing ability to adapt and acclimatise.

  She gulps in air, exhales before sucking in another breath, then sinks her face under the water. Her hair fans out around her, gently brushing her shoulders. How long can you hold your breath under water? It was a game she used to play with her brother Stephen when she was little. She always won, much to his annoyance. He never seemed to understand that the key was to empty your mind, think of nothing, remain as still as possible. You use less oxygen that way. She counts all the way to one hundred before her lungs sing for air. Lifting her face out of the water, she inhales.

  She emerges ten minutes later scrubbed, renewed.

  There is a glass of wine waiting for her in the living room. She sips it. It’s cold for red, having been stored in the cottage, but the alcohol heats her as it trickles down. For tonight at least she will put everything else from her mind.

  ‘We have pizza,’ Patrick says.

  ‘They have takeaways around here?’

  ‘Yeah right.’ He laughs. ‘From the freezer. You’re either organised or you starve.’

  Melody accepts the plate from him; she is ravenous. ‘So, do you come here often?’ she laughs, blowing on a slice of pizza to cool it. ‘You don’t talk about it much.’

  He stares into the fire before his eyes flick over to Mel. ‘There’s a lot we haven’t talked about these past few years.’

  They sit eating and drinking in silence, watching the flames consume each new lo
g he throws on, gradually turning it to white-hot embers. Although she was inclined to disagree at first, Patrick is right. There is a lot they haven’t said. Sure, they’ve seen each other regularly for lunch or dinner, or when he comes to stay, but that’s different, skirting around with niceties and small talk. Melody has turned this into an art form, talking but not saying anything of import or meaning. Has there been one occasion in the last six years when they have dived beneath the surface of their friendship? If there is, she can’t think of it. Even when she lost the baby she’s not even sure she thanked him properly for his help and support. Then there’s this place. She casts her eyes around. He must have been coming here regularly and she had no inkling. And why has he left it exactly as it was thirty years ago, practically untouched? It’s not like he doesn’t have the money to do it up. The Patrick she knows, or thinks she knows, would have had it ripped out in a weekend, come in armed with mood boards (she has seen this in action), sourced tasteful pieces of mid-century furniture from markets and fairs and paired them with photographs and pictures from his collection. She wouldn’t be sitting on this moss-green velvet sofa. The fact that he hasn’t touched the place bothers her because it reveals a side to him she didn’t know existed. And she wonders what else has been going on in his life that she is not aware of.

  To think how they used to sit up all night together at university with a bottle of vodka, making endless rounds of toast, talking about anything, everything. Bad sex, good sex, desired but rebuffed sex, workload, stresses, bitchy friends. Tiny, inconsequential problems they seem now, but at the time they threatened to destabilise their fragile self-esteem. Or maybe it was just hers, because thinking about it, it was she who did most of the talking. ‘I’m a good listener,’ Patrick would always say.

  Can they go back there, after everything that’s happened? Probably not. But they could salvage something, re-establish trust. She should have nurtured her friendships more carefully, that much is obvious to her now. Instead she has let them go to seed.