To my surprise, our wedding photos still line the landing. We’re signing the register. Cutting the cake, the icing version of us balanced precariously on top, meringue dress and wonky top hat. I allow myself a moment of missing him. Once, we had something solid, something good. It was as though we melded into something new when we were together. Something better.
There’s a candid shot of Matt whispering in my ear. I’m throwing my head back in laughter. I wish I could remember what he said. Something rude most likely. My hair, shimmering blonde under the bright summer sun, is sprinkled with confetti. Blonde like Chrissy. At least he has a type. The sight of the yellow roses in my bouquet eradicates my sentimentality entirely. Enjoy the date bitch. Matt must have purposefully chosen a card adorned with yellow roses to go with the flowers he left on my doorstep. I should have figured it all out sooner.
Angry now, I take the last three strides to the bedroom and press my cheek to the door, imagining Chrissy doing the same on the other side. There’s no sound of movement, of breathing. All I can hear is a whooshing noise, the same as I did on our honeymoon when Matt held a conch shell up to my ear, waves roaring, hot sand burning the soles of my feet.
I grip the handle, my palm slick with sweat. Slowly I push the door.
I can’t help crying out when I see what is inside.
47
Our bedroom. It’s almost incomprehensible that once this was the place I thought I was safe. This was the place I thought I was loved. It’s a mess. The floor littered with moving boxes. I yank open the curtains. Dust motes spin as though happy to see daylight.
What is going on?
‘Having a clear out,’ Matt had said when he offered me the green glasses, but this is more than a clear out. The boxes are crammed with his clothes. The contents of the loft. Our spindly Christmas tree we vowed to replace each year in the sales as we wrapped tinsel around its threadbare branches, but never did. The string of pumpkin lights we’d hang outside the porch on Halloween.
He’s moving. Leaving. My heart cracks that little bit more as I rifle through the rest of the boxes, seeing what he is taking, what he has discarded in the way he discarded me. Is that their plan, to frame me for a murder I didn’t commit and run away? Move abroad? The thought of Chrissy causes me to look around the room. Where is she hiding? Every sense is on high alert.
The roar of a motorbike revving in the street outside sounds like it’s next to me. I take a step towards our floor-to-ceiling built-in wardrobes, picturing Chrissy hiding behind the door with a knife, a gun. My imagination gallops, until I convince myself this piece of MDF painted glossy white is all that separates me and imminent death. Despite this I take another step, until I’m touching the handle, filling my air with lungs before flinging open the door. There is nothing but space. Empty wire hangers dangling from the rail.
A quick check of my watch tells me I haven’t got much time left before Matt comes home. He never walks Branwell for longer than thirty minutes in the rain and I’ve already been here for forty-five. I hurry to the spare room we’d once earmarked for a nursery. A single airbed and a sleeping bag are on the floor . A pillow still indented with the shape of a head. Who is sleeping here? Why would Chrissy not be sharing his bed? Where is she? I’d been so certain she’d be here, but I’ve searched everywhere.
And then I hear a noise from downstairs and remember I haven’t. I didn’t look in the toilet.
Every shift of the stairs beneath my feet, every creak is deafening, even above the sound of my heart punching against my ribs. Sweat is beading on my brow as I press my ear against the cloakroom door.
Silence.
In my head I count to three before I throw the door wide, jumping back, hands raised to protect myself.
There is nobody there.
Leaning against the wall, body weak with relief, I notice that the postman has dropped the mail through the letterbox and that would account for the noise. Automatically I crouch and scoop up the envelopes, shuffling through the letters. It’s mainly junk: a flyer for the new Indian that delivers, a voucher offering twenty per cent off vertical blinds, an A5 sheet advertising guttering clearing and a couple of what looks like marketing mailshots for Matt. In the kitchen I drop them on top of the paperwork that is always heaped next to the toaster.
I can’t help noticing that Matt hasn’t opened the post for ages, and I start to rifle through the pile to see if there’s anything for me he hasn’t passed on. Among the thin brown envelopes is a thick cream one stamped ‘Markstone Insurance’. It’s not a company I’m familiar with and I can’t help holding it to the light to see what’s inside. Nothing is visible. Curiosity overcomes me and gently I lift the flap of the envelope. Once open I pull out the letter and document inside and begin to read. The words spring at me from the page. I sit heavily on a stool, feeling as though all the air has been knocked out of me. I screw up my eyes, taking three deep breaths before I read again, as though that somehow can have made a difference. As though the letter will now say something entirely different. It doesn’t.
Four months ago, despite our separation or perhaps because of it, Matt had taken out a joint life insurance policy on us both. He must have forged my signature. If I die Matt stands to inherit a million pounds. The floor rushes towards me and I put my head between my knees, swallowing the bile that has risen in my throat.
My thoughts rage. Despite the letter I am holding in my hand I find it unfathomable Matt would ever hurt me. My disbelief is fuelled by denial but it’s all interwoven with strands of doubt despite him being the one who pushed me away, refused to see a counsellor, packed our marriage in a storage box, tightly nailing on the lid. I scan through the policy in my hand. One million. Enough for a brand new life.
For two.
Was I meant to die that night and when I didn’t they thought they’d torment me, send me the antidepressants hoping I’d finish the job myself?
The sound of an engine outside pulls me to my feet. The slamming of a car door. Without waiting to see if it’s Matt I slide open the patio doors before running across the rain-damp lawn, my socks sodden. I slip out of the back gate. I can’t see him. The man who vowed to honour and protect me. Now a stranger who has put a value on the wife he no longer loves.
I’m still holding the letter in my hands. I won’t let him get away with it. I won’t.
But he’ll know as he pushes open the front door. Stumbles over my shoes on the doormat. He’ll know I was there.
Frightened I throw a glance over my shoulder, as my wet feet slap against concrete sending shockwaves of pain shooting through my shins, almost expecting him to be right behind me.
Tick tock.
I’m running out of time.
48
Now I have a plan, as I know you will have too. I know you so well, Ali. You’re predictable. You’re selfish.
You’re a liar.
I’ll almost be sorry to come to the end.
Almost.
Despite everything, I’ll miss you.
49
Visibility is poor as I speed towards the police station, my wipers swish-swish-swishing against the lashing rain. The life insurance policy flutters from the passenger seat to the floor as I tear around a corner, and as I lean to pick it up my car drifts. There’s a sharp blast of a horn, and I look up just in time to straighten the wheel, missing the approaching car by millimetres.
Calm.
A speed camera flashes as I pass it in a blur, but I don’t care. My mind is racing too, trying to second-guess Matt’s next move. Will he come after me? Run? I can’t let him disappear along with Chrissy, for if they vanish, I know the cloud of suspicion hanging over me never will. The car park is almost full. I slot in-between a police car and a black Fiesta, its wing scraped white but, as I step out of the car into a freezing puddle, I hesitate. Is the insurance policy enough? Will PC Hunter take me seriously running in without shoes with this one solitary piece of evidence to clear my name. I think of his abru
ptness. His sarcasm. There’s nothing in this envelope linking Matt to Chrissy. ‘Circumstantial’ I think he’d say, and yes, I did learn that from the TV. My spirits lift as I remember the photo of Chrissy and Matt in my case at Iris’s. The letter she had written him. The phone call Jules overheard.
Surely that will be enough.
It has to be.
Yanking my seatbelt across my body, as my foot squeezes the accelerator, I watch the station shrink in my rear-view mirror and promise I’ll be back soon.
* * *
I’m barely aware of where I am until I reach Iris’s, where the sight of Matt’s car parked in the driveway causes coldness to drip through me like the teeming rain streaming from the guttering.
He’s still here. Why?
There’s nowhere to park on the road unless I block the driveway and it occurs to me this is exactly what I should do. I can call the police and Matt won’t be able to leave. Once I show them the photo, the letter and the insurance policy and have explained exactly what’s going on they’ll have no choice but to take him in for questioning. This whole nightmare will be over.
But my desire to call the police is overridden by the desire to check Iris and Branwell are okay. I’ve no idea what Matt is capable of.
Enjoy the date, bitch?
It must have created the perfect opportunity for him when I agreed to meet the man I thought was Ewan.
The house is quiet as I push open the front door. Too quiet. I pull out my mobile phone and as I call ‘Hello?’ I’m scrolling through the recent calls list. Near the top is an incoming number I don’t recognise: it must be the direct line for PC Willis when she phoned to ask me to go into the station.
‘Iris?’ I shout again. Silence wraps itself around me, suffocating the tiny spark of hope I’d been holding onto that Matt would be sat at the kitchen table, being plied with tea and custard creams, with no idea I’m aware of what he’s done.
Swallowing hard I begin to edge down the hallway. My socks imprinting damp footprints on the oak floor.
There is no bubbling of the kettle, no muted tones of the radio that’s always kept on low ‘for company’, no conversation, no scrambling of paws tearing down the hallway to greet me.
My whole body tingles with an overwhelming urge to run. To get out of this house, where again, a sense of tragedy has settled into the atmosphere, but I can’t. I can’t run. I can’t leave.
The kitchen is empty. Two mugs sit on the table, both half-full. One of the wooden chairs is upended, its spindle back snapped.
A sense of foreboding builds, a pressure in my head as though someone is inflating a balloon.
My thumb presses dial. I lift the mobile to my ear, waiting for PC Willis to answer, as I creep out of the kitchen and towards the lounge, and that’s where I see them, poking out from behind the sofa.
Feet.
Iris’s beige moccasined feet.
She’s lying on the floor, eyes closed, an odd hue to her skin. I think she’s dead.
My head starts to spin and as I stumble backwards I notice the message written on the mirror in the orange lipstick she’s worn since the 1970s.
You’re next
50
I’m whimpering as I back out of the room, phone clamped to my ear, willing PC Willis to answer. A muffled sound, like somebody trying to hum, draws my attention to the corner of the room.
Ben.
I hadn’t seen his car as I’d arrived but then I hadn’t been looking for it, lost to my own thoughts.
He’s slumped onto the floor, wrists and ankles bound, tie skewed, suit crumpled. The frames of his glasses are bent. There’s a strip of what looks like Iris’s tea towel tied around his mouth, blood trickling from the corner of his lips.
‘Oh God. Oh Ben.’
He makes an urgent, indecipherable noise as I rush towards him, gesturing wildly with his head but I can’t tear my eyes away from him, until a shadow shifts in the corner, stopping me in my tracks.
Matt is standing silent. Still. The hate emanating from him is as thick as the fear coming from Ben.
In that split second, I notice everything: the whites of Ben’s bulging eyes as he struggles to free his wrists, the stainless steel bread knife clamped in Matt’s hand. But it’s the scarf looped around his neck that causes my simmering rage to erupt. I bought him that scarf last Christmas thinking the blue would match his eyes that now stare at me with venom.
Until death do us part.
Just as I’m about to spring forward I hear someone say: ‘Hello? Hello?’
Thank God. PC Willis’s voice drifts from the phone I am still clasping in my hand.
There’s a fraction of a second where Matt’s eyes flicker from my phone to my face before he leaps forward. I scream.
Instantly, there is a frantic barking from the garden. I think I can reach the back door to let Branwell in. He may be small but he’d never let anyone hurt me. I spin, launching myself towards the door. Matt’s fingers grip my shoulder. I turn and kick him as hard as I can in the groin. He crumples to the floor, and I gabble into the handset.
‘PC Willis. This is Ali Taylor. My husband. Matt. He’s killed my aunt. Hurt my brother. He’s trying to kill me. He’s going to kill us both.’
‘Alison. Where are you?’
Matt is kneeling now, fumbling for the knife that had slipped from his fingers as he fell.
‘Iris’s: 212 Station Road. Matt’s been seeing Chrissy. She’s not missing. Oh God.’ I edge into the dimness of the hallway as Matt staggers to his feet.
‘Ali. Are you safe?’
‘No.’
Matt looms towards me.
I’m not safe at all.
‘My husband is going to kill me.’ I speak slower now. There’s an inevitability about it all.
‘The police won’t be long. Can you get to a room with a lock?’
‘It’s too late,’ I whisper, as Matt prises the phone from my fingertips and smashes the handset against my head.
Blackness.
It’s too late.
51
Everything is fragmented. Indiscernible. Vaguely I am aware of being lifted. Cold air. Branches tugging at my hair. Being carried through the back garden. The thrumming of an engine. The creaking of the gate. Lying down somewhere warm and soft. Drifting-drifting-drifting. Blackness once more.
We’re moving. My head throbbing. Lulled by the vibrations.
Safe inside the car.
Strapped in next to Dad. Driving to the corner shop. A block of Neapolitan ice cream from the freezer for Sunday tea. Swapping my strawberry for Ben’s chocolate.
Sleep.
There’s a whooshing sound in my ears as my senses reawaken with a roar. At first I think it’s my own flow of blood I hear, my pulse beating rapid and light in my wrist, but then I realise it is the sea. The ground I am lying on is hard and damp, my teeth chattering. Above me I see exposed beams knotted with woodworm. Grey stone walls.
Dark things happen on dark nights.
I realise the photograph on my Instagram page was taken here, the place Matt knew I loved. I’d shared my memories of childhood picnics with Ben and Mum before she got sick. The place where he had proposed.
Rope bites into my wrists as I push myself to sitting. There’s a tugging at my ankles, Matt is tying my feet.
‘You bastard.’ I kick once. Twice. My heel connecting with the soft flesh of his belly.
He slaps me hard. The metallic taste of blood coats my mouth, and I glare at him wondering what road we had taken since we had made our vows that could possibly have led to this. Had I really been such a bad wife?
He pushes his face towards mine, eyes burning into me – and suddenly I know.
I haven’t been a bad wife at all. This is not my husband.
‘Ben?’
The man so close I can feel his breath is wearing Matt’s clothes. Matt’s scarf. But the smell is distinctly my brother.
In the corner, the man I thought was Ben
is frantically nodding his head. The wire-rimmed glasses that don’t fit him properly sliding down his face. As well as feeling scared and angry, I also feel worthless and small. How easy Ben must have thought it would be to fool me with my prosopagnosia, and how right. Ben and Matt have similar hairstyles, short and dark, and when I’d seen Matt tied up wearing Ben’s suit and glasses it never for a second crossed my mind to look a little closer.
Don’t believe everything you see.
Although I cannot trust what is before my eyes, we all have a unique smell that’s almost impossible to replicate. And suddenly I realise exactly what this is about. It has been Ben all along. Taunting me. Scaring me. ‘Murderer’ painted on my door. Antidepressants in case I couldn’t live with what I’d done. Now it all makes perfect, perfect sense.
‘Ben.’ I’m firmer this time. ‘I know it’s you.’
He opens his mouth in a gasp and I smell it again, the menthol cigarettes he always smokes when he is stressed, and there is nothing more stressful than killing.
I should know.
52
I had stayed up late revising for my GCSE mocks, it must have been about eleven thirty before I’d fallen into a troubled sleep. My eyes sprang open at midnight, and I wasn’t sure what had woken me at first. I sat up in bed and rubbed the blur from my eyes. Moonlight filtered through the gap in my curtains, the wardrobe shadowed on my ceiling, and that was nothing out of the ordinary, though that night the shadows looked darker. Menacing somehow. Almost reluctantly I swung my legs out of bed, a sixth sense telling me something was very, very wrong. It’s the small details I remember now. The fabric of my towelling dressing gown against my goosebumps. The fur of my slippers warming the soles of my feet. The squeaking hinge of my bedroom door as I eased it open, half-hoping it was just Ben that had woken me, but somehow knowing it wasn’t. There was still a lingering smell of the sausages we’d eaten for dinner but now these felt heavy and greasy in my stomach.
The Date Page 22