by Jess Ryder
‘Don’t be so hard on me, darling,’ begs Isobel. ‘You know what I’m like when it comes to anything to do with Cara. I feel so bad, I only want a chance to make up for the past.’
Alice turns round and glares at me. ‘Over thirty years I’ve had to put up with this. Can you imagine? I guessed it would take a while for her to get over it, a few years even, but this is insane.’ She grips the back of the dining chair. ‘You’d think she’d have moved on by now, that we wouldn’t have to celebrate Cara’s birthday every year with her favourite fucking chocolate cake, and walk around with a fucking long face on the anniversary of her fucking death.’
‘Stop it, you’re embarrassing Meredith!’
‘You’d think she’d have got tired of thanking Cara in the acknowledgements of every fucking book she writes and—’
‘I always thank you too,’ Isobel protests.
‘And generally shoving her name in my face at every fucking opportunity, like I should be okay with this, like I should love Cara just as much as she does. Why the fuck should I? I never even knew her.’
I stand up again and back away, my body hitting the wall. I feel a painting swing on its hook behind me. I have to go. Where did I put my bag?
‘Please, please don’t be like this,’ says Isobel. ‘You’ve always been so supportive.’
‘I have limits, Izzy, and you’ve gone way beyond. Meredith is not the reincarnation of Cara. You’re fucking insane!’
‘No, I’m not, you can’t say that. You’ve got to have an open mind. There’s a deep connection between us. We both felt it instantly.’
‘Oh yeah, I bet you did.’ Alice slams down a cooking dish and storms off upstairs.
‘Sorry about that,’ says Isobel after a few moments. She lights a cigarette, throws open the patio doors and stands with one foot in the garden while she smokes, drawing the nicotine into the bottom of her lungs and exhaling noisily.
I spot my bag nestling at the foot of the tartan armchair and start to creep forward, but just then Isobel steps back into the room, throwing her cigarette stub in the bin.
‘Please don’t go,’ she says.
‘No, really, I think I should.’ I pick up the bag and hug it to my chest.
‘You can’t leave at this time of night. I won’t let you. We all need to sober up. I’ll make some coffee.’ She goes to the kettle and starts filling it.
‘Honestly, I’d rather go.’
‘No!’ She turns to me, lowering her voice. ‘Alice is jealous, but she’ll get over it. I’ll talk her round and by tomorrow I promise you she’ll be absolutely fine.’
‘No, she won’t, it’s too awkward.’
‘Meredith, believe me, I know how to handle Alice.’ She takes the bag off me and smiles.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Cara
August 1984
She was doing okay, all things considered. Keeping busy was the main thing and, luckily, there was a lot to do. Once Jay had gone and she was by herself in the house, she realised just how filthy the place had become. They’d never once used the vacuum cleaner and she didn’t even know if there were any cleaning materials or where they were kept. The stair carpet was edged with grey fluff, the toilet bowl stank, there was mould along the side of the bath, the windows were almost opaque with dirt, the kitchen was thick with grease and everything she picked up seemed to be covered in hair. It was worse than when she’d been a student, and that was saying something. She would clean one room at a time, starting at the top and working downwards.
For the next two days, she hoovered and dusted and scrubbed, defiant against the heat. She didn’t go to the police. Jay was right in that respect; she didn’t have the guts. And anyway, the person she should confess to first was Isobel. And confess she would, but not until she’d got the house back into some order.
She paused from washing the kitchen floor, and sat back on her heels. Bananarama’s hit ‘Cruel Summer’ sang out of the radio – too right, she thought. The heatwave was showing no signs of abating. Sweat was running from her neck into her cleavage and her armpits felt sticky. At least the quarry tiles were looking cleaner, no longer covered in a film of grime. She looked down at the gritty black water in the bucket and shuddered. How could they have let it get so bad?
The garden was worse; she had no idea how to tackle that. It needed a team of professionals with proper equipment, but her dole money wouldn’t run to it. How shameful, she thought, to have let it get into such a state. By rights, Jay should come and help her, but she wasn’t going to ask. She hadn’t seen him since the split, but she’d had a few creepy phone calls she guessed were from him – either the phone would ring twice then stop, or she’d pick it up and hear someone breathing. Once the doorbell rang, but when she went to answer, nobody was there. It could have been kids, but somehow she knew it had been Jay. He’d left a few things at the house – clothes, toiletries, music tapes – and she guessed he wanted them back. Perhaps she should put them in a bin liner and stick them on the front doorstep.
What worried her most was that he still had his key. She bolted the front door every night before she went to bed, but it didn’t make her feel any safer. The locks needed changing, but she couldn’t afford to have it done. She suspected he was watching the house; just had this strange feeling that he was close by, as if some ancient part of her brain could subliminally detect his scent. When it got dark, she turned off the lights and stared through the window, waiting for him to emerge from the shadows or pop up from behind the parked cars. Then she decided he wouldn’t risk entering at the front of the house; he’d come in via the path around the pool and get in through the garden. The summer foliage was out and he would be completely hidden from the road. And the bottom gate wasn’t padlocked; all he had to do was reach over to draw back the bolt. At night she lay with her ears pricked for the creak of the hinges, his footsteps coming up the path, glass breaking in the conservatory…
The daytime was problematic too. What if Jay let himself in while she was out? He might steal more things, or lie in wait for her to come back. She’d made an emergency dash to the corner shop three days ago, and brought some basics, but they wouldn’t last forever. Then there was signing on, she couldn’t miss that. And she’d have to go to the post office to collect her dole money. The situation was becoming impossible.
Cara finished off the kitchen floor, moving backwards with the mop until she reached the doorway that led into the conservatory. She left the tiles to dry, collapsing in a bamboo armchair and putting her legs up on the coffee table. The cleaning was finished, at last, obviously not up to her mother’s impossible standards, but good enough to salve her guilty conscience. Just the garden to go, then. She puffed out a long sigh. The longer she left it, the worse it would get. Help was what she needed. Someone with muscles.
Toby! She leapt from her chair, sliding over the wet kitchen floor and running into the dining room (she no longer called it the office). His details would be on his application. Cara opened the old filing cabinet and took out a thick folder labelled ‘Auditions’. There he was. She gazed at his black-and-white 10x8, at the kind eyes and the easy, open smile. She liked Toby. He was far more handsome than Jay, who always looked as if he was either sickening for an illness or just recovering from one. She went back to the folder and found Jay’s application too – the short, handwritten CV littered with spelling mistakes, and his tiny, overexposed head shot from a photo booth. Isobel had liked the look of him because he was ‘real’. Hmm… he’d turned out to be a bit too real for Cara’s liking. She ripped up Jay’s application and threw it in the bin, then reached for the phone.
‘Hi! Is that you, Toby? Cara here… Yes, it’s me… I’m fine, thanks… Well, actually that’s a lie…’ And she broke down in tears.
He took the coach that evening, arriving at Darkwater Terrace at about 11 p.m. As Cara ran downstairs to answer the doorbell, she was suddenly reminded of her own arrival, eight long months ago; how her heart had
jolted as she’d stepped over the threshold, like a bride about to embark on a wonderful new life.
‘Sorry I’m so late,’ said Toby, as she opened the door.
‘Don’t be silly, it’s fine.’ She threw her arms around him and they embraced, illuminated by the light in the hallway. ‘I’m so glad you’ve come,’ she whispered, glancing over his shoulder into the street. She gasped. Had she just seen someone slipping behind the van parked opposite the house? She’d only glimpsed him for a second, but she thought she recognised Jay’s slim build and the hunched shape of his bomber jacket.
She withdrew. ‘Quickly, come inside,’ she said. Toby stepped in and she shut the front door behind him. ‘I think I saw Jay out there.’
‘Really? You sure?’
‘There was a shadowy figure, in dark clothes… It couldn’t be anyone else.’
‘I’ll go and check.’ He made to turn round, but she grabbed his arm.
‘No, don’t. I don’t want a fight.’
‘I’ll just have a word…’
‘No, please don’t. Leave it. Come and have a beer. I’ve only got one left, but we can share it.’
The next morning, Toby was up early. He went to the corner shop and came back with milk, fresh bread and a packet of bacon. He fried the rashers, dipping the bread slices in the fat before assembling thick, delicious sandwiches. They took them into the garden and ate them standing up, discussing how best to attack the weed-infested flower beds and the lawn that had become a wildflower meadow. Toby found a scythe in the shed, but it was too blunt and rusty to deal with the grass, so he searched the Yellow Pages and found a place that hired out electric strimmers. Cara gave him the keys to Bertha and he went to collect it while she dug at the hard, dry earth and pulled out all the obvious-looking weeds. They worked hard, only stopping briefly for lunch. The weather was punishingly hot and the back of Cara’s neck burnt in the sun.
At the end of the day, they stopped to admire their work. The stepping-stone path had reappeared and one of the flower beds was looking almost normal.
‘I’ll go over it with the strimmer again tomorrow,’ Toby said. ‘Then it should be short enough for the lawnmower.’
‘It’s fantastic, thank you so much. I couldn’t have done it without you.’
‘No problem.’ He stretched out his weary limbs. ‘I’m starving. Shall we go for a curry?’
They went to the Indian on Redborne High Street – it wasn’t the best curry house in Birmingham, but it was cheap and, most importantly, close by. Cara felt nervous leaving the house unguarded.
‘If it was him outside last night, he’ll know I’m here,’ Toby reassured her. ‘He won’t try anything, I promise.’
‘But what about when you leave?’ She prodded an onion bhaji with her fork. It had been cooked for too long and the batter was rock hard.
‘I think you should leave too,’ Toby replied. ‘For your own safety.’
‘But I’ve got nowhere to go.’ Cara pushed her plate away. ‘I’ve wrecked everything and hurt the person I care most about in the whole world.’ Her eyes were smarting with tears.
Toby reached across the table and took her hand. ‘Ask her to come back.’
‘It’s too late. She hates me.’
‘No, she doesn’t, she loves you.’
‘Not any more; she’s got a girlfriend now. Apparently it’s serious.’
He shook his head. ‘No, it’s too early to be serious, but I didn’t mean in that way.’ Cara felt herself blush. ‘Oh… I see. Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’
She nodded and looked down, not wanting to meet his eyes. The realisation had dawned on her gradually, since she’d got rid of Jay and allowed her emotions to breathe freely again. She’d pushed the idea aside at first, telling herself that she was missing Isobel’s company, nothing more. But since she’d been in solitary confinement, she’d had time to put her own internal house in order. As she scrubbed and swept, she’d gone back over the past and remembered how happy she’d been with Isobel, how well they’d got on from the very first moment they’d met, how beautifully their personalities complemented each other. She had never doubted Isobel’s love and she wanted that joyful sense of security back. As each day passed, she had ached for Isobel more and more, knowing this was too sharp a pain to feel for just a friend. Letting her go had been a colossal mistake.
‘You’ve got to be sure,’ Toby said gently. ‘If you do love her – you know, like properly – you mustn’t mess her around. It would be too cruel.’
The waiter intervened then, taking their plates away, and Toby ordered two more Cobras.
‘I don’t know what I feel exactly,’ Cara said, when they were alone again. ‘It’s really confusing. But I do know that Isobel’s the most important person in my life. Is that what being in love means?’
‘Write to her,’ said Toby. ‘Put it all down, then she can decide what she wants to do.’
Cara composed the letter that night, emptying her emotions onto the page and begging for forgiveness. She told Isobel she’d got rid of Jay, but not about the thefts – it would be easier to explain face to face, she decided. Instead, she focused on Jay’s anger at being dumped and how frightened she was of him. As she confessed her shortcomings, she began to see the situation through Isobel’s eyes. She had been a silly fool and Isobel had been right all along. The tears poured down her cheeks as she wrote that she missed Isobel desperately and longed for the old times. She begged her friend to come back so they could start afresh, on a new, open and honest basis. She finished with a flourish: I love you with all my heart and will never let you down again.
A bit melodramatic, she thought, rereading it next morning; the sort of thing Isobel would write, rather than her, but that was probably a good thing. She wouldn’t get Isobel back with bland, non-committal statements – it would require guts and blood.
‘I’ve done it,’ she told Toby. ‘I’ve just put it in the postbox.’ It was early morning but the air was already stiff with heat. He was lying face-down on Isobel’s bed in his boxer shorts, smelling of stale alcohol and sleep.
‘What? Oh… yeah…’ He slowly turned onto his back. ‘You didn’t hang about then.’
‘No.’ She smiled at him proudly, waiting for his congratulations.
‘Well… that’s good… great. Fingers crossed, eh?’
She nodded.
They spent the day in the garden again, clearing more flower beds, mowing the lawn, disentangling the bindweed from the rose arch and piling all the cuttings in a heap by the bottom gate. Toby added some bits of timber he’d found in the shed, and when evening fell they lit the bonfire.
‘I’ve got to go back tonight,’ he said, putting his arm around her shoulders as they stared at the flames. ‘Will you be okay by yourself?’
‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘I’ll be fine.’
He left her to watch the fire burn out. As darkness fell, she felt a deep catharsis. Everything had been cleansed and purified. The house, the garden, but most important of all, herself. She was ready for a new future. All she needed now was Isobel.
Isobel’s reply came by return, a few lines scrawled in purple ink on the back of a picture postcard. The image was of a Pre-Raphaelite painting, The Beloved by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and when she saw it, Cara sank onto the hallway floor and cried. Isobel loved this painting – she’d had a poster-sized version of it on the wall above her bed at university.
Dearest Cara,
I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to get your letter, even though your news has really worried me. Change the locks and try to keep calm. Coming to see you on Saturday. We’ll work it out, my darling. Promise.
Love you always,
Isobel xx
Cara stood the postcard on the mantelpiece and smiled. Just forty-eight hours to wait and then everything would be all right.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Me
The traffic thickens like gravy as we approach Bristol, c
ars backing up on the slip roads, their tail lights shimmering in the sloppy darkness. Isobel is leaning right forward, her face scrunched in concentration, breasts touching the steering wheel, trying to get closer to the windscreen, as if this will somehow improve her vision. The rain has reduced to an irritating drizzle; every time a lorry thunders past, it decorates the screen in opaque brown streaks. The wiper blades are squeaking and it feels like they’re scraping against my brain. I wipe the thoughts away and for a second my head is clear, but then they come straight back at me. Again I wipe, and again they return. Back and forth we go in rhythm, until all I can see is mud.
Isobel switches on the radio to catch the evening news. What they’re calling ‘the Archway student killing’ has already been demoted to third in the running order. A disembodied female voice announces that the body of a man in his fifties was found this morning hanging from a tree in a south London park. He hasn’t yet been formally identified, but it’s pretty obvious it’s Christopher Jay.
‘Thank God. It’s over,’ says Isobel, turning the radio off.
It’s not over for me, though.
Christopher Jay. As far as I know, I only met him once, that day in the pub, but there may have been other times, when I was a baby. My father. Not my father in any meaningful sense, but his death still pulls at me, like a child tugging mistakenly at my skirt. How can I feel the loss of someone I never wanted or needed, never knew I even had? I realise now that I was hoping they’d find him alive, imagining – foolishly – that I’d get some answers. That they’d put him in a locked interview room and torture him until he broke and told them what happened to Becca. But then again, I’m so angry with her for cheating on Dad, I hardly care any more.