When she eventually regained consciousness, she was in hospital, but unlike the last time, not an A&W ward. No, this time she was in a maternity hospital. Spring Valley on Rainbow Boulevard, Nevada. Weird, she remembered, looking out the window with nothing to see but desert all round.
‘We’re all real sorry ’bout what happened to you, honey,’ a nurse with a Southern drawl breezed in and told her. ‘You were only about ten or eleven weeks gone, is that right? But you know, don’t despair, sweetie. Plenty of women who miscarry first time round go on to have perfectly healthy, normal pregnancies. I see it happen all the time in here. Besides, you’re so young, you can always try again!’
She’d fallen getting out of the bath, was what he’d told the hospital staff. A complete freak accident. While he’d been down in the casino. He’d just come back up the room to check on his fiancée and found her lying there. He was utterly devastated, he told them. Really laid it on with a trowel. He’d even thrown in the fact that he’d had to call off their wedding, garnering yet more sympathy for himself.
Nor were there any flowers from him this time. No hand-holding, no mortified apologies, no faithful promises that he’d get help and that this would never happen again.
And so lying there, weak as a cat and unable even to sit up in bed without broken ribs stabbing painfully into her sides, she began to think. To formulate a plan. A way of escape. Because she had to. She’d thought of escaping many times before, but this time was different. This time it was for real.
But whatever she decided to do, it would have to be soon.
When she was finally deemed well enough to travel and flew safely back home, she went straight down to visit her beloved Mrs K., who at this stage, was barely able to even distinguish Jean from the rest of the staff, God love the woman. Her poor, worn-out brain really was disintegrating that fast.
The two of them sat alone in Mrs K.’s peaceful, quiet room and Jean had calmly told her everything. About the whole, nightmarish trip, about her aborted wedding, about losing the baby, about the reason why she’d miscarried, everything.
‘I have to get out,’ she’d whispered, knowing that the chances were she was effectively talking to herself. Mrs K. was so completely tuned out these days, she barely even knew who she was herself half the time, let alone who Jean was.
‘Because I’m scared. And I was never the type to give into fear … But this is different … I’ve never been this afraid before in my whole life. And I’ve never felt this trapped. I have to go, to take off. Before it happens again.’
And the more she thought about it, the more do-able it all seemed. After all, you saw this kind of thing happen all the time in movies, didn’t you? So what was to stop her from completely reinventing herself? Then moving to a new city, somewhere miles away, where he’d never find her? He’d always vaguely threatened her that if she ever left, he’d come after her, that he’d spend the rest of his life tracking her down. He almost made it sound like it would become his life’s mission and, God knows, the guy was certainly obsessive enough to do anything.
But supposing … the Jean he knew were to just vanish? Suppose she just ceased to exist any more? It would make her practically impossible to track down, wouldn’t it? And, after all, the only other link he’d have to trace her would be via Mrs K., but he rarely if ever bothered asking after her and had never once even gone to visit her.
Which had always suited Jean; she liked keeping this part of her life private.
Besides, he never even knew Mrs K.’s real name, hadn’t once asked. She remembered him making a disparaging comment once about how she was ‘only ever your foster mother and, at that, only for a short time, so why do you bother traipsing all that bloody way to see her?’ At the time, she’d snapped back at him and they’d ended up rowing about it, but now she was glad of it. Glad he knew so little about Mrs K. Because if she were to disappear, she knew that she was bound to be the first person he’d want to see or interrogate. The first link to her.
Amazingly, this was where her luck held. As it happened, Mrs K. was due to be moved to a new care home, in Limerick this time. A super-posh one by the name of Foxborough House, apparently, where Alzheimer’s care was the best around. And crucially, where no one would ever have heard of one Jean Simpson. It couldn’t have been more perfect. Meant she could still go to visit, just under a brand-new name and no one would be any the wiser.
The more she talked out loud about it to Mrs K., that warm, peaceful sunny day, the more she knew this was her one and only chance. She knew him of old, knew he’d leave no stone unturned to track her down, so therefore her strategy had to be foolproof. She had to disappear into thin air.
The old Jean had to go. No other way to do it. She’d take a brand-new name, put together a whole new identity. She’d move away too, back to Dublin, maybe. Mainly because a) it was big enough that she could just disappear and be anonymous, and b) he hated the place and never went near it, if it could possibly be avoided. Galway was his city; it was where his business was based, where he’d lived his whole life. It was where Jean and he had met and eventually moved in together. It was bound to be the focus of his search.
There was something else, too, that worked in her favour. She knew right well he’d be too cowardly ever to go to the police and mount a big search operation for her. Because the first thing they’d surely do would be to start sniffing around, asking all sorts of questions. And how long would it take them to realise she’d been in and out of A&E units for the past two years? That she’d presented with a whole string of injuries and a litany of the most pathetic excuses the staff must ever have heard? They’d surely put two and two together and he’d only end up implicating himself. As it was, these days after one of his ‘outbursts’, he’d spend more time cajoling her into not going to the police than he ever would apologising to her.
No, she was safe from that, she was certain of it.
And there was yet another thing going in her favour. There was a customer at the diner where she worked, Harry McGlade, who came in for a big fry-up brekkie all the time. Had a nickname everyone called him by, ‘McGlade, the Blade’. A real character, a man with friends in low places, if ever there was one. Used to use the diner as a sort of dining room-cum-office.
She’d been serving him coffee one day and overheard him having a conversation with a ‘business associate’ about how easy it was to obtain fake passports. Ones that were so realistic, not even the most thorough immigration official could ever possibly see through them. So she made up her mind. She’d ask him for help, knowing full well she could rely on his discretion.
One thing was for certain, though. She had to move fast.
She’d even decided on her new name. Kitty, after Kathleen, Mrs K.’s Christian name. And Hope for a surname. For what she was about to do, she’d certainly need hope in bucketfuls.
‘So … what do you think?’ she asked Mrs K., who’d been lying propped up against the pillows, looking frail, pale under her parchment-thin skin, bone tired and half asleep. Jean didn’t expect an answer, couldn’t even be certain if she’d taken anything in properly.
‘I mean, of course I’d be able to come and visit you in Foxborough House, except I’d go by a different name, that’s all. But it would still be the same old me.’
But then Mrs K. astonished her by opening up her cornflower-blue eyes wide, taking Jean by the hand and squeezing it tightly.
‘Do it, love,’ she whispered weakly. ‘And just remember, you’ll be a long time dead!’
Chapter Sixteen
Outside Rocky Island Crematorium
An aching silence as all Jean could bring herself to do was gape at the ground while Simon and Angie stood stock-still, shell-shocked. Neither of them able to really take in what it was they were actually seeing.
Someone just say something … Jean silently willed, aware of them both drinking her in, from head to foot, jaws hanging somewhere around their collarbones. From out of nowhere, she s
uddenly thought about just how changed she must look to them now, with the drastically chopped hair, dressed in clothes a million miles removed from the kit she used to traipse around in. Her first instinct was to turn and run, but somehow she forced herself to stand there, while silence crackled between them like so much static electricity.
In the background, she was dimly aware of other mourners slowly trickling out from the crematorium and into the cool, blustery day. She could hear voices wafting back; surreally talking about perfectly normal stuff like going somewhere for lunch now and arranging lifts back to the hospital in Youghal, and wasn’t it shame there’d been such a tiny turn-out?
In the end, it was Simon who took the lead. Stepped forward and locked eyes with her. Such a deep, penetrating look, full of confusion and pain and something else Jean couldn’t quite read.
She tried to force out a sentence, but to her frustration absolutely no sound would come. And now all she could do was mutely look from him to Angie, back and forth, desperately trying to read them and not able to, at least not clearly.
In the end, though, Angie saved her all the bother, by bursting into big, gulping, noisy tears. Simon immediately went to her side, slipped his arms around her shoulders, then turned back to look at Jean.
‘I think we should go somewhere we can talk. I think after two years, the very least you owe us both is that.’
They drove in convoy to the nearby picture-postcard seaside town of Cobh, Jean leading the way, though she hadn’t really the first clue where she was going, Simon and Angie following closely in their car behind. As if she needed to be watched carefully, almost as if they were afraid she might just put her foot to the floor and try to escape on them all over again.
Which stung, but then if that was how they felt, could she really blame them?
Shaking, she drove into Cobh and pulled over at the first hotel she spotted. The WatersEdge; appropriately named, she thought, as quite literally you could have dived over any one of the balconies dotted around it and landed directly into the swirling sea below. And if things went badly for her here, she thought wryly, she might end up doing exactly that.
In tense, awkward silence, Simon led the way through reception and on into the bar, which given that it was lunchtime, was fairly busy, then outside onto a terrace that directly overlooked the harbour. Completely empty, apart from the three of them. A perfect setting for a final act of contrition, Jean thought numbly.
They took a table and settled themselves, Simon and Angie sitting opposite Jean, almost as if they’d come to interview her. She hadn’t anticipated how much of a united front they’d be and, again, figured she deserved it all. The waves of hostility practically rolling towards her were bad enough, but if anything, she figured it was lucky they weren’t physically hurling furniture across the terrace at her.
A passing waitress offered lunch menus, which they swatted aside.
‘Coffee OK for everyone?’ Simon asked, as Angie just nodded mutely, twisting a hanky Simon had given her round in her hands, over and over. Jean managed a tiny nod back at the waitress too, though she knew right well the very smell of coffee would turn her stomach. A half-pitying smile back from the waitress, who’d doubtless clocked that this lot definitely weren’t locals, but more likely passing visitors, dressed as only people who’d just been attending a funeral on Rocky Island could be.
And given the friction that was practically pinging between the three of them, Jean figured that the waitress would quickly put them down as distant relatives, who were now about to have the mother of all barneys over a deceased relative’s will. You could nearly see a worried thought balloon over the poor, hassled girl’s face that read, ‘Better have security on stand-by, just in case this lot start sticking forks into each other’s eyes.’
Strange, Jean thought from out of nowhere, to be sitting here faux-polite, with the two people she’d once been closest to out of anyone in the world. The first man who’d shown her what true love really was and the best friend, who she’d treated so—
She stopped herself. There’d be time enough later on for all of that.
Once again, Simon took the initiative.
‘Look … em … Jean,’ he began, stumbling over her name, like he had to keep reminding himself she wasn’t Kitty any more. ‘Thing is, we know pretty much everything there is to know by now.’
Jean nodded, and suddenly it was as though the world had shrivelled down to just this tiny table. Somehow she forced herself to make unbroken eye contact; a far better punishment for her that way. Though poor old Angie, she couldn’t help noticing, now looked like she was going to be physically sick. All Jean wanted to do was reach across the table to her, slip her arm round the girl’s shoulders and tell her everything would be OK. Like she’d done a thousand times in the past, whenever soft-hearted Angie was getting a bit weepy and upset over some bastard who’d mistreated her.
But then that was another thing she’d forfeited, wasn’t it? The right to ever call herself a best friend, or any kind of friend, ever again.
Simon coughed, cleared his throat and continued.
‘The police filled us in …’ he started, then hesitated.
‘I can imagine,’ Jean said softly.
‘… Well, they pretty much fleshed out a lot of your back story.’
He looked straight at her now, unflinching. Nothing, she thought, not a recognisable scrap of that old look he’d get in his eyes when he used to look at her. Like a total stranger treating her with a polite but cold disdain. She’d fully expected it to be bad, but not quite as bad as this.
Well, what did you expect anyway? a voice inside her head asked. Welcome home banners, a parade and a happy reunion, great-to-see-you, don’t-leave-us-again, knees-up all held in her honour?
Yeah, right.
‘As you can imagine,’ Simon was saying, businesslike, clipped, ‘it didn’t take the police too long to find out all about Jean Simpson. And very quickly afterwards, we came to realise exactly what you’d done. That you’d just changed your name, your whole identity.’
Jean nodded, taking it on the chin, willing herself to stay strong. There’d be time enough later on to collapse.
‘We even know the reason why,’ he went on, and she may have been mistaken, but could have sworn that this time, there was the slightest break in his voice as he said the words. A tiny chink … Maybe of understanding?
‘That you were trying to protect yourself, to escape from …’
Yes, she’d been right! Because now it was Simon’s turn not to finish a sentence. So Jean obligingly did it for him.
‘… from an abusive relationship,’ she said calmly.
Then Angie spoke up. ‘For God’s sake, Kitty, why couldn’t you have just told one of us?’ she suddenly blurted out, twisting Simon’s hanky round and round her finger, face snow white from shock. ‘You and I were best friends! We told each other everything! Couldn’t you have trusted me?’
Seeing Angie was agitated, Simon reached out to her and gently took her hand, which seemed to calm her down momentarily.
‘Sorry,’ she tacked on weakly at the end. ‘I keep meaning to say Jean, not Kitty. Pretty hard not to; to me you’ll always be Kitty.’
‘I understand,’ Jean said softly, wanting nothing more than to sit beside her and tell her it would all be OK, but knowing she’d doubtless be brushed aside. ‘And you have to believe me when I tell you that it broke my heart to have to do what I did. Hardest thing I’ve ever done. Hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.’
‘Two years!’ Angie glared over at her, really starting to get angry now, as all that pent-up frustration finally reached an outlet. ‘You wait two long years to come back to us and explain? Have you even got the first clue what you put us through? We did absolutely everything humanly possible to try to find you, we organised search parties with all the neighbours, we might as well have moved into the Garda station, we spent so much time there, we even littered the whole city with flyers
looking for you! Have you any idea of the worry, the stress we all went through that miserable Christmas? Which, by the way, lasted for weeks, right up until the police unearthed the truth about you …’
‘Shh, shh, it’s OK,’ Simon gently told her and at that, she seemed to stall a bit.
‘I can only imagine,’ Jean whispered. Knowing it was next to useless to try to say much more.
‘And in all this time, what do we get from you anyway? A lousy postcard? That’s it? After everything we went through together! Did we really mean so little to you? That you were just able to stroll out of our lives without a backward glance and probably even without giving us a second thought?’
‘Angie, you have to believe me, that’s not true … You’ve got it all so wrong … You have no idea …’ Jean leaned across the table towards her, willing her to listen.
‘Well, if I have it all wrong,’ Angie swallowed hard, eyeballing her and sounding stronger now, ‘then I guess you’d better fill me in. Please, go ahead,’ she threw in, a bit sarcastically, which was so uncharacteristic of her. ‘After all, we’ve waited this long, haven’t we?’
Then Simon spoke, sounding at least calm, if nothing else. ‘Thing is … Jean,’ he said, and if he accidentally stumbled over her name again, it was hardly surprising. ‘We know where you were coming from, we can even guess at your reasons for keeping so much from us for so long, and ultimately, for doing what you did. But what we don’t understand is why. Why then? Why that Christmas night, of all nights? The day before Angie’s birthday? And only a few days before you and I were due to go away on holiday together? I think the very least we’re owed after all this time is a full explanation. Don’t you?’
Jean nodded, though said nothing. Because how in the name of God could she ever even hope to begin? She looked from Simon to Angie and from Angie back to Simon again; Angie all teary and emotional, Simon rock-still, ashen-faced.
No way out of this. No more running. They were right: they deserved the truth, the full truth and nothing but. She was about to say, ‘You’ll hate me for it,’ but shut herself up in time. A superfluous statement if ever there was one. They already despised her; sure, how could they not?
Me and You Page 24