Me and You

by Claudia Carroll

  She didn’t say it aloud, but it was there all the same, unspoken. If she was about to go through with her emergency plan, she needed to be utterly untraceable.

  ‘So where did you go?’

  ‘I got the taxi to take me home and asked the driver to wait.’

  ‘You mean you went back to the house?’ Angie asked, stupefied.

  ‘Had to. No choice. So I bolted inside, raced upstairs and went to … to this hiding place I had …’

  Shit. That had been even harder to say than she’d reckoned on. A pause while she tried to filter away the panic that her body could still recall with near digital clarity, even if her mind had edited it out after all this time.

  ‘By that I mean … a safe place … one I’d buried my whole past life in, just in case an emergency ever happened.’

  ‘Which was where exactly?’ said Simon, flushing furiously.

  ‘In the bedroom.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘You’ll love this,’ she told him sardonically. ‘Under a wonky floorboard, covered with this tatty red rug on the floor that I’d bought with you at a flea market years before.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Simon muttered under his breath. ‘You mean all that time you had stuff concealed down there?’

  ‘Had to,’ she said slowly. ‘My real passport, for starters, real birth cert, official documents and this tiny running away fund that I’d stashed there: cash I’d squirrelled away over the years just in case the unthinkable ever happened. And then of course, it did.’

  Simon’s hands, she noticed, were balled into fists by now and she was just wondering if she should leave it at that when a very red-eyed Angie piped up.

  ‘For God’s sake, I’ve waited two bloody years to hear the end of this! Don’t stop now, what next?’

  So Jean kept going. Editing out the bit where the only tiny, sentimental indulgence she allowed herself was to say a silent prayer for Simon and Angie before banging the hall door behind her and leaving for good.

  ‘Well, my luck held,’ she said. ‘It was so early in the morning, the street was deserted and the lights were all out along every house beside mine. Thank God there was no one to see, no neighbours up and about, absolutely no witnesses. So I told the taxi driver to take me to the airport and twenty minutes later, we were there.’

  She remembered vividly how sheer numbness and shock seemed to get her through. Somehow got her out of the taxi, into the terminal building and over to the first ticket desk she saw that was open. Like a person who’d mentally rehearsed a fire drill time and again, and who knew exactly what steps to take when the need arose.

  ‘When we got there,’ she went on, ‘I just went up to a ticket desk and they told me that the first available flight they had out that morning was at six a.m., travelling to Amsterdam.’

  ‘Amsterdam!’ Angie nearly gasped. ‘I don’t believe it! The police traced a lead we had that placed you there! We even went through CCTV footage of you at the airport! At least, it was someone who looked a lot like you … but it was a bit blurry, you know … and we convinced ourselves it wasn’t you.’

  ‘Why Amsterdam?’ Simon asked her coolly.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, shaking her head, ‘it just appealed. I figured everyone had really good English in Holland, so I’d be fine, I’d get by for a bit. And in the event of a search, I thought it was unlikely that word of my disappearance would spread as far as the Netherlands. I just thought it was somewhere I could lie low and think about what to do next. You have to understand I wasn’t thinking straight. I needed time, I needed space, I needed to somehow get my head together.’

  ‘And so you just hopped on the plane without a backward glance,’ he said, jaw tense.

  She couldn’t answer. Couldn’t even finish what she’d been about to say.

  Because it was only when she was actually on the flight and watching Dublin airport from a safe distance as the aircraft slowly began to taxi away, that the panic attack she’d been holding at bay finally overcame her.

  She remembered thinking about Angie, her own lovely Angie. It was her birthday that day and now look what she’d gone and done to the poor, blameless girl. A true pal, who’d shown her nothing but love, loyalty and friendship.

  Then she thought of Mags, Jeff and Sarah, all the gang. All the amazing friendships she’d forged over the years. What would they think of her? When they realised she’d just buggered off on them, without a single word of explanation?

  She still wasn’t able to think about Simon, though. Not while she was still in shock and trying to process so much. She remembered surprising herself at not even being able to feel pain yet. Instead, there was just the dull expectation of pain to come.

  She remembered vividly the aircraft thundering down the runway, building up speed for take-off. And how she allowed herself one final look out the window behind her, before she burst into tears and allowed the enormity of what she’d just done to sink in.

  Because Kitty Hope was no more. She’d arrived at the airport as Kitty and would land in Amsterdam as Jean.

  And, somehow, bring herself to start a whole new chapter in her life.

  Chapter Seventeen

  30 September, The Chocolate Bar, 9.45 a.m.

  ‘So, Angie, come on, tell me everything! Dish the dirt! Quick, while we’ve got time before the elevenses brigade all start to descend on us!’

  I’m in our Dame Street Branch, being grilled by Sarah, during a mercifully quiet mid-morning lull.

  And she is categorically not – repeat NOT – letting me off any hooks till she’s wrung every last, tiny detail out of me.

  ‘For starters, how did Kitty look?’

  ‘You mean Jean, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I keep meaning to say Jean. Sorry, force of habit.’

  ‘I know. I still can’t get my head round it either,’ I tell her numbly.

  ‘You still haven’t answered me! So, does she look exactly as she always did? Or has she put on any weight? Maybe … gained a few pounds across the midriff?’ Sarah asks hopefully.

  ‘No, she’s still the very same,’ I answer, laying out whole new layer of double chocolate with dark organic mint filling at very front of our counter display, along with a sign saying ‘Sample stock, feel free to try!’ Knowing they won’t last longer than approx. three minutes in here.

  ‘The very same? How exactly? For God’s sake, Angie, I need details here!’

  ‘You know, tall, super-skinny … Oh, but she’s had the hair all chopped off. Looks kind of …’

  ‘… kind of what? Weird? Makes her look … a bit older, maybe?’

  Now I know Sarah means well, but I honestly don’t think she’ll be happy till I tell her that Kitty – sorry, I keep meaning to say Jean – now has thighs the size of the Port Tunnel from stuffing herself with nothing but McDonald’s and subsequently spending the past two years living in a haze of guilt-induced oblivion. Sarah’s school of thought is that it’s the v. least she could have done, for what she put the rest of us through.

  ‘The thing you have to understand is,’ I try to explain, ‘I was just completely knocked for six … And still am really. Just to look back and see her standing there at the back of the crematorium … I’m not joking, it was like coming face to face with a ghost. To be honest, I’m amazed I was even able to be coherent around the girl. Never mind taking in how she looked, and whether or not she was carrying a couple of extra pounds.’

  Must still be in utter shock, I think to myself. It’s the only reason I’m even half functioning today, but then, as I know of old, habit tends to be a terrific deadener for getting you through.

  Sarah suddenly flings down a tea towel she’s ostensibly been drying espresso cups with, and furiously turns to face me.

  ‘Well, I don’t know about you,’ she says, ‘but half of me wants to hug the girl and the other half wants to wring her neck for what she made us all suffer through. I’m furious and curious at the same time, if that makes the sligh
test bit of sense.’

  ‘I know,’ I tell her patiently, ‘and if it’s any consolation, so am I. But, believe me, I don’t think any of us could possibly make her feel anything even approaching the hell she’s gone through herself. I mean, we can’t begin to appreciate the anguish she’s been suffering ever since she left. Can you just imagine what it’s been like for her, all this time? Not being able to check in on Mrs K., not being able to explain things to any of us, just walking out on her whole life like she did. You should see her now, Sarah, it’s … Well, it’s actually weird.’

  ‘Weird how?’ says Sarah, brightening.

  ‘It’s not just the way she looks, it’s her whole persona. She’s changed. You have to prepare yourself for quite a shock when you see her.’

  ‘Details, please.’

  ‘Well … remember how whacky and wild she used to be? That mad, restless energy she always had about her? How funny she was and how she never seemed to give a shite about getting into trouble or anything?’

  ‘How could I forget?’ Sarah says dryly, folding her arms and momentarily abandoning the espresso mugs. ‘You’re forgetting, I’m the girl who went with you on that famous night to meet her in a pub for “just the one”. And woke up the following morning in Holyhead, with possibly the worst hangover ever known to man, thanks very much.’

  ‘Well, it’s … it’s like that incredible, insane spark there was about her has just been put out. Totally extinguished. All that devilment and craic and messing and the way she used to behave … it’s like that was a whole other person that we used to know in a whole other life. And now there’s a woman in her place who looks vaguely like the Kitty we knew and who even sounds like her, but this time she’s called Jean and is … somehow …’

  ‘Somehow what?’

  I rack my brains trying to come up with right word.

  ‘Sadder. Like a fragile girl who’s had all the life and spirit sucked out of them.’

  Which seems to satisfy Sarah, for the time being, at least. But then I don’t actually think she’ll be happy till Jean has crawled in here on her hands and knees, wearing sackcloth and ashes with a shaved head, pleading to make amends for everything.

  ‘It was just hearing her whole side of the story was so heart-rending,’ I go on. ‘’Course, we knew fragments of it from what the cops were able to tell us two years ago, and were already able to piece a lot of it together. We knew that a woman called Jean Simpson had been through the A&E unit in Galway so many times that staff were starting to get suspicious, and that they’d guessed about the nightmarish relationship she must have been trapped in …’

  I break off here a bit. Just remembering back to that horrific night two years ago when I went back to Kit— Jean’s house to find that copper Crown sitting there with an ashen-faced Simon. And then having to sit and listen to what he told us. Exactly what it was that the police had discovered as soon as they’d run background checks on one Jean Simpson.

  And it’s amazing, but I’m still shuddering at the memory. Even from a safe distance of years, it still has the power to send an ice-cold shiver down my spine.

  I glance over to Sarah who’s looking expectantly back at me, impatiently waiting for further elaboration.

  ‘Look,’ I say lamely, ‘We’ve all spent so much time speculating and counter-speculating. It was just finally getting to hear the whole thing from Jean’s point of view that … that made me see it all a bit differently, that’s all.’

  ‘And what exactly is there to see differently here anyway, I’d like to know? Oh, Angie, you’re not going to turn into a big mushy marshmallow on me, are you? Need I remind you that Jean, or whatever we’ve all got to start calling her now, just flitted off and left the rest of us here worried sick about her! God, we did everything possible to try to find her, you name it! And all the time, she’s holed up in Amsterdam? And not a phone call to any of us in all that time, not a letter of explanation, absolutely nothing! So don’t you even think about going all soft on me now, missy, because I’ll tell you something,’ she goes on, now packing dirty coffee mugs into the dishwasher with such ferocity that I’m afraid she’ll start flinging them up against the wall in a minute. ‘I know exactly what I’ll say to that one if she ever has the nerve to face me. I’ll look her right in the eye and … and …’

  ‘And say what exactly, hon?’ I interrupt her gently. ‘Because, believe me, I honestly don’t think you could possibly make the girl feel any worse than she already does. If you could only have heard her yesterday! Your heart would have broken for her, it really would. Just to sit there and to finally hear her telling her side of the whole thing …’

  I trail off lamely here, unsure how to articulate what else is on my mind. Because I’d guessed, of course, but never really realised to what extent Jean was afraid. The terror she must have felt that Christmassy night when she vanished; one minute feeling so safe and secure with everything in life to look forward to, and the next, stuck down a dark alleyway with her very worst nightmare suddenly standing face to face with her.

  ‘To be honest,’ I tell Sarah, ‘I think the girl has spent the past two years having some kind of nervous breakdown. I don’t think she even knew what she was doing the night she took off. She was in complete meltdown; she wasn’t thinking straight. I think she’d worked out her emergency plan years before and just followed through numbly, without even stopping to think about the consequences. And then spent the next two years of her life regretting it, though Jean’s not the type to wallow. She just accepted this was the price she paid for her safety, and got on with it.’

  ‘Easy enough for her to just “get on with it”. But what about you? You were the best friend she had. Did she honestly expect you just “to get on with it” too?’

  Still haven’t quite worked out the answer to that one myself, so I turn away and get back to plonking out chocolate samples on the display case.

  ‘And another thing,’ Sarah mutters unconvinced, but I can tell by the fact she’s stopped bashing crockery round that she must be a bit calmer now. ‘Jean really should have trusted us back then. She could have told us the truth. She didn’t have to live a lie all those years, not around any of us. We would have been on her side, for God’s sake. We would have helped her.’

  ‘Yeah, but in a funny way, she was only doing it to protect us, if that makes any sense.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, that guy she’d been living in such terror of, Joe, well … he’d spent years and years just sabotaging her friendships and slowly isolating her from everyone who ever cared about her. So of course, when the worst started to happen and then kept on happening all those years ago, Jean looked around and found herself utterly alone and friendless. I think she was petrified of the same thing ever happening again. Of the same old pattern repeating itself with us.’

  Sarah is looking over at me with ‘still remain unconvinced’ practically stamped across her forehead, so I keep on trying to drive my half-arsed point home.

  ‘Look, Jean’s really been through the mill,’ tell her firmly, ‘all I’m asking is that you just give the girl a chance to explain it to you. Doesn’t she at the very least deserve that? She’s changed her flight, but she’s still planning on going back to Cape Town in a few days anyway, and she came here specifically to try and put the past to rest. Which you have to admit, was brave of her, if nothing else. You’ve got to give her that. So all I’m saying is, would it kill you just to meet her halfway? For old times’ sake, if nothing else.’

  ‘In other words, you’ve decided just to forgive her and let her waltz back into your life? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know.’ Only the truth.

  ‘But of course, there’s still one last and final thing,’ Sarah goes on, dishwasher abandoned as she looks even more keenly at me this time. ‘Something that’s not quite so easy to explain away. If I’m allowed to refer to the elephant in the corner, which both of us have success
fully managed to avoid so far.’

  Swear I know what’s coming next without being told.

  ‘Sorry, babe, but I have to know. What about Simon in all this? How does he feel about her sudden resurrection?’

  And now I clam up a bit. Then look hopefully towards door, praying a customer will come in and put end to the awkward turn this conversation’s suddenly taken. But no such luck; the brekkie rush is over and we tend not to fill up again till after 10.00 a.m., when customers usually need their sugar/caffeine hits to see them through the rest of the morning. I glance around anxiously for some untended-to job that needs doing to extricate myself from having to answer, but Sarah’s straight onto me.

  ‘Angie? Come on, love, don’t just clam up. I only wanted to make sure that he was OK, that’s all. And that you were too, of course. I mean, that’s the woman that he’d wanted to mar—’

  OK, at that I interrupt her bit waspishly before she even gets a chance to finish her sentence.

  ‘Look … I honestly don’t know how Simon feels about it, OK? So can we just leave it at that?’

  Bleeding hell! I love Sarah dearly, but honestly, there’s times when she’s like a dog with a bone, till she prises an answer out of you.

  ‘And I’m assuming that Jean knows nothing whatsoever about the two of you? As of yet, at least?’

  ‘Well … we were both still coming to terms with seeing a ghost for the first time in two years, so no, Sarah, our respective love lives didn’t really enter in the equation, thanks for asking all the same.’

  Didn’t mean to sound quite that snappy, not when she only meant well, but truth is … the real truth is, I’m worried bloody sick about whole situation with Simon.

  Before we left yesterday, Jean had told us she was staying on in Cork for a while, so she could tie up any loose ends at the hospice where Mrs K. passed away. But then, in yet another surreal moment, she said now that she’d spoken to us, that maybe she should come up to Dublin, just for a couple days before she went back to Cape Town. ‘To try and make my peace with a few more people,’ was how she put it, so simply and humbly that it nearly broke my heart. ‘So maybe after I’m gone, we can all finally put the past behind us.’