The Split

by Sharon Bolton

  She is married. To Freddie. And she has no memory of it at all.

  33

  Joe

  Joe, Jake and Ellie have dinner at his mother’s house, as they often do on Sunday evenings. All three of them relax around Delilah. He loves his kids, of course, and needs them in his life, but this once-a-week intensity is tough. When you live with your children, and see them every day, there is natural downtime, when you can co-exist in the same house for hours without paying each other any particular attention. On the other hand, when interaction is restricted to a few hours a week, the pressure to make those hours count becomes enormous.

  After dinner, both kids pull out their iPhones and take themselves off to the lounge. Joe’s suggestion that they help with the clearing away and then play catch in the garden falls on deaf ears. Including those of his mother.

  ‘You’re trying too hard.’ Delilah throws him a tea towel.

  ‘They have all week to play on their phones,’ he grumbles. ‘Jake’s too young for an iPhone anyway. I’m surprised he’s allowed it at school.’

  ‘He isn’t,’ Delilah says. ‘And Ellie has to keep hers in her locker. Sarah didn’t want to buy them, but they kept on at her for months, claiming all their friends had them.’

  ‘Which probably isn’t true.’

  Delilah bends to close the dishwasher. ‘She knows that. But she feels guilty.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘She talks to me. I listen.’

  Joe hears the rebuke in his mother’s voice and wonders whether to acknowledge it. She’s right that he keeps conversation with his ex-wife to a minimum. It’s too easy to slip into bitterness and blame. For the first time he realises that his relationship with his former partner is mirroring that of his parents. His mother, as far as he knows, hasn’t spoken to his dad in over a decade.

  From the next room, they can hear the low buzz as one of the kids watches a YouTube video.

  ‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ his mother says and Joe braces himself for bad news about Sarah, even the kids, and is a little surprised when Delilah continues, ‘It’s about Bella Barnes.’

  The murdered rough sleeper. The immediate relief Joe feels is followed quickly by the guilt that always accompanies any thoughts he has about Bella.

  ‘What about her?’ he asks.

  ‘We did an appeal for information, especially any sightings during that last week.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘We got a few. Mostly not significant, but a couple that worried me.’

  Joe knows that look on his mother’s face. ‘Spit it out, Mum.’

  ‘She was seen, by more than one witness, hanging around your flat.’

  Inside Joe, something twists. ‘Seriously?’ he says.

  ‘Joe, did she ever come into your flat?’

  He knows she has to ask him this. ‘No.’ Doesn’t mean he has to like it.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, I’m bloody sure.’

  ‘Did you ever meet her in private?’

  His mum is doing her job. ‘I saw her on the street, occasionally in one of the parks, mostly at the church hall. That’s it.’

  ‘Did you know she was hanging around your flat?’

  He hadn’t, but he isn’t entirely surprised. He’d suspected Bella had a crush on him. Coming after what happened with Ezzy, this could be bad for him.

  ‘You may be asked to come in and say all that officially,’ Delilah says.

  Bella and Ezzy. Two young, vulnerable women hanging around his home, trying to make the relationship personal? One time, anyone would put down to bad luck, but twice?

  ‘Joe, don’t worry about it. We already know you knew each other. I had to ask, you know that.’

  He does. Work always comes first with Delilah. They are silent for several minutes and then she says, ‘So what’s really bothering you?’

  He picks up a pan lid and envelopes it with the towel. ‘Something happened. It might be nothing, but—’

  His mother stops moving. ‘What? What happened?’

  ‘Someone may have broken into the flat last Sunday. During the night.’

  Instantly, he has his mother’s full attention. ‘When you were asleep?’

  He lets his head nod.

  ‘Was anything taken?’

  ‘Nothing that I can see. The only sign someone had been in at all was the back-door key on the mat by the fire escape rather than in the lock.’

  ‘Could have fallen out,’ she says.

  ‘Yeah.’

  She knows him too well. ‘What else?’

  ‘A knife,’ he says. ‘Mine. I found it on the kitchen worktop and I know for a fact I put it away the night before. Or I’m going mad.’

  ‘Why the fuck didn’t you tell me before?’

  Joe has no answer to give her.

  ‘Please tell me you haven’t washed the knife.’

  ‘I put rubber gloves on and wrapped it in clingfilm,’ he says.

  ‘I’ll have a team round tomorrow. For heaven’s sake, Joe, what were you thinking? After what happened with—’

  ‘It wasn’t Ezzy Sheeran, Mum. It can’t have been. One way or another, at her own hand or someone else’s, she’s dead.’

  ‘We’d better bloody hope so. Get the locks changed tomorrow. And you’re sleeping here tonight.’

  Joe doesn’t argue. He might be pushing forty but – there’s no getting away from it – being with his mum makes him feel safe.

  34

  Felicity

  Felicity does not find her car. She combs the nearby streets, checks every town-centre car park and even jumps on a bus out to the west campus to make sure it isn’t at work. Her missing car, though, feels like the least of her worries. If anything, it pales into insignificance beside her missing husband.

  She tries to look through the wedding album for clues but finds she can’t see Freddie’s smiling, handsome face without wanting to be sick. After several attempts she gives up. The photograph of the two of them at the altar, along with the dress and the jewellery is proof enough. Before locking the trunk, she searches beneath the wedding-dress box but finds nothing else. Certainly nothing to indicate when the wedding took place or how long she has been married. She finds nothing to suggest where Freddie might be now. Alive or dead, in the UK or on the opposite side of the planet.

  Closer than you think, whispers a voice in her head in the early hours of Sunday morning.

  Getting up soon afterwards, she brings the wedding photograph and the trinket box downstairs, locking the trunk behind her and tucking the keys at the back of a drawer in the kitchen that she rarely uses. The two retrieved items are in the bedside cabinet now, the one furthest away from where she sleeps. She has yet to bring herself to look at either again, but finds their very presence is staining her thoughts.

  She wanders her house, opening cupboard doors, checking everything is in its proper place. As she does so, she knows that lurking at the back of her mind is the dangerous thought that she may not, after all, have been responsible for the disorder in her home. Remembering Joe’s advice about changing the locks, she finds the number for local locksmiths and determines to contact them first thing on Monday. She tells herself that it is a sensible precaution, but the question she asked of Joe keeps coming back to haunt her.

  You really think someone is coming into my house? When I’m out and when I’m asleep?

  By mid-morning, she is unable to stay in the house a moment longer. She goes out running, but the church bells that fill the city on Sunday mornings make her think of weddings. The scent of flowers in the gardens she runs past remind her of a church filled with roses and lilies, but whether the memory is real or imagined, she cannot tell.

  The run is a failure. It’s far too hot and her heart isn’t in it. Exhaustion sweeps over her after only two miles and she turns for home. Limping back across the common she catches sight of a man who looks a little like Joe, and for a moment her heart leap
s. But even if it is him, how can she possibly tell him this?

  Oh, by the way, I’m married. Sorry, I should have mentioned it before. My bad. No, I don’t know where my husband is. I seem to have mislaid him. This won’t impact upon your assessment of my mental state, will it?

  This is not something she can tell Joe.

  She spends the rest of Sunday numb with anxiety and indecision, unable to see any way forward. She has no idea how she can be married and not know it until now. Losing a few hours of the day is one thing; losing months, even years of her life is another altogether. The trick she’s developed out of necessity, of flicking back through pages in her memory, has been no help to her with this, because no one can keep a detailed record in their head of every day of their lives. Until recently, she has never thought of keeping a diary of any kind so she cannot go back through the years and say, on this day I was not married, nor on this one, nor this.

  She cannot be married, to a perfect stranger, and yet she knows with a certainty she can’t explain, that Freddie is no stranger.

  As the clocks strike four in the afternoon, she plucks up the courage and pulls the photograph from the cabinet. She wastes no time looking at herself but focuses all her attention on her husband. Freddie’s face is faultless, handsome as a dream. He is tall and looks both strong and athletic. She cannot imagine a man more perfect, or any she would sooner choose to spend her life with. And yet merely looking at his image makes her sick with fear.

  She loved Freddie once. She knows this as surely as she is afraid of him now.

  By Sunday evening, she hasn’t come to any decisions about her marriage. She has though, devised a plan for dealing with her car. She will report it missing on Monday morning, claiming she hasn’t used it over the weekend and has only just noticed it’s gone. It takes her a long time, even after that, to fall asleep.

  * * *

  You think there’s any place on Earth he won’t find you?

  ‘Stop it. Leave me alone.’

  Felicity is dreaming. She is trapped in a cramped, dark space. She is afraid, but not of her immediate surroundings. This is her hiding place. Bad things don’t happen to her in here. Bad things happen when he comes to take her out of it.

  The voices come at her from the darkness.

  He’s getting closer.

  You think the South Atlantic is far enough? Idiot, you can run to the moon and he’ll find you.

  ‘Stop it.’

  In her dream she can feel the cold wall against her face. She pulls the duvet up over her head, trying to shut out the voices.

  Joe won’t let you go. He’ll never agree that you’re fit enough.

  Unless you sleep with him. That might work.

  ‘Shut up. For God’s sake, shut up!’

  Maybe he’s found you already. Have you thought of that? Maybe he’s just fucking with you. Any time now, there’ll be that knock on the door. Honey, I’m home.

  A knocking sound wakes her, to find no difference between sleeping and waking. She is still crouched in a small dark space, huddled in a duvet, damp with sweat. Sometime in the night she has crawled into the under-stairs cupboard again. The knocking from her dream is going on, loudly, insistently, on her front door

  Stiff, trembling, she opens the cupboard door and gets to her feet. Through the glass of her front door she can see the silhouette of someone on her doorstep. In her pyjamas, she creeps forward.

  ‘Who is it?’

  Her whisper gets an indignant response. ‘Harold from next door. Your car’s blocking the road. You can’t leave it like that.’

  Her car is back? How is this possible?

  ‘Look, love, I don’t want to be a pain, but if you don’t move it, I’m going to have to call the police. You couldn’t get an ambulance through at the moment, or a fire engine.’

  ‘I’ll move it,’ she tells him. ‘Give me a minute.’

  She finds shoes and a coat and grabs her car keys from the hall table. When she opens the courtyard door, she hears her neighbour doing the same thing next door. He appears at her side.

  ‘Were you drunk?’ he asks her.

  She can’t exactly blame him. Her car bonnet is in the parking slot, the rest of it sticking out into the road at an angle. No normal person leaves a car like that.

  Watched by a scowling Harold, she climbs inside. The seat is too far back. The mirror needs adjusting too. She starts the engine and reverses out, before backing the car properly into its space.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says to Harold.

  As she returns to her house, the thought strikes her that not only did her car mysteriously reappear but her car keys did too. They were not on the hall table when she went to bed, she knows this for a fact.

  She sinks to the cold hall floor and thinks: This, this is what despair feels like.

  35

  Felicity

  Felicity spends the next two days trying, and failing, to learn more about her newfound marital status. Her phone calls to the registrar have proven fruitless, as she has nothing more than her own name to offer them. She has no idea what her married name is.

  Nor can she think of anyone who might be able to help. She had few close friends at university and has lost touch with all of them since. In any event, they weren’t really friends. She has never really made friends.

  For what feels like the first time, she wonders why.

  She has been unable even to put a timescale on her marriage. The silver lily gift would date back to their student days, making it likely she and Freddie met at Cambridge, but without an idea of his second name, or the college he attended, her old university can’t help.

  She makes an appointment for the locksmith to change her locks later that week and devises, for the next few days, a plan that should keep her home safe. She locks every window and tucks the keys away at the back of a kitchen drawer. She bolts her front door top and bottom and arranges a pyramid of empty cans behind the back door before she leaves, squeezing herself out through the narrowest of gaps. If she doesn’t send the cans tumbling when she arrives home, she will know someone has been in before her.

  Late on Monday, it occurs to her that she might be divorced, that the marriage failed, maybe in a messy and painful fashion, and that that might be the reason she has blanked it from her mind. The surge of hope is soon gone, when she acknowledges that on some level Freddie is still a presence in her life. She might have divorced him. He hasn’t gone away.

  As she is driving to Joe’s on Tuesday evening, she makes her decision. She will tell him nothing about what she has learned over the weekend, but she will agree to the hypnosis. Something might emerge, that could give her some clue as to how to proceed. Any way forward has to be better than the state of limbo she is currently in.

  36

  Joe

  ‘When you’re ready, Felicity, I want you to tell me what happened last Tuesday evening. I want you to talk me through everything you did, from leaving work, to the moment you heard my call on your mobile.’

  For nearly five minutes, Felicity has been in a hypnotic trance. It has taken longer than usual to get her into the deeply relaxed state necessary for hypnotherapy to work, but when Joe lifts her hand from her lap, it falls back in the manner of someone fast asleep.

  ‘You left work at five thirty,’ he prompts. ‘You were planning to come to me.’

  ‘I stopped at the garage.’ Her voice is deeper pitched than usual. ‘I needed petrol. And some fags.’

  ‘Do you smoke?’ he asks.

  ‘So, shoot me.’ She gives a disdainful shrug.

  This is not Felicity’s normal way of speaking. He wonders if she is putting on an act when she is with him, deliberately trying to seem more refined.

  He asks, ‘Where did you go after the petrol station?’

  ‘Home. Got changed. Had a fag.’

  ‘You decided not to keep our appointment?’

  ‘Waste of bloody time. No offence.’

  ‘None taken. Where
do you smoke at home?’

  ‘In my courtyard. The basement if the weather’s bad. I only had one, though. And then I did some handwashing. I’d left one of my shirts to soak, and I checked to see if the blood had come out. I rinsed it through, hung everything up to dry and then checked my home emails.’

  ‘How did you get blood on your shirt?’

  ‘I’m not supposed to talk about that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Her breathing is quickening. Behind closed eyelids, her eyes are flickering.

  ‘That’s OK, Felicity. You don’t have to tell me anything you’re not comfortable with. This is your time. I want you to concentrate on breathing for me.’

  For several more minutes, Joe focuses on getting her back into her deep trance. As he does so, he writes on his pad: Blood on shirt? Not supposed to talk?

  ‘Can you remember who your emails were from?’ he asks.

  ‘My bank, telling me my monthly statement was ready. A delivery company, about something being delivered the next day. Boring. I checked through some news sites. I read a piece about the murder of the homeless woman – I’d say the daft cow asked for it – and then I went out for some food.’

  Joe thinks, were he to close his eyes, he would not believe he was still speaking to Felicity.

  ‘You didn’t have anything at home?’ he asks.

  She scoffs. ‘Rabbit food. I wanted a burger. I walked. I was almost there when—’

  She stops and her calm face takes on a troubled look.

  ‘What happened?’

  Felicity’s head begins to make small twitching movements. She says, ‘Someone was watching me.’

  ‘You saw someone watching you?’

  ‘No. They kept out of sight. But you know, don’t you, when you’re being watched? It’s an instinct. We know when we’re in danger.’