No Smoke Without Fire

  ‘He really should be more careful of his security,’ Celeste had said to herself wryly, when she looked at his latest Instagram post giving chapter and verse about his travel plans.

  In these last months, Ben had been the one trying to track her down and confront her. First, his appearance at Heavana, then the message on Tinder, and his attempt to get her number from her friends, and pitching up at Seventh Heaven, and tailing the Seventh Heaven van almost all the way to Birmingham. There would have been plenty of evidence of harassment there if she had taken it upon herself to go to the police. It was too late for that now. However, now it seemed from what Harry had told her when they spoke at the RAC school reunion, that Ben claimed he was seeking her out in order to make his peace. He had told Harry he was hoping for some kind of reconciliation so that he could move on with his life as a married man. It was way too late. That ship had sailed. Celeste wasn’t naïve enough to believe any of it. The real reason he had pursued her at first, she had decided, was because he wanted to intimidate her into stopping her relentless social media campaign against him that was blackening his name and putting both his reputation, his job and his future marriage at risk. The reason he had come to see her now was because he was determined to find out where Mia had gone and whether Celeste had had any part in her escape.

  Celeste had placed the Seventh Heaven condolences card (on the back of which he had scribbled his number), in her purse, next to her credit cards, keeping it safe for the day when she would feel strong enough to confront him. Her agenda was very clear, motivated by the desire for retribution. Now she had worked out exactly what she was going to say and do. She reviewed the events of the past few weeks in her mind. She had made one failed attempt already to have it out with him but had bailed at the last in the doorway of the pub. They had come close to a face-to-face confrontation when he stalked her to one of the CelestialHeadstones.com deliveries and almost cornered her in the church. But she had been too smart for him and made a quick getaway. He had paid with his windscreen for that mistake.

  In all these near encounters, they hadn’t actually spoken. This time she had orchestrated the meeting herself. She intended to get the upper hand. This time she was going to do the talking. For once he would listen, and she would make him understand that the way he behaved towards women was intolerable.

  Neither she, nor Mia, nor any other woman was ever going to suffer his abuse again.

  #MeToo

  But in truth the real reason she had lured Ben to this final encounter, was because she was determined to challenge him once and for all for having selfishly and recklessly locked Tom into his bedroom and then maliciously lied about it. She had spent seven years torturing herself with the thought that it was she who was solely responsible for her little brother’s death. His behaviour was unforgiveable, beyond redemption. Now it was time for him to pay.

  #ForTom

  *

  The churchyard was quiet when she parked the van in the parking area. No one else was visiting the graves that early evening. Everyone had gravitated to the other side of the village where final arrangements were being made for the village Midsummer firework display being held on an area of common land just beyond the perimeter of the houses. An occasional dog walker passed by on the public footpath that ran alongside the brick wall leading to the fields. The church wall was festooned with climbing roses and jasmine and she caught the delicate scents on the air as she approached Tom’s headstone. She put down her floristry workbox and then went back to the van for the blooms.

  This time she was surrounded by her own heady aura of summer fragrance as she carried out armfuls of red roses from the van to the grave. There must have been two hundred blooms or more by the time she was done. Leaving at 4am that morning, Celeste had made a special trip to the New Covent Garden flower market and purchased three whole cartons of flowers, which she had specially selected – a perpetual rose called ‘Stolen Hearts’ with deep crimson velvety double blooms, dark green foliage and a strong, sweet fragrance. She had designed a special memorial for this Midsummer’s Eve – a swathe of roses to encircle Tom’s headstone.

  She sat down on the grass and began to prepare the stems – stripping away the thorns and trimming the ends. She couldn’t bear the thought of Tom’s bed of roses being punctured with thorns. It was to be as soft and inviting as a feather mattress. Her design had been inspired by the art installation of 888,246 blood-red ceramic poppies that had progressively filled the famous moat of the Tower of London in the autumn leading up to Remembrance Day 2014, the hundred-year anniversary of the start of the First World War. Each poppy represented a British soldier killed in the war. Like so many Londoners she had queued to view the installation and been moved to tears at the sight.

  With the fading of the light, nature’s evensong was in full swing – birds, insects and ducks from the village green, and even a barn owl, joined in the chorus. She knew these sounds so well, from having slept as a child with her windows open on balmy summer evenings in the Surrey countryside, that they scarcely registered. But then she was startled by a different jarring sound. She looked up. A motorbike engine. It could have been one of the punters for the fireworks. But it wasn’t. She recognised the particular sound of that engine and she knew exactly who it was. She knelt down on the grass and carried on stripping away the thorns without a second glance.

  By seven o’clock in the evening, Celeste had finished arranging the flowers. The roses glowed like fire in the warm rays of the setting sun. Unlike the ceramic poppies at the Tower of London, these blooms would not last long. But they were living, and they were real. Their transience represented the transience of life itself – from bud, to bloom, to blown – the short life cycle of the rose. It brought to mind that Shakespearean love sonnet she had committed to memory as a teenager for her English A level, Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? She could still remember most of the lines. ‘Summer’s lease hath all too short a date,’ she said out loud.

  By eight o’clock in the evening, the vast disc of the red Midsummer sun had sunk behind the church tower, stretching long, cool shadows across the churchyard, and Celeste began to wonder whether Ben had stood her up. He was supposed to have arrived at 8.30pm.

  While Celeste was engrossed in creating her flower installation, a few people had stopped to look over the wall and see what she was doing. Others had glanced across quickly, and moved on, respecting her privacy and understanding that this was a private and emotional tribute and that she might prefer not to be disturbed by the intrusions of a stranger. Just one woman walking her Labrador tried to strike up a conversation.

  ‘Those look pretty,’ she said. ‘Are you going along to the fireworks later?’ The woman was trying to be friendly. Nevertheless, Celeste was struck by how stupid she was to ask such a question to someone in the middle of preparing a memorial for a grave! Celeste looked at her blankly, but the woman didn’t give up. ‘Fireworks on the village green,’ she said. ‘Fun starts at 9pm, to celebrate Midsummer’s Eve. There’ll be a big crowd. The first firework goes off as the sun sets. It’s become a big event. People come from miles away.’

  Celeste stooped to gather together her tools as the woman went on her way. The sun was now so low in the sky that she couldn’t see the disc, only its light reflected in the pink, dappled clouds above. Still Ben wasn’t here. She began to feel edgy. As the time for the fireworks approached, a steady stream of people walked along the path towards the village green. But the churchyard was now so shadowy that no one seemed to notice her sitting quietly on the grass beside Tom’s headstone. She was so tired from waking in the early hours to buy the roses that at last her fatigue overcame the slow anger that had burned in the pit of her stomach all through the spring and summer, leaving a strange emptiness and peace.

  She lay down in the bed of roses that she had created. She turned her head into the pillow of soft, velvety petals, and she breathed in their sweet perfume, which seemed to intensify as darkness f
ell. Face down, she stretched out towards Tom’s headstone, and crushed the rose heads and petals in the palms of her hands then pressed her fingers against the cold stone. She shut her eyes, and breathed deeply, and at last felt close to Tom.

  Then, for the first time in many months, Tom came to her in a dream…

  There is a road winding through the trees, and Tom (as a small boy) is running ahead of her with a little brown dog yapping at his heels.

  She runs after him, in red stilettos.

  She can’t keep up because of her heels, and he shouts out to her from a distance.

  ‘I’m going home. There’s no place like home.’

  She calls after him: ‘Wait, you forgot your heart.’

  She holds a beating heart cupped in her hands and there’s blood everywhere.

  Then she trips over a stone and falls down.

  And he disappears around the curve in the road into the trees.

  He is gone.

  Tom’s heart is lost.

  She’s lying face down in the dust on the road crying for her own broken heart.

  She feels Tom tapping on her shoulder and his little boy voice saying, ‘It’s OK, stop crying, I found my heart. I’m here, I’m home.’

  She looks at her hands and they are white: all the blood is gone.

  He taps on her shoulder again.

  She turns her head, and she sees Tom’s face smiling down at her…

  *

  In her dream it was such a good feeling, like sinking into a warm bath, a sense of relief flooding through her body as she saw Tom happy and whole and unharmed. But now she felt the tapping on her shoulder, more insistent, and the voice, not a little boy’s voice this time, a brusque man’s voice, saying loudly, ‘I’m here, I’m here. Are you OK?’

  The dream melted away, along with all the good, warm feelings with which it ended, making way for a surge of flustered panic.

  It was Ben.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ he said – though he didn’t sound it.

  She rolled over and looked up. It was almost dark in the shadow of the church. His face was sinister in the moonlight. She stifled a scream. Suddenly she was back in that damned boathouse, lying on the bare compacted earth, with the grit and the gravel digging into her spine. It was like stepping into a time warp. He towered above her, looking down, but now his features were set into hard lines, all the more mature, confident, domineering and cruel. She leapt to her feet and straightened her hair.

  ‘This is such bad timing… I got held up at work. I had so much to finish off before my transfer to Singapore. I only got the chance to look in on my farewell drinks. And then the traffic… There was a crash on the A3… I’ve been trying to call you. You’re not answering your phone.’ Same old Ben. So quick to come up with excuses. So quick to shift the blame.

  ‘What time is it?’ she said. ‘I must have fallen asleep.’

  He looked at his phone. ‘Twenty-one, twenty-one,’ he said. ‘Sunset.’

  No sooner had he said the words than a burst of rockets exploded in the air above the village green.

  The fireworks had started.

  PRESENT

  51

  Like a dog, I feel my own hackles rise as I watch him go up to You, a menacing, looming shadow in the light of the moon. It’s all I can do to keep still and stop myself charging in for the kill. You are face down in the flowers. Unlike Sleeping Beauty, You have no forest of thorns to keep you safe. You turn over and slowly get to your feet. I can’t make out the words, but You don’t sound happy when You engage with him. Your features are in shadow, but I can see from the set of your shoulders and your chin, that you’re facing up to him, even though he stands more than a head above You.

  Now You are waving your hands while he turns away and lights a cigarette and perches on the bottom step of a large stone cross. That seems to make You even more mad. It’s almost dark but his arrogant expression is lit up as he strikes a match. You march over and grab the cigarette from his mouth and grind it into the turf under the heel of your black trainer. You are right to be angry. It’s Midsummer. It hasn’t rained for weeks. Everything is dry. The grass is like tinder. It only takes one spark to start a fire.

  *

  Now careless of any passers-by, Theo creeps along to a position behind the wall less than two metres distant from Tom’s headstone. Shielded by a statue of St Peter he is able to watch and hear. Ben stands up. He towers over Celeste. He grabs her by the upper arm so hard it will leave bruises and shouts down at her and wags his fingers in her face.

  From his new hide in the churchyard, Theo hears everything. Celeste unleashes seven years of bitterness and pent-up rage and lets rip with the accusations – coercive, abusive, an ego-maniac, entitled, he lied, he betrayed her, goddammit, he sexually assaulted her, he’s a brute, Mia’s better off without him, he doesn’t deserve happiness, he’s always been a bully, he’s not fit to be a husband, he’s certainly not fit to have a child…

  ‘You killed Tom… rapist and murderer… I wish you were dead…’

  It’s fierce and it’s loud. Ben counters every accusation. He accuses Celeste of interference in his marriage. He accuses her of poisoning his fiancée’s mind against him. He accuses Celeste of kidnapping his future wife and his unborn child. He tries to force Celeste to tell him where Mia is hidden. ‘What have you done with her?’ he yells, as if Mia is an object who has been mislaid.

  Ben is a fighter, but he’s not used to people fighting back. Theo knows he should intervene to protect Celeste in her hour of need but is rooted to the spot, a silent witness to the fight. Surely someone else will overhear the row and have the sense to call the police? He doesn’t want to be exposed for what he is, a stalker, but what holds him back is more primal than that – he’s scared. Theo’s never been a fighter. He’s been the target of too many bullies. He cowers away from all forms of confrontation. There’s something else, too, that stops him from jumping in between Ben and Celeste. He’s spellbound and enthralled, mesmerised by Celeste. In her anger, she is radiant, superb, sublime… He’s never been more in love.

  *

  Perhaps, because it’s Midsummer’s Eve with a party and music on the village green and fireworks exploding in the night, the fireworks in the churchyard go unnoticed. There’s a firestorm overhead and all the eyes and ears in the village are focused on the rockets, fountains and Catherine wheels, whistling and banging in the air, lighting up the sky.

  All except Theo’s. His eyes and ears are still trained on ground zero. He watches with a morbid fascination. What started as a verbal confrontation becomes physical. Ben grabs Celeste’s arms and shouts in her face. This time she won’t be his chattel or his conquest. Those boxercise classes she did at XYX come into good use. Her muscles are toned and firm. Her technique is good. The aggression that Niklaus and Juan taught her to channel into punching a stuffed leather ball is aimed at Ben – she pummels his chest, dodges to avoid the retaliation then punches him in the face – once – hard. He stumbles back and cries out in pain. And that’s when he lets rip. An eye for an eye, a fist for a fist. He takes back his arm and forms a fist, and he whacks the side of her face with a force that knocks her to the ground.

  *

  Celeste lands in a quivering heap among the roses. She looks up. He stands there panting, staring down at her with the same manic expression he wore on his face that night in the boathouse when he pinned her body to the ground under his. At the end of the day he’s a man and she’s just a woman. He’s stronger than her. No amount of motivational training in the gym can combat biology. When it comes down to brute strength, he’s her superior.

  But XYX taught her something else. Resilience. Never give up. When you hit the floor, you regroup, you stand up, you summon all your strength and stamina, and you fight on.

  When Ben knocks Celeste to the ground, she lands next to her workbox. She reaches in and grabs the first thing that comes to hand. As if by chance, her fingers fall on the florist
ry knife that she had been using to strip the thorns and trim the stems of Tom’s roses. By now, Ben has turned away from her in contempt and is walking away down the path towards the woods, his shadowy bulk merging into the darkness. She leaps to her feet, her muscles, springy and strong. She holds the knife like a baton in a relay race, punching forwards at her side, and she sprints. He doesn’t reach out to take the baton, he doesn’t turn, and she doesn’t slow.

  For once in his life, Ben is not watching his back.

  She hits him at full speed below the ribs. He crumples to the ground at the side of path and she stumbles on top of him. Groaning with pain, he rolls over and grapples with her, crushing her in his arms. Weakened by the blow, he can’t get to his feet and she is like an Amazon, writhing and struggling to get away. She scrambles to her hands and knees, preparing for another sprint start into the woods. But he catches her by the ankle and won’t let go – as if hanging on for dear life. She pulls away on all fours, dragging him behind. His bloodied hands slide over her ankle.

  Her trainer comes off. At last she is free.

  Like wildfire, she is gone.

  *

  Theo remains hidden in the shadows of the trees, appalled and terrified by what he has seen. He takes out his phone to make a call to the emergency services, then he stops. He can’t help thinking that Ben had it coming. But he can’t leave him lying there like a wounded animal bleeding into the soil. He counts the seconds, ten… twenty… fifty… until he hears the Seventh Heaven van being driven away, and then he calls 999. Before the ambulance arrives, he puts on his leather biker’s gloves and picks up the knife that lies covered in blood at the foot of Tom’s grave and Celeste’s floristry workbox that stands abandoned among the blood-red roses that circle his headstone. He deposits them in the panniers of his motorbike.