by Elena Wilkes
‘I thought it was… I assumed it was… But now I think—’
What did she see?
Charlotte was gone.
Jack was gone.
Peter was gone.
Martin had done fifteen years of a prison sentence that she had orchestrated.
All she had was a broken necklace and a hairband and a bunch of weirdo letters pointing nowhere.
Nothing she had to say now was going to change anything. No one wanted to open this case to get justice for an ex-offender with dodgy background.
She frowned. ‘I think I’ve got it all wrong. I was only seventeen. I was drunk, I’d been taking drugs. It was dark. I’m making connections where there aren’t any. Maybe Charlotte was wearing a necklace that night, or maybe she wasn’t – who knows?’
‘Who indeed.’
No evidence, no corroboration, no point. It’ll never stick with the CPS. But she could see by the D.S.’s face that there were things that might: the death of Jack and Peter Vale for a start off, and then abandoning a baby. Frankie saw her future, what was left of it, being mapped out on that paper pad on the desk. She saw endless questions and charge sheets and solicitors. It was the future she’d always feared.
They looked at each other.
‘I see. Right.’ The D.S. picked up her tea in its plastic cup.
‘Can I go home now please?’ Frankie gazed into those insipid eyes.
‘I don’t see why not. We’ll definitely want to talk to you again so don’t think of going anywhere, will you?’ Frankie looked down at her tea. The liquid surface shimmered with tension, shaking as though there might be an earthquake just waiting to happen.
Chapter Thirty-One
The exhaustion hits her like a tidal wave.
Home.
Sanctuary.
Away from all of this.
Away from Martin and police and questions and chaos.
She needs to find Vanessa, find Chloe and start again, start clean.
Alex. Alex would help.
In spite of everything, all the lies and the deception, Alex would lay down his life for her if she asked him to; she knows that. She’d married him because, on some fundamental level, Alex was the kind of man she could trust with her life.
And Chloe’s.
The journey home is a blank. The miles tick by under the wheels, the hedges flicker past in the blue gauzy light, the signs say one thing and then another.
The Truth.
What is the truth? Does she even know what that is? The thing that’s been buried for fifteen years? Martin… Chloe… Charlotte… She has no idea what the truth is anymore.
The roads become more familiar, the streets she knows come upon her one after the other. This is her truth; this is her reality. These houses, these fences, these stones are what a real life and real relationships are built from, not a fantasy from years ago.
This. Is. Her. Truth.
Swinging into the drive, she knows before she even looks up that he will have seen her. Alex will be waiting for her in the same place he’s waited for her for fifteen years – and she realises it’s so lovely to come home.
She gets out of the car and breathes in the sweet morning air. This is what being free smells like: fresh and clean and full of promise. She goes to close the door, but then sees the photograph caught between the seat and the floor mat. Bending down to retrieve it, she hurriedly pushes it into her bag. If she shows it to the police now, then what? What does it prove? Nothing in isolation. One dubious photograph of a boy looking into a camera lens. It would go nowhere but into D.S. Markham’s bin.
Alex opens the door to greet her. He pulls her into his arms, squeezing the life out of her.
‘Thank god. Thank god…’ he murmurs over and over. ‘I thought… I thought… Oh Christ, it’s not important, you’re here with me now. Nothing else matters. You’re here, you’re here…’
She lets him hold the weight of her, feeling as though she would love to let go right now and give up: let her legs collapse beneath her and be carried away. The door slams behind with a definite click and the sound is like music.
Shut the world out; shut everything out.
‘Hey, hey… No, don’t cry! No, Frankie! Come on, come on. Come and sit down.’ He pats her arm, her cheek, checking her over. ‘Where have you been? Are you hurt? What’s happened to you?’
She pushes the hair out of her eyes. ‘I’m going to have to get out of all these clothes. They’re ruined,’ she sniffs and starts weeping again. ‘They just need throwing away.’ She can’t get her words out.
‘You’re fine, you’re okay…’ he soothes. ‘Look, let’s not talk about anything right now. I’ll get a black plastic sack or something and bring it up to you. Go and shower, I’ll fix you something to eat. Are you hungry? Thirsty? No? Just go on up then. I’ll sort everything.’
She hiccoughs a sob and scrubs at her face with the back of her hand.
‘I’m in a mess, Alex.’ She sways with tiredness, but has a desperate need to say this one thing. ‘I’m not seventeen anymore, I’m a grown woman, I need to get a grip of my life, get a grip of this marriage and stop behaving like a bloody kid.’ She looks up at him through swollen, painful eyes. ‘Everything I’ve done to you… The hiding, the lies…’ She sobs again. ‘I want a second chance. I know I don’t deserve one.’ She bites her lip. ‘I’m so sorry for what I’ve put you through. I can’t imagine why you’re still with me.’
‘Because I’ve always loved you and I always will.’ He goes to pull her to him but then pauses and sniffs. ‘But maybe not before you’ve showered,’ he grins. ‘We’ve both got a lot to be sorry for, and we both need to put it behind us. I’ve told you; I’ll sort everything out, don’t worry so much.’ He gives her a little shake. ‘Now get in that bathroom!’
Somehow, she manages to get up the stairs and peels off all her clothes, leaving them on the side of the basin and switching on the shower. She steps into the water, the heat of it tingling her scalp and face as she pools shampoo into her palm and begins to scrub at the matted grease coating her hair.
She is aware of the door opening through the steam and the rustle of a plastic bag. The rustling stops.
‘Frankie.’ His voice sounds odd.
‘Yes. I’m going to tell you everything, Alex. All of it.’
‘I don’t mean that. I meant what I said earlier. I love you. You know that, don’t you? I have always loved you and I always will.’
‘Yes. I know you do and I’m incredibly grateful.’ She begins to wash her body, over and over as though there can never be enough soap to make her feel really clean again.
‘I know you feel bad, and guilty about what’s gone on between us.’
Squeezing her eyes tight, she tries to shut out the pain and the trauma of what’s happened. Pulling her fingers through her hair she lets it snag until it almost aches.
‘Tonight, Alex… Tonight something terrible happened. I really don’t want to talk about it, but I have to.’ The images come back to her, bloody and horrible, but she knows she has to relive them. Her body starts to tremble. She sees his outline wavering on the other side of the glass; she just needs a bit of time to process the horror. She tries again.
‘Someone died… Two people died. I—’ She goes to say more but the words choke her.
Alex is still faltering on the other side of the misted screen. She’s not sure he’s heard her properly.
‘There’s so much that’s gone wrong and so much to put right. We just need a plan.’ He sounds so definite. Her hand shakes as she turns off the shower. It’s instantly quiet and she tries to find it in her to utter the words again.
‘Did you hear what I just told you? Martin’s been detained and taken in for questioning. I’ve been in a police station, Alex, I need to tell you, I’ve been involved in—’
‘Wouldn’t it be better if we just drew a line in the sand?’ He reaches back and grabs the towels from the rail, shunting the shower doo
r open and passing them to her. ‘We should start again, Frankie, just like I said before, leave this place, go away, start a new life where no one knows us.’
She pulls one of the towels around her. She’s aware of the birds outside, a mad dawn chorus. Her eyes feel as though they’re full of grit and sand.
‘Alex.’
‘You need to get dressed. We can’t stay here. We need to hurry.’
She watches him as he shakes open the plastic bag and begins pushing her clothes inside. The stink of petrol and smoke is making her feel sick. She looks at the side of his face as he works. His lips are pushed forward in concentration, his brow slightly furrowed. A note of alarm begins to flutter inside her ribs.
‘Alex?’
He pauses and looks round at her.
‘Did you hear what I just said?’
‘Yes.’
‘Aren’t you shocked?’
‘What is there to say?’
‘Is everything okay?’
She knows it’s not, but she doesn’t know how or why. There’s just something seriously, seriously not right.
‘We’re free now, aren’t we?’ He turns to face her, smiling. ‘It’s all over… all that stuff is dealt with. Gone.’
‘Alex.’ His face is not the face she knows. His eyes are not his eyes. ‘What are you talking about?’
It’s like she’s seeing him for the first time in years. The shock is almost physical.
‘It was supposed to be so simple.’
‘What was?’ She tightens the grip on the towel.
‘It was just supposed to frighten you.’
Her mouth goes to form the words again, but can’t. She doesn’t know what he’s saying. It’s making no sense. Frighten her? What is he talking about?
‘The notes. The phone calls at night. The figure in the alleyway… All those things that were happening.’
She’s still not getting it. She stares at him.
‘You were testing me…? Was that it? To see if I would tell you? You were testing me because you thought I was having an affair?’
He doesn’t answer. He goes back to tying up the sack.
‘I always knew about Martin, you see. I always knew from the moment I touched you at that party, that I loved you.’ His face flinches as though he’s been stung. ‘And that you would never love me in return. Not really.’
He looks at her face and nearly laughs; it’s a bitter sound.
‘You don’t even remember me being there, do you?’
His words swim in the air towards her. Alex is the stalker? The notes, the flowers, the being followed – it was all him?
‘Please don’t say you remember me.’ He holds up a hand. ‘I know that you don’t. You don’t feel about me the way you feel about Martin. You never have. You were in the garden, crying… Crying over a man that was treating you like shit, but you couldn’t see it. He’d done that to you, given you drugs and booze and then dumped you… What kind of man does that to a beautiful girl?’ He presses his lips together as if to blink away the memory. ‘All the time I was talking to you – trying to help you, I knew you hadn’t even seen me. All you were doing was desperately staring into the space that he’d left as though he might magically come back.’
It’s as though she’s in some alternate reality. Everything around her looks ordinary and normal and okay, and yet everything is as far from okay as it can possibly be.
‘And I know – and have always known – that’s the way it is. That moment: your eyes searching somewhere past me; that’s the way it’s always been between us. You wouldn’t believe all the things I’ve had to do, Frankie,’ he chuckles sadly, ‘to move into your sightline. All I ever wanted was to have you look at me the way you looked at him that night. Your gaze was like a searchlight in the darkness. I’ve spent years trying to be picked out by it, to bathe in its warmth, but I’ve always been relegated to the shadows. You’ve always shown me kindness and regard and respect, but never love, Frankie. Not that deep, grinding, passionate love I saw on your face that night.’
His agony is palpable; there’s such a terrible, terrible yearning.
‘I kept thinking as the years passed: is this is the year she’ll forget him? Will she move on and stop thinking about him? But it never happened.’
‘Alex—’
There’s a sense of unravelling; a spooling out of reality – or what she thought was reality – stretching and lengthening in front of her.
‘Every time his parole date got closer, I could see what was going to happen. He was going to be let out and once he came out…’
She feels her face collapsing.
‘Oh yes, I knew all about his parole dates and when they were. I knew everything, you see. Oh, I’ve put your clean clothes over there.’ He gestures towards the chair as though this is a normal conversation.
‘I knew that once he was out, you’d be like magnets for each other.’ His smile winces. ‘It was inevitable. I couldn’t stop it… You need to get dressed, Frankie. We do need to get a move on.’
She has a feeling that she’s just an automaton. Her body is functioning, but her brain has gone into survival mode: Put clothes on, get your shoes on, get out of here. It doesn’t matter how you do it. Stay calm. Stay focussed.
‘I couldn’t prevent it. I knew that. I thought about it long and hard, and I came to the conclusion that if I couldn’t stop it from happening then I’d just have to find a way to control it… And by the way, don’t worry, I’ve packed us a picnic for later and I know you’re exhausted but you’ll be able to sleep in the car.’
This is a dream, her brain tells her. You are imagining all this, none of this is real.
She pulls on her jeans. The action is so familiar. The impossible incongruous ordinariness of the action jars.
‘There was no way I could have him getting out on parole and walking the streets. I knew he’d try to find you. Something had to happen, and that something was Peter Vale. Only that didn’t work out either. This is what happens when you delegate work,’ he chuckles. ‘No one ever does the job as well as you would do it yourself.’
‘You knew that Peter Vale attacked Martin?’ she hears herself saying.
Alex frowns as though she’s just asked something stupidly obvious.
‘Of course!’ He checks his watch. ‘This is taking longer than I’d planned. Have you got enough layers on there, do you think?’ He catches her shoulder and turns her round to look at the back of her hoodie, pulling it down to neaten it. ‘You’re so beautiful, you know that?’ He kisses her temple. His saliva is cold on her skin. ‘We need to wrap up warm where we’re going. Come on.’
Her head feels like glue; her feet wade across the floor as though she’s walking through deep snow. He knew Peter. How did he know Peter?
He goes ahead of her out of the bathroom and down the stairs. She sees the rectangle of the front door with the arch of the skylight over the top. Just through that thin pane of glass is the outside world where she will be free; she will escape. There are people out there, people who will help. She suddenly realises she doesn’t have her phone.
‘By the way, I’ve got your phone here If you’re looking for it.’ Alex doesn’t look round. ‘It was in your jacket pocket. You don’t want me throwing that away, do you?’ He chuckles and opens the door to the kitchen. A wall of heat hits her. The Rayburn is going at full pelt. There’s a bag of what looks like rags on the floor next to it. Alex goes over and opens the bottom fire door. There’s an instant crackle and a pall of smoke. He dumps the sack, and crouches to pull something out. It’s a shirt with blood on it. Frankie takes a step back as he feeds it into the licking flames and shuts the door.
‘Your clothes can just go straight in the bin. Won’t be a sec.’
She watches him walk to the back door and across the patio and she immediately runs into the hallway, desperately yanking at the front door catch but it won’t give. A tiny cry freezes at the back of her throat as she tries again but
she can see the metal deadlocks are holding it fast. She spins round. No, this can’t be happening… No…
‘You got everything you need?’ Alex’s voice calls out from the kitchen. ‘I’ll just put this last lot on the Rayburn and we’ll be away. Don’t fret.’
She stands, dumbly. As soon as he opens that front door. The minute she thinks she can make a run for it…
‘Right… Here we go.’ He appears with his coat on and a large wicker picnic basket slung over one shoulder. The bizarre incongruity of this whole situation leaves her breathless.
‘It’s still really early. You’ve got everything, have you? Jacket? Bag? I told you to wrap up warm.’ He tuts. ‘I don’t suppose we’ll catch much traffic. What do you think?’
‘No.’
Her eyes are darting everywhere. His hands, the keys, the lock, the madness of a picnic basket. His fingers shake out the set of keys from his pocket and he unlocks the deadbolts and then the main lock. The door opens a little. She can smell the early morning air. It’s out there. All she has to do is—
Alex pauses, holding on to the door edge.
‘I want us to start again, Frankie. I want us to be a family: you and me and Chloe. Now there’s just us. Everything else has been taken care of, so we can, can’t we? The three of us.’
His face is open and pleading. She sees it all there: his love for her, how much he wants this. He’s almost begging. A sudden thump of realisation stops her heart, dead.
‘How do you know her name?’
‘What?’
‘How do you know Chloe’s name? I never told you. I never said. I only told you I had a daughter… How do you know it, Alex? Who told you?’
‘Jack.’ He smiles.
‘Jack?’ She can’t take it in.
‘I was with Jack at the party that night.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘That’s how I know everything.’
Her head feels like it might explode. She sees Jack with his white buzz-cut hair coming down those stairs that night and tries to picture the boy with him.
‘—But no, I actually met Chloe and introduced myself.’
A creeping stone of terror forms a hard ball in her gut. ‘You did what?’