by S. E. Lynes
Just want you to know that Neil did everything, no matter what.
A throwaway line – less, a half-line. No matter what. As if to say he did everything despite… something.
‘No.’ I stand up, pacing the living room, rubbing Fred’s back in circular motions. ‘No, no, no.’
Fred burps adorably. Outside, street lamps splash yellow on the deep blue sky. If Abi were returned to me right now, right this second, what damage would we have to repair? Could we repair her? Who would she be now? Who on earth would she be? Would she know me?
‘Where are you?’ I whisper, weeping softly into the strange calm that loneliness brings. ‘Where did they take you, my darling girl? What did they do to you?’
Neil and Bella are our friends. I cannot seize upon throwaway comments uttered in a tearful drunken fit; I cannot. I’m starting to feel like I did after that day. Matt might be right. I might need help again. The party has been traumatic; Neil has become my focal point, my obsession, the lightning rod for my own not-quite-grief. Our foreheads touched on the empty street. He pulled me out of the water. There’s a connection between us; I can feel it but I don’t understand it. To suspect him is mad. I can see that; I can see it at the same time as believing that very suspicion. But our houses were searched and sniffed, for God’s sake. Every house on the street, every garden, was searched. We made formal statements at the station but there was no evidence, none whatsoever, of any of us having done anything sinister. Our stories matched. That Bella had a selection of recent photos of our child on her phone was only because she took them at Sunday lunch, the day before Abi disappeared. It’s possible she was hiding behind the camera while she made sense of her feelings, although I had no idea about that at the time.
It’s Matt. He is to blame. Then and now. To be betrayed by the person closest to me has unhinged me. There is nothing left, nothing safe for me to hold on to, and because of that, I am unstable. But… but… there is still something I can’t reach. A lost baby. A toy. Neil and Matt beneath the willow tree. Bella’s drunken tears. All easily explained. And yet… like the seconds, small things accumulate. Seconds become minutes become hours. Small things become bigger things become… information?
Call me if any new information comes to light. Another whisper in the silent dusk. DI Farnham. Her number is in my phone.
But first, I’m going to talk to Bella. I rang her this morning and told her I needed a chat; she said she’d meet me in Starbucks this evening. I find my phone in the kitchen and text: On my way.
Thirty-Four
Matt
Neil is in the kitchen, the air an aromatic cloud. Curry. Matt realises this is what he could smell coming into the house a few minutes ago. The back door is open and a soft breeze drifts in. Soon the weather will cool. Soon it will be the anniversary.
‘Where’s Bel?’
‘Gone out with a couple of the girls from the salon.’ Neil hands him a beer.
They touch bottles and drink. Neil has almost finished his. Matt wonders if it’s his first.
‘Chicken tikka masala,’ Neil says. ‘The rice’ll be a few minutes.’
‘Cool. Cheers.’ Matt could not feel less like eating.
Neil busies himself with the rice. Matt takes a seat. The table has been set – properly, with place mats and glasses and, rather optimistically, a jug of water. The sight moves him. Neil is looking after him, as he always has. His and Bella’s kitchen is still structured in the old-fashioned way: a small space at the back of the house with a modest pine table, no bar, no high stools, no pendant lights, no range cooker, no ample patio doors. He remembers Neil’s mum in this kitchen when he came here after school, how she always asked him if he was stopping for dinner. It feels homely. Authentic. From a time when people called in on one another, when the choice was tea or coffee. Round here, they call tea ‘builder’s tea’ – he wonders what Neil feels about that, whether he asks his clients for Earl Grey or rooibos or herbal, to make a point.
Soon, like everyone else, he and Bella will knock out the wall adjoining what estate agents would call ‘the snug’ at the centre of the house and open it out into this kitchen. They’ll knock most of that back wall down too. So much light! they will say, opening out their bifold doors and clinking their flutes in celebration. It is what everyone does. It is what he and Ava did last year. Neil did the extension for them, of course. Did he ever feel like ‘the staff’ as he did with Johnnie? Was he irritated to be the one in overalls while Matt left for work in his suit, his hands pink, his nails white? Matt doesn’t think so. Neil loves to get stuck in. Hates standing there pontificating. And it was almost a joint project – Neil altered Matt’s initial sketch (improved it) and Matt did some hands-on stuff at weekends – loaded sand and cement into Neil’s mixer, helped him shift the washing machine, made countless mugs of coffee and tea for him, his electrician, his plumber, running out to the corner shop to buy umpteen packets of chocolate digestives.
But if Neil could keep the huge heartache of his life hidden, has he kept other things hidden too? Resentment? Jealousy? What was it he said at the party? They think just ’cos they dossed around for a few years at uni, they think they’re better. They.
Is Matt one of them?
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ Neil is placing two plates of chicken curry on the table. ‘You’re in a world of your own there, mate.’ He returns to the fridge, retrieves a jar of mango chutney and a pot of Greek yoghurt and brings those over too.
‘It’s not the Maharajah,’ he says, sitting down. ‘Just from a jar, like. Sorry there’s no poppadums. Bella made it before she went out. She’ll tell me off for not putting this lot in little bowls.’ He gestures to the condiments before shovelling a forkful of food into his mouth.
‘That was kind of her.’
Bella is kind, he thinks, while Neil eats, quickly, as he always does, as if someone might snatch it away. And Neil is kind too. He is not the jealous type. Bella is materialistic, they both are, but not like that, not to the point of getting bent out of shape about it. Neil is the opposite of entitled, has always expected to work for what he has, and has always been proud of Matt’s academic and professional success. He prefers to be his own boss, that’s all, and is successful in his own right – it’s mostly a lack of time that has prevented him from upgrading his house before now.
Isn’t it? And what the hell does any of this have to do with anything anyway?
‘It’ll be all right, you know,’ Neil says.
Matt shakes his head. Neil has cleared his plate by half; Matt’s looks like he hasn’t touched it. Which he hasn’t.
‘It’s over,’ he says.
‘It won’t be. She’ll come round. People get over stuff, big stuff.’
Matt leans back from his dinner and takes a long slug of his beer.
‘I should’ve told her,’ he says, watching his friend make short work of the last mouthfuls of a meal he knows he cannot so much as touch.
Neil shrugs. ‘What happened happened. You can’t judge yourself on what you do in a panic. You were just trying to protect what’s yours.’
‘My castle,’ Matt replies, the words laced with bitter irony.
‘Exactly. She’ll understand that once she calms down. She just needs some space, that’s all.’
‘I hope you’re right.’
Neil grins. ‘I’m always right.’
‘Do you think you’ll do the kitchen soon then?’ Matt says, looking about him, at the pine units, the peeling corner of the lino floor.
Neil swallows his last mouthful and pushes his plate away. He takes a swig of beer and sits back in his chair.
‘Think we might move, to be honest,’ he says.
‘Move?’ Matt reels. ‘Since when?’
Neil shrugs and sighs deeply. ‘Might go further out. Get more for the money, you know? There’s some beautiful places over by Guildford – big gardens, off-street parking, garages, the lot. One place we saw had a barn.’
&nbs
p; ‘You’ve already looked? You never said anything.’
‘Only online. It’s not a definite plan, just something we’re thinking about. There was nothing to say really, to be honest. But I don’t want to do a load of work on this place and end up selling it. I’d rather just move to our forever home.’
Forever home. That’s Bella talking. ‘So you’d… you’d leave the area?’
‘We’re hardly moving to Australia.’
‘I know, but…’ But what? Matt finds himself fighting a feeling of betrayal. He swallows it. ‘You always did fancy a barn, didn’t you?’
‘Yip.’
‘And I… I suppose it’d be good to raise kids out there.’ Shit. That was clumsy.
Sure enough, Neil stands, abruptly, and crosses the kitchen. ‘Another beer?’
‘Sure, yeah.’
Neil brings the beers, sits down. He coughs into his hand, pushes his fist to his chest, as if to rub at a pain or a morsel of food that won’t go down. ‘Ava told you then, did she?’
Matt nods. Another wash of guilt.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says.
Neil shrugs. ‘Not your fault. That’s why we haven’t done the house yet. Treatment costs a bloody fortune. One more try and we’re going to look at adopting. And if we do that, it’ll be new place, new area, new start.’ The sentences rattle from him, as if he wants them out in one go – and quickly.
‘I see.’
From the garden, the unlikely chirrup of evening birdsong. Matt tries to remember a time when he didn’t live on the same street as Neil. He cannot, not in any concrete way.
‘We heard an owl the other night,’ Neil says. ‘They get confused with all the street lighting, birds do. You get a lot more birds further out.’
Another pause. Matt picks at the label on his bottle until Neil chinks it with his own.
‘Oi,’ he says. ‘You can still visit.’
Later, in bed, sleep a million miles away, Matt replays what will always be known as that day. He had stopped doing this, but since the party, he can’t help himself. The days, the weeks that followed. The latent suspicion of the police, the officer whose name he has forgotten pointing to the camera on her lapel, telling him it wasn’t a formal statement, not to worry, they just needed to keep a record. Oh, but he had felt their eyes on him and Ava, their cameras recording every word and twitch, Lorraine Stephens pretending not to listen. Even if he’d wanted to tell them that it was him who left the door open, he wouldn’t have – would have been a fool to change his story and risk arousing suspicion for such a small detail. It was bad enough when they piled on about the blood on the pavement.
The police were cagey with Neil too. That imperceptible layer of frost that Matt watched melt away as Neil wrapped them in his certainties, his capability, his openness. His charm.
But he hasn’t been open, has he? He has hidden his troubles so deeply that Matt has not had the slightest clue.
I’m always right, Neil said at dinner.
And yes, he has always been right, has always been possessed of a kind of down-to-earth wisdom from which Matt took his lead. Neil was Matt’s moral compass before Ava ever was.
But that night he wasn’t right, was he? His moral compass had lost its north. That night, in the pouring rain, he insisted on shaking on the lie. It was the first time – is the only time – he has advised against honesty. Come to think of it, it was the first and only time he’s suggested shaking hands. And when Matt thinks about that now, in the shadow of all that Ava has said, he wonders what need there was to mimic some gentlemen’s agreement when it was already long written into the deeds of their friendship that of course Neil wouldn’t have betrayed his confidence. That was a given, wasn’t it? So why shake on it? Why insist? Neil has always known the right thing to do. But not that time. That time he called it wrong. As if something had skewed his judgement.
As if he needed it to be kept secret more than Matt did.
Thirty-Five
Ava
The September evening is a warm breath on my face. I walk the long way round so as not to pass in front of Neil and Bella’s house and risk being seen by Matt. At the top of Thameside Lane, I round the corner left, my stomach clenching as it always does whenever I go near the river. Last night’s scene with Neil is still fresh in my mind – of course it is: the two of us crashing into the cold water, the strange, mad intimacy of that. That Abi drowned, I know I have to accept. I am getting nearer to it, which could of course be why I am so wired – a last frenzy before the small expiry of acceptance.
But how she ended up in the river is another matter. On this, my nerves are alight. My gut tells me that if she did drown, if that has to be how her life ended, then it was not an accident.
I know nothing for certain. The only certainty I have now is that her disappearance – her death – is not my fault.
It never was.
At the sight of Bella through Starbucks’ window, my stomach flares with heat. Dread – that’s what I feel. I have resolved to take it slowly, but frankly, I want to grip her by the neck, push my face in close and ask her what she knows.
I back in, drag the pram in after me. The whole operation is awkward. Seated in one of two armchairs, Bella is the only one in the place apart from a spotty, lanky teenage boy at the bar. From overhead speakers, pop music mutters into the coffee-infused air. Lulled by the rhythm of the pram and a full belly, Fred has dropped off to sleep. I use the shorthand of pointing to Bella’s mug and raising my eyebrows. She shakes her head, raises her mug: I’m OK, thanks.
‘Name?’ The teenager has his felt-tip pen poised.
I look about me, at the empty café, back at him. ‘Really?’
He blushes and instantly I feel like a bitch. Which I am. I fancy a hot chocolate, for the sweetness, but instead order a decaf latte. When he hands it to me, I thank him profusely, by way of apology.
‘Hey.’ I approach my friend, wondering if friend is what she is now, wondering if Neil has told her about last night. What he has told her.
She is wearing a red and orange dress and a tiny denim jacket, drinking peppermint tea in full make-up. Her nails are painted red, not one chip, not one chewed cuticle. I look down at my own loose combat trousers, my scruffy Converse, the puke stain on my grey sweatshirt. I’m wearing no make-up; my hair is pulled back into a ponytail. I feel unfashionable, out of place and a bit manky.
‘Hey.’ She doesn’t stand up. There will be no cheek kisses, no hugs.
I park the pram and sit down. ‘I’m guessing Neil told you about last night.’
She nods slowly. Nods again when I ask if he mentioned the river incident.
‘I went a bit crazy,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.’
‘He was pretty shaken up.’ She sips her peppermint tea. ‘Are you all right? I heard about… you and Matt.’
‘Did you know?’ The question flashes like a flame. I dampen my tone. ‘I mean, did you know about the door?’
She shakes her head. ‘No. Neil never said anything. Not a word, swear to God.’
I pour a whole sachet of sugar into my coffee, wonder why I didn’t just get the hot chocolate, then how the hell I can even think about anything so trivial, so irrelevant, when elsewhere in my brain hangs the notion that someone knows something about the death of my daughter. The notion that Bella herself knows something. But I cannot grip her by the neck. Not here.
‘Matt’s at yours, isn’t he?’ are the words that find their way out of my mouth.
‘It was good you rang actually. Gave me an excuse to clear out.’ She sips her drink, licks her lip. ‘They can have a man-to-man convo,’ she adds. ‘Whatever that is.’
‘I have no idea.’
Incredibly, we smile at one another.
From behind me comes the clank of the barista cleaning up.
‘So,’ Bella says. ‘What did you want to talk about?’
I study my hands. They are chapped from washing them too often,
as they were when Abi was a baby. Bella will have noticed, will have wondered why I don’t moisturise them. Christ, these thoughts are like bugs.
I look up, try to hold her gaze, if only for a couple of seconds.
‘Remember you said Neil had been out all night,’ I begin. ‘The night Abi… disappeared?’
‘Yeah.’ She shifts: straightens her spine, lengthens her neck. ‘Why?’
‘Did you mean all night all night or just, you know, late?’
‘I thought you sorted this out with Neil.’ Her voice carries an edge, and when I look at her, I see that her jaw has pushed forward slightly, her mouth flat. She has told me about fall-outs with other friends that left me assuming that her friendship with those women was over, only to hear that she went out with them the following week, all sorted. I wonder what’s coming, whether I can avoid the scene my insides tell me is imminent.
‘I did.’ I keep my tone level and quiet.
‘So what’s this then? Checking to see if our stories match?’
The confrontational tone almost winds me.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘But since finding out Matt didn’t close the front door, everything I’ve thought about that day has been turned on its head. It’s not that it changes what happened so much, it’s more the sense that someone I know so well could have lied to me for so long, and what that means about everything else I thought was true – do you know what I mean? I’ve been turned on my head, if I’m honest. That’s how it feels. I’ve gone through it all so many times, hoping for a different outcome, but now…’ I look up, but there is such hardness in her eyes, I return to the safety of the coffee I never wanted.
‘Now what?’
I force myself to meet her gaze, no matter how intimidating. ‘Neil said he continued looking. Can you remember what time he got back?’
Her bronzed skin yellows. Her beautiful turquoise eyes narrow. Her jaw clenches. Each alteration is tiny. Infinitesimal. But, like the inconsequential events at the party, they add up.