by Naomi Joy
Caroline revels in being the most glamorous woman wherever she goes and, though she looks down on others for not meeting her standard, she’d be furious if anyone ever did. I’ve learned over the years, through the misfortune of others, that not competing with Caroline in the glamour stakes is a great strategy for survival: don’t try to be like her, it only makes her angry.
‘What do you say?’ she asks.
I roll her offer on my tongue, savouring this brief moment of power, then relent. ‘OK,’ I tell her. ‘I’d love to.’
‘It will be more responsibility as I’ll need you to be on the business side of things as well as the practical, but you’re smart; I trust you can make it work.’
I look down at my hands – I don’t want this to interrupt my mission with Kay – but I force my gaze up and will myself to accept. Exposing what happened to Tabby is my priority, but this promotion is important. I should take it.
‘You can count on me.’
Caroline runs her tongue over her front teeth, happy with her morning’s work. ‘Great. Congratulations, then!’
She sticks out an eager hand for me to shake. ‘I’ll pop your new contract through later and, if you could come up after work, we’ll start the handover right away.’
*
I admire my room as I sit down to my day of patients and check it for signs of sloppy cleaning. The walls are sterile-white, stunning marble underfoot, a large silver mirror to my left and potted succulents across the surfaces. I snap on a pair of latex gloves and give my office seat a second wipe down, just in case. It’s very important to me that everything is perfectly clean before I begin. If I spot a stray hair, or a greasy smear on the mirror, I simply cannot concentrate on the task in hand. That’s when mistakes happen, and I don’t like to make mistakes. Once I’m done with my preparations, the room looks brighter, somehow, perhaps because it’s framed in the context of my recent good news.
I click through my day’s appointments. First up, Botox injections for a young patient’s underarms to stop her unstoppable sweating, a few mani-pedis and IPLs in between. Then, this afternoon, I’ll assess an older woman for purple leg-vein removal, then pump a few late-teenagers’ lips like party balloons. All in a day’s work, I sigh, as the first knock sounds at the door, the radio in the corner telling me that Kay’s podcast has attracted a record number of downloads. ‘The cold case that’s red-hot,’ says the presenter. ‘I defy you to find anyone who isn’t listening.’
‘What’s your theory, then?’ asks his co-presenter. ‘Runaway? Kidnap? Murder?’
‘I think she’s still alive,’ he replies. ‘The fact that Tabitha Rice was thinking about moving abroad in the days before she went missing is too much of a coincidence.’
‘Well, if anyone can bring someone back from the dead to answer for their crimes it’s Kay Robero.’
Rick
Fifteen Years Ago – 2005
Saskia Silvetti was gorgeous, no doubt about it. When we were together, I basked in her glow, lit by her mocha skin, my eyes lost somewhere in the crease of her cleavage. What’s more, our relationship brought me reputation points, opened doors I hadn’t known were there, drew me into circles I had no business standing in.
She was kind, too, and forgiving of my upbringing. She told me she liked how I had to work my way through university. My poverty was, somehow, a plus, and because she knew I didn’t come from much, she paid my way. Whenever I went out with Saskia, the Bollinger was on her. And, just like that, my problems began to disappear.
Except one.
*
I found Tabby after class rustling through my drawers a few weeks later – my stuff strewn across the floor. The first, silent question I had popped into my head: How had she known which room to find me in? Quickly followed by the second: Had she been following me?
My eyes widened as I took in the devastation. Too late to take the crash-course in How Not To Break Up With People. We never locked our dorm-room doors – we all trusted each other, plus, most of these people had too much money to care if something was stolen, and some of us didn’t have anything worth stealing anyway. It was this weakness that had allowed Tabby to get in.
A cat among the pigeons.
Saskia was by my side and clutched my arm a little tighter when she saw the dread etched across my face.
‘Who is she?’ Saskia asked, and I shouldn’t have lied. I really shouldn’t.
‘Nobody,’ I replied, feeling guilty even as the word left my lips, the same insult levelled at me not long ago.
As the commotion grew, some of the boys came out onto the landing to listen. Freddie’s frosted-blonde highlights caught the light.
‘Trust me to have ghosted a psychopath,’ I bemoaned as I passed him, reddening as soon as I was out of eyeshot.
They slapped each other’s backs, laughing, and, as I went inside, I could feel them close in behind me to eavesdrop on what happened next.
‘Do you at least use a condom when you’re screwing other girls behind my back?’ Tabby spat, spinning my way. ‘Thought you might want this back, seeing as you’re done with me now.’ Her face was pink and splotchy, her fingers hooked under one of my OUDS university hoodies, a mess of my belongings on the floor behind her.
I puffed my chest and thought about Saskia and the boys listening on the other side of the door, about the glasses they’ll have pressed up to the partition wall in Freddie’s room, the omnipresent sound of his Xbox suspiciously silent.
‘Let me get this straight,’ I began, trying to hide the tremor in my voice. ‘You’re here because… I told you I didn’t want to see you anymore?’
She blinked back her surprise, not used to seeing this side of me. I was hurting her.
‘Who is she?’ Tabby asked, her voice cracking, embarrassed.
I tried to do it, I really did, but I couldn’t bring myself to twist the knife in. I should have called her crazy, or pathetic, or desperate, instead I showed her I was weak. ‘Why don’t we talk about this somewhere else?’
Her blue eyes appeared almost green, watery emeralds of envy staring back at me. She didn’t move a muscle.
‘You hate these people,’ she hissed. ‘It’s all you talk about. And now you’re leaving me for one? It doesn’t make sense. I think you’re using her.’
‘I’ve never said that,’ I lied. ‘And Saskia’s got nothing to do with why I ended things with you. You’re young, you’re still at school, what we had wasn’t serious. I’m sorry if I gave you a different impression but… I thought we were on the same page.’
Tabby looked at me, boiling from the inside out. ‘Liar.’
She breathed heavily through kinked nostrils and I imagined her as a racehorse, pawing a hoof at the ground, ready for the gun to go off so she could gallop towards me and knock me out. I heard someone guffaw on the landing beyond.
‘I think you should leave,’ I said.
In response, Tabby took my laptop, ripped it from the plug and threw it, hard, to the floor. She smacked my face with a twitchy palm, her eyes watering, daring me to retaliate. I watched her tears build and felt every ounce of sorrow and hate and anger seeping from her pores into mine. She got in my face then, her lips wired, her breathing ragged.
‘Do it then, break up with me. To my face,’ Tabby snarled. ‘Just say it out loud. Just once, that’s all I want, then I’ll go.’
Behind me, the door opened.
Tabby’s face, previously plum-purple, settled.
‘Rick,’ Saskia mouthed, creeping in behind, the long dress she was wearing grazing the carpet. ‘Do you want to tell me what’s going on?’
‘Do it,’ glared Tabby.
‘Is this… an ex?’ Saskia’s soft Italian accent glided over my shoulder and snaked towards Tabby.
‘Bitch,’ Tabby frothed.
I heard someone laugh outside. ‘He’s absolutely fucked it.’
‘Are you going to let her talk to me like that, Rick?’ Saskia breathed, looking at me with
doe-eyes, waiting for me to defend her, disappointed when I said nothing: my silence damning.
‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’ Tabby countered suddenly, making for Saskia with sharpened nails before I had a chance to think my way out of the situation.
‘Stop it,’ I said, stepping between them, trying to turn down the heat.
‘I’m not getting involved in this,’ Saskia said, taking the high road, and, just as I turned to stop her, the door slammed shut and she left, the smell of her expensive perfume lingering, jarring with Tabby’s cheaper scent.
Tabby stood opposite me for a few furious seconds, breathing nosily, then followed Saskia out.
‘Wait,’ I tried, reaching my hand out towards her, my fingers catching air as she shifted to avoid my grip.
‘Fuck!’ I cried, crashing my palm into the plasterboard of my dorm and, with that, voices hushed, doors clicked shut, and I was alone.
*
Things changed after that day.
Though I worked to repair my relationship with Saskia, things were never quite the same between us and our committed partnership turned on-again off-again. The boys, though not outwardly nasty, stopped inviting me to things, the fact that I was already so different to them was the main driver, but now they were weary of mine and Saskia’s turbulent ups and downs, and, after we got back from Christmas break, I felt the shift more than ever. They’d all met up, a few times in fact, and stories about a raucous New Year’s Eve party did the rounds. Sorry you couldn’t make it, they’d said, knowing full well I hadn’t made the guest list.
I spent a night in January crying over it. I was still two years and two terms away from graduation. A lifetime. And I wasn’t the kind of person who could cope without friends for that long, I needed the company, I craved it. I used to have friends at home. Happy friends, normal friends. Friends who I went to the cinema with on a Friday night, bowling on a Saturday. Friends who’d invite me to the beach and to their semi-detached house parties. I made a mistake, when I got into Oxford, of cutting them out. I left so many texts unanswered when I was riding high with Saskia, an immature part of me revelling in the power. I don’t know why exactly, perhaps I was too desperate to suppress everything about where I came from, but I didn’t care about them anymore, I made it clear that I was busy with my Oxford friends and Oxford girlfriend. So when Christmas rolled around and my Oxford friends and Oxford girlfriend were nowhere to be seen, it was my turn to feel the cold shoulder from my former set of schoolfriends. My question, Cinema tonight?, still sitting unanswered in my phone.
I wonder what they’d have made of Tabby, if I’d never met Saskia and kept in touch with them all. I’d have brought her back home with me for a weekend over Christmas, had her tag along to a bowling night with some of the girls my mates had met too. My mind immediately jumped to an insult. ‘You can take the boy out of Norwich but you can’t take the Norwich-taste-in-women out of the boy.’ But I knew deep down they wouldn’t have said that. They’d have welcomed her, they’d have liked her, they’d have joked with her and she’d have joked back, witty remarks lobbed back and forth, all of us drinking a little too much, cheap rounds, going home to cold sheets, Tabby saying, You have such great friends, Rick, they remind me of mine.
So you can understand, perhaps, why I was surprised to see her one night in February. Tabitha Rice, back in the glow of my bedroom door, blonde hair shining, skin silky, her voice smooth. Tabby didn’t blow hot and cold like Saskia, her fire for me raged year-round, and here she was, burning bright. She said she was sorry about what happened between us. I was too. She asked if she could come in. I stood to one side. She held up a bag of doughnuts, a boxset swinging in her other hand.
‘Truce?’ she asked, pearly gloss on her lips, shimmer on her eyelids. I’d never been happier to see anyone in my life.
She pulled herself close as the opening credits played, leaned in, and, though I knew I should have asked if she was sure, I was lonely and aching for the company. Tabby made me feel good and, what’s more, it had been a while.
As the story played out in front of us, so did the next chapter of ours. She smelt sweet. Snowflakes of sugar I couldn’t stop thinking about licking off her doughnut lips. I twitched with the thought, crossed my legs, tried to hide how I felt, but she knew. Was she doing it on purpose?
I noticed then that beneath the black skirt she was wearing were the fasten-tops of suspenders and, as she sucked the jam from her fingertips, I fell back under her spell. She laughed at something on the screen, but I wasn’t looking at the screen anymore, I could only see her. Her body was hot as I curled my arm behind her shoulders and drew her close. Soft hair grazed my neck and I breathed in the smell of strawberry shampoo, her pulse throbbing against my chest. Then I whispered in her ear, my breath wet, moving down her neck, back up to her lips. I kissed her without asking. She said something like, Only if you’re sure.
I was sure. I pinned her down, her smile wicked, hands rigid by her sides, lips sticky as I pressed harder.
‘I’m sorry,’ I moaned, forgetting everything, our motion together like second nature.
‘Me too,’ she breathed.
Annabella
Now
I find myself pounding the wet pavements to Rick’s house after work. Kay texted earlier to say Mandy was being discharged from hospital and it was all I could do not to bolt there immediately. Mandy had released a short statement from her hospital bed, designed to quell the attacks being rallied at her husband. The intruder was about 5’8, average build, male – I chalked up that last observation to everyday bias. No woman expects to be knocked unconscious by another woman. It ends: We are working with the police to bring the intruder to justice.
I want to know how she is, to see if I’ve scarred her lovely face, if the pair of them are going to be able to get through this latest test together. I want to know if things are tense between them – Rick hadn’t believed Mandy when she’d said she’d heard something outside their bedroom – and I wonder if he’s apologised for that. I wonder if she’ll hold it against him if he doesn’t. I wonder how close they’ll sit together tonight, if they’ll polish off a bottle of wine with dinner against doctor’s orders or stick to water.
But when I arrive, rain beating down, I find, to my horror, that the lights are off. There’s a paparazzi in a car just ahead, on his phone, about to give up on getting a glimpse of them too.
I walk briskly across the street, flick my wet hair from my face, treading dangerously close to their front door as I cross the road to get a better look, just to check, and, when I don’t see them, deduce they must still be at the hospital, that perhaps Mandy is being kept in for another night as a precaution. I wait for ten minutes, text Kay to ask if she’s heard anything else, then, when no one appears and Kay doesn’t respond, I jump on the bus to take me there.
*
My damp trainers squeak against the lino corridors of St. Thomas’ hospital and I squeeze a mound of anti-bacterial gel into my palm before continuing up the stairs. I’d stalked the ground floor to no avail, not wanting to draw any attention to myself by asking the staff where I could find Mandy – they’d probably take me for a journalist and escort me out. I use the sleeve of my jumper to open door handles and try to breathe lightly so I don’t inhale too many germs. This place will be riddled with them.
On the first floor, I walk into a massive waiting room of people, a faint whiff of something stale in the air as I pass through. A woman rolling in and out of consciousness wheels past me on a sad trolley-bed, her arm flopping hopelessly through the railings. I up my pace and flit past signs for dermatology, pathology and radiology. Then, a sliver of hope: the Acute Admissions Ward.
I curl my head round the door of the first room. Eight frail bodies are propped up in beds, clutches of visitors round a few, the majority empty, the smell of mince and potatoes heavy in the air.
Another ward is further down the corridor and through a set of double doors. I turn sidewa
ys and slide through, careful not to touch the surfaces.
A nurse smiles at me as I enter, something green stuck between her canine and first molar, waiting for me to ask where I can find my sick relative. I smile back, then duck my head as I pass, pretending to know exactly where I’m going. This ward smells stronger than the last. It’s how I imagine a medical war-tent might smell – wounds fresh with blood, corpses waiting to be taken away. I realise why it smells so bad when I step inside; there are far more beds in here and the windows are closed. Though it’s winter, this room is in dire need of circulating air, but I imagine the frail lady in the bed nearest the window has complained about the cold. I make my way out, still no sign of Mandy.
Down the following corridor are the private rooms, each with a name next to the door, scribbled frantically with marker pen. I wonder how much you have to pay for these. I find a young girl in the first, her hair in pretty pigtails, a tube running from her nose, the door ajar. There’s a boy in the second with a broken leg, a man in the third with a bandage over his eye, an old lady behind the fourth door who grins at me as I come in, then starts shouting when I turn to leave. Where do you think you’re going, love? You need to give me my medicines! I stalk down the corridor away from her shouts, passing a number of closed doors, busy nurses, porters rubbing mops across floors, doctors whizzing from room to room, chasing one emergency after the next.
I pause when I see her name come into focus. Mandy Evans. My fingers tremble as I step closer, her door cracked open slightly. I breathe in, and the scent of their home – freesia, peach – comes back to me in waves as I draw closer. I hesitate when I see the outline of Rick’s back, his broad shoulders stretching a long-sleeve sweatshirt, his sharp haircut protruding from the top.