by Naomi Joy
I spoke first. ‘You have to drop the allegation, Tabby. I don’t understand why you’d make something like this up.’
Her foster mother answered the phone. ‘Please don’t call this number again, Rick.’ Then hung up.
That’s when I knew this was serious.
I slammed my way back to my room, trying to convince myself this was temporary, a blip, a mistake, some confusion, a misunderstanding – my eyebrows knotted, my muscles tight. But my room still smelled of her and I couldn’t escape. Didn’t she realise how much she’d upended my life here already?
I thought about what would happen next… going home to Mum and Dad and my moron brother. I couldn’t do that. I’d ostracised them, stopped them from visiting, embarrassed. I couldn’t slink back, tail between my legs. My brother would laugh from the pit of his rolling gut. ‘Not so smart now, huh?’
Also, there was the money issue. I’d paid for my accommodation here upfront with my student loan. I couldn’t afford anywhere new, I had about £50 in my pocket from today’s shift – that was it. I briefly thought about sneaking into college and sleeping in the bathrooms, of going out each night and making sure a willing girl took me back to hers.
But I couldn’t keep that up: where would I keep my stuff? Would I have to find a shed… a barn somewhere? Someone’s garden?
This was useless.
There was only one person who could make this right, only one girl who could make this all go away. I had to convince her to drop it. I had to force her to tell the truth. Whatever it took. It was her word versus mine, and I had to silence her.
Annabella
Now
We sit in a white-marbled eatery, a plate of picture-perfect sushi between us. The background plays quietly, the clatter of ice cubes as the waitress fills my cucumber water, occasional shrieks from overexcited women on a table across from us, the chink of cutlery as tables are re-laid for new customers. Blue flowers lie beside me on the light-pink bench I’m sat on, giving off a soft pollenated scent that tickles my nose if I breathe in too deeply and, even though Rick had described this dinner as a catch-up, the flowers have turned the atmosphere from friends to maybe-more-than-friends. It’s put me on edge. Does he think that seducing me is the best way to get me on side? He doesn’t know me very well if so.
‘You haven’t told me about your day. Are you still working at the clinic?’ he asks, snapping me back to attention.
‘I am and, today wasn’t too bad,’ I reply, forcing a smile, finding it difficult to open up and let my guard down. I’ve never been good at hiding my feelings. ‘The usual.’
I study his face as his mouth half-opens, reaching for something else to say, trying to save us from our awkward pauses in conversation. His hair is thick on top of his head – thicker than usual – then fades as it reaches his ears, his neck.
He catches me looking. ‘I need to sort this mop out,’ he laughs.
‘No, it looks good,’ I reply, a little too enthusiastically. ‘I was just…’
I swallow a slippery piece of fish as Rick chuckles, my sentence hanging, awkwardness dominating the mood between us. I begin to wonder if Rick regrets asking me here. The only thing we have to catch up about is Tabby and, let’s be honest, it’s not exactly friendly conversation.
At least the food’s good. Sashimi is always my friend at places like this – sitting separate and apart from the sticky clumps of rice and hidden fireballs of wasabi, in neat, slimy slices. One of my stranger personality quirks is that I prefer to eat my meals in clear sections. In my opinion, sushi should be eaten fish first, rice second, seaweed third, not all in one messy, mixed-up mouthful. Rick must have remembered that about me and, I have to say, if it weren’t for the uneasy company, I’d be enjoying myself.
‘Can I get you anything from the wine list?’ asks the waitress.
Rick looks at me and cocks an eyebrow. ‘Should we?’
The waitress taps her pen on her pad, she’s after a yes or no not a protracted discussion.
‘We haven’t seen each other for years. How about a bottle of bubbly?’
I nod at the waitress, confirming our order, telling myself that I’m doing the right thing. That I’m in control. That getting involved in the podcast, that getting closer to Rick, that it’s all for the greater good, that it’s all for Tabby, and, when I lock my eyes onto his, I feel confident, sure about what it is I have to do.
*
His voice gets progressively slower as the fizz flows and early evening turns late. His words are heavier, somehow, his shoulders hunched protectively over his glass, spinning it between his thumb and forefinger.
‘It’s been really hard,’ he tells me, midway through chronicling how he still isn’t able to live a normal life. ‘And, you know, they’re bringing it all up again, opening the wounds. It’s been years… but the world still won’t let me move on. There’s a podcast about it now.’
My eyes narrow. Yes Rick, you’re the victim.
‘Have you listened to it?’ I ask, thinking back to today’s episode and the slightly different direction Kay had taken it in, preparing the listeners if Rick outs Tabby for what she put him through at university.
Who among us can say we haven’t made a mistake at some point in our lives? I’ve made too many to count. So, it strikes me today that our victim, Tabitha, was probably no different. And doesn’t that make her more human?
Kay had stopped short of saying that Tabby may have falsely accused Rick of raping her, and I can’t say I blame Kay for that. Personally, I believe there’s more to the story, that Rick slimed his way out of the accusation and let Tabby take the rap, but I’d have no way of proving that… and neither would Kay, if it came to it. She must be annoyed. It’s far easier to get the public on side when your victim is squeaky-clean. But it isn’t very realistic, is it?
‘I listened to the first episode,’ Rick replies. ‘It’s always the husband,’ he tells me, citing the episode title, knocking back the last of his drink. ‘But that line of inquiry: it’s lazy. Look how far the police got following that one.’
He sits back, brings his hand to his mouth and glides it down his chin, creases his brow so a determined line carves a path between his eyebrows.
‘You never did say sorry for accusing me.’
I swallow, hard. In the days and weeks after Tabby went missing, I made no secret of the fact I wanted Rick’s story turned upside down, any false alibi he had searched inside and out.
‘I get it, though,’ he continues. ‘You wanted to blame someone. I just happened to be an easy target.’
You were cheating on her, you wanted her gone, you were desperate for a life without Tabby in it.
‘I’m sorry,’ I lie. ‘I was upset. I just wanted her back.’
He waves a hand at my apology, bats it away, and I’m surprised, honestly, by how flippant he is. If someone publicly accused me of murder I don’t know if I could just wish it away with a flick of my wrist.
‘I don’t want you to think I’m being glib,’ he adds, reading my mind. ‘But you have to understand, the whole world has thought me guilty at some point. If I held onto the hate, the injustice, it would eat me alive. So, I’ve been working to let it go. To forgive and forget.’
Not me. I haven’t forgotten and I’m not about to forgive.
‘That’s good,’ I say instead, playing along. ‘Be careful, though, next you’ll be knocking on people’s doors, telling them to let Jesus into their lives.’
‘Never say never,’ he laughs, gripping the stem of his glass, the muscles tensing in his forearm, changing tack. ‘You know what makes me angry, though? Because she’s still missing, because she’s not here, she’s untouchable. She’s been preserved in this perfect image that was never real and never really her. The press won’t bring up anything uncomfortable about her past, about her character. She’s missing and therefore she’s an angel, end of story.’
I think about the conversation I overheard between him and Mand
y in the hospital, about the article Kay showed me. ‘If you see it like that, why haven’t you said what you need to say?’
‘Because I can’t,’ he replies. ‘How can I say anything negative about a woman who’s been canonised by the papers? If I said anything negative, anything at all, it would count as evidence that I didn’t like her and wanted her gone.’
‘OK, so what would you say if things weren’t so complicated?’
‘That she was messed up, fragile, emotionally unstable, sometimes suicidal, but you know all of this, you were close to her too.’
I can’t help but speak up. ‘She was also kind and generous and fun and brilliant…’
He shrugs. ‘But she wasn’t perfect.’
‘Do you know someone who is?’
I watch his expression frost and I berate myself for pushing him away, for letting my emotions get in the way of the bigger picture.
‘You’re right, though,’ I concede. ‘I know she wasn’t perfect and that she hurt you when you were together.’
‘You don’t even know the half of it. You know she tried to get me kicked out of Oxford?’
What happened to forgive and forget?
‘She did?’
‘She made up a story about us having non-consensual sex. She retracted it, but only after my world had fallen apart. I forgave her, she did the right thing in the end, but it was a horrible process to go through, for both of us.’
‘Tell me what happened. I just, I can’t believe that she’d make something like that up.’
He rubs his forehead, pained. ‘It’s a long story. In Tabby’s mind, the police and her foster mother had more culpability than she did.’
I lean in, knowing that I can kill two birds with one stone here. ‘You should keep it to yourself, Rick. Journalists have not been your friend, and the more fuel you add to the fire of Tabby’s disappearance the more, ultimately, they’ll want you to burn. Not her.’
He looks into my eyes and I search them for answers, realising the questions I have aren’t for Rick, but for Tabby. I can’t believe she’d accuse him of something so serious unless she had good reason. She wasn’t malicious like that.
A few beats of tension build between us and I turn raw-salmon pink, nervous to dig any deeper, fish hook caught in my tongue.
Tabby
Five Years Ago
It’s finally here! The day I’ve been waiting for! And it hasn’t been easy to keep my brilliant mood hidden from Rick. He suspected something when I bounded in from work, grinning from ear to ear.
What’s got into you? he asked, eyebrows askew, and I had to pretend that I’d had a pay rise.
‘Lucky for some,’ he said. ‘They’re working me to the bone at the office.’ Rick’s an asset manager. He deals with other people’s money, which is ideal for him – he’s always telling me what to do with mine. ‘Going to have to head back there this evening, actually, lots of end of month accounts to finish up.’
I decided not to point out it was the 21st and that ‘the end of the month’ was still ten days away… Come on, Rick, at least be believable.
Still, my stomach fizzes with the possibilities of what’s next. My life will be so different after tonight. Will I even come back here again, to this place? What if he’s so perfect that we just decide to move in right away, elope, get away from it all. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
No matter what happens, I am not coming back.
Then a dark cloud closes in. What if he doesn’t show up? He can barely turn up to a text chat let alone face-to-face. What about his life makes me think he’s willing to leave? What if he just wants me as a bit on the side? What if he discards me immediately when he realises I am not quite the ‘Belle’ he’s hoped for?
I push my thoughts to the periphery as Rick steps out of the front door, grinning nervously, his empty briefcase swinging stupidly by his side. When did this become the reality of our relationship? Have we been doomed from the beginning?
When I’m sure he’s gone, I dye my hair dark at the roots so I am more Bella-like, I rub the darkest fake-tan I can find over my porcelain skin, I draw thick black pencil over my eyebrows, run red lipstick over my lips. I look different, more like her. I feel different.
I scan the news on my phone, hoping Alex will text to confirm that we’re still on for tonight, and cook dinner as though this is a normal evening. I watch the clock as it passes, painfully slowly, drink an espresso. I wonder if he’s packed a bag like I have, if he’s going to be as ready as I am to jump into a new life together. Even though this is only our first meeting, if he asks me to move to Turkey tomorrow – I am ready.
Eventually, it’s eight o’clock, and our meeting in half an hour draws close. I decide to send him a message before I leave.
On my way. So excited! x
I don’t want Rick to realise anything is wrong when he comes home, so I pile my side of the bed with pillows, shoving them under the duvet, and hope he won’t try and touch me – not that he ever does – when he gets back from his night out with his lover. I exhale heavily as I pass a framed photo from our wedding day on the mantelpiece. Something about the twist of Rick’s bow-tie, of the neatness of his shoes, of the happiness in his smile makes my stomach cramp and, for a second, I want to abandon everything and sort things out. Then I remember the texts he sent to someone else and regroup.
Our relationship is not capable of being saved. Fuck him. Fuck her.
*
I wonder what Alex will think of me when we meet. I have to walk across the park down the road, then through the carpark of the superstore, to the bar that sits on the corner of Battersea high street. He’ll be there when I arrive, sipping an Old-Fashioned, following a long shift at the clinic. I dream that he’ll tell me I’m even prettier in person. That we’ll fall in love and, all things going well, he’ll ask me to run away with him.
When we’re safe, I’ll text Annabella to let her know where I am, that I’m sorry I had to leave in such a hurry but that it was the only way. Obviously, Alex can never meet her, so I won’t see her again after tonight. Losing her friendship will be a tough price to pay.
I will miss her, greatly.
My pulse thumps in my wrist as I pull the door wide. My stomach twists and turns. This is it. I turn the lock confidently and swing my rucksack onto both shoulders. I check that I have my phone and my wallet in my pockets before I step out into the evening.
The rest of my life starts now.
PART 3
Dog-walker finds body
A report by the London Times
The body of a young woman – suspected to be that of missing South-London woman Tabitha Rice – was found floating in a flooded field at Brimley Farm, Dartford yesterday.
A dog-walker found the badly decomposed body. They said, ‘My dog, Barney, wouldn’t come back when I called him – which was odd, you know. He’s usually very good, like, very obedient. I went over to grab him, and he had this beaten up shoe in his mouth. He wouldn’t let it go. He ran off again, back into the field, so I followed him, he was barking blue murder, he was. I saw him in the distance, pulling on something. At first, I thought it was a branch, then I realised it was bone… then that it was a body, floating in the mud. Barney kept digging it up until the police arrived. Maybe he wanted to save them? He’s a good dog.’
Tabitha Rice went missing nearly five years ago, but so far there have been no breakthroughs in her case. This latest development is being linked to the missing Battersea woman as Brimley Farm is owned by Tabitha’s paternal grandfather.
The dog-walker, who did not want to be named, continued, ‘It looked like she’d been there for a while. The skin on her body was grey, like, swollen. I’ll never forget it. I thought she were face down; then they turned her over and I realised… Barney was barking, the police were trying to back me up but I couldn’t move: her face was missing, caved in, but moving. Rolling with maggots, it was. Someone said, down the pub, that she’d drowned in the mud, buried
alive.’
The body has been sent for identification. More on this story to follow.
Annabella
Now
I meet Kay in Camberwell at an establishment called Tea Time. Inside, the walls are covered in multi-patterned teapots, the tables stacked with loose leaves in glass domes, beside them chests of teabags ordered by tea-type – black, green, white, rose – dozens of options within each sub-category. The aroma of the place is fruity potpourri and, each time a chest is opened, the tea gasps a new scent into the room. For some, I could imagine this place might feel too close and claustrophobic – an unwelcome assault on the senses – but, as I inspect the surfaces, though it is cluttered, it is perfectly clean, so I am relaxed as I head to the bar to order. It feels almost rude to ask for an English Breakfast, so I choose an Earl Grey from the bespectacled server. Black. The way you’re supposed to have it.
Kay is sitting in the corner, purple teapot to her right, trying to find her way around the ball-strainer she’s been given. From what I can make out, it looks as though she’s decided to separate it into sections, pulling it apart to better understand how it’s put together. Concentration laces her face but, when she spots me, her worry dissipates and she leaps up to greet me, pushing her hand fast into mine.
As we sit, I observe her outfit: a tweed blazer, faded tartan shirt beneath. If I’d just seen her top-half I’d assume her bottom was also Scottish-inspired, a bright blue saltire printed across a denim skirt, or a kilt and sporran. As it is, she’s wearing black bell-bottoms and I can’t help but smile. Kay’s nearly two decades older than me, but her eccentric style is ageless – she’ll look exactly the same when she meets someone else here in ten years’ time, a new mystery to solve, another podcast to put out.
She’s speaking before I’ve had a chance to sit, steaming pot in one hand, strainer discarded, sitting in a pile of brown water by her side.
‘The body is on Tabitha’s grandfather’s property,’ she says. ‘This has got to be it. This is our breakthrough. I might need to fast-track putting the series out, I hadn’t realised it would end here.’