Do Her No Harm

by Naomi Joy

  ‘Rick,’ I say as he comes in, not making eye contact at first, affecting a slightly different voice, one I think he’ll like. He greets me with a confident hand to my waist, a friendly peck on the cheek.

  ‘Hey,’ he says. ‘What can I get you?’

  We approach the till together.

  ‘Could I just get a white americano?’ I ask – I know from my surveillance it’s what Rick’s about to order – and I stand a little closer, his body inches from mine. Kay’s instructions ring loud as I spot Rick looking at me, a little unsure what to make of my proximity. ‘Get closer to him, AB. Blur the lines. You need to pull his guard down with your bare hands, not wait around for him to lower it for you.’

  ‘Make that two,’ Rick says to the barista, smiling wide. She’s wearing a grey-ribbed jumper that hugs her torso, faux-buttons down the front, her hair scraped up into a cute messy ponytail, a chewed biro balanced over her left ear.

  ‘Hiya, Rick,’ she says coyly, blowing a pink bubble with her gum.

  ‘Hello,’ he replies, the barista’s bubble bursting as he shoots his eyes away from her and back towards me, instead. Is it working?

  ‘I need to get one of those,’ I say, turning from the barista and nodding towards Rick’s reusable flask, wondering if he boil-washes it every night to keep the bacteria at bay.

  ‘Right,’ he says. ‘Just doing my bit for the dolphins.’

  He smiles at me with a set of dimples I hadn’t noticed before and lifts his eyebrows, guiding us to a quiet area at the back of the café.

  ‘Did you see the news?’ I ask him first, getting to the point.

  ‘About the body?’

  ‘Yeah, what do you make of it? What do you know about her grandfather?’

  ‘Not much, I only met him once. I didn’t trust him but I’m not sure he killed Tabby.’

  ‘You don’t think she could have gone to him for help and… I don’t know… there was some terrible accident while she was there?’

  Rick curls a hand round his flask.

  ‘Maybe,’ he replies. ‘I guess anything’s possible.’

  ‘But you’re not convinced,’ I say, two hands at the top of his guard, tugging at it.

  ‘Well,’ he muses. ‘There’s something…’

  I shift in my seat.

  ‘What?’ I ask, pulling harder.

  ‘I don’t know how much you know, how much the police told you.’ I tilt my head and widen my eyes, waiting for him to go on. ‘She was talking to someone before she went missing. Romantically, I mean.’ He looks at me, searching my expression for signs that I knew, but I didn’t. I honestly didn’t.

  ‘How do you know?’ I ask, sceptical.

  ‘I found the messages they’d been sending to each other on her phone one night. She was asleep and the blue light woke me up.’ Just as I’m writing this off as another of Rick’s lies, he says something that catches my attention. ‘They were making plans to run away to Turkey together, they wanted to set up a clinic on the beach, I think he was a doctor of some kind. She’d been pestering me to pay for her to complete some qualifications, I guess she needed them before she set off.’

  I catapult back five years in a heartbeat, Tabby persuading me that moving to Turkey would be a savvy career-decision. My gut wrenches as I consider the spiel she gave me about moving; the one I’ve replayed in my head so many times, isn’t the whole story.

  I move uneasily.

  ‘Do you know if she ever made any real plans to go? Flights, accommodation, a job?’ I ask quickly, my heart racing. ‘Because she spoke to me about going to Turkey too. She wanted me to come. She asked me the day she went missing. I told the police but…’

  Rick looks at me as though I’ve just given him an answer for something. ‘Really?’ he says. ‘I think that must have been part of the reason they let me go, I guess you corroborated my story without realising it.’

  My eyes narrow. Did I let him get away?

  ‘You think that’s where she is now?’ I ask. ‘In the foothills of some Turkish town with a random doctor?’

  Rick shrugs.

  ‘Did you ever ask her?’

  ‘No,’ he replies. ‘I didn’t want to corner her. I wanted her to tell me when she was ready.’ He has a far-off look in his eyes as he remembers. ‘The man was rugged and olive-skinned and every woman’s Mediterranean fantasy… I doubt it was even a real picture.’

  ‘Do you think she was tricked?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he says. ‘But then he wasn’t the only one.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I ask, picking up on the chill in his voice.

  ‘She wasn’t sending real photographs either.’

  I crunch my face and wonder why Tabby would do that. She was confident and gorgeous and secure in herself. Wasn’t she?

  ‘I don’t know how to say this,’ he begins. ‘I kind of assumed you knew.’

  I shake my head.

  ‘The pictures Tabby sent him were all of you.’

  Tabby

  Fourteen Years Ago – 2006

  The sad studio we shared fell silent for a few minutes after Rick sped away to see Saskia. He thought I didn’t know, that I hadn’t realised, that he was successfully pulling the wool over my eyes. Or perhaps he just got off on the thrill and didn’t particularly care if I knew. We’d been on and off since the moment we met, I’m not sure why I thought me being pregnant would change that.

  One minute, two minutes, three, then the studio filled with sound from the upstairs neighbours, blaring music down through the ceiling, then shouting across the top of it, bass line vibrating through the walls, marijuana fogging through the air vents. I’d made the mistake of walking out on my foster family and now I was trapped here. It would take a lot for them to let me back in. I had to work to earn my foster parents’ trust, the love I had for them conditional and fragile, the love they had for me accompanied by a paycheque.

  Money. My foster mother was obsessed with it. Think of the newspaper deals you could get if you dropped your anonymity over this rape charge, Tabby. She had this eBay account, flogged most of the family’s Christmas presents on it, along with worn-out clothes and things she’d shoplifted from charity shops. I’d seen her do it. Are you calling me a thief? she’d asked me once, hunched over in the charity shop changing room, three extra jumpers lining the gap between her T-shirt and jacket.

  It was how I knew she wouldn’t have told the council I’d left, she’d still be taking the cheque every month, rubbing her hands, saying she’d put up with me for long enough that she deserved it. That was my only way back, by threatening to turn off the money.

  I had to think about it. I’d surprise Rick soon, catch him in the act with his sometimes girl – the one he thinks will make him into a better man – and call his bluff.

  Me or her.

  Annabella

  Now

  I call Kay on my way to the bus stop, filling her in on the latest about a doctor in Turkey, fake pictures, a possible killer, someone the police had considered in the beginning but hadn’t been able to track down.

  ‘Do you believe him?’ she asks, her voice aloof. She’s between meetings and doesn’t have long to chat.

  ‘Well, Tabby never told me she was speaking to anyone, but, I don’t know…’ I hesitate, the air so cold I can see my breath as I talk. ‘She was sending him my pictures. I can’t imagine she ever wanted me to find out.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Kay replies. ‘We’ll try to track him down. Do you have a name? Any more information?’

  ‘I didn’t ask much, but I will next time.’

  ‘You need to dig deeper, find out exactly what he knows.’

  And with that, she hangs up, my meeting with Rick casting a great, grey shadow across the case. I fidget as I wait for the bus to pull in, trying to keep the warmth in my hands, and wonder if Tabby had valued my friendship as much as I’d valued hers. Why hadn’t she told me about the doctor? About the pictures? Was our friendship not as close as I thought?
It was true that I was always the one to make plans with her, the one who forced us to stick to our routines and traditions. She was flaky and unreliable but I forgave her for it, I didn’t mind. She’d get into trouble and I’d bail her out. She’d persuade me to go clubbing and I’d end up playing her carer for the night. My mood clouds. Was our friendship unequal? How had I not seen it before?

  I remember, she came to my place one day, it had been raining and I’d been upset about some relationship or other. It was my first year at Pure You and we were already in each other’s pockets. She’d marched through my flat in her trainers, drenched – I remember feeling anxious about the marks she was leaving on the lino floor but hadn’t said anything – and she’d flung my bedroom door open, a bottle of vodka bursting in with her. Come with me, get up, we’re going out! She’d bundled me out of my dressing gown, slipped a sequin dress over my shoulders and pushed me out of the front door. It was gone midnight, but that night we danced together till four. It had ended in a strange room, a slimy creature on the sofa next to me, its whiskered top lip vibrating with each exhalation. Tabby was on the floor. I’d crawled on my hands and knees towards her, woken her up, and we’d run from there together. Tabby had laughed about it, told me she’d spiked our drinks with something to make the night a little more interesting. I’d been horrified, initially, but nothing had gone wrong and we were both OK, so I’d let it go. I’d spent the next hour in the shower, scrubbing at every inch of my skin, trying to rid myself of the germs from that place, from that person, from the strange substance running laps in my bloodstream. I was panting when I came out, exhausted. Let’s call in sick today, she’d said, knowing that I didn’t have that choice. I had patients. I’d left her in my flat with a smile on her face as I’d trudged to work with dry skin and tired eyes.

  Rick

  Thirteen Years Ago – 2007

  Saskia lay in the cool morning light in a lacy nightdress, her hair scrunched underneath her cheek like an extra pillow. Saskia. Even her name was sensual. I imagined her sometimes as a fork-tongued serpent-woman, sent to tempt me.

  ‘Morning handsome,’ she hissed, and slithered closer, curling a sleepy leg between mine. I felt, as I always did when I woke up with Saskia at her plush flat, an uneasy combination of guilt and glee: like waking up and remembering a vivid dream about sleeping with your ex – your wife right beside you – then the dawning realisation that it wasn’t a dream, after all, but a waking nightmare.

  I was cheating on my full-bellied girlfriend and, though I knew I should stop, I wasn’t going to. Tabby used to feel like home, but now that she was living in mine, all I wanted to do was run from it.

  ‘What are we going to do today?’ Saskia asked, and I wished my life was as simple as hers.

  I twirled her dark hair round my fingertips and breathed her in: fire and spice. I wrapped my hands round her body – svelte and skinny – her pelvis protruding like antlers, her bellybutton the right way round. I inhaled Saskia behind Tabby’s back, enjoyed her, let the high of not having anything to worry about take me over. It was a pure and indulgent escape. A selfish one, too, because Saskia and I both knew whatever this was, wasn’t long-term. She hadn’t even come back into my life with a bang. She’d just never really left. On and off, we were, like a faulty switch that, right now, showed no sign of a problem. My relationship with Tabby was less light switch, more bulldozer, and she’d ploughed back into my life this year with the ferocity of industrial farming equipment, leaving me no choice but to look after her and her calf.

  I pushed Tabby from my thoughts and lazed my way into Friday with Saskia. We ate leftover pizza and made a loose plan to head into town together in the afternoon. Saskia wanted to see an old friend, and I needed to spend time with the pregnant woman who’d upturned my life.

  Saskia snaked her hand into mine as we boarded the train together.

  ‘Are you staying at mine again tonight?’ she breathed into my ear, wet.

  ‘Course,’ I replied, settling into a duo of seats. We nestled into one another, her head balanced on my shoulder, her long dark hair ducking into the seat of my trousers.

  ‘Let’s go to the toilets,’ she whispered, then kissed me. ‘I want you.’ Her face frowned and she kissed me harder.

  ‘We have to be careful up here, Sas, people know us.’

  She withdrew then, yanked her arm out from behind me, rushed a hand to her heart. ‘You’re embarrassed to be seen with me?’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean—’

  She lurched away, folded her arms, and again I was tired and irritated and… Why couldn’t anything just be easy?

  ‘Sorry,’ I wilted. ‘I’m an idiot.’

  Those words clung to me and I echoed them because I was an idiot. I could feel Tabby agreeing with me, her presence burrowed beneath my skin, calling me an idiot from somewhere deep inside because she wasn’t here to tell me to my face.

  Why was I doing this? If she knew… it would break her.

  *

  Saskia and I alighted the train and walked the short path to town, the station lined with students. I didn’t realise this at first, but many of my peers would head home from university for a short weekend here, a long weekend there, Mummy and Daddy paying the exorbitant train fares to allow them to hurtle back to London for a quick get-together. Mummy would iron the collars of their polo-shirts, daddy would take them to the club for a swanky dinner. Saskia was one of them, of course, and she waved to somebody on the platform. ‘Have a great flight!’ she called, and the girl nodded back, her shoulder weighed down by a Louis Vuitton holdall. ‘Her parents have moved overseas. Typical, right?’

  I didn’t know what she meant, I just smiled as she grabbed my hand and we walked out of the station into the wind, ice dropping from the sky. I helped her with her hair as the arctic breeze whipped it across her face. We were close then, our noses Christmas red, and though I knew I shouldn’t – people knew us here – I pulled her into me, her hair flowing free, batting against my cheeks and, I don’t know why I did it then, in that moment – maybe because I wanted to self-destruct – but I kissed her just as I spotted Tabby walking towards us, the rhythm of her waddle familiar, drawing close.

  I closed my eyes. Hoped she’d see. Hoped it would be enough to end us once and for all.

  Actions speak louder than words, Rick.

  Annabella

  Now

  Rick Priestly looks like the perfect man. Tonight, for example, he’s dressed exactly as you’d expect, in a white shirt and dark jeans, a grey pair of trainers tied neatly to his feet. I wonder what terrible truth he’s going to reveal this time about the girl I thought I knew so well. Kay’s words from an earlier conversation play loud between my ears. ‘You need to try and get hold of his phone, if you get the chance. But be careful, AB. Promise me.’

  He stands under the orange glow of a streetlamp across the road, his hair tidy in his familiar side-swiped style. I recall the times I followed him from a safe distance, watched him from metres away, scared to get too close, and, for old times’ sake, I pause, taking him in. I observe him undo his top button, adjust his shirt, check his watch, blow his breath on his hand, smell it, press mouth-freshener into his tongue, check his watch, check his phone, sigh. Then, just as he’s been debating texting me something simple, but curt – I’m here, outside the bar; the implicit message clear: Where are you? Why are you keeping me waiting? – I smile and head over. It’s an almost out-of-body experience – because now I am walking straight for him, about to say hello, placing myself willingly into his clutches. He hears me approach, heeled boots striking pavement, then looks up, my camel coloured coat breezing behind me. He throws his arms wide and angles his head back.

  ‘There you are,’ he beams.

  I press my cheek against his and his hand presses firm against my back. I close my eyes, a queasy cocktail of excitement and horror bubbling in the pit of my stomach, as though I’m riding a rollercoaster but have suddenly discovered the safety ba
r isn’t locked into position.

  ‘Let’s go in,’ he says. Hungry eyes, red socks.

  *

  We sit at a two-seater table at the back of the bar. Vibey music and dim lights twinkle behind the heads of other couples on very different kinds of dates and the smell of expensive small plates – caviar canapes, sun-dried bruschetta, feta-stuffed grilled peaches – whizz by. Rick’s back is to the room and I recall the elaborate dance he’d performed to get me into this position. First, he’d turned down every table in the house except this one – the one at the very back – then, when the waiter had pulled out my chair, the one Rick clearly wanted to sit in, Rick acted quickly to usurp him. He’d pulled out the other chair, then chastised the waiter.

  ‘You’re showing me up here, mate,’ Rick joked, and the waiter blushed and pushed the chair back in. I probably wouldn’t have picked up on the way he’d done it, if I hadn’t known. But I’m fake-dating a man I can’t trust, so I look out for these things. It’s interesting, that I’m saying the word ‘date’, it’s not as though Rick and I have discussed it – it’s too taboo to bring up – but neither of us could deny that our frequent meet-ups have taken a turn, the place Rick’s chosen for tonight’s meal decidedly romantic. I’m blurring the lines, just as asked, surprised at how easy it’s been.

  ‘Shall I get us a bottle?’ he asks, and I can’t help but notice the stretch of his shirt against his arms.

  ‘Sure,’ I reply. ‘Your choice.’

  He flashes me a grin with wide, white teeth then heads over to the bar. In the meantime, I familiarise myself with my surroundings. A woman with a sharp face sits by herself at a table across. Black strands of her hair are stuck to the backless gape of her top and she’s eating a tiny portion of steak, blood pooling from the meat onto her plate, chewing away at it, engrossed. It annoys me that she’s not more alert, that her focus is entirely on her food. I might need a witness after tonight, I might need an alibi. Rick clouds my view of her as he returns, retaking the seat across.