Do Her No Harm

by Naomi Joy

  I add an extra incentive, learning from Kay, and the image of Mandy’s agent dumping her looms large in my mind. ‘You know, we’re in talks with a Hollywood production company. They want to make this whole thing into a film. You could be a part of that if you join us.’

  Her false eyelashes flutter and, after a moment of weighing up her options, agrees.

  We home in on Kay in her beat-up Volvo and I watch her twitch and turn, moving up in her seat as she spots me, then shrinking down when Mandy comes into view behind. She paws at her cap, pulls it lower when she thinks I might just be passing by and don’t want her to be seen, but then I call her name and her face creases like wrapping paper.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I tell Kay. ‘I told Mandy about the podcast. She knows who you are.’ Kay’s eyes slide towards Mandy and she plasters a false smile on her face. ‘And about the Hollywood production company.’

  ‘Does she now?’ Kays replies, picking up on my meaning, our brief eye contact not a million miles away from an exchange of elongated winks.

  ‘What is it that you want from me, specifically?’ Mandy asks nervously when we’re all inside.

  Kay and I sit straight in the front, our bodies facing forward, and Mandy’s in the back, as though we’re a couple of police officers who’ve just arrested her. Her eyes tennis-ball between us as we speak, my gaze fixed on the rear-view mirror, the smell of pear-drops and dust crowding my nostrils.

  ‘We just want to ask you a few questions, that’s all,’ Kay begins softly. ‘And, listen,’ she continues. ‘AB and I were both shocked to hear about the break-in and your head injury.’ Mandy touches her hand to the area. ‘How’s your recovery going?’

  Mandy smiles like a survivor might smile. ‘I’m getting there.’

  ‘Rick told the police, and the papers, that nothing went missing that night. What’s your theory – that you caught the intruder before they could nab what they’d come looking for?’

  ‘I have no idea, it was all such a blur. I’m just thankful I’m still here to tell the tale.’

  I shift in my seat.

  ‘Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about your boyfriend?’ Kay asks next, a few short-hand notes scribbled across her pen and paper.

  ‘Sure,’ Mandy replies, timid, and I observe her body language: her arms are crossed over her middle and her strong shoulders are hunched inwards. I wonder if we’re in quite the right venue for Mandy’s guard to drop. She’s a clean, Farrow-and-Ball kind of girl, the pantones of today’s dark running outfit carefully curated. Death’s Whisper on her upper half, Pagan Grey on her feet. I think we need to take a different tack, be less combative. I shuffle round in the chair so we’re facing each other. I want her to relax, I want her to feel safe. I want her to trust me, to let me in.

  ‘Tell me about him, Mandy,’ I say gently. ‘What’s he like as a partner? You’ve been together for a little while now…’

  She brings her hands up to her triceps and squeezes them absent-mindedly. ‘He’s great,’ she replies. ‘I love him.’

  ‘Really?’ I probe. ‘Things can’t have been easy. You’ve had a spotlight on your relationship for as long as you’ve been together.’

  She half-smiles in return, her eyes angled towards the floor of the car, a couple of Kay’s discarded energy drink cans and a splattering of crumbs littering the footwell. ‘We do our best.’

  ‘We know about the arrangement, Mandy,’ Kay interjects, snapping her neck to the rear-view mirror to analyse Mandy’s immediate reaction. Fireplace Red splashes Mandy’s face.

  I swallow hard. What’s the plan here, Kay?

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Kay presses.

  Mandy sighs, moves her hands to her face, visibly weighing up her options, years of tightly woven secrets about to unravel.

  ‘He’d kill me if I told anyone,’ Mandy says, wiping the perspiration from her forehead with the sleeve of her running jacket. ‘But, honestly, I just want it to stop,’ she mutters, her admission hanging in the cramped space between us. ‘I should go,’ she says, grabbing at the door handle, the panic clear in her voice.

  ‘Listen,’ Kay says. ‘Why don’t I give you my number?’ Kay fishes for something in her wallet, overstuffed with receipts and loyalty cards and a couple of loose notes. ‘Here you go,’ she announces proudly, passing Mandy a business card, coffee ring on the front.

  ‘Think about it and, if you want to tell us anything else about your boyfriend, or the night Tabitha Rice disappeared, you give me a call.’

  ‘What about the production company?’ Mandy asks, her soft voice hardening. ‘Can I meet them?’

  ‘Only if you talk to us first.’

  Mandy nods, pulls the door handle, and makes to leave.

  When the door’s shut behind her, her strong figure disappearing into the distance, Kay and I exchange a look.

  ‘Good work,’ Kay tells me, revving the engine. ‘I think she’s going to talk.’

  Tabby

  Thirteen Years Ago – 2007

  I muttered a ring of sorrys as the doctor hurried towards the door, and then Rick was in the frame instead, bringing in the freezing air from outside, his eyes blinking back cold tears. Between blinks, he tried to find the right thing to say.

  ‘You’re awake.’

  He shut the door and curled his arms up to his chest, his young hair brushed to one side. He looked like a teenager in a sulk, but the people here knew him as the man who’d lost a child today.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

  He looked at me, then looked quickly away.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, then fell asleep.

  I drifted in and out of consciousness, the medication I was on shifting me from one blur to the next. When I woke up later, Rick was scooting away from me, padding out of the room. I could hear him rustling, the bed creaking every time he resumed his position by my side. I liked having him there, and I wished he wouldn’t keep getting up.

  ‘Don’t leave,’ I groaned, the next time he moved, a pair of too-big brogues on his feet.

  ‘Tabby?’ he asked, moving bloodshot eyes in line with mine. ‘What you did last night, Tabby –’ I raised my hand, interrupting him. I didn’t want to hear it.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I told him again.

  ‘Why didn’t you call me earlier? If I’d known you were planning something like this, anything like this, I could have helped. You could have spoken to me.’

  I lazed my eyes shut once again, machines bleeping beyond, and tilted my tired head away from him, the relentless sway of his verbal tango dipping me backwards.

  I could feel the void left in my belly, the emptiness. For the first time in months, I was alone, just as I knew I would be, except—

  ‘Rick?’ I asked, my voice scratchy.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Thank you for being here.’

  Rick shifted, moved closer. ‘You know I’ll always be here for you, no matter what.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  I tugged at the cannula on my hand, it was itching me, sore, and I wanted it off. Rick’s hand wrapped around mine and I felt him move the cannula back into position, relieving the pain.

  ‘Why are you still here?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you hate me?’

  His grey-blue eyes misted once more. ‘Never,’ he said, wrapping me into him.

  Annabella

  Now

  The i-Spy app twinkles and I read the message that’s just been sent to Rick from the same unknown number.

  You can’t hide who you are forever. Your truth will out, Rick.

  The message weighs heavy in my hands and, as my mind whirrs with questions, I decide to pace the pavements to Rick’s house and capture his mood first-hand. I have a plan, I need him to talk, and I know what to use to make him sing. Kay would be proud of me, her protégé striking out on her own, acting on instinct. The wind gusts as I close in, blowing my hair from my face. In the frosted glass of a passing window I see that my nose is pink at the tip, my ch
eeks reddened from exertion. Crisp air fills my nostrils, propelling me forward. Around me, the breeze combs the tops of the trees to one side, smoothing the branches to a capital-wide side-parting.

  I press the doorbell and wait for Rick to answer, noticing that I’m dressed in the same outfit as when we met at Rick’s spin class all those weeks ago. I pull out my phone to text Kay, to let her know where I am, then decide against it, knowing she’ll want the full story in one go rather than in two halves. Dewdrops of perspiration dot the Lycra stretched over my limbs, uncomfortably warm beneath my puffy winter coat.

  Eventually, the door creaks open and a thicket of tawny hair appears in the gap, Rick Priestley’s smiling face below it.

  ‘Annabella!’ he exclaims. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘We need to talk,’ I tell him, and he stands aside.

  My eyes bounce over the muted colours of the hallway, stairs leading to the second floor and the cream carpet I well remember. For a moment, I replay taking those stairs two-at-a-time as I’d fled the scene, Rick’s voice bouncing off the walls behind me, ‘Mandy…Is everything OK?’ but I force myself to move on and scuff my feet into the hallway doormat.

  ‘Drink?’ he asks simply, coiling a hand round my waist, moving me towards him, leaning in to kiss me.

  ‘Sure,’ I smile, letting his warm lips touch mine. Again. This situation is a mess.

  We part and, just as I’m about to follow him into the kitchen, my eyes zero in on someone in the pictures, a woman with light blonde hair looping either side of her face in soft curls. Her face is round and red and, what arrests me first, is how much this person looks like Tabby.

  ‘Hey,’ I call out. ‘This girl here…’ I squint closer. ‘Is that Tabby?’

  Rick moves back this way, a pair of orange socks on his feet. ‘Ah,’ he says. ‘Yes. I love that picture. I took it on one of the morning shifts at McDonald’s.’ My eyebrows raise, he hasn’t mentioned this before. ‘I used to work there at university, Tabby would keep me company on the quiet days.’

  He hands me a glass of white – I won’t drink it – but I take it with thanks and find myself loitering at the frames a moment longer than I should. ‘Is something the matter?’ he asks.

  ‘No, I just…’ I begin. ‘It’s nice.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asks, moving closer.

  ‘That you keep her here. And that Mandy doesn’t mind,’ I say, gesturing towards the picture.

  I look away from the frames and over at Rick, shrugging his shoulders to his ears. Why would he keep a picture of Tabby on display if he killed her? The story behind it seemed genuine too. The devil’s advocate in me weighs in: He’s bluffing, Annabella, why can’t you see it? You’re falling for every trick in his book.

  ‘Sorry,’ I reply. ‘I’m prying – I shouldn’t have said anything.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Do you want to come through?’ he asks, smiling to cover the awkward moment I’ve created.

  I sit gently into one of the sofas, pulling my arms from my coat.

  ‘Can I take that?’ Rick asks, and I hand him my jacket, watching him pace out of my eyeline for a moment as he hangs it up. I cross my feet, my legs, then my arms, twitching nervously as I try to clear my head.

  ‘Tabby,’ he sighs, when he comes back in. ‘When am I ever going to get out from under that girl’s shadow?’ His eyes grey. ‘It’s not as though I want to forget her, or what’s happened, it’s just… exhausting.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I say quickly. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  He creases his features as he sits on the sofa opposite.

  ‘What did you want to talk to me about?’ he asks.

  I wiggle into the sofa cushion and recite the sentence I’d rehearsed on my way over, knowing it’s what I need to do to make him talk. ‘I don’t think we should see each other anymore.’

  I watch as he falters, hurt and surprise twisting together across his face. ‘Why?’ he manages to ask. ‘Because of Tabby?’

  ‘No,’ I reply. ‘Because of Mandy,’ I say, avoiding eye contact. ‘You told me you have an arrangement and that’s fine – I don’t want to push you to tell me the ins and outs of what it is, because that’s between you – but I don’t feel comfortable seeing you until your arrangement is done. How do I know you’re not telling me one thing and her another? She lives here, her pictures are on the walls, her pyjamas will probably be tucked under her pillow upstairs. It’s not right.’

  Rick covers his face with his hands.

  ‘Until it’s over, and I mean properly over, I think we should call time on whatever this is between us.’

  ‘I understand,’ Rick says after a while.

  He looks at the floor, pulling his thoughts together, and I can tell he’s going to talk, that he’s going to tell me about his and Mandy’s arrangement, my first attempt at using reverse psychology working wonders.

  ‘Mandy and I…’ he explains. ‘Our relationship isn’t real. She’s an actress. I hire her to play a role.’

  The separate bedrooms. The payments. It’s her they’re going to. Kay was right.

  ‘At first it was temporary. The media had been on my back, another day another story about my killer instinct, another friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend filling column inches with lies. I needed someone to change the narrative, to prove that I was capable of being loved, that there was someone who’d chosen to be with me despite what the papers were saying. Despite what everybody thought about me at the time.’

  He gives me a look, and I can tell he’s talking about me, about the way I’d turned my back on him.

  ‘The problem was, I didn’t want to date anyone new, I wasn’t ready.’

  I sit up a little straighter, not sure if I’m impressed or horrified. I understand, in a way, why he did it. The media were relentless. They still are. And now I’m one of them.

  Kay was right about the payments, but not the motivation. Rick’s not paying Mandy to hide from the press, he’s paying her to be seen.

  I swallow the fleeting guilt I feel, this recurring feeling of getting Rick wrong all too familiar. What he’s done with Mandy is duplicitous, certainly, but it’s not murder, and it’s not as though she’s been an unwilling participant.

  ‘How did you convince Mandy?’ I ask.

  ‘I met her at a theatre club and, yeah, I took a gamble, guessed she’d need the money.

  ‘It’s probably a lot to take in,’ he says, stating the obvious. ‘Mandy and I have been talking for a while about ending the arrangement, but then the break-in happened, this podcast came out, and now I’m back to square one.’

  I cast my eyes to the side.

  ‘If I had my way, the arrangement would continue until the noise dies down. If she leaves me now, the papers will hound her for tell-alls and I don’t have the money to match those kinds of deals. But Mandy is desperate to get out, and I understand why: she’s losing work, she’s been fired by her agent. We’re not in a good place. She wants compensation, she’s threatening legal action.’

  An alarm sounds on my phone. I have to be at work in twenty minutes.

  ‘I’m sorry, Rick, I have to go,’ I say, silencing the alarm. ‘But thank you for telling me the truth. It means a lot that you trust me to keep your secret.’

  ‘Wait,’ he says, reaching for my hand as I get up from my seat. ‘I need to tell you something.’

  I turn towards him, my ears pinned back, animal-like. ‘I want you to know that, without you standing by me, well, I’m not sure if I’d have coped. Knowing that you trust me, that you, the closest friend in the world to Tabby, have changed your mind about me, it’s more than I could have hoped for.’ I think I see his eyes water, but he looks away, embarrassed by his sudden outpouring of emotion, his guard in tatters. ‘If you never want to see me again after this, I’ll understand, but I didn’t want you to leave without telling you how much reconnecting with you has meant to me.’

  I am floored, unsure exactly what to sa
y or how to say it. This story, this arrangement, proof that Rick has been leading a double life, tricking the public into thinking he’s one thing when really he’s another, is dynamite. I can just imagine Kay rubbing her hands together. We’ve got him, AB! The public will hate this! Soon there’ll be a petition to reopen the case, his home will be searched, and finally, after all these years, they’ll get him.

  Funny then, that I feel for Rick. That I believe in his struggle and the lengths he’s been pushed to by the press. Strange that, because he trusted me with the truth, I feel protective over him. Surprising, certainly, that, as I leave his house, I know that I am not going to tell Kay Rick’s secret until I am certain that it needs to be told. Only if we can prove his guilt beyond doubt.

  *

  I push open the surgery door eleven minutes late and the receptionist shoots me a look, pigeon-necked patients craning forward in the distance, the waiting room full already – Saturday afternoons are always the busiest – but, before she can speak, her mouth half-open, I interrupt.

  ‘Busy morning. Just give me two mins, then send my first down, OK?’

  I bustle into my bright space, take off my running clothes, and replace them with my uniform, smoothing the creases in the black cotton against my skin. Have I been wrong about Rick? Is it possible? Am I really going to keep what he’s told me from Kay? I wipe away the sweat that’s trickling from my hairline, then press my face, armpits and chest with tissue and pedal open the noxious-yellow waste bin. There isn’t a shower in the office – and I didn’t have time to go home to have one – so that’s exactly what these tissues are: Toxic. Disgusting.

  Are my memories wrong too, then? When Tabby disappeared, Rick had seemed almost… glad… and everything spiralled from there. Ever since Tabby told me he was happier with someone else, that he and Tabby were struggling to find a way to end their relationship, that her disappearance meant he didn’t owe her half of his assets, I’ve been convinced of his involvement. But a hunch isn’t enough. Every time I see him, he throws doubt on what I thought I knew. My guard’s still up with him, certainly, but I’m not sure whether I need protection from Rick, or he from me. What am I doing? What have I done?