Greenwich Park

by Katherine Faulkner

  ‘We’ll be in touch,’ he says. ‘In the meantime, if you do hear from Rachel, please do give us a call.’

  ‘Of course.’

  They step outside and I close the door behind them. I lean back against the weight of it, slide down to the floor until I am crouched in the hallway, my bump pushed up against my knees. I am shaking, actually shaking, all over, as if I’m outside in the cold. When I close my eyes, all I can see is Rachel’s face, her slightly parted lips, her childlike horror, like a burst balloon, as I utter those awful words, the last ones I said to her. We’re not friends. We never were. I want you to leave, tonight, and not come back.

  I open my eyes again. You are a liar, I tell myself. You are a liar, Helen Thorpe.

  39 WEEKS

  KATIE

  He is late, as usual. The venue was his choice, an Indian restaurant on Church Street in Stoke Newington. There are thick white tablecloths, a tea light at each place setting, paintings of Kerala on the walls; fishing nets against an orange sunset in Fort Kochi, houseboats in the lush backwaters. There is a smell of cardamom and fennel. The Virgin Mary watches over us from a candlelit shrine in the corner. Outside, raindrops dribble down the windows. A passing woman abandons her umbrella after it is blown inside out by the wind, leans over a puddle to shove it into a bin.

  I am the only person here, and my presence seems to be a source of relief to the waiters. They are smartly dressed, and startlingly young, like teenagers on their way to a sixth-form ball. They treat me with exaggerated politeness, pulling out a chair for me, bringing me a glass of the house red, as requested. They tip the bottle gently, enclosed in a folded white napkin. I drink the wine quickly, nibbling on a dry poppadum. It is crisp, still hot from the oil.

  When Charlie finally arrives, he looks flushed, the ends of his hair wet against his neck.

  ‘Sorry, Katie.’

  He leans to kiss me, but I pull away.

  ‘Ugh, Charlie, you’re wet.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He pulls away grinning, leaving my cheek clammy. ‘You look nice.’ He snatches a poppadum, shoves it into his mouth as he sits down. ‘Starving,’ he says.

  Soon Charlie has ordered a bottle of wine, another round of poppadums, and a whole load of starters I have no interest in eating. When the waiter has finally disappeared, Charlie looks at me.

  ‘What?’ he says. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘The police came to see me,’ I tell him. ‘They said Rachel has gone missing. That she hasn’t been seen since the night of Helen and Daniel’s party.’

  Charlie frowns. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I know. They came to see me too.’

  ‘Did they?’

  ‘They wanted a list of everyone at the party.’

  The speakers blare into life – some mournful Hindi song. I twist my napkin in my hands.

  ‘They kept asking me about when I saw her last.’

  ‘Yeah, they asked me the same thing.’ Charlie pauses, frowns. ‘And? Why are you looking at me like that?’

  It was a stupid idea, coming here. Why didn’t we go somewhere private?

  The food Charlie has ordered arrives, worryingly quickly, in a series of little metal bowls. My stomach turns over in protest. I can’t look at the creamy sauces, the lurid colours of the chutneys.

  ‘Come on,’ Charlie says, when the waiter is a safe distance away. ‘What is it?’

  I lower my voice. ‘The last time I saw her, at the party, she was going down into the cellar. With you.’

  ‘Wait, hang on. I didn’t go down to the cellar with her.’

  I examine him closely.

  ‘I didn’t!’ He is looking me straight in the eye. ‘Honestly, Katie. I went down to the cellar, yes. But I was on my own.’

  ‘Charlie, I saw her go down there. I remember the blue dress she was wearing – I saw the back of it. She was following someone down there. Then ten minutes later, I saw you and you told me you’d just been down in the cellar. You were covered in dust.’

  Charlie is shaking his head. ‘Yeah, I had been down to the cellar. But I was there on my own. I wanted to see the building work, that was all. There was nothing to see! Just a load of wet concrete. I came straight back up. Got a beer. Came out to find you. Rachel wasn’t down there with me.’ Charlie is searching my face. ‘It’s the truth, Katie. Why would I lie?’

  I know Charlie, I tell myself. He is not perfect, but I know him, I’m sure of it. I know his face. I would know it if I was blind, if I had to feel it in the dark. I know his heart. I have always believed that, fundamentally, he is good. Now, as I look in his eyes, I believe he is telling the truth. But could I be wrong?

  ‘Hang on. Did you tell the police you saw me go down to the cellar with her? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?’

  I stare at him, then look away. ‘Not exactly,’ I mutter.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I was sure it was you,’ I tell him. ‘I thought you’d be in trouble.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘So I didn’t tell them, all right? I didn’t tell them that I saw her going down to the cellar with anyone. And now I don’t know what the fuck to do.’

  I still don’t quite understand why I didn’t tell them. But the way it happened just didn’t feel like lying. It just felt like it didn’t come up.

  ‘So, you saw her talking to Mr Charlie Haverstock,’ the detective had said. ‘And you think that was around eight fifteen?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘All right. And that the last time you saw or spoke to Miss Wells, was it?’

  It didn’t feel like a lie, you see. It just felt like agreeing. It felt like being polite. Not making things difficult, for anyone. In the moment, it was the truth that felt like a lie. This vague idea that I’d seen her again later, when I was coming back from the bathroom … After all, it was only the back of a blue dress that I saw, and what looked like the shadow of someone else. It felt weird to bring up. I told myself it was something that might mislead them, confuse matters, obstruct the investigation. And then before I knew it, they were shutting their notebooks anyway. Nodding their goodbyes. And that was it. It was too late.

  I’d convinced myself it wasn’t a lie. But it feels like a lie now. The more I think about it, the worse it feels.

  ‘This cellar thing – it might be important, Charlie.’ I twist the napkin again. ‘Don’t you think? Whoever went down there with her – it might have something to do with her going missing.’

  Charlie frowns, his mouth full of food.

  ‘The detective left her card,’ I say quickly. ‘She was nice. I’ll call her. I’ll tell them I just … remembered it.’ All of a sudden I can’t wait to call them. I’m flooded already with the relief of it, with the release from guilt.

  ‘Katie, I wouldn’t if I were you.’

  Charlie’s voice is quiet, but firm. I look at him, confused.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Charlie takes a deep breath. ‘Look,’ he says. ‘Ultimately, it won’t really matter what you told them. They’re interviewing loads of people about what they saw at the party.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So – why would you want to draw attention to yourself – get yourself more involved? Admit that you lied, when they spoke to you the first time?’ He shakes his head. ‘Think how it’ll look, Katie.’

  I feel a rising panic in my chest. ‘No, hang on,’ I say. ‘I didn’t lie, Charlie, it wasn’t like that. I just … I just didn’t tell them that one thing. They even said, if I remembered anything else, that I could –’

  Charlie snorts. ‘Yeah, right.’ He shakes his head, smiling sadly. ‘They want you to think that. That it won’t matter if you change your story, that you can tell them anything. Trust me, it doesn’t work like that. The worst thing you can be is inconsistent. They’ll make something of it, if they want to.’

  ‘Oh, Charlie, you’re being paranoid. The police aren’t going to go after me!’

  He shrugs. ‘If you say so.’
He snaps off a piece of poppadum and dips it in a sauce. ‘I’m just saying, they twist things. Think what they were like with me.’

  I sigh. I know how much he hates talking about what happened last year. He was an idiot to take coke into the club, of course. But he isn’t some kind of dealer. The irony was he had taken it in for Rory and his mates.

  Though he would never admit it, Charlie still looks up to Rory, just like he did when they were little. He still tries to please him, does what he asks. When he was caught by an undercover cop, it didn’t take me long to work out why Charlie refused to say who the ‘friend’ he’d bought the coke for was. And because he wouldn’t name names – and maybe, a bit, because of his dad, and his money, and his smart mouth, which doesn’t do him any favours – the police threw the book at him. Did him for possession with intent to supply. Wanted to make an example.

  Fortunately, the lawyer Rory paid for did a good job, and the judge was more sympathetic than the cops. She accepted his plea that it was just for him and his friends. Still, he was lucky to get a suspended sentence. To be able to keep working.

  The waiter reappears with the main courses. He sets down a wooden board with naan, then the curries. He says the bowls are hot, that we should be careful. The table is crowded, the wine glasses clinking against the metal bowls. The smell of ginger and garlic is almost too much. For a moment I think I’m going to be sick.

  ‘Look,’ Charlie says eventually, putting his hand over mine, ‘for a start, I’m sure Rachel is fine.’

  I look at him, feel my throat tightening again. I want to believe it is true. ‘Do you think?’

  ‘Of course.’ He squeezes my hand. ‘She’ll have just gone back to her boyfriend or something. Or her mum. Or a friend. Christ, I don’t know, Katie – it could be any number of random things. As far as I can tell, there’s no reason to think that anything bad has happened to her.’

  I pull my hand away, twist my napkin. ‘The police wouldn’t be involved if they didn’t think something bad had happened to her.’

  ‘OK, but even if something has happened – I don’t know. This … this cellar thing? It might not even matter.’ He pulls his hand back, dips his naan into one of the chutneys, staining it red. ‘I just think if you change your story now, they might think it’s weird. And it might distract them from something that really is important.’ He takes a bite. ‘Don’t you think?’

  I look at him. I think back to that night, when I saw him and Rachel together, how his hand brushed against her side.

  ‘Charlie, what were you talking to Rachel about? When I saw you that night?’

  His face darkens. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, come on. You were together, by the bookcase. Just the two of you, for ages. You were standing really close to her. Why did you have so much to talk about when you’d only just met her?’

  He looks away, out into the blur of rain.

  ‘What, Charlie?’

  ‘Nothing!’

  ‘What do you mean, nothing?’

  ‘I don’t know … nothing! We were just chatting. Normal stuff.’

  He is staring into his lap now, then back to the rain-splattered window. I was sure he wasn’t hiding anything before. Now I don’t know. I want to believe he is telling the truth. I want to, so much. But then I think again about the way he and Rachel looked, when I saw them talking at the party, the intensity of it.

  And then later, when he came out to find me in the garden. Why was he covered in dust if he’d only gone down there for a moment?

  When he speaks again, Charlie’s tone is different. Harder.

  ‘I don’t get it, Katie,’ he says. ‘You met this girl what – once, twice? Why are you interrogating me about it?’ He leans closer. ‘What are you asking? Are you saying you think I’ve got something to do with her going missing?’

  ‘Of course not. Don’t be stupid!’

  ‘Well, what then?’

  ‘I just … I need to know what happened.’

  ‘Well, maybe we’ll never know. People go missing all the time, usually because they want to. We don’t know what was going on with her. It could be any number of things. It could be nothing at all.’ He pauses. ‘Don’t you think?’

  I stare out of the window, watching the rain thrash against the glass, the bent backs of people walking through it. I watch the buses and taxis throw waves of water over the pavement, the brown rivers running into drains. I think about what happened to Emily, about how she ran for help, her bare feet cold on the cobbled street. Anything could have happened to Rachel, I think. She could be out there, in this. Hitchhiking by a roadside. In a ditch somewhere. Under a bridge. She could have been hit by a car. She could have run away, somewhere north, Scotland, abroad. She could be face-down in water, her bloated body lolling against a harbour wall. I close my eyes.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I don’t know what to think.’

  HELEN

  When we finally go out shopping for a pram, it isn’t as enjoyable as I’d hoped. Daniel suggests one of those out-of-town discount shopping places. It is a long train ride away, and we sit for what seems like an hour as the gaps between the stations lengthen.

  He hardly says anything when we are there, or on the way home, the new pram wedged next to us in the wheelchair bay. Stupid not to have driven.

  ‘Is it the expense?’ I ask, after Daniel has been quiet for most of the journey. ‘I know the joint account is getting a bit low, but we have all those savings, remember. Why don’t you transfer a chunk over, for the baby things? This is what they are for, isn’t it?’

  He insists it isn’t that. That everything is fine. ‘I’m just feeling a bit run-down,’ he says, smiling tightly. ‘Need an early night.’

  So we sit in silence. I watch the ramshackle suburban gardens backing onto the train line, a moving gallery of broken bicycles, Fisher Price slides, trampolines full of rainwater. The backs of the houses are pockmarked with broken satellite dishes. My eyelids start to feel heavy. I didn’t get much sleep last night.

  Since the police came about Rachel, I can’t seem to rest. I thought that text message had meant she was all right. But she can’t have just gone to her mother’s or the police wouldn’t be asking questions, would they?

  Daniel keeps telling me not to worry. He says she was obviously fine the day after the party, when she sent that message. If she changed her mind about going to her mother’s, so what? She’ll be off with the father of the baby, or with another new best friend.

  Sometimes, for a few hours, he convinces me. I allow myself to decide it’s not my fault, not my problem. I mean, we’re not responsible for her, are we? We were just gullible enough to take her in for a couple of weeks.

  And yet, when I close my eyes at night, it all looks different, my thoughts harder to dismiss. And for all his attempts to reassure me, I think the worry of it is eating away at Daniel, too. The police went to his office the day after they spoke to me. He didn’t say much about it. But it upset him, I can tell. I want to tell him not to feel guilty. That we weren’t to know. But every time I try to talk about it, he shuts me down, changes the subject. Stands up, takes his plate up to the study to eat alone, mutters about needing to get on with work.

  Daniel has always had periods of insomnia – sometimes, if he really can’t sleep, he will get up in the night and disappear downstairs for a while. But since Rachel left, he is worse than ever. Whenever I wake in the small hours, his side of the bed is empty. Sometimes I hear him rattling around, like a restless ghost. There is the sound of the kettle boiling. The TV noise fading from laughter to music to explosions, as he thumbs from channel to channel. When I ask him why he can’t sleep, he never gives the same answer. Or any answer at all.

  I asked him the other night, when he got back into bed. Is it Rachel? Are you worried about her? I worry about her too, I told him. He just said I should get some sleep.

  I’ve called the detective a couple of times, just checking in, seeing if there�
�s any progress. No one seems to know. If I could just be sure that she is somewhere else, that it wasn’t me, that I didn’t do anything. Of course, it can’t have been. I would remember. Wouldn’t I?

  I wondered if I should tell the police about the notes, my suspicions about her and Rory. But the more I thought about all that, the less certain I was. I mean, I never really found any proof, did I? And Rory is my brother. I couldn’t say anything. Not unless I was sure.

  On the walk back from the station, the cold bites at my hands and cheeks. Daniel pushes the empty pram, his fingers gripping the bar tightly. It has started to sleet. The pram’s pebble-coloured sunshade is already starting to darken and stain.

  When we get home I turn the key in the front door and flip the light switch, but nothing happens. A fuse must have blown.

  ‘I’ll have a look,’ Daniel says.

  I find a torch, hold it for Daniel at the top of the cellar steps while he climbs down to get to the fuse box. When he pushes the lever up, there is a slight fizzing sound, and the bare bulb hanging in the cellar flickers on.

  ‘Well done,’ I tell him. I switch the torch off.

  ‘I’ll get some dinner on,’ Daniel says, hauling himself back up the steps.

  Just as I’m about the turn the light off, I notice it. ‘Daniel,’ I say, ‘have you seen that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look. In the floor.’

  The crack is as fine as a pencil line. It cuts through the middle of our newly laid foundation, from the top to the bottom, like a jagged tree root. For some reason, a verse comes into my head. Something remembered from school, from the Bible, I think.

  And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split.

  KATIE

  I was bracing myself for it to be difficult. The name was common enough. But by the time I have worked through all the listings, I find there is only one Rachel Wells of the right age listed as currently living in London. I frown. That can’t be her, can it? The address isn’t anywhere near Greenwich.