Who she was, p.10
Who She Was, page 10
‘I’ll look after Paolo.’
‘A single guy? They won’t let you look after Paolo.’
‘Bet and Will can look after Paolo.’
‘They’re too old! That’s what the social services will say!’
‘But we can’t just leave Steve somewhere.’
‘Fine,’ she said, heading for the door. ‘Then let’s go.’
‘What? Where?’
Her mouth twisted in what was not quite a smile.
‘We both know where he is, don’t we?’ she said.
15
He was at the icehouse. Down by the harbour.
Clementine lifted a ruined lobster pot that stood at the entrance and retrieved a key. She opened the door. A blast of freezing air, conspicuously colder than the night. She turned on the electric light inside. Her breath steamed in the yellow light. I followed her inside.
Steve sat at the far end of the icehouse, tied to a chair.
The bandages around his neck had been changed.
His eyes glittered with menace and fear at the sight of us.
But he didn’t seem too bad, I thought with relief.
He wasn’t going to die.
But he was gagged. Some kind of material was tied over his mouth and sealed to his face with brown duct tape. As I got closer, I saw his eyes were wild with panic. He was squirming on his chair, rocking his stocky body back and forth, frantically indicating the water bottle on the floor.
‘It’s OK,’ Clementine told me calmly, looking at him. ‘He can scream all he wants. Nobody’s going to hear him.’
I listened to the night.
The village was sleeping. I could only hear the restless sea, a lonely seal. The gulls mourning for their empty nests. I shuddered. It was below freezing in here.
I pulled the tape and the gag from his mouth, and lifted the bottle to his lips. He greedily guzzled the water.
Clementine chuckled at his desperation.
‘Listen,’ he said to me. ‘Please listen to me.’
‘Better put his muzzle back on, Tom,’ Clementine said. ‘Think of Lisa and Paolo.’
But I shook my head. This madness had to end.
‘I don’t want your friend to go down,’ Steve gasped. ‘I don’t want her to lose her son. Oh yeah – you think I didn’t hear? I heard everything! Listen to me! Tom.’
So now he knew my name. No more getting called Toby! I felt strangely triumphant.
‘Please – it’s too cold in here to leave me all night long. Just let me go and – I promise – I’m just going to walk away. Pretend this never happened. Let you get on with your life. And I’ll get on with mine.’ He indicated Clementine, and me, taking us both in with the nod of his head, as if we were undeniably a couple and absurdly, and in spite of everything, my heart lifted. ‘I’ll wish you well,’ he said, hanging his head and beginning to weep silent, bitter tears.
Clementine laughed. ‘Liar.’
‘Listen to me,’ he said, raising his head, immediately changing tack. ‘You’re in big trouble, Tom. You’re smart enough to know it. But it’s not too late. What happened? An argument that got out of hand. That’s all! Listen – Tom, right? Tom.’ He indicated Clementine again, looking her in the eyes this time. ‘She’s not what you think she is.’ He laughed without humour. ‘When I found her – I thought I would be enough for her. Stupid, stupid, stupid!’ He furiously rocked the chair that held him. ‘You don’t know her!’ he screamed.
She slipped her arm through mine. She placed a chaste kiss on the side of my face.
And it was enough. It was enough to inflame him. To enrage him. A black cloud seemed to pass across his face.
‘Let me go,’ he said, his face a sick yellow under the bare electric bulb of the icehouse, almost too tired to speak. ‘And I’ll let you walk into the sunset holding hands. I’ll forget all this ever happened – honest I will! I’ll let you feed him the same stinking lies you fed me, Tina. Let you tell him you never felt like this before. Let you tell him that it’s the best sex you ever had in your life.’
They stared at each other. He shook his head.
‘I don’t even have to ask, do I? If he’s had you tonight, I mean. I can smell him on you, Tina, you slut.’
Clementine sighed. She smiled at me, raising her eyebrows.
‘Sexual jealousy was always a bit of an issue, as you can see.’
He addressed me. ‘Does she still scream – I love your cock? Or was that just for me?’
I lifted my fist, all sympathy gone. ‘Stop talking now.’
He laughed at me.
‘Go ahead. Knock my teeth out. Crack my skull. You can share a cell with that foreign bitch who stabbed me. And that old yokel who helped you.’
‘Will Farthing saved your life, moron,’ Clementine said.
‘You’re all going down,’ he said. ‘You know that, right? The lot of you!’ He rocked and raved. ‘And you,’ he said to Clementine. ‘You are today what you were when I found you. And we both know what that was, don’t we? There’s a name for what you were, Tina. A cheap, dirty little whore.’
‘Shut his mouth,’ she told me, finally angry.
And I did.
With pleasure. With fury.
I stuffed the oily rag halfway down his throat, making him gag. And then I wound the roll of brown duct tape over his filthy mouth, over his nose and his mocking eyes, this man who knew her before she knew me, one more thing I could never forgive him for.
Outside the gulls were screaming and screaming and screaming.
‘Tighter,’ Clementine said.
16
Even in my old life, that world left behind long ago, I wanted to sleep alone. Even when there was someone I loved in my bed and a pushchair in the hallway. Even back in the bad old days, given the choice – which I wasn’t in a one-bedroom flat – I would have slept alone, as much for my loved one’s benefit as my own. For I am not an easy sleeper. Sleep does not come quickly to me and it does not stick for eight hours when it does.
But it was different with Clementine.
I slept so well and so deeply with her. In fact, I slept better than I ever have in my life – God help me, even with her husband tied to a chair in a refrigerated shack with an oily rag stuffed in his mouth and an entire roll of duct tape holding it all in place.
Sleep with her was different, because it came so easily and because it was deep and restful. After leaving Steve in the icehouse we had returned to my flat above the Lobster Pot and we made love. And sex was different with her too – everything was different – because it felt like those heady, feverish couplings of these first nights would echo down all the days and through all the years ahead, it felt as though the hunger would never wear off, the way it had worn off with everyone else I had ever known. And the sex was getting better because tonight we no longer had the shy desperation of when we were still finding our way around each other, mapping the contours of our love. I held her in my arms, and I looked at the length of her, and I wondered – could I ever get tired of this?
Everything was new with her.
I was young again. I was happy again.
I drifted off to sleep, nothing in my head and my heart full, and she slept in my arms, her conscience clear, as always, and the waves out in the night broke foaming white against the black craggy cliffs of the estuary, black and white the colour of our Cornish flag, black and white the colour of our hearts, as the sea whispered its song all night long.
I choose you.
I choose you.
I choose you.
Then I woke up in a cold sweat.
And I jumped out of our bed, our warm and loving bed, full of a sick dread, suddenly weighed down with a burden too heavy to bear, wondering what the hell we had done.
I dressed quickly, not turning on the bedroom lights, the night still pitch-black outside, the enormity of what we had done hitting me hard, my senses reeling.
Clementine stirred in her sleep.
‘We have to let him go,’ I said to her, to the darkness. ‘Now.’
I didn’t say the rest of it – whatever it means, whatever happens next, whatever they do to Lisa, whatever they do to the rest of us. We have to let him go because anything else was madness.
She did not argue with me.
As far as I am aware, she did not even wake. She slept on and she slept well, as if it was all the same to her, as if she could have her sweet blissful rest with me, or without me.
There was nobody down on the quay.
Nobody out on the water.
The last frosty bite of closed season was in the air as I walked quickly down the stone steps to the esplanade, then down to the quay. The ruined lobster pot was still outside the icehouse. I felt underneath, finding nothing, my fingers scrabbling in the dirt.
The key was gone.
I felt my heart fly with panic, desperately patting my palm against the ground. And then I touched the cold metal. I must have missed it in the darkness. Or someone had moved it.
I opened the icehouse door, and the freezing cold hit me immediately, far colder than before, my breath already steaming as I stepped inside and turned on the light.
Steve was gone.
The old broken chair still stood exactly where we had left it, but it was empty now and the duct tape and the rag and the fishing line that had held him was nowhere to be seen, as if it had been taken away with him as evidence.
I stood there smelling the ancient stink of fish in the wood of the icehouse as much as in the freezing air. And then I stepped outside, closing the door behind me.
And what I felt was a profound sense of relief.
Steve had released himself.
He had got away.
Of course he had. And whatever happened next, we would deal with it. Everything was going to be OK.
In the far distance, the air was alive with tiny yellow lights, like a host of fireflies descending on our village, and all the fishing villages just like it. It took me a moment to realise that they were cars, dozens of them, trying to get ahead of the rush.
The summer season was about to begin.
I looked up at the village, St Jude’s rising steep and still and sleeping above me. All was darkness as I took the first step to home.
A quiet voice from the shadows stopped me.
‘Put the key back where you found it, Tom,’ he said. A pause. ‘Best give it a little wipe first.’
I did as I was instructed.
I put the key under the lobster pot.
Then I turned to face Charlie Farthing.
‘Did he get away?’ I said.
Charlie seized my throat in his right hand.
‘Get away? How the fuck was he going to get away? My old man tied him to a chair! And some other idiot gagged his mouth and blocked his nose! You try getting away from that, Tom.’
‘But we have to let him go.’
Charlie’s eyes were shining with rage in the darkness. He did not loosen his grip on my throat.
I thought – Charlie wants to kill me.
He released me with a snort of disbelief.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said.
‘Don’t worry about it?’
I could still feel the heat of his fingers on my throat.
‘You stupid bastard,’ he said. ‘Come and see what you have done.’
17
They are bringing the body down.
Will and Charlie. Father and son. They have finally stopped shouting at each other. Screaming at each other. I thought they were going to come to blows. The blame, excuses, disbelief and rage. It has all stopped now, while they bend to the task of bringing the body down.
They had Steve in what the Farthings call the box room. More of a telephone booth than a bedroom. At the back of the house, a place for storage and things that were destined to be dumped.
Like Steve.
He had been dead when Will went back to the icehouse. To give him water, Will had said, to make sure he was breathing so that we could work out what to do. So we had time.
So we could do it right.
And now there was no more time, and no more chances to undo what we had done, and I had seen Steve on the unmade single bed of the box room, looking like a poor carbon copy of himself, all the life gone, just drained away.
They are shuffling around upstairs, talking to each other again, their voices low murmurs, but it is the practicalities they are discussing now. I bring the cup of steaming hot tea to my lips and I find that my hand is shaking so badly that I cannot drink it. I place it carefully on the kitchen table.
Bet reaches across the table and pats my arm.
It is a kind gesture that says – it’s nobody’s fault.
Not Lisa’s for sticking the lobster pick in his neck.
Not Will’s for taking him to the icehouse and tying him to the chair.
And not me for shutting his dirty trap with the oily rag and the roll of duct tape over his mouth, his nose, his eyes, when he would not stop talking, when he would just not stop saying those awful things about her.
Nobody’s fault, then. But everybody’s fault.
It is too late for explanations now and forever, too late to explain, too late for the police. Especially now that Will has taken charge of the body.
‘The police are not the only ones who know how to hide a body,’ the old fisherman had said, when it was clear that there were no more options, that we had to continue down the road we had chosen.
‘Is that the plan now?’ Charlie had asked his father, close to tears, close to fury but genuinely wanting to know.
And the sea roared its response.
‘How’s ow meider?’ Bet asks me.
It is an old Cornish term of endearment. Ow meider means – my honey. And I know she can only be talking about one person.
‘She’s all right,’ I say, reluctant to say her name for some reason. But we both feel it. Clementine should be here right now.
Bet exhales and lifts her eyes to the ceiling.
Here they come.
It’s not going to be easy. These old fishermen’s cottages are not built for this work.
I sit in the darkness of the kitchen, staring at hot sweet tea I can’t even bring to my lips – Good for shock, my lovely, Bet tells me – hearing them shuffling around upstairs, working out how they are going to do it, then testing the weight of the body, negotiating the bedroom door, their voices inaudible whispers, subdued in deference to the lateness of the hour and the nature of the bleak task at hand.
And I think to myself – How can it still be dark outside?
This night has gone on too long. This night has lasted forever.
And I also think – We never learn, do we?
We should know by now – you can’t get too close to outsiders. It always ends in tears. And things that are far worse than tears. The locals and the emmets – outsiders, tourists, derived from the Old English word for ants – can respect each other, be civil, be polite. Be nice. It is hugely underrated virtue – niceness.
And why on earth not be nice to the emmets?
They buy our day-caught fish and sprawl on our beaches and gawp at our postcard-pretty views on the coastal paths, dreaming of Poldark and pasties. And we take their money. We can smile at each other, concur on the glory of the brand-new day, chuckle wryly about the ever-changing weather. But don’t get involved. There can be no happy ending or meaningful relationship when you get involved. Our worlds are too far apart. Never love an emmet. It’s fatal.
And I also think – This happened because I loved her.
And here they come now, bumping clumsily down the ridiculously narrow staircase. Here comes the dead body, this sorry excuse for Steve, being carted to its fate in old bedding. I realise that I have stopped breathing.
Will and Charlie pause at the foot of the stairs, taking a rest. Their eyes glance my way.
I know I have work to do soon. Don’t worry – I know.
Then the front door opens, releasing a blast of this place, the cry of the gulls and the smell of the seaweed and the salt that seasons everything.
Then the door slams shut behind them – too loud! – and they are gone, lugging the body towards the harbour, towards the Bonnie Bet, wrapped in its box-room duvet. They should get a move on. The first milky light of dawn is, I think, already streaking the horizon. Or perhaps I am just imagining it.
There is a part of me that believes – that truly believes – this night will never have an end.
And I shiver as I sit in the darkness in what passes for the sound of silence – even the gulls are at peace now – in our blessed, beautiful corner of the world.
Because there is never absolute silence around here.
There is always the sea.
After a handful of minutes, no more, I hear the Bonnie Bet’s engine start up and pull away from the harbour. The throaty sound has not died away when Charlie is back in the doorway, alone.
I drink my tea and stand up.
‘Ready, my lovely?’ Bet asks me.
I sit at the bow of the Pleasure Dome, the wind whipping back my hair, Charlie up on the bridge, taking us out of the estuary and into open sea. He turns the sleek white boat starboard, as he always does, out to the rocks where the seals sunbathe and where the dolphins play, towards Maggie’s Cove.
It is really getting lighter now, it is not my imagination, and I swallow down the fear.
What if someone sees?
The fear will live with me now, there will never be a time when the fear is gone, or very far away.
And then there is Maggie’s Cove, the little beach house shuttered and dark, the cliffs above it steep and craggy and black, the waves foaming white against them, white on black, the colour of our Cornish flag.
Charlie keeps going. I stare out to sea.
‘This is a good place,’ Charlie says eventually, as if we have come here to see the seals or the dolphins.
By my feet I have Steve’s childishly purple paddleboard and oar, sitting in a puddle of salt water on the polished wood of the Pleasure Dome’s gleaming deck.
