Alex thought briefly of Will. They’d all needed real friendship more than they’d known, but Matt had clearly needed it most. Perhaps memory played tricks on them too, because if it had been such a great friendship how could it so easily have withered and died? No accident, however tragic, could have done that on its own.
‘He never talked about what it was that had brought him low?’
‘No.’ She looked at him suspiciously, and Alex realized his question had come close to admitting he might have some idea himself.
Before she could throw it back at him he said, ‘Did he leave a note?’
She nodded and said, ‘I kept it. I told mom and dad I burned it because I didn’t want them dwelling on it. I kept it though.’
‘You don’t have it with you?’
‘It’s in my apartment, but I can tell you what it says if that’s what you want to hear. I know every word of it.’
‘No, I’m sorry, I...’
He was embarrassed for asking but she was determined he’d hear it.
‘Dear Mom, Dad and Martha, I hate myself for putting you through this but there’s no other way. I want to sleep, that’s all, just sleep and be finished with it. Thanks for everything, and I’m sorry it didn’t work out the way it should have done. Please don’t feel bad. Matty.’ Her face was tight with restraint and when she spoke again she sounded angry. ‘Not quite as eloquent as you might have expected from Matt, not offering much in the way of answers either, but then, I don’t suppose his mind was exactly at its sharpest.’
Alex looked down into his drink. He felt like he was contaminating this house and her life and her memory of Matt just by being there. When he looked up again she was still staring at him, eyes unflinching, demanding some response, as if she’d waited all this time for an encounter like this and wasn’t willing to let it go.
Alex stared back and said, ‘I don’t know what I can say to you. I should have been here but I wasn’t. I should have been a better friend but I wasn’t. I’ve never been in the position you’re in now but I can’t imagine you want to hear my condolences, not now, and you don’t want to hear how much he meant to me.’
She laughed bitterly and said, ‘No, you’re right, I don’t. What I’d like to know is what happened. Why did the Matt I’d known shut down like someone had turned off the lights? Why didn’t you keep in touch with him? Something happened. All I want to know is what. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.’
Alex shook his head, thinking of his own empty thoughts of suicide, and said, ‘Nothing bad enough to kill himself.’ At least it wouldn’t have been if they’d kept in touch, helped each other, stayed strong. Like Rob had said, they’d been shallow, just not shallow enough. And perhaps finally, the time had come to reject who they’d been then, and the flawed decisions they’d made. ‘The five of us were out one night in a car. Matt was driving. He’d had a few drinks but he was okay. A girl, a student, ran in front of the car. She was killed. Matt had been drinking but it hadn’t been our fault, so we decided not to go to the police. We kept it secret, and we shouldn’t have done. We agreed never to tell anyone.’
Will had probably told people though, and maybe the others too, certainly if Will and Rob had been murdered - but he couldn’t be sure of that anymore. For a while, with a transformed Matt playing the bogeyman, absurd thoughts and fears had come to make sense. What was he to believe now? That Natalie was the killer, or that he was behind it all himself?
Martha had looked resolute until now. On the surface at least, she was still composed but she looked as if she’d crumpled up inside from a blow.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I shouldn’t have come here. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have done. I’m sorry.’
She shook her head in response but didn’t speak and though she wasn’t crying he saw for the first time that she was struggling to keep her emotions in check. Finally, she took a deep breath and said, ‘You’ve no idea how much it means just to be told something, to have some understanding of what must have been going through his mind. It’s not knowing that really hurts.’
For the first time in years, Alex thought of Emily Barratt’s family. They’d never been told the truth either, and maybe a decade on, the pain of her loss and the added pain of not knowing how it had happened was as fresh and raw as it had ever been. Yet at the time, they’d hardly thought of her as having a family at all.
‘It wasn’t his fault,’ said Alex, thinking aloud. ‘I came here to tell him that.’ He stopped, conscious again of how far his timing was off.