The police knew, of course, that Lisa had recently given birth but Nick denied all knowledge of a baby over and over until eventually they stopped asking, although I’m sure they haven’t stopped looking. Richard defended Nick, as he always had, whether out of loyalty, or out of fear of being discovered for the liar that he is, I do not know. I have never forgiven him for his part in the accident. But we always seek out someone to blame, I suppose. It’s human nature. And it’s easier to hate him than hate Nick, than hate myself. Still, Richard has at least provided me with a new identity. ‘You’re a missing person, Kat,’ he had said over the phone, his voice cold and hard. ‘I’ve a client who spent time inside for identity theft. Let me make some enquiries.’ And weeks later, as we had met on the edge of a pier, the crashing waves spraying salt into my mouth, I had taken the envelope he handed to me and something else wordlessly passed between us as if we both knew this would be the last contact we would ever have. I turned away from the snarling hate in his eyes and stared out at the flat white sky and, despite our strained relationship, I’d felt a pang of loneliness as his shoes clattered against the wooden boards as he walked away from me.
Nick had stuck to his story that I had depression and had left him days before. There were enough people to validate my erratic behaviour. I had watched the live coverage unfold in front of my former home. The reporter sweating in his cheap suit, interviewing the woman with the red hair who lived a few doors down from us. Her eyes shimmered with unshed tears despite the fact we had hardly spoken. Still, everyone wants their fifteen minutes, I suppose. She confirmed that I had rarely been seen in the few months before my alleged disappearance and when I did venture out, I really wasn’t myself. Running around without shoes. Even Tamara had cried on the news. She always was the better actress. I’m pleased she got to play Maria in the end; I saw the photos online and she looked stunning. Her dreams came true, at least. The musical ran for two weeks longer than it was supposed to. I’m guessing the attention surrounding my disappearance probably did wonders for ticket sales. Who was it that said there is no such thing as bad publicity?
There were rumours that Nick had killed me. The police had to take those seriously and had dug up our garden, but there was nothing to find. I was distraught as I watched the helicopter reports on TV. Dewei’s and Mai’s rose bushes wrenched out of the ground as though they were nothing. Over time I was classed as another unsolved murder, another sad statistic. The newspapers interviewed some of our old school friends. Aaron was photographed standing stiffly with his wife. He was quoted as saying he hadn’t seen or spoken to me or Lisa in ten years. He always was a liar. But then, we all have things to hide, don’t we? Our version of the truth is pliable, we mould our reality to mask our lies, and sometimes it sounds so plausible we even convince ourselves.
There’s a mother sitting on the bench opposite me, a baby next to her in a pram. She rocks her with one hand while scanning through her smartphone with the other. The baby gurgles and I see the pale pink soles of her feet rise up as she grabs her toes with her fingers. Her legs are turning red and I think I should go and offer the mother some of the sun cream I carry in my bag. On the patch of grass in front of the benches there’s a girl twirling a pink dress, her skirts billowing, and her shiny black bob swishes around her face. For a second, she looks so much like Lisa it snatches my breath away. I miss her. Tears haze my vision as I remember a time when we would link hands and spin until we were dizzy. ‘Faster,’ she would cry and just when I felt my feet had left the ground and I was soaring high in the brilliant blue sky, she’d unlink her fingers from mine and we’d stagger across the grass before tumbling onto our backs. I would scrunch my eyes against the bright sunflower sun and wait for the dizziness to pass. Once, an inflatable beach ball had landed on her head. ‘Hey!’ Lisa had sat up and shouted. ‘Go and play somewhere else, Jake.’ She had thrown the striped ball back and sighed theatrically before flopping back down onto the grass. ‘Boys. They are so annoying.’
But even then there was something that transfixed me about Jake. It wasn’t just his bright green eyes, the way his skin was dotted with freckles. It was more than that. ‘Fate,’ he called it when we were older and he tilted my chin to kiss me.
I bring two fingers to my mouth as though I can still taste him – Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum – and I wonder if it ever fades. The sense of loss. Now Lisa’s gone too and my last memory of her springs to mind, as it frequently does. Her black hair fanned out over the chocolate leather sofa, the panic in her eyes, the metallic tang of blood catching in my nose, in the back of my throat.
‘Help me,’ she had croaked, and I had leaned over and whispered in her ear.
‘What have you been hiding for ten years, Lisa?’
‘I don’t know…’
‘I read the texts on your phone. Between you and Aaron. There is something.’
Lisa whimpered.
‘Tell me and I’ll help you.’ I stroked her brow.
She began to whisper. ‘I told Aaron when I slept with him on my thirtieth birthday. It was a relief to tell someone.’
Lisa’s face was as stark white as the wall behind her, and I knew she was slipping away.
‘What, Lisa? What did you tell him?’ Frustration pricked behind my eyes.
Eventually, reluctantly, she spoke. ‘That night at The Three Fishes—’
‘What about it?’
Her head had lolled to the side and I had placed my hands on her shoulders and shook her hard. Her eyes snapped open.
‘I had a tiny bit of mephedrone left.’
I placed my ear to Lisa’s mouth so I could hear her properly. Felt her hot breath.
‘Hardly any. I put it in our drinks. Mine and Jake’s.’
‘How could you?’
A single tear streaked down her cheek. ‘I wanted us to have fun. He wasn’t supposed to drive.’ She drew in a long, juddering breath and closed her eyes as though trying to find the energy to speak again. ‘He’d promised me we’d leave the car and get a taxi home. He’d promised…’
Lisa was the one struggling to breathe but the pain tore at my chest.
‘I’m so ashamed,’ she’d whispered. ‘Keeping it a secret has ruined my relationship with Mum. Please don’t tell her. She’s better off not knowing. Better off without me.’
She had fallen silent but I could still feel warm air against my ear. I remembered Jake feeling dizzy and sick. The way he drove too fast, desperate to get home. I’d thought he was in shock about the baby. But he was drugged. She had drugged him. Would he have been able to avoid the other car if his senses hadn’t been dulled? Would he still be alive? Would our baby?
So many lives ruined. So many lives – what was one more?
I can still feel the coolness of the cotton cushion cover in my hand; I can still taste the bile that stung my throat as I held the cushion over Lisa’s face. I can feel her struggles growing weaker and weaker. I can still hear the monster in my head laughing as tears poured down my cheeks. I will always carry the weight of my shame as Nick burst back into the room and I told him it was too late. She had died a natural death, and often I try to convince myself that this is true. All that blood. I am sure she had a placental abruption – I’d read about them in my baby bible – being so far from the hospital she’d probably have died anyway. Probably. But I couldn’t have taken that risk.
I touch my cheek as though I might still feel the tears that poured from me. My grief was real and raw. The hole inside black and gaping, but it was only right, wasn’t it? Only fair. She was the one responsible for Jake crashing. She took him from me, along with my unborn child and my chance of ever being a mother again. How could she do that? Know that? And to stand tall and proud and offer me a lifeline, pretend to be my surrogate and my friend. It could have broken me, it really could.
Sometimes I wonder if it has.
‘Mummy.’ The word whirlwinds inside me, stirring up loss. Guilt. Hope. But above all love.
‘Jacob.’ I open my arms wide and my darling, darling boy toddles into them. I bury my face in his black, glossy hair and inhale Johnson’s Shampoo before I tickle his ribs, blowing raspberries on his cheek, tasting the strawberry ice cream we’d had earlier.
He giggles but the sound doesn’t drive out the endless screaming that’s in my head every time I look at his face and see Lisa’s face. Jake’s face. All the things I ever did wrong. All the things I ever did right.
‘I’m hungry,’ he says.
‘You’re always hungry.’ I stand and stretch out my hand, and he places his small one in mine. We swing arms as we walk.
We pass the baby sleeping in the pram, her skin as pink as her vest. I glance around for the mother but she is over the other side of the park, deep in conversation. My fingers twitch with the urge to push the pram away. To slather the baby in sun cream and kisses. She shouldn’t have left her here. You can’t be too careful nowadays, can you?