ANNA
Saturday, 3 August 2013
Evening
Tom is meeting some of his army buddies for a drink and Evie’s down for her nap. I’m sitting in the kitchen, doors and windows closed despite the heat. The rain of the past week has stopped at last; now it’s stiflingly close.
I’m bored. I can’t think of anything to do. I fancy going shopping, spending a bit of money on myself, but it’s hopeless with Evie. She gets irritable and I get stressed. So I’m just hanging round the house. I can’t watch television or look at a newspaper. I don’t want to read about it, I don’t want to see Megan’s face, I don’t want to think about it.
How can I not think about it when we’re here, just four doors away?
I rang around to see if anyone was up for a playdate, but everyone’s got plans. I even called my sister, but of course you’ve got to book her at least a week in advance. In any case, she said she was too hungover to spend time with Evie. I felt a horrible pang of envy then, a longing for Saturdays spent lying on the sofa with the newspapers and a hazy memory of leaving the club the night before.
Stupid, really, because what I’ve got now is a million times better, and I made sacrifices to secure it. Now I just need to protect it. So here I sit in my sweltering house, trying not to think about Megan. I try not to think about her and I jump every time I hear a noise, I flinch when a shadow passes the window. It’s intolerable.
What I can’t stop thinking about is the fact that Rachel was here the night Megan went missing, stumbling around, totally pissed, and then she just disappeared. Tom looked for her for ages, but he couldn’t find her. I can’t stop wondering what she was doing.
There is no connection between Rachel and Megan Hipwell. I spoke to the police officer, Detective Sergeant Riley, about it after we saw Rachel at the Hipwells’ house, and she said it was nothing to worry about. ‘She’s a rubbernecker,’ she said. ‘Lonely, a bit desperate. She just wants to be involved in something.’
She’s probably right. But then I think about her coming into my house and taking my child, I remember the terror I felt when I saw her with Evie down by the fence. I think about that horrible, chilling little smile she gave me when I saw her outside the Hipwells’ house. Detective Sergeant Riley doesn’t know just how dangerous Rachel can be.
RACHEL
Sunday, 4 August 2013
Morning
IT’S DIFFERENT, THE nightmare I wake from this morning. In it, I’ve done something wrong, but I don’t know what it is, all I know is that it cannot be put right. All I know is that Tom hates me now, he won’t talk to me any longer, and he has told everyone I know about the terrible thing I’ve done, and everyone has turned against me: old colleagues, my friends, even my mother. They look at me with disgust, contempt, and no one will listen to me, no one will let me tell them how sorry I am. I feel awful, desperately guilty, I just can’t think what it is that I’ve done. I wake and I know the dream must come from an old memory, some ancient transgression – it doesn’t matter which one now.
After I got off the train yesterday, I hung around outside Ashbury station for a full fifteen or twenty minutes. I watched to see if he’d got off the train with me – the red-haired man – but there was no sign of him. I kept thinking that I might have missed him, that he was there somewhere, just waiting for me to walk home so that he could follow me. I thought how desperately I would love to be able to run home and for Tom to be waiting for me. To have someone waiting for me.
I walked home via the off-licence.
The flat was empty when I got back, it had the feeling of a place just vacated, as though I’d just missed Cathy, but the note on the counter said she was going out for lunch with Damien in Henley and that she wouldn’t be back until Sunday night. I felt restless, afraid. I walked from room to room, picking things up, putting them down. Something felt off, but I realized eventually that it was just me.
Still, the silence ringing in my ears sounded like voices, so I poured myself a glass of wine, and then another, and then I phoned Scott. The phone went straight to voicemail: his message from another lifetime, the voice of a busy, confident man, with a beautiful wife at home. After a few minutes, I phoned again. The phone was answered, but no one spoke.
‘Hello?’
‘Who is this?’
‘It’s Rachel,’ I said. ‘Rachel Watson.’
‘Oh.’ There was noise in the background, voices, a woman. His mother, perhaps.
‘You … I missed your call,’ I said.
‘No … no. Did I call you? Oh. By mistake.’ He sounded flustered. ‘No, just put it there,’ he said, and it took me a moment to realize he wasn’t talking to me.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.
‘Yes.’ His tone was flat and even. ‘So sorry.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Did you … did you need to talk to me?’
‘No, I must have rung you by mistake,’ he said, with more conviction this time.
‘Oh.’ I could tell he was keen to get off the phone. I knew I should leave him to his family, his grief. I knew that I should, but I didn’t. ‘Do you know Anna?’ I asked him. ‘Anna Watson?’
‘Who? You mean your ex’s missus?’
‘Yes.’
‘No. I mean not really. Megan … Megan did a bit of babysitting for her, last year. Why do you ask?’
I don’t know why I ask. I don’t know. ‘Can we meet?’ I asked him. ‘I wanted to talk to you about something.’
‘About what?’ He sounded annoyed. ‘It’s really not a great time.’ Stung by his sarcasm, I was ready to hang up when he said, ‘I’ve got a houseful of people here. Tomorrow? Come by the house tomorrow.’
Evening
He’s cut himself shaving: there’s blood on his cheek and on his collar. His hair is damp and he smells of soap and aftershave. He nods at me and stands aside, gesturing for me to enter the house, but he doesn’t say anything. The house is dark, stuffy, the blinds in the living room closed, the curtains drawn across the French doors leading to the garden. There are Tupperware containers on the kitchen counters.
‘Everyone brings food,’ Scott says. He gestures at me to sit down at the table, but he remains standing, his arms hanging limply at his sides. ‘You wanted to tell me something?’ He is a man on autopilot, he doesn’t look me in the eye. He looks defeated.
‘I wanted to ask you about Anna Watson, about whether … I don’t know. What was her relationship with Megan like? Did they like each other?’
He frowns, places his hands on the back of the chair in front of him. ‘No. I mean … they didn’t dislike each other. They didn’t really know each other very well. They didn’t have a relationship.’ His shoulders seem to sag lower still; he’s weary. ‘Why are you asking me about this?’
I have to come clean. ‘I saw her. I think I saw her, outside the underpass by the station. I saw her that night … the night Megan went missing.’
He shakes his head a little, trying to comprehend what I’m telling him. ‘Sorry? You saw her. You were … where were you?’
‘I was here. I was on my way to see … to see Tom, my ex-husband, but I—’
He squeezes his eyes shut, rubs his forehead. ‘Hang on a minute – you were here – and you saw Anna Watson? And? I know Anna was here. She lives a few doors away. She told the police that she went to the station around seven but that she didn’t recall seeing Megan.’ His hands grip the chair, I can tell he is losing patience. ‘What exactly are you saying?’
‘I’d been drinking,’ I say, my face reddening with a familiar shame. ‘I don’t remember exactly, but I’ve just got this feeling—’
Scott holds his hand up. ‘Enough. I don’t want to hear this. You’ve got some problem with your ex, your ex’s new wife, that’s obvious. It’s got nothing to do with me, nothing to do with Megan, has it? Jesus, aren’t you ashamed? Do you have any idea of what I’m going through here? Do you know that the police had me in for questioning this morning?’ He’s pushing down so hard on the chair I fear it’s going to break, I’m steeling myself for the crack. ‘And you come here with this bullshit. I’m sorry your life is a total fucking disaster, but believe me, it’s a picnic compared to mine. So if you don’t mind …’ He jerks his head in the direction of the front door.
I get to my feet. I feel foolish, ridiculous. And I am ashamed. ‘I wanted to help. I wanted—’
‘You can’t, all right? You can’t help me. No one can help me. My wife is dead, and the police think I killed her.’ His voice is rising, spots of colour appear on his cheeks. ‘They think I killed her.’
‘But … Kamal Abdic …’
The chair crashes against the kitchen wall with such force that one of the legs splinters away. I jump back in fright, but Scott has barely moved. His hands are back at his sides, balled into fists. I can see the veins under his skin.
‘Kamal Abdic,’ he says, teeth gritted, ‘is no longer a suspect.’ His tone is even, but he is struggling to restrain himself. I can feel the anger vibrating off him. I want to get to the front door, but he is in my way, blocking my path, blocking out what little light there was in the room.
‘Do you know what he’s been saying?’ he asks, turning away from me to pick up the chair. Of course I don’t, I think, but I realize once again that he’s not really talking to me. ‘Kamal’s got all sorts of stories. Kamal says that Megan was unhappy, that I was a jealous, controlling husband, a – what was the word? – an emotional abuser.’ He spits the words out in disgust. ‘Kamal says Megan was afraid of me.’
‘But he’s—’
‘He isn’t the only one. That friend of hers, Tara – she says that Megan asked her to cover for her sometimes, that Megan wanted her to lie to me about where she was, what she was doing.’
He places the chair back at the table and it falls over. I take a step towards the hallway, and he looks at me then. ‘I am a guilty man,’ he says, his face contorted in anguish. ‘I am as good as convicted.’
He kicks the broken chair aside and sits down on one of the three remaining good ones. I hover, unsure. Stick or twist? He starts to talk again, his voice so soft I can barely hear him. ‘Her phone was in her pocket,’ he says. I take a step closer to him. ‘There was a message on it from me. The last thing I ever said to her, the last words she ever read, were Go to hell you lying bitch.’
His chin on his chest, his shoulders start to shake. I am close enough to touch him. I raise my hand and, trembling, put my fingers lightly on the back of his neck. He doesn’t shrug me away. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, and I mean it, because although I’m shocked to hear the words, to imagine that he could speak to her like that, I know what it is to love someone and to say the most terrible things to them, in anger or anguish. ‘A text message,’ I say. ‘It’s not enough. If that’s all they have …’
‘It’s not, though, is it?’ He straightens up then, shrugging my hand away from him. I walk back around the table and sit down opposite him. He doesn’t look up at me. ‘I have a motive. I didn’t behave … I didn’t react the right way when she walked out. I didn’t panic soon enough. I didn’t call her soon enough.’ He gives a bitter laugh. ‘And there is a pattern of abusive behaviour, according to Kamal Abdic.’ It’s then that he looks up at me, that he sees me, that a light comes on. Hope. ‘You … you can talk to the police. You can tell them that it’s a lie, that he’s lying. You can at least give another side of the story, tell them that I loved her, that we were happy.’
I can feel panic rising in my chest. He thinks I can help him. He is pinning his hopes on me and all I have for him is a lie, a bloody lie.
‘They won’t believe me,’ I say weakly. ‘They don’t believe me. I’m an unreliable witness.’
The silence between us swells and fills the room; a fly buzzes angrily against the French doors. Scott picks at the dried blood on his cheek, I can hear his nails scratching his skin. I push my chair back, the legs scraping on the tiles, and he looks up.
‘You were here,’ he says, as though the piece of information I gave him fifteen minutes ago is only now sinking in. ‘You were in Witney the night Megan went missing?’
I can barely hear him above the blood thudding in my ears. I nod.
‘Why didn’t you tell the police that?’ he asks. I can see the muscle tic in his jaw.
‘I did. I did tell them that. But I didn’t have … I didn’t see anything. I don’t remember anything.’
He gets to his feet, walks over to the French doors and pulls back the curtain. The sunshine is momentarily blinding. Scott stands with his back to me, his arms folded.
‘You were drunk,’ he says matter-of-factly. ‘But you must remember something. You must – that’s why you keep coming back here, isn’t it?’ He turns around to face me. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? Why you keep contacting me. You know something.’ He’s saying this as though it’s fact: not a question, not an accusation, not a theory. ‘Did you see his car?’ he asks. ‘Think. Blue Vauxhall Corsa. Did you see it?’ I shake my head and he throws his arms up in frustration. ‘Don’t just dismiss it. Really think. What did you see? You saw Anna Watson, but that doesn’t mean anything. You saw – come on! Who did you see?’
Blinking into the sunlight, I try desperately to piece together what I saw, but nothing comes. Nothing real, nothing helpful. Nothing I could say out loud. I was in an argument. Or perhaps I witnessed an argument. I stumbled on the station steps, a man with red hair helped me up – I think that he was kind to me, although now he makes me feel afraid. I know that I had a cut on my head, another on my lip, bruises on my arms. I think I remember being in the underpass. It was dark. I was frightened, confused. I heard voices. I heard someone call Megan’s name. No, that was a dream. That wasn’t real. I remember blood. Blood on my head, blood on my hands. I remember Anna. I don’t remember Tom. I don’t remember Kamal or Scott or Megan.
He is watching me, waiting for me to say something, to offer him some crumb of comfort, but I have none.
‘That night,’ he says, ‘that’s the key time.’ He sits back down at the table, closer to me now, his back to the window. There is a sheen of sweat on his forehead and his upper lip, and he shivers as though with fever. ‘That’s when it happened. They think that’s when it happened. They can’t be sure …’ He tails off. ‘They can’t be sure. Because of the condition … of the body.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘But they think it was that night. Or soon after.’ He’s back on autopilot, speaking to the room, not to me. I listen in silence as he tells the room that the cause of death was head trauma, her skull was fractured in several places. No sexual assault, or at least none that they could confirm, because of her condition. Her condition, which was ruined.
When he comes back to himself, back to me, there is fear in his eyes, desperation.
‘If you remember anything,’ he says, ‘you have to help me. Please, try to remember, Rachel.’ The sound of my name on his lips makes my stomach flip, and I feel wretched.
On the train, on the way home, I think about what he said, and I wonder if it’s true. Is the reason that I can’t let go of this trapped inside my head? Is there some knowledge I’m desperate to impart? I know that I feel something for him, something I can’t name and shouldn’t feel. But is it more than that? If there’s something in my head, then maybe someone can help me get it out. Someone like a psychiatrist. A therapist. Someone like Kamal Abdic.