‘There was a story on the news once. Years ago. I was at home with my parents, and it was on in the background. Some young lad who’d driven a moped off Beachy Head. They’d recovered the moped but not his body, and they showed his mum on the television, crying because she couldn’t even give him a proper burial.’ The baby strained uncomfortably and Anna shifted position and patted it on the back. ‘We talked about it. I remember Mum watching with her hands over her mouth, and Dad being angry with the boy for putting his parents through it.’ She tailed off, pausing her rhythmic patting to stare intently at Murray. ‘They saw what that boy did to his mother, and they would never, ever have done it to me.’
Tears welled in the corners of Anna’s eyes, finding the line of her narrow nose and running in tandem towards her chin. Murray held out his handkerchief, and she took it gratefully, pressing it against her face as though brute force alone could hold back the tears.
Murray sat very still. There was much he could have said about the impact of suicide attempts, but he suspected it wouldn’t help Anna. He wondered if she’d been offered the right support all those months ago. ‘You should have been given a leaflet by the officers who dealt with your parents’ deaths. There are charities that support people bereaved by suicide. Groups you can go to; people you can see on a one-to-one basis.’
Some people found shared experiences a lifeline. They thrived in group therapy sessions, walking out stronger and better equipped to deal with their emotions. A problem shared …
But suicide support groups didn’t help everyone.
They hadn’t helped Murray.
‘I saw a grief counsellor.’
‘Did it help?’
‘I had a baby with him.’ Anna Johnson gave a half sob, half laugh. Murray found himself laughing with her.
‘Well, that does sound quite helpful.’
The tears had slowed. Anna’s smile was weak, but steady. ‘Please, Mr Mackenzie. My parents didn’t commit suicide. They were murdered.’ She pointed at the torn-up card. ‘And this proves it.’
It didn’t prove it. It didn’t prove anything.
But it did ask a question. And Murray had never been one to ignore an unanswered question. Perhaps he could take a look himself. Pull out the original files, read through the coroner’s reports. And when – if – there was something to investigate, he could hand over the package. He had the skills, after all. Thirty years in the job, and the best part of that on CID. You didn’t hand in your knowledge along with your warrant card.
He looked at Anna Johnson. Tired and emotional, but determined, too. If Murray didn’t help her, who would? She wasn’t the type to give up.
‘I’ll request the files this afternoon.’
Murray had the skills, and he had the time. Lots and lots of time.
SIX
You’re not allowed to go back. It upsets people. If there was a manual, that would be the first rule – never go back – swiftly followed by rule number two: never let yourself be seen.
You have to move on.
But it’s hard to move on when you’re a non-person; when you’ve left behind the life you knew and haven’t yet begun a fresh one. When you’re stuck in no-man’s-land between this life and the next. When you’re dead.
I followed the rules.
I disappeared into this half-life, lonely and bored.
I miss my old life. I miss our house: the garden, the kitchen, the coffee machine you bought on a whim. And, vacuous though it sounds, I miss manicures and six-weekly highlights. I miss my clothes; my beautiful walk-in wardrobe of pressed suits and carefully folded cashmere. I wonder what Anna’s done with them all – if she’s wearing them.
I miss Anna.
I miss our daughter.
I spent her last year of school filled with dread for her first one at college. I was afraid of the emptiness I knew she’d leave; the influence she’d never know she had on us both. I was afraid of being lonely. Of being alone.
People used to say she was the spit of me, and we’d turn to each other and laugh, not seeing it. We were so different. I loved parties; Anna hated them. I loved to shop; my daughter was thrifty, making do and mending. We had the same mousey hair – I never did understand why she wouldn’t go blonde – and the same build, with a tendency to plumpness that bothered me more than it did her. I wear my new lightness well, I think, although I confess I mourn the compliments of friends.
The journey down takes longer than I anticipated, but my tiredness dissipates the second I set foot on familiar ground. Like a prisoner on parole I drink in my surroundings, marvelling at how so much has changed for me, yet so much has stayed the same. The same trees, still bereft of leaves; a scene so identical to the one I left, it is as though I’ve only stepped away for a moment. The same busy streets and bad-tempered bus drivers. I catch sight of Ron Dyer, Anna’s old head teacher, and shrink back into the shadows. I needn’t have bothered – he stares right through me. People see what they want to see, don’t they?
I walk slowly along quiet streets, revelling in the illicit freedom I’ve seized for myself. Every action has a consequence; I haven’t broken these rules lightly. If I’m caught, I risk losing my next life, languishing instead in purgatory. A prison of my own making. But the buzz of being back is hard to ignore. My senses are tingling after so long away, and as I turn into the next street I feel a racing in my chest.
Nearly home. Home. I catch myself. Remind myself it’s Anna’s home now. I expect she’s made changes. She always loved the bedroom at the back, with the pretty sprigs of blue on the wallpaper, but I suppose it’s silly to imagine her there now. She’ll have taken over our bedroom.
For a second my defences slide and I remember the day we went to see Oak View together. The previous owners, an elderly couple, had updated the electrics and connected the house to mains gas and waste, replacing the costly oil tank and the unpleasant septic tank still buried in the garden. Your father had already made an offer. All that was left for us to do was to breathe life into the place; to uncover the original doors and fireplaces, and free the windows long-since painted shut.
I slow my pace. Now that I’m here, I’m nervous. I focus on the two things I need to do: stop Anna going to the police and ensure that any evidence points to suicide, not murder.
But how?
A couple, walking arm in arm, turn into the street ahead of me. I step into a doorway, wait until they’ve passed, and use the time to calm myself. I need to make Anna understand the danger she’ll be in if she starts to question what she thinks she knows. How can I do that yet stay invisible? I imagine a cartoon ghost, rattling chains and wailing in the dead of night. Ridiculous. Impossible. Yet how else do I get a message to her?
I’m here. Outside our – Anna’s – house. I retreat to the opposite side of the street, and when even that feels too close I move into the gated park in the middle of the square, watching through the prickly branches of a holly bush. What if she isn’t home? I could hardly have called in advance to check. What if the risks I’ve taken to come down were all in vain? I could lose everything. Again.
A noise along the street makes me retreat further behind the holly. I peer through the gloom onto the street. A woman, walking with a pram. She’s on the phone, walking slowly. Distracted. I keep watching the house, scanning each window for signs of activity.
The pram’s wheels make a rhythmic sound on the wet pavement. I remember pushing Anna around the forecourt at Johnson’s, in and out of the cars, waiting for sleep to envelop her. We were just kids ourselves, barely scraping by on what your dad saw fit to pay us. The pram was a second-hand monstrosity, with a bouncing chassis that jerked Anna awake if we went over bumps. Nothing like the sleek modern affair this woman has.
She pauses by the house, and I tut, impatient for her to move on, in case I miss some movement beyond the open curtains. But she doesn’t walk by. And now I see that she isn’t alone. She has a dog with her, trotting in the shadows beside her. I feel a sharpness in my chest.
Is it …?
The pram wheels crunch over gravel as she pushes it through the gates and to the front door. The stained-glass panel in the front door glows a soft red from the light in the hall.
It is.
The woman’s call ends and she slips her phone into a pocket. She takes out a key, and as she does so she pushes back her hood and I see mousey hair beneath the light above the door, and soft features above a mouth that was always quick to smile, only it isn’t smiling now, and there’s a pounding in my head, because it is her.
It’s Anna.