Finally I’d found myself a purpose. After weeks of drifting helplessly, I grabbed onto the idea like a drowning woman clinging to flotsam. The tide was turning.
Even better, I had an ally in my plan to turn detective. Someone to listen to me, who I didn’t have to be fearful of hurting, like I did with Jacob. Besides, Jacob had far too much to juggle with work and worrying about you. Glenn wasn’t a stranger from out of the blue who had offered to help; he was a villager, someone I’d grown up with, but who, crucially, hadn’t been around when you were attacked, so I could absolutely trust him.
‘Where do we start?’ he asked.
I studied him, trying to find doubt, or worse, amusement. He leaned forward, elbows on the small round wooden table, clearly keen to get on with the task. His pale blue eyes searched mine, as if testing my own resolve, and his strong, surprisingly dark eyebrows drew together in concentration.
‘Umm, I don’t know.’ I blinked, trying to gather my thoughts.
‘Did you find any clues in her room?’
‘Oh, well, umm, I haven’t. I can’t face going in there for longer than a couple of seconds. And searching through her things feels like a huge betrayal of trust.’
‘But it’s the most obvious place to start,’ Glenn said slowly. He looked stunned.
‘I just can’t, okay?’ The room felt dead, like you looked dead when I visited you in hospital.
We stared at our glasses of orange juice as if somehow they would provide divine inspiration. This wasn’t the most auspicious start to our detective work.
Suddenly Glenn sat upright, clicked his fingers. ‘Got it! Scene of the crime.’
‘What?’
‘Yeah, it’s perfect. We’ll go to the scene of the crime. We don’t know where to start or who to investigate, so let’s look at where it happened.’
Downing our drinks, we hurried outside. Jumped into his white van, covered in mud splashes, and we were off. I felt hope for the first time in a while.
Twenty-Nine
Glenn glanced at me as he took the turning for the marsh. Through the driver’s side window, a flock of redwing could be seen taking flight from the field. Their russet flashes showed clearly as they banked.
‘Are you definitely all right with going there? Only it’s suddenly occurred to me it’s probably not a great idea… bit upsetting for you, and all that.’
I shook my head. No need for thought or doubt. ‘I go there all the time. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s the only place I feel close to Beth.’
He changed gear while nodding as though he understood. ‘I s’pose so, but wouldn’t you feel closer talking to her at the hospital? Or being at the house, surrounded by her things?’
‘You’d think, wouldn’t you? But it’s…’ I tried to choose the right words to explain. ‘When I look at her, in the hospital bed, all I feel is bitterness. I want to shake her awake. I feel furious with her and everyone and everything. She just lies there! I’m terrified I’ll never hear her voice again.
‘When I’m in her bedroom it’s like it’s frozen in time, like her. It’s not full of life, it’s full of dust. Full of the slowly fading scent of her perfume. There’s no life there. No meaning to it. That is not where she is.
‘But I go to the marsh and, I don’t know, it’s quite an eerie, atmospheric place. I go there and can feel her. Yeah, it’s where something dreadful happened to her, but it’s also where she’s been really happy. We used to go down there and spend hours together watching the birds, and she’d bang on about identifying an animal from a dropping we’d found. And you know, she’d be able to tell all sorts about it, how fresh it was, what the animal had eaten… just from a bit of poo.’
Glenn didn’t say a word, but he listened intently. Encouraged, my words tumbled out.
‘Half the time I didn’t take it in, to be honest, but it was lovely to see her face. She glowed with enthusiasm, you know? She lit up from the inside. She was so passionate about nature that her whole body language changed when she spoke about it. It filled her up; she’d stand straighter and her head was lifted and her hands would gesticulate with larger movements, you know? To see that, to see what nature could do for her was incredible. So that’s partly it.’
The words all came out in a rush, Beth. It was so lovely to talk about you as a girl full of life, rather than lying in a hospital bed. I couldn’t speak to Jacob or anyone else in the family this way; they’d get too upset. Besides, we were always too busy talking about medical care, prognosis, medication…
Glenn nodded. ‘Yeah, I kind of know what you mean about the marsh. I used to come with my dad sometimes. We loved the wildlife here. It’s a place that’s kind of empty but full of life, isn’t it?’
‘That’s exactly it. Exactly!’ Just like Beth, I sat up straighter, hands gesticulating. ‘It’s a place of bonding. And it feels isolated, but actually it’s really, really full of life.’
Someone else got it the way we did, Beth! Time to take a chance. Before speaking, I studied him, keen to gauge his reaction to my confession.
‘Thing is, Glenn, it’s like I said, in hospital and at home everything feels devoid of life and I don’t feel close to Beth at all. But out on the marsh, she’s truly alive, still. She’s on the wind; she’s in the blades of grass; she’s speeding through that great big sky with the birds, free. Sometimes I can almost feel her, almost hear her. If I can only concentrate hard enough I’ll connect with her again; we’ll find each other. That’s where I’ll find my Beth. That’s where I’ll get her back.’
Instead of answering, he shuffled forward in his seat to hunch over the steering wheel and beeped his horn twice, because we were about to go over the sudden rise in the lane. Everyone always honked their horn there, to let anyone on the other side know they were coming and avoid a crash on the single lane. As we crested the rise, the air freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror swung crazily from side to side, filling the van cab with faux pine freshness. I stared at Glenn. The slightest frown played on his face as he considered what I’d said.
He thought I was nuts, Beth. I’d taken a leap of faith sharing such a ridiculously intimate thought with him and fallen flat on my face.
‘I think I know what you mean,’ he said, finally, eyes still ahead. ‘My mum used to be into all this spiritual stuff; you know, mediums and all that. Ghosts. Before she died.’
He pulled over, switched off the engine and turned to me. ‘You know the sort I mean?’
I told him I did.
‘Well, I’m not sure I believe in ghosts and stuff, but I think I sort of believe in energy, you know? When something happens, a lot of energy, maybe positive or negative, goes out into the world. And maybe stays there. What you’re picking up is not so much Beth’s spirit but more the force of what happened to her, all that good and bad energy, and that’s why you feel closer to her here.’