DS Carmichael interrupted. ‘Ryan, two separate eyewitnesses saw them walking towards the edge of the cliff together. Neither Charlotte nor the man appeared distressed. They were both holding mobile phones to their ears when they climbed over a fence and then stepped off the edge. Unfortunately, the car park CCTV cameras weren’t in operation, so we can’t back their statements up yet.’
‘Then the witnesses are wrong,’ I replied adamantly. ‘Charlotte had been a little down lately, I admit that, but she was getting better and she wouldn’t just kill herself. We tried so hard for a baby and we only had a couple of months left to go. She wouldn’t end her life, or our child’s. She had no reason to.’
‘They were walking hand in hand,’ said DS Carmichael softly.
‘What?’
‘The witnesses say Charlotte and the man were holding hands when they died.’
My world suddenly ground to a very sharp halt. I opened my mouth to argue with her, but by the look of everyone else in the room, they believed her. I couldn’t lift my hand up to my eyes quickly enough to quell my tears. Dad pulled me into his shoulder and I sensed he was trying to stop himself from crying, too.
‘What do you think the relationship was between this man and Charlotte?’ Johnny asked.
‘It’s another question we can’t yet answer,’ DS O’Connor replied. ‘Our investigation is still in its early days.’
‘So you do think they were in some kind of relationship?’
‘Only because something brought them to that place at the same time, for what we believe was the same purpose.’
‘To die,’ I said. It wasn’t a question. They nodded their heads while I shook mine.
‘No, I’m not buying it. Charlotte wouldn’t do this to herself or to us. It makes no sense to me, but you believe it because you don’t know her. Mum, do you think she was having an affair or suicidal?’
‘I don’t know what to think anymore.’ She looked down at the table.
‘The evidence so far seems to point to the fact her death was voluntary, Ryan,’ my dad added. ‘But let’s not worry about that for the moment.’
‘Then what should I be worrying about?’ I asked with a raised voice. No one could answer.
I couldn’t listen to the police or my family any longer. I stormed out of the living room and into our bedroom, slamming the door behind me so hard that I heard the wedding photos hanging in the hallway juddering.
I wanted so badly to call Charlotte and have her answer, telling me it’d been some huge fuck-up and that she was fine. How could I even start to get my head around not hearing her voice again?
CHAPTER THREE
THREE DAYS AFTER CHARLOTTE
So much of what you believe – or what you have convinced yourself to be true – can be flipped on its head quicker than you can ever imagine.
I was desperate to believe that what had happened to Charlotte had been the result of foul play, that she’d been murdered by this unidentified stranger – not that she’d willingly gone with him and jumped to her death.
After another restless night, I turned on my iPad and went online to look up the location where she’d died. Birling Gap, in East Sussex, was part of the Seven Sisters coastline, with panoramic views of the English Channel. Charlotte had been found at the base of a five-hundred-foot cliff drop that was notorious for its erosion.
That makes much more sense! She and this man didn’t take their own lives; the ground simply gave way beneath their feet.
Surely if they’d travelled that far to die, they’d have driven a few miles further down the coast to Beachy Head. That was a suicide spot, not Birling Gap.
‘Dad, I think I know what happened to Charlotte . . .’ I began hurriedly as I marched towards the kitchen. My parents, Johnny and DS Carmichael were sitting around the table with an open laptop in front of them. I was surprised to see the police there on a Sunday morning.
‘Sit down, Ry,’ urged Johnny, and I obliged.
‘The cliffs, they’ve been known to collapse,’ I continued. ‘What happened to Charlotte was an accident.’
‘I have something to show you and it won’t be easy to watch,’ DS Carmichael began gingerly.
‘Please, Ryan, sit down, just for a minute,’ Mum urged.
DS Carmichael pressed play. Footage had been retrieved from a dashboard camera a driver had failed to turn off when he’d parked for a clifftop dog walk. He’d returned to find his bumper scratched. It was only when he reviewed the recording that he noticed what else it had taped.
I held my breath as I watched Charlotte leave her car. Compared to a lot of expectant mums, her baby belly was relatively small, and she was disguising it that day with an overcoat. Her phone was clasped to her ear as she walked across the car park. A male figure came into view. He had his hand to his ear, too, like he was also on the phone. I recoiled as they embraced. I wanted to shut my eyes, but I couldn’t tear them away from the screen. Then they held hands and walked slowly but deliberately across the car park and towards the safety railings that prevented visitors from going too close to the edge.
He was the first to climb over them, before holding his hand out to help her until they were side by side. Then, with their phones still clutched to their ears, they began their walk towards the horizon. My stomach sank when they suddenly fell over the edge and out of view. Mum’s hand covered her mouth and Dad looked away from the screen.
It was absolute proof that Charlotte hadn’t been abducted, she hadn’t slipped in an awful accident and the ground beneath her feet hadn’t crumbled. No longer could I tell myself the eyewitness statements were mistaken.
We all remained in silence for I don’t know how long. I could feel everyone’s eyes drilling through me, waiting for a reaction, for me to say something, anything. But I didn’t have a reaction to give.
Instead, I tried to imagine what had been going through Charlotte’s head in her final moments. Was she scared? Did she die straight away or was she in pain? Was she thinking about me, or had she put me out of her mind? Why did she do it? Had she learned there was something medically wrong with the baby and felt she had no choice but to end both their lives? Had this man, this unidentified stranger, been a part of her life for a long time, skulking about in the shadows, hiding behind my back? Had he made her pregnant? Who was on the other end of the phone as they walked to their deaths? Just how shit must our life together have been for her to take herself away from it in such a brutal, catastrophic way?
Among all the confusion there was only one thing I was certain of: I didn’t know my wife as well as I thought. I grabbed my jacket and keys and left the flat without saying a word.
I made my way by foot towards Abington Park, where I’d spent many a school holiday and weekend as a kid playing football and cricket with my mates. More recently, it had become a place where Charlotte and I took long Saturday-afternoon strolls, throwing bread to the ducks and geese in the lakes and buying Gallone’s ice cream from the van near the children’s play park.