Authors: Lucie Whitehouse
I waited a long time for sleep to come. The couple of hours I’d spent on the sofa before Chris had woken me hadn’t helped but it was more than that. The inside of my head felt like a maze from which I had to escape before I could rest but though I tried countless different ways through it, each one led to a different set of disturbing ideas and images: Alice’s body rolling on to the decks of a trawler with a shimmering, jumping catch; Pete as he heard the truth; Sally crying hysterically. Richard, at the computer. And, less clear, there was a picture of Helen, looking at her mobile as it rang with my number.
Before Chris left I’d had an idea. ‘I think he might have gone to the boat,’ I said. ‘To Shalfleet. Was his car still there?’
‘I didn’t look.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘No, I’ll go.’ His voice was firm enough to make me look at him in surprise. ‘You’re tired,’ he said, holding the eye contact.
It had been barely half nine by then but after he’d gone I went upstairs, cleaned my teeth and got into bed. I’d stared at
The Mayor of Casterbridge
for a while, rereading the same half-page over and over again until I conceded defeat and turned off the light. My phone was on the bedside table next to the dinosaur tooth and minutes later it had rung, casting its blue glow up on to the ceiling in the dark room. It was Chris, calling from the quay at Shalfleet. ‘You were right,’ he said. ‘His car’s here.’
When sleep finally came I had the dream, as I had known I would. I was on the cliff-top again, in the swirling unbreathable mist. Through it came the low mourning bell and the strobe which raked back and forth, watching, searching. I shrank from the light, shielding my face as it approached, putting my hands up to shade my eyes and to block out the shape that was taking on form, definition. The beam passed over and I opened my eyes again, looked behind me for a way down, a path. The figure was moving, coming towards me. My heart was beating, its crazy rhythm at odds with the relentless steadiness of the bell. I had seconds before the beam returned, back the other way. It was moving over the patchy grass, illuminating it stripe by stripe, closer and closer. I scratched at the air in front of my face, needing a breath, just one. My feet were rooted; they wouldn’t move. Now the light came on to them, so bright I thought it would burn, but it was cold, ice cold. Through my hands, I could see red, the blood in my eyelids all backlit. The beam stopped; it lingered on me, touched me, but then suddenly it swept off again, as if it had tried me and found me wanting.
I opened my eyes and there she was: Alice. I tried to turn away but couldn’t. Her arms were so deathly pale, the skin seeming to melt even as I watched, the bones showing clearly in her thin blue fingers. She was looking at me, forcing me to look at her. My heart beat faster still, so hard I thought it might burst through my chest wall. I raised my eyes slowly. There was her chin, the white cheeks. Higher still, towards those terrible empty grey sockets, the vacancy. I opened my mouth to scream but before I could she reached out her hands and clutched my arm, her grip tight as a knot. ‘Kate,’ she whispered, and I woke up, the sheets around me damp with sweat.
The body was formally identified as Alice two days later. When Chris rang to tell me, he sounded tired out. ‘It was lucky,’ he said, ‘if anyone can call any of this lucky. They think she must have been caught somewhere for a while – under a ledge or in some sort of sheltered eddy – to mean that the skeleton was almost all in one piece. With the winter we had, that storm after Christmas, the sea was so violent. If she’d been out in exposed waters, it might have broken up entirely, never been found. At least Peter has that – at least he knows now.’ He’d paused. ‘I can’t think of anything more terrible,’ he said, ‘than what he’s had to go through. And those men on the boat – what must they have felt? I just can’t imagine. But at least Peter hasn’t had to see the body – that’s a mercy.’
In the days that followed, I didn’t leave Yarmouth. For the most part, in fact, I didn’t move far off the circuit that connected the cottage with the café, Wavells and the newsagent, not even taking the dinghy out for fear that Pete might come looking for me and not be able to find me. I couldn’t seek him out but I did have to be there if for any reason he needed me.
I wondered whether Sally might come to the café or knock at the cottage but I didn’t see her either. I tried to imagine how appalling she must have been feeling about what she’d told Pete, the degree of self-flagellation to which she was subjecting herself. Was it wrong, what she’d done? Perhaps she really had thought there was still a chance Alice might reappear and reveal that she’d spent the winter in some remote corner somewhere. I didn’t know. All I knew was that she must be feeling awful, and ashamed, so when she didn’t come to me, I went looking for her. I waited until the early evening when she was usually home from work and walked round to Mill Road. I knocked loudly twice but there was no answer. It was the same the next day.
I didn’t hear from Helen, either, and I didn’t try to contact her. I remembered the small voice that had spoken to me the day Alice’s body had been recovered, asking why she hadn’t rung back. It was almost two weeks now since I’d left the message with Esther and she hadn’t called or emailed or sent even the most cursory of texts. I knew something was wrong – since Christmas we’d spoken so regularly it was as if there had never been a problem between us – but I wasn’t ready to address it yet. I wanted to speak to her, to tell her everything that had happened with Pete, but something held me off. The simplest part of it was hurt that she could disappear so completely again. The dominant part, however – I could allow this much without having to go deeper into it – was fear. I was afraid of what could possibly cause her to pull back so suddenly, when the biggest obstacle between us had been overcome. I looked back over our most recent conversations, tried to think of how I might have offended her, but found nothing. And into that space flooded Richard.
Chapter Thirty-one
Alice’s remains were cremated at a private ceremony but a memorial service was held for her at St James’s in the Square. Just before eleven on Thursday the following week, the church’s single bell started to toll, its unmistakable funeral tone darkening the morning and breaking the silence which had settled on the town like a weight.
Chris had told me about the service but not, I thought, with the idea that I should go. Even if he had suggested it, I wouldn’t have. It felt inappropriate: I would have been embarrassed for Pete to see me there. The café, though, was almost empty, all the morning-coffee regulars in church, as Mary was. ‘It’s for his sake I’m going,’ she’d said, taking a long black coat out of the cupboard. ‘She kept herself to herself but there’ll be a lot of people who want to show him their support.’
‘I didn’t know you knew him,’ I said.
‘Everyone does. He’s popular here – well liked.’
When she’d gone, my thoughts turned back to Alice. My views about her were so confused now. It was as if there were a number of discrete versions of her and I had a different feeling towards each of them. There was the desperate Alice I’d met on the common for whom I felt sorrow and pity but then there was the one who’d been unfaithful, who seemed to have made Pete work so hard to try to make her happy and finally hadn’t allowed him even the certainty of knowing whether she was dead or alive. There was also the Alice of my dreams, who reached out those white-blue fingers to grip me. Part of me would have liked to have gone to the church but again, for mixed reasons: to pay my respects to someone with whom I felt I’d had a sort of relationship, yes, but also in the hope that being there, seeing the mourning, might somehow lay her to rest in my mind, end the nightmares.
The service was short. It was scarcely eleven thirty before the bell resumed its monotone lament. A few minutes later there were footsteps and subdued voices in the street; they were walking back to Pete’s house this way. I was out from behind the counter and, suddenly afraid of being seen, I drew back against the wall.
My eyes found him immediately. Flanked by Chris and a silver-haired woman with her arm tucked tightly into his, he was at the head of a group of six or seven coming up the High Street. Although I couldn’t have imagined that he would be wearing anything else, his black suit still surprised me; in it he looked so different to the Pete I knew, with his scruffy jeans and navy jumper or even the leather jacket and sweater he’d worn to supper. His formality seemed to emphasise his distance from me and the things we’d done together, going out in the dinghy and on the boat, walking on the beach at Brook. Now, in the suit, surrounded by people I hadn’t seen before, he seemed impossibly far away.
The woman with her arm through his was in her late sixties. She was tall – five ten even with her slight stoop – and I guessed at once that she was his mother. She wore a black three-quarter-length coat and a hat with a small veil which shaded her eyes but as she turned to say something to Pete, I had a clear view of her face. It was heavily lined, an outdoor face, but I saw the high Slavic cheekbones and a glimpse of pale eyes and knew without a doubt I’d guessed right.
It took them several seconds to pass the long plate-glass window, Pete moderating his usual stride to accommodate her pace, but just as they were about to disappear from sight, he turned his head and looked into the café. I saw him scan the front of the room but I was too far back, out of the small pool of natural daylight that fell through the window on to the floor. Then, a fraction of a second later, his mother spoke again, pulling his attention away. A moment more, and he was gone.
I wasn’t usually tired out by a day at the café but as I was walking back to the cottage that evening, a great weariness seized me and it was all I could do to get home, lock the door behind me and climb the stairs to my bedroom, where I lay down and promptly fell asleep. I came round again just after nine, woken, probably, by the hoot of the ferry as it departed. Though it felt too late for dinner, I made an omelette and poured a glass of wine before going back upstairs to my study.
Laid out on the desk were the details for the next couple of days, printouts from the estate-agents’ websites of the cottages I had appointments to view. Anglesey – an island off North Wales. A place so remote I hoped Richard hadn’t even heard of it. A place to which I had no connection at all, and that was the point: there was no mental trail he could use to follow me there. I’d never even seen pictures of it except the ones on the internet yesterday. At least I’d had links to the Island when I’d come here, I thought. Soon I wouldn’t even have that: he’d have driven me away from everything that was familiar. I thought of the poor Canadian woman I’d read about and just hoped it would be enough.
I’d kill you
. I heard the words again as if he’d whispered them in my ear.
I folded the pieces of paper in half and tucked them into my bag next to the ferry ticket. Then I poured another glass of wine and brought Helen’s number up on my mobile. I hesitated for a second, then made the call. My heart jumped when I heard the ring tone and I prepared myself for the sound of her answering voice, the breezy ‘Kate!’ The phone rang six times, seven, and then, as really I had known it would, the answering service clicked in and the automated voice asked me to leave a message. Indecisive, I missed the first couple of seconds’ recording time but then I did speak. ‘Helen,’ I said, ‘it’s me. Look, maybe nothing’s the matter and I’m being paranoid but it seems like a long time since we spoke and I’ve tried calling and I left a message with Esther but I haven’t heard from you. If something was wrong, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you? Ring me or text. Just – get in touch.’
I caught the seven-thirty ferry. As I waited in the car for my lane to start loading, I remembered the day after Christmas when I’d stood in the terminal building waiting for Helen to buy her ticket, watching her bag bouncing against her back as she’d jogged down the room, so reluctant to leave me on the Island on my own that she’d almost missed the boat. I’d left my phone on all night and though she would be up by now, maybe already on her way to the office, there had been nothing.
On the ferry I left the car and climbed the stairs to the passenger area. I went out of the heavy wooden door from the top lounge on to the open deck. Below, the ramp curled up after the last of the cars and then came the tug of the engine and white water as the boat began to move away. There was a grey-haired couple at the gate on the harbour and they waved at the young family standing just along from me. The man was holding his small daughter on his shoulders, her little legs in stripy tights hanging on either side of his neck. ‘Wave, Emily,’ he said. ‘Wave.’
In a matter of seconds there was clear water between the boat and the town. Now I could see the pier parallel to us and then, when our perspective broadened, the beach and garden at the George, where the wooden tables had now been set out on the grass for the coming season. A minute more and I could see the whole length of the town where it bordered the shore and stretched out to meet the grassy slope of the common, whose benches already seemed tiny and distant. There were the huge properties with their private jetties and then the row of smaller but still substantial houses further along, one of them Pete’s. Over the boat’s white wake, gulls wheeled and tumbled, their wings flashing against the bright blue sky, the sun infusing everything with light. Despite the morning chill, I looked back and saw the green layers of the Island’s fields and woods as if it was already summer. I would come back, I thought; I would visit Chris, take up the offer of a night or two in his spare room. I couldn’t just go and not come back again, not now.