Can't Let Go (3 page)

'What are you scared of?'

Danny had meant his question as a
sort of joke, a cliché. It was what you
said to people in those circumstances. 'Come on, what are
you scared of?'

And the usual answer, the expected answer, the answer
most people would give was, of course, 'Nothing.' But not
me. What was I scared of? I could have given him a list. I
had a list, an actual written list.

I knew all about fear. I lived with fear the whole time,
and it was manageable, mostly. It wasn't much fun, but
that was okay. I killed someone: I couldn't expect my life
to be a bed of roses. But I could cope with the fear, most
of the time. I could live with it. I had it down to a fine art.

The best way to manage fear was to analyse it; to divide
it into categories and to deal with each little bit of it
separately. I did this quite often. I would sit down and I
would make a list – a physical list, pen and paper. I wrote
down what I was afraid of, and I wrote down reasons why
I should or shouldn't be afraid, and what I could do about
it. I would keep the list. I would fold it up small and carry
it about me somewhere: in the back pocket of my jeans, in
the zipped compartment of my handbag; in the inside
pocket of my jacket. Sometimes when I needed
reassurance I'd pull it out and read it. I would usually keep
it until the paper was falling apart, and then I would write
a new one.

The list usually fell under three major headings. The
first thing I was afraid of was Rivers Carillo; or, more
correctly, his ghost – his apparition. That one was easy to
deal with, to neutralise. I knew he was dead because I had
killed him. The dead didn't walk again except in my
imagination. I could usually make the apparition disappear.
Sure, it was off-putting. Sometimes it was
downright frightening when he would suddenly spring up
in front of me. Sometimes, like I've said, he would presage
a migraine, but that was okay; that was just something I
had to live through. But no actual harm would come to me
from seeing Rivers Carillo. It was just a reminder of what
I once did.

The second heading, the second thing I was afraid of,
was that someone knew what I had done and would come
and find me. That was a tougher fear to deal with, because
it was both more realistic and more amorphous. It had
been seventeen years and no one had yet tracked me
down. That didn't mean that they wouldn't at some point
in the future. On my list I had three subsections under that
heading; three ways of controlling that particular fear.
The first was information, the second was disguise, and
the third was the ability to run away.

I had gathered as much information as I could about
Rivers Carillo. I had made a sub-list of anyone and
everyone who might have known about Rivers Carillo
and me; who might have known that we were seeing each
other and therefore might, somehow, for some reason,
unlikely as it seemed, associate me with his death. I had all
the newspaper clippings that I had ever been able to gather
on the subject. I had every single thing that I'd been able
to find anywhere on the internet that related in any way to
the subject: tidal patterns through and around the Golden
Gate, for example; the names of second-hand bookstores
in San Francisco's North Beach; a list of universities in the
state of Indiana. I kept all this information in a manila file,
stored between
The Times Atlas of the World
and the
Collins Complete DIY Manual
on the bottom shelf of my
bookcase. I knew that having the file in my possession
constituted a risk in itself, but I didn't think that anyone
would be able to put the information together to make any
sense of it. And besides, I hardly ever invited anyone into
my flat.

The next tactic was disguise. The woman – the girl –
who killed Rivers Carillo had been a pretty, vivacious,
annoying whirligig called Lizzie Stephens. On the plane
back from San Francisco I killed her too. I supposed I
should have changed my whole identity. I should have
found a graveyard and a child who had died young, born
the same year as me. I had a vague idea that it was
possible: I'd seen it in a film or read it in a book. But I was
eighteen years old and very, very scared. I wanted to go
home to see my mother and father. I needed them. I
wanted to be at home. So I compromised. I killed Lizzie.
'I've decided I'd like to be called Beth from now on,' I told
my parents as they met me at the airport.

'Oh, I am pleased,' said my mother, who'd never liked
the abbreviation Lizzie. 'I'd prefer Elizabeth, but at least
Beth sounds like a proper grown-up name.'

Beth was altogether a different person. She looked
different. She seemed shorter, although she wasn't. Her
hair was straighter and her clothes were much more
discreet – jeans, a white shirt, a plain T-shirt, a simple
trouser suit for work. There was, I'd discovered, an art to
being unobtrusive, to slipping through life without
making so much as a ripple. There was great skill
involved in keeping your head down and not leaving
traces. And just occasionally I worried that I had taken the
art of unobtrusiveness too far, that I had become so
unobtrusive, so secretive and hidden as to be positively
noticeable, almost intriguing: a mystery to be solved.
That seemed to be the case with Danny. He was intrigued
by me, and that was dangerous for both of us.

That was why my ability to run away was so precious
to me. That was why I had so few possessions. I
remembered Robert de Niro in the film
Heat,
playing a
master thief who kept nothing in his life that he couldn't
leave behind with just a few minutes' notice. That was the
way I tried to live. That was why I had a car, the height of
eccentricity for someone who lived just a stone's throw
from the public-transport hub that was King's Cross:
because, if all else failed, if I got discovered, I could just
throw my life into my car and drive away. I could go to
Cornwall, or to Scotland, or to the wild west of Ireland, or
I could drive to Kent and catch the shuttle and head
anywhere in Europe. My trusty little Polo could one day
be my best friend.

The third heading on my list, my third great fear, was
that I would tell someone what I had done. Of all my
fears, this was, I thought, the most likely to come true. It
ought to have been the easiest to control but sometimes it
felt like the most difficult. I usually subdivided this section
into three sub-headings, three circumstances under which
I might have spilled the beans. The first was when an
apparently innocent conversation skirted too close to the
subject: the chat at my sister's house about my summer in
San Francisco, for example. Any casual chats in the pub
with friends or in the staff room at work that touched on
subjects like student life, or memories of past summers, or
favourite songs from the late 1980s could be risky. I would
walk away from those conversations, using a variety of
excuses. 'Marking' worked well, but only with non-teachers.
I had lost count of the times that I had suddenly
remembered somewhere else I had to be. People expected
it of me now.

And then there was the risk of big emotional heart-to-hearts,
the sort you had in relationships and in close
female friendships. There was a simple solution to the
problem: I didn't do relationships. It was that old cliche: I
had a skeleton in the closet. I supposed in my case that it
was close to being literally true. I imagined sometimes
that it was. Rivers Carillo's skeleton was there, in my
wardrobe, stuffed into an old suitcase that was pushed to
the back, behind the winter coat that I hardly ever wore.
Something it was just about possible to ignore, even
though I could see part of the suitcase every time I opened
the door. But sometimes, when I was sorting through my
clothes, I would have to get it out. And then sometimes I'd
open the suitcase, hoping that I had made a mistake, that I
had dreamt the whole thing and that there was nothing
there at all. But there always was. And to push an already
overstretched metaphor even further, my fear was that if I
were to get involved with someone, sooner or later they
were going to want to go rooting around in my stuff, and
one day I would find them sitting on the bed with the open
suitcase in front of them and a horrified look on their face
– a look that said, 'Oh my God, I'm in a relationship with
Bluebeard.'

So I didn't do relationships. And I was particularly
cautious about close female friendships, too. Guys were
okay. You could be great friends with a bloke and yet
know almost nothing about each other. I had that kind of
friendship with Danny. Sometimes I'd go round to his
place and we'd have evenings of playing CDs and
watching D V D s , and exchanging names of favourite films
and bands, the kind of night that I enjoyed because it
represented warmth and friendship rather than intimacy
and involvement. That was something I really didn't want
to spoil. But I steered clear of close women friends
usually, because they would always ask questions about
my personal life. Because I was scared that if I let myself
get close to people, then one day there would be the
inevitable exchange of innermost secrets after a few too
many drinks and out it would come: I would reveal the
whole, terrible truth. Blokes were safer. They weren't
interested in that kind of conversation. They just wanted
to know what sort of music you liked.

And, finally, there was the fear that one day I would just
blurt it out. That perverse desire to confess was perhaps the
thing that scared me most. 'Blurt' – what a strange and
specific word that was. The dictionary definition was 'to
utter suddenly or unadvisedly'. The word had no roots,
nothing Latin or Old Germanic or anything of that sort. It
seemed to be imitative, onomatopoeic: a word that made
the sound of what it meant. Blurt – the sound of someone
revealing the awful secret that they had kept buried for
seventeen years. It was like the urge to press a big red
emergency button or pull the cord on a train. The more
you told yourself not to do it, the worse the urge became.
There was no way to control this particular fear except to
spend as much time as possible alone.

So that was my life. That was why I lived like that.
That was why on that Sunday afternoon, listening to
Danny's C D , I was staring out of my open window at the
roofs of London below me, trying to ward off a headache
that felt like someone inside my head was intent on
pushing my eyes out of their sockets. That was why I was
just beginning to let myself wonder if I should lighten up
a bit; if maybe I was safe now. Seventeen years on,
nothing I feared had happened. Maybe I should let myself
start living again. Maybe I had served my time. Maybe it
was time to reconnect with the human race.

'Miss Stephens?'

I had my back to my class of year tens
as I wrote on the whiteboard and I
couldn't immediately tell who was speaking, since all the
girls spoke in pretty much the same way: confident
middle-class with a hint of affected Estuary. I turned and
saw that it was Chloe – Chloe T., rather than Chloe P. In
other words, the class daredevil, the one who asked the
questions that the other girls wanted to but didn't. I
looked at her and raised my eyebrows, waiting for the
question. I was pretty sure I knew what it was going to be.
I would get asked this question, or something like it, at
this point every year. In fact, I probably encouraged it. I
led the class discussion around to it. If we were going to
study that story, the story that seemed to have been
written about me, then I knew that I might as well brace
myself for the question. I almost laid a bet with myself to
guess which of my year ten GCSE English set would ask
it, and on what day; and I had my bland, non-committal
answer carefully prepared.

'Miss Stephens, do you really think it's true? Do you
really think that if someone killed someone and got away
with it, they'd be desperate to tell someone?'

Chloe T. put her head on one side after asking the
question, a self-satisfied smile on her face. She was a
clever girl and a funny girl and I had always liked her a lot.
And I had often wished that she wasn't in my class. I
looked at her as evenly as possible, and I said, in my
brightest voice, 'I don't know. What do
you
think?'

It was probably my catchphrase as a teacher: 'I don't
know. What do
you
think?' The kids probably did
impersonations of me, using that question. I used it all the
time. It worked on almost any occasion, for almost any
question a pupil might ask. And it worked that time, too.
Chloe narrowed her eyes and started to think, and then
the others girls joined in, all calling out with their
thoughts; and I stood there with my gaze fixed on the far
wall, on a point where the paint was peeling off, half listening
to a bunch of teenage girls imagining that they
were murderers, hoping that the conversation would drift
away soon. One of them, Bella, was suddenly struck by
something. 'Listen, think about it. Imagine the worst
thing you've ever done, like, maybe, shoplifting? Or
telling a whopping great lie to get out of doing something,
but you're really proud of it because it was, like, a really
clever lie? You'd be
bursting
to tell someone then,
wouldn't you?'

They liked that idea. They all started discussing the
worst things they had ever done. There was a confession
from one girl about borrowing her older sister's leather
jacket and then losing it, and the elaborate lie she had told
her sister. Another owned up to breaking her mother's
favourite vase and blaming it on her two-year-old
brother. I was feeling on safer ground. And then, out of
the blue, Chloe T. piped up again. 'Miss Stephens, what's
the worst thing you've ever done?'

I felt myself start to blush. I wasn't prepared for that
question. I turned back to the whiteboard. I tossed the
marker pen in the air and tried to catch it, but I missed and
it clattered against the rubbish bin. I took a deep breath,
turned back to the class and smiled sweetly: 'Well, Chloe.
Funny you should ask. A few years ago I throttled one of
my pupils with my bare hands when she kept asking
annoying questions.'

The sound of several sharp intakes of breath. A few
sniggers. I was getting into my stride now. 'I chopped her
body up into tiny pieces and posted it to her parents.'

Some giggles, then a wave of laughter. I could almost
see what the girls were thinking: 'Good old Miss Stephens
– she's not as dull as she looks.'

I wondered what would have happened if I'd told them
the truth, if I'd answered Chloe's question with complete
candour. 'When I was just a few years older than you I
killed a man. I looked him in the eye and I killed him. I got
away with it, and I've never told a soul – until today.'

Probably their response would have been the same: the
same sharp intake of breath, the same sniggers and
giggles, the same assumption that I was joking. Because
how could Miss Stephens, with her neat brown hair and
her cheap black skirts and trousers, and her plain, mannish
shirts in shades of white and cream and grey, possibly
have been a killer?

The reason for that intensely, horribly apposite
discussion? And the reason why I had to put up with
it almost every year? Blame Edgar Allan Poe.

It had been bad enough having to teach
Macbeth
every
year, with the hand-washing scene, and Lady Macbeth
going to pieces because of her guilt about the murder, and
a class full of girls debating whether they could carry off a
killing without going mad. But what bright spark decided
to put the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe on the GCSE
syllabus? Of course, his tales of death, disease, imprisonment
and burial alive were hugely popular with fourteen to
sixteen-year-olds. Call it Goth, call it emo, whatever
name you gave it, the dark side always held a powerful
allure for that age group. And most of the tales were fun
to teach: 'Ligeia', 'The Fall of the House of Usher', 'The
Premature Burial' – the kids lapped it up. But there was
one story that I wished had never been written, and
certainly never added to the syllabus. It was called 'The
Imp of the Perverse'.

The narrator of the story had committed a murder, a
very clever murder for which he would never be
suspected. He had got away with it. But something was
eating away at him – the perverse desire to confess. Sound
familiar? In the Edgar Allan Poe story, the narrator did
confess, and it all ended badly as he awaited his death on
the gallows. Imagine me having to teach that story every
year to a class of inquiring girls.

I became a teacher because it seemed the safe, unobjectionable
thing to do. I got my degree, did my
teaching certificate, kept my head down, didn't make
waves. Despite everything, I discovered that I was good
at it. It was one of the few things in my life that I enjoyed.
I felt safe and normal when I stood in front of a class and
communicated with them. Three years earlier I had
moved to a fee-paying independent North London girls'
school. A teacher's dream, you would have thought.
Classes full of bright, attentive girls: Louisas and Amelias,
Ellies and Ellas, Alices, Freyas and Floras. Great parental
support, a warm and exciting atmosphere in the school
and a willingness to encourage pupils to go beyond the
syllabus. But, oh, the questions. The school encouraged
inquiring minds. And it wasn't just the lessons the girls
liked to inquire about. Why wasn't I married, did I have a
boyfriend, had I got any action at the weekend, was I a
lesbian, why were my clothes so dull, why didn't I try to
do something more interesting with my hair? What was
the worst thing I had ever done?

School was quiet that day. It got like that in May and
June. Year Elevens and the Upper Sixth were no longer in
lessons. Exam season was under way. I had taught them
all that I could. Now it was down to them. The rest of the
pupils, the ones who didn't have big exams, were getting
a bit demob happy. It was the time of year when they liked
to push their luck and ask outrageous questions.

It was a very warm day, the third one in a row, and
people were already beginning to predict a long hot
summer. Outside it was glorious. But it had become
almost unbearable in the creaky, un-air conditioned
Victorian building where I taught most of my classes. The
girls had already abandoned their uniform of thick black
tights or trousers in favour of skirts, the shorter the better.
The bell went, and Year Ten packed up their bags and
filed out, still giggling at the thought of Chloe T . chopped
into tiny pieces and posted to her parents. 'Nice one, Miss
S,' said a couple of the girls as they left the classroom.

It was lunchtime, and I had no classes for the rest of the
day. I ran my hands over my face, feeling the sweat that
had pooled on my forehead and in the dip above my top
lip. I rummaged in my bag for a ponytail band, and pulled
my hair back off my face and neck, enjoying the instant if
fleeting sensation of coolness. I walked across to the
window and climbed onto one of the desks so that I could
stick my head out of the open part of the window and feel
the fresh air on my face. Outside, I could see a cluster of
A-level students sitting on the wooden bench in the shade
of the huge old tree in the playground. They had open
books on their knees, as if they were doing last-minute
revision, but from where I was standing it looked as if
they were goofing around instead.

I wandered down to the staff room feeling
uncharacteristically relaxed. I'd had a couple of sleepless
nights after Saturday's encounter and Sunday's
headache. I'd been lying awake thinking about Danny's
invitation, too. But on a beautiful bright day like that
day I felt as if I could put everything out of my mind.
The weather was making me feel light and excited,
almost as if I was on holiday. I made plans for the
afternoon. I'd walk home instead of taking the Tube. I'd
take my marking with me, and I'd stop in Regent's Park
on the way home and do it there. And I guessed it was
my happy mood that knocked me off guard and led me
to do something I rarely did: I accepted a social
invitation from one of the other teachers. Lesley, probably
the nearest to a friend I had at the school, invited me
out to a comedy night in a pub in North London. I
figured that maybe someone had pulled out and she had
a spare ticket. Otherwise I couldn't imagine why she
would have invited me; I had turned down many overtures
of friendship in the past. Because the invitation
coincided with the beginning of my change of heart –
that half-formed decision that perhaps it might be time
to rejoin the human race – I found myself saying yes.
Various people in the staff room reacted with double
takes. It had seemed like a simple decision. I had no idea
what it would lead to.

I walked home still feeling happy. It wasn't long until
the end of term, and I was feeling that mildly euphoric
mood I sometimes got on the first truly hot day of
summer. If you had asked me exactly what I was feeling,
I'd have said that the worst was over. The weather was
beautiful. It would soon be the summer holidays, I had
survived the toughest question I could possibly have been
asked, I had decided that the ghost of Rivers Carillo could
just get lost and not bother me again. London felt alive.
People were sunbathing in Regent's Park. They were
smiling; I was smiling. The time had come to relax, to
make friends, finally to put everything behind me. I was
actually looking forward to spending time socially with a
group of people from work. Maybe I would even say yes
to Danny's invitation. Whatever had come over me?