Precious Thing (18 page)

When I snapped back to my senses I flinched, the shame hitting me like cold water in my face.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I didn’t mean …’

‘Don’t apologise, Rachel,’ he said and he got up to fill our wine glasses.

I awoke the next morning in his bed. The duvet pulled over me, still fully clothed. Jake must have carried me there when I passed out on the sofa. I got up and looked in the mirror. My hair was a wild mass of red. I pulled it back from my face into a ponytail. My eyes were bloodshot and smudged with mascara, if only from crying I thought. My mouth was dry, in desperate need of water.

‘What time is it?’ I said, emerging from the bedroom.

Jake was sitting at the island in the kitchen, coffee and papers laid out on the wooden worktop. ‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’ I asked, seeing the clock on the wall. Half-past nine.

‘Rachel … I … you need to see this,’ he said. He pointed to the newspaper and then with one hand rubbed his eyes as if something was causing him pain.

Three steps across the open-plan living room and I was leaning over his shoulder, reading the same newspaper he was reading. I scrunched my eyes, not wanting to believe what was in front of me. The darkness, the doorway. Jake and I embracing. An image stolen from us the night before, now shared with the world. The front-page picture in the
Daily Mail
and underneath the strapline:

TV girl seeks comfort with colleague after discovery of boyfriend’s body.

‘I’m sorry, Rachel,’ he said, ‘I’m so so sorry,’ and I saw his mouth open to say something else but I didn’t hear any more because I was running out of his flat into the icy morning.

Running, running through the streets. The cold cutting into my face. Cars and buses and horns and people. People everywhere. I wanted to click my fingers and make them disappear. To make space for me, to leave me alone to think and breathe. The cold burnt into my lungs but still I kept going, I couldn’t stop; if I stopped it might catch me, this avalanche roaring in my ears. It might scoop me up and bury me alive.

Ahead, an expanse of green. Queen’s Park. Through the gates still running. Mercifully free of kids. Too cold for kids today. The space became mine. I was free to fill it with my breath and thoughts. A bench, over there, I saw it and sat down. My knees pulled tight into me, then tighter again so I was small enough to disappear. For a moment, stillness. The traffic and the people and the workmen, everyone quiet all around. A window of silence. Then a searing pain in my stomach as if I was being ripped in two. They came, then, the tears, warm on my freezing face, slipping down to my lips with their salty taste. So many I thought they might never stop. And the images flickered like the old cine films Niamh used to play, of Jonny, of his body, lost to me forever. I had loved him in a way I never thought possible. My tears were for him, but mostly they were for me. For the future I had lost. Jonny had been healing something that was broken inside me. He had offered me a way out. And now he was gone there was no one left to fix me.

T
HE INCESSANT DRILLING
was loud and reassuring. For days I had worried that behind every noise and shadow lurked someone uninvited. Now the locksmith was here and the click-click of every lock and bolt being replaced told me I could be safe once more, that my flat was being sealed up, watertight, so no one without a face or a name could slip through doors and windows unnoticed again.

The air smelled of bleach from the hours I’d spent cleaning and hoovering and washing when the police finished their search a few days earlier. I had scrubbed until I wore holes in my Marigolds and my arms ached, stopping only when I was convinced every fingerprint, crumb, every germ and scent of the people who had trampled through my home had been removed. With a certain satisfaction I looked around, coffee in hand, and saw my reflection in the shining surfaces. Nothing out of place, only a pile of mail to deal with.

I can keep this at bay, I can hold it back.

The flash of a message on the answerphone caught my attention. I wanted to block everything out but I knew it would flash at me all day long and give me no peace so I pressed play.

‘Rachel, it’s Laura here,’ said the voice so like my mother’s. ‘I’m so so sorry for everything. I’ve been trying to reach you since Clara went missing and then I heard the news about Jonny. Please call me and let me know you’re OK.’

I pressed the stop button. She wanted me to reassure her I was OK.

I am not OK. My boyfriend has died, my friend is missing. Nothing will ever be OK again.

My call to Aunty Laura could wait.

On autopilot I moved over to the kitchen table, eyeing the pile of post that had grown little by little over the past ten days. Mentally, I needed to tackle it, if only to wrest back control of the little things in life that were slipping away from me. I’d opened one letter, an invitation to join an exclusive health club, when my mobile phone rang, Sarah’s name flashing up on the screen.

‘Hi babe.’ (No one had ever called me
babe
before or since thankfully.) ‘It’s me,’ she said like she was the only person who ever called.

‘Hi.’

‘I didn’t know whether to phone, I mean I just wanted to let you know I’m thinking of you.’ She stumbled over her words. ‘It’s so awful, I can’t imagine how you must be feeling.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, barely able to hear her above sound of the drill.

‘Fucking hell, what’s that? Sarah asked.

‘Oh,’ I said, ‘Just a locksmith doing a few jobs.’ I didn’t have the energy to go into detail.

‘I understand,’ she said though I wondered how she could. ‘Listen, I’ve got to go, there’s a gang of us going around town today putting posters up of Clara. You never know, it could make a difference.’

I doubt it.

‘Good luck,’ I said and hung up.

I got back to the pile of letters, starting with the official-looking ones, the bills, my credit-card statement, which I put to one side – most of it I would claim back on expenses. A tasteless card with butterflies on it from my Aunty Laura, obviously sent before Jonny’s body was found. Inside, in her scrawly handwriting, a note:

Darling Rachel,

I’m so sorry to hear about Clara, I know you must be going out of your mind. I’ve called your flat several times but I can’t seem to reach you. Do get in touch.

Love as always,

Laura x

I threw it on the pile along with the predictable letters from estate agents promising us (me) they had hordes of imaginary buyers waiting to snap up our flat. Then I came to a large brown envelope with my name typed in capitals and my address underneath. It was hand-delivered, no stamp, but it was so light I wondered if it contained anything at all. I waited for a moment, listening to the locksmith’s drill growing louder and louder as he worked his way around the flat to the kitchen windows, before I took a knife to it and sliced it open. I tipped it upside down and watched two pieces of paper float slowly to the floor. The drilling tunnelled into my brain. I wanted it to stop. I bent down to retrieve the contents of the envelope and saw a newspaper clipping with a typeface I recognised instantly as the
Daily Mail
’s. I shook my head to stop the pain. The front page was facing down; all I could see was the day’s weather forecast and a nib about Gordon Brown. But I knew that wasn’t what I was meant to read. Slowly I turned it over and saw myself and Jake embracing in the dark of his doorway. And when I looked at the sheet of A4 that had fallen from the envelope I saw it was blank, save for the words:

D
ON’T YOU FEEL ANYTHING,
R
ACHEL
W
ALSH
?

The drilling stopped but the pain in my head was fierce, red-hot. Next to me I felt a presence, a breath on me that made me jump. I turned to see the locksmith who, noticing my surprise, took a step back. His lips were moving but I couldn’t hear the words, so he repeated them, this time louder.

‘Didn’t mean to give you a fright love, but I’m done now,’ he said. ‘How many keys do you want?’ I watched him pull his saggy jeans up over his waist only for them to fall back down again. His name was Mickey, he owned the locksmith’s round the corner. That was as much as I knew.

It could be him, it could be anyone.

I looked at the letter in front of me, my name written in angry capitals.

DON’T YOU FEEL ANYTHING?

I slid it under the pile. ‘You sure you’re OK?’ he asked.

‘Fine,’ I said, hoping he couldn’t hear the thud of my heart.

‘How many sets of keys you after? Just you here is it?’ He had a friendly face, a ruddy complexion. But that didn’t count for anything.

‘No,’ I said. I didn’t want anyone to think I lived alone. ‘I’ll need three. Two for me, one for my boyfriend.’

‘Right you are.’

I reached for a cheque, wrote his name and the amount and handed it to him, breathing with relief as I watched his bulky figure fade through the door into the afternoon.

The curtains were closed to shut out the day and I was wrapped cocoon-like in my cream cashmere blanket. With the remote I flicked through the TV channels until a programme about Great White Sharks on Discovery caught my attention. I let myself drift with it, imagining I was cutting through the deep waters with the sharks, as graceful and powerful with nothing to fear.

The voiceover was deep and gravelly and suggestive of danger. It told me Great Whites could smell a drop of blood from over a mile away. ‘There is no hiding from the Great White Shark, they can detect and home in on small electrical charges from hearts and gills.

‘They plan their attacks and choose their prey long before their victims see them.

‘It’s what makes them so deadly.’

The credits were playing when the phone rang, startling me with its noise. I wasn’t expecting a call. I didn’t want to deal with the unexpected so I let it ring out. But the caller was persistent – no sooner had it stopped than my mobile started to vibrate. It was Sandra’s number. I hadn’t spoken to her since we parted in Brighton a few days before, the image of Jonny’s body fresh in our minds. Initially I had harboured the illusion we could support each other in grief but when I looked at her that day I knew we would drown each other with the weight of it.

‘Rachel.’

‘I was just on my way out,’ I said, turning the volume down on the television.

‘It’s the postmortem …’ I heard an intake of breath, as if she was trying to deliver her news with control but failing, failing miserably.

‘They say he might have tried to commit suicide,’ she said and then she stopped, no more words, just the sound of her breaking into a million little pieces.

I glanced at the television; the picture was fuzzy with interference and the walls moved in and out as if they were breathing. My vision had switched to black and white, the colour had dropped out.

‘Sandra,’ I asked finally, ‘how did he die?’

‘Hypothermia in the end,’ she said. I wondered what that meant,
in the end.
‘But they said …’ She paused, struggling with the words. ‘They said he took an overdose of sleeping pills first. He would never have done that, not Jonny.’

The telephone slipped from my hand. A sliver of sunlight poked through the curtains and fell on the room.

By degrees, my vision was restored and suddenly it was so clear, so very very clear, everything turning in on itself.

Sleeping pills. Such an obvious clue.

You did this.

And the photograph in my room, the texts and letters too.

You wanted revenge.

I trusted you and you betrayed me.

I waited, not drawing a breath, the stillness of the room like the dead calm of the sea before a tsunami strikes. I slumped to the ground, curled into myself, my hands gripping my head for protection.

Through the phone a muffled voice: ‘Rachel … Rachel, are you there …’ and then the voice disappeared, drowned out by the deafening roar in my ears. My body started to shake, I could feel the wave of white-hot rage thundering towards me.

Then it hit, sucking the breath from me, my lungs on fire. Everything around vanished, eaten up by the anger that was now consuming me.

The pressure built up in my head, ready to explode. I couldn’t do anything, just sit and wait for this to pass; my whole body was pinned down by a force greater than me.

I don’t know how long I stayed like that, but finally there was silence. Quiet settled on me again. The pain in my head dulled to a warm fuzz.

My hands fell to down to my lap, my fingertips tinged with blood where my nails had dug deep into my scalp. I looked around the room; the tidiness and perfection of it gave no clues as to what had just happened. Everything was the same. But inside, inside me, everything had changed.

I listened as words echoed in my head, searching to put a face to them.

We don’t see the signs because we choose not to. We see what we want to see. We’re all guilty of that.

Ann Carvello.

At that moment I felt her words resonate through every fibre of my being.

I should have known, Clara, that what we had was lost, eaten away by years apart, by the unspoken doubts and misunderstandings we had allowed to fester and rot.

Most of all I should have realised that when you betrayed me once you would do it again.

Clara, my best friend: not dead, just haunting me like a ghost.

I
T’S THE IMPRINT
of you but it’s not you. Your mannerisms are different, the way you flick your hair, more abrupt, less elegant; the way you throw your head back when you laugh, even your laugh itself; deeper, throatier, the result of too many Marlboro Reds, I think. The smoking shows in your face, your skin looks tired, I can see the red spots of burst veins; the glow has gone. And your speech is peppered with words you never used to use, like
totally
as in
totally amazing
. Then there’s the slight inflection at the end of your sentences that makes them sound like questions. But it’s your eyes where I see the biggest change. They’re still blue, deep blue, but duller, as if the light that made them dance and sparkle has been extinguished. It’s you, but it’s not you.