The Cruellest Game (16 page)

I could hear Robert’s voice downstairs. He was on the phone. I didn’t trust him any more. And I realized that I quite badly wanted to know who he was talking to and what he was
saying without him being aware of my presence. I dropped my armful of yesterday’s clothes on the landing floor and made my way as quietly as I could downstairs, avoiding the treads which I
knew creaked.

Robert was in the kitchen. The door was open. I stood in the hall outside with my back pressed against the wall.

‘Look, I just don’t know when I can return,’ I heard him say. ‘It’s far too early to decide. I can’t leave my wife . . . Well, yes, thank you. If you could
give me a couple of weeks before we talk again, that would be great. Really. I can’t make any decisions right now. I just can’t . . . No. Well, thank you anyway . . .’

He ended the call. I stepped into the room and spoke as if I knew nothing of his call, which had fairly obviously been to his employer.

‘Who was that on the phone?’

‘The Amaco personnel people,’ he said. Surely speaking the truth for once, I thought nastily, even though it was a Saturday. But then, as PC Cox had remarked on the night of
Robbie’s death, this was the oil business. It didn’t shut up shop for the weekend.

‘They wanted to know when I could go back to work. I told them not for at least another two or three weeks—’

‘I think you should go back straight away,’ I said, interrupting. ‘There’s no point in moping around here. That won’t help either of us. Just go. It’ll be for
the best.’

He looked surprised and hurt.

‘Not yet, surely,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to leave you on your own. Not yet.’

‘I’ll be all right,’ I said. ‘Call them back. Tell them you’ve changed your mind.’

He shook his head. ‘No,’ he began. ‘It wouldn’t be right—’

I interrupted him again. This time I screamed at him.

‘Don’t you understand, you lying bastard. I don’t want you here. I want you to go. I want you to go anywhere, anywhere at all, and just leave me alone.’

I hadn’t meant to fly out of control like that, but I couldn’t stop myself.

He recoiled from me as if I had physically attacked him.

Which I was just a hair’s breadth from doing.

Robert left for the North Sea less than forty-eight hours later, early on Monday morning, eleven days after our son had died. He hadn’t argued at all after my near
violent outburst. Instead he’d meekly called the Amaco people back and made the necessary arrangements to return to work as soon as possible.

He told me he’d managed to get a flight to Aberdeen from Exeter – sometimes it had to be Bristol from where the service was more frequent – and I drove him to the airport just
as I always had. We’d only ever run one car as Robert was away so much and almost never wanted to go anywhere alone when he was at home.

We had little to say to each other on the hour or so drive, and he looked sad and beaten as he climbed out of the car and made his way to the terminal building. It occurred to me that I was
suddenly the strong one. The decisive one. And that I’d never realized how weak the man I’d married could be, whatever his bloody name was.

As soon as I got home I called Gladys Ponsonby Smythe. I thanked her for all her help with the funeral arrangements and told her I’d never have got through it without her. Which was more
or less the truth.

‘Shall I pop over?’ she offered at once. ‘I could pick up one of Mrs Simmons’s home-made cakes from the shop.’

I turned down the offer, a little too quickly probably, even though I knew only too well how delicious Mrs Simmons’s cakes were.

‘Robert and I need some time alone, just to be quiet together,’ I fibbed by way of explanation. I was fairly sure that if I confessed that I was alone in the house a herd of Dartmoor
ponies wouldn’t have stopped her dropping everything and rushing to my rescue.

Gladys said she quite understood, and I was able to move on to the real reason I had called her.

‘About Robert,’ I began as casually as I could. ‘You know when you said you thought he used to sing in the choir at your other church? I wondered how long ago it was, and if
that would have been when he was with his first wife?’

Was there an almost imperceptible pause? I wasn’t sure. But Gladys sounded clear enough when she did answer.

‘Oh, Marion, luv, I feel such a fool,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose it was your Robert at all, chuck. After all, it was years and years ago. I couldn’t tell you
exactly how many, but Gerry and I have been in Blackstone over twelve years. The man I remembered must have looked then like Robert does now. Silly of me.’

‘So you don’t remember his wife?’ I persisted.

‘To be perfectly honest, I don’t think I remember anything, luvvie,’ said Gladys, with a small snort of laughter. ‘I got it all wrong, didn’t I, and I have no idea
what I thought I was doing sticking my oar in like that, and at your poor lad’s funeral too. Typical, Gerry would say. I just hope you can forgive me, flower, that’s all . .
.’

She was prattling now, in true Gladys fashion, and absolutely determined to treat me to her full range of Northern endearments, it seemed. I knew I wasn’t going to get any more sense from
her, even assuming there was any to get. I let her voice wash over me until I could reasonably interject and end the conversation.

Afterwards I wondered if perhaps I had been wrong to attack Robert the way I had. If Gladys had made a genuine silly mistake, then I had not caught Robert out in another lie after all. But that
was the terrible dilemma the two of us now shared. With even the slightest cause, would I ever again be able to stop myself becoming suspicious of him?

I also tried to call Sue Shaw. She didn’t pick up. And I didn’t somehow expect her to. Nor really did I expect her to respond to the message I left asking her to call me back for a
chat, only a chat.

Then for the rest of that day, and most of several that followed, I just moped around the house, poking about among Robbie’s things, periodically bursting into floods of tears. I ate and
drank little, delving into the freezer only if I really needed food and not interested at all in the form it took. Any crockery and cutlery I did use was piled in the sink. I couldn’t even be
bothered to load the dishwasher. For the first time since we had moved in, Highrise looked grubby and uncared for, and I didn’t give a damn.

Paracetamol were no longer helping at all with my sleeplessness. I visited my doctor to request some sleeping pills which he duly provided, prescribing zolpidem, apparently the UK’s most
popular sleeping aid, although I had never heard of it before. While I was there he insisted that I get my feet redressed. I’d neglected them totally since scalding them on the day of
Robbie’s death, but my wounds had stopped leaking and seemed to be healing OK, in spite of my lack of attention.

I answered the phone as infrequently and briefly as possible and then only to ensure that neither Gladys nor my dad nor Bella nor any other of my relatively small band of acquaintances descended
upon me. I ignored Robert’s calls and emails completely. I thought he deserved to suffer as I was suffering. The only time I left Highrise was when Florrie more or less forced me to take her
for a walk, rubbing herself against my legs and whining pitifully.

Even with the aid of the zolpidem, I tossed and turned my way restlessly through most of each dark night, and endured each long day with lonely and harrowed anguish.

Then, six days after Robert had returned to work, on a particularly bright and beautiful Sunday morning, I decided I could take no more of it. I dug out my heavy-duty boots, put on extra thick
socks to protect my feet, loaded Florrie into the back of the car, and drove up onto the moors past Okehampton Camp, the big army training centre where hundreds of cadets, including Royal Marines
Commandos, are put through their paces every year. Fortunately no military manoeuvres were taking place and the track into the heart of Dartmoor, which cuts right through the camp’s firing
range, was open.

After a mile or so I parked. Only then did I wonder why I had bothered with the protective socks and why I had brought Florrie with me. Habit I supposed. But in view of what I was planning, both
were irrelevancies.

I set off on foot, Florrie running circles around me, towards Yes Tor, the second highest point on the moors, its peak more than two thousand feet above sea level. The air was cold and the sky
impossibly clear. I could see for miles. Beyond that. Purple hills seemed to stretch to infinity. But not even Dartmoor at its best could lift my dismal mood nor alter my intention.

A life that had seemed so idyllic now appeared not to have been real at all. Robbie was dead. And I could see no future. Thinking of my son and how he would have loved to be up there with me on
such a day, I climbed to the very top of Yes Tor, and stood trembling on its famous angular granite summit.

It seemed a very long time ago that I had stood in Robbie’s bathroom contemplating a bottle of paracetamol while telling myself that it really was true that potential suicide cases should
always wait until tomorrow. For me, there was no point any more in waiting till tomorrow. Every day was the same. Filled with total despair.

Florrie took off after a rabbit, winding, whirling and leaping her way through the heather and bracken at a speed that belied her age. I didn’t call her back. I did not want her under my
feet. I stepped forward to the edge of the top-most granite slab on the steepest side of the tor and prepared to jump. I could feel the sun and the wind burning my face with an unexpected
intensity. It was as if all my senses and every nerve ending were more acutely tuned than they had ever been before in the whole of my life. And just as I was planning to end it.

A lone crow circled overhead, its grating
caw caw
quite deafening to me. The sun seemed blindingly bright. I shut my eyes against its glare and tried to force my body forward over the
edge of the tor. But I couldn’t get my legs to move. I wanted one more look at the world I was leaving behind. I opened my eyes again and, staring straight ahead over the purple peaks of this
place I so loved, made myself begin to shuffle towards the permanent oblivion I so sought.

It was then that I heard the voice. Clear as the day itself.

‘No, Mum, no. Don’t do it.’

It was Robbie’s voice.

I threw my upper body back to safety just as gravity threatened to pull me irrevocably forward and down. I collapsed in a crumpled heap on the ground, and sobbed for England. I was a wreck. But
I was still alive and I knew with absolute certainty at that moment that I intended to remain so.

I am not a fanciful woman. I do not believe in God or the devil. I do not believe in life after death or the supernatural. I knew even then that Robbie’s voice was inside my own head. And
only inside my head. It could be nowhere else.

None the less, his voice had been absolutely real to me. As was the message it had given.

No. Don’t do it.

As far as I was concerned Robbie had spoken to me just as certainly as if he had been alive and standing by my side. I didn’t fully understand it, but I knew I had experienced a road to
Damascus moment from which there was no turning back.

Florrie bounded back towards me, panting, excited. She began to lick my hands and my face.

I pulled myself upright, called her to follow, and began the descent.

After a bit I turned and looked back up at Yes Tor. There is, on the side where I had positioned myself intending to leap, a short sheer drop from the very top, but by and large tors are not
designed for suicide. I studied the terrain with a kind of detached interest. It would, I feared, have been far more likely that I would have just broken bits of me instead of killing myself.
Suddenly the absurdity of it hit me. Along, I suppose, with the enormity of what I had so nearly done.

I began to laugh hysterically. Florrie trotted at my heels, looking at me curiously. An approaching couple walking a yellow Labrador, the only other people I had seen on the moor that morning,
took a sharp turn onto another path. In order to avoid a woman who must appear to be quite mad, I suspected.

By the time I reached the car I had stopped laughing and felt more like crying again. But I still believed that something monumental had happened, and that I was going to be able to cope again
soon. None the less, I had to return to a home I could barely stand being in.

Around mid-afternoon I forced myself to eat something. I tried to read and to watch TV. Both proved more or less beyond me. I remained determined that I would never again contemplate suicide,
but the brief flash of optimism I had experienced in the car had been just that.

By bedtime I was preparing for another predominantly sleepless night. However, ironically, considering my purpose in going there, the sharp Dartmoor air seemed to have done me good. Or maybe I
was just totally exhausted. But mercifully I fell into a deep sleep almost as soon as my head touched the pillows.

I was still using the guest room. Somehow I remained unable to return to the room Robert and I had shared. Florrie was in her bed in the kitchen. My gran had always taken her beloved Jack
Russell to bed with her, but Florrie slept in the kitchen because Robert didn’t believe in dogs being allowed in bedrooms and had convinced me I didn’t either. After all, she did moult
everywhere. Robbie and I had kept to the rule, whether Robert was away or not, without thinking about it, and it hadn’t occurred to me to change the dog’s sleeping arrangements. I had
other things on my mind. In any case, that night I was out for the count.

It was perhaps because I had been deeply asleep at last that I woke so suddenly and with such a start. Something was wrong. I sat up in bed, shaking my head to try to clear the fog which filled
it.

I’d been woken by something, and I didn’t know what. Had it been Florrie barking? She wasn’t barking now. Had there been some other noise?

I listened hard.

At first there was only silence and I began to wonder if I’d just been having a dream. I’d been taking sleeping pills after all.