I Let You Go

  ‘There’s nowhere to run to, Jennifer.’

  I whirl around but can’t see him. I peer through the gloom and make out scrubby bushes; a stile; in the distance a small building I know to be a shepherd’s hut.

  ‘Where are you?’ I call, but the wind whips my words away and carries them out to sea. I draw breath to scream but in an instant he’s behind me, his forearm across my throat, drawing me up and backwards until I start to choke. I jab my elbow into his ribs and his grip relaxes enough for me to take a breath. I will not die now, I think. I have spent most of my adult life hiding; running; being afraid, and now, just as I’m feeling safe, he has come back to take it away from me. I will not let him. I feel a surge of adrenalin and I lean forward. The move unbalances him enough for me to twist away from him.

  And I don’t run. I have run enough from him.

  He reaches for me and I push out my hand, smashing the heel of my palm into the underside of his chin. The impact pushes him backwards and he teeters for what feels like seconds on the edge of the cliff. He reaches for me, clawing for my dressing gown, and his fingers brush against the fabric. I cry out and step back, but I lose my balance and for a moment I think I am going with him, crashing against the cliff on the way down to the sea. But then I’m face down on the edge of the cliff, and he’s falling. I look down and see a glimpse of his rolled-back eyes, before the waves suck him under.

  52

  Ray’s phone rang as they were skirting Cardiff. He glanced at the screen.

  ‘It’s the South Wales DI.’

  Kate watched Ray as he listened to the update from Penfach.

  ‘Thank God for that,’ Ray said into the phone. ‘No problem. Thanks for letting me know.’

  He ended the call and let out a long, slow breath. ‘She’s okay. Well, she’s not okay, but she’s alive.’

  ‘And Petersen?’ Kate said.

  ‘Not so lucky. By all accounts Jenna was running along the coastal path when he came after her. They struggled and Petersen went over the edge.’

  Kate winced. ‘What a way to go.’

  ‘No less than he deserved,’ Ray said. ‘Reading between the lines, I don’t think he “fell” exactly, if you know what I mean, although Swansea CID have got the right approach: they’re filing it as an accident.’

  They fell silent.

  ‘Do we go back to the nick now, then?’ Kate asked.

  Ray shook his head. ‘No point. Jenna’s in Swansea hospital and we’ll be there in less than an hour. Might as well see the job through to the end, and we can grab a bite to eat before we head home.’

  The traffic freed up as they got further into their journey, and it was a little after seven when they arrived at Swansea hospital. The entrance to A&E was thronged with smokers with hastily assembled slings, bandaged ankles and assorted unseen injuries. Ray sidestepped a man bent double with stomach pain, still managing to take a deep drag from the cigarette his girlfriend held to his lips.

  The smell of smoke hanging in cold air was replaced with the clinical warmth of A&E, and Ray showed his warrant card to a weary-looking woman on reception. They were directed through a pair of double-doors to C ward, and from there to a side room, where Jenna lay propped up on a pile of pillows.

  Ray was shocked to see the deep purple bruises that crept out of her hospital gown and up her neck. Her hair was loose and fell lankly on her shoulders, and her face was etched with tiredness and pain. Patrick sat next to her, a discarded paper open at the crossword.

  ‘Hey,’ Ray said softly, ‘how are you doing?’

  She gave a weak smile. ‘I’ve had better days.’

  ‘You’ve been through a lot.’ Ray came to stand by the bed. ‘I’m sorry we didn’t get to him in time.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now.’

  ‘I hear you were the hero of the hour, Mr Mathews.’ Ray turned to Patrick, who raised his hand in protest.

  ‘Hardly. If I’d been an hour earlier I might have been some use, but I was held up at the surgery and by the time I got there … well…’ He looked at Jenna.

  ‘I don’t think I’d have made it back to the cottage without you,’ she said. ‘I think I would still be lying there, staring down at the sea.’ She shivered and Ray felt a chill, despite the stifling hospital air. What must it have felt like, out there on the edge of the cliff?

  ‘Have they said how long you’ll be in here?’ he asked.

  Jenna shook her head. ‘They want to keep me in for observation, whatever that means, but I’m hoping it won’t be longer than twenty-four hours.’ She looked between Ray and Kate. ‘Will I be in trouble? For lying to you about who was driving?’

  ‘There’s a small issue of perverting the course of justice to think about,’ Ray said, ‘but I’m pretty confident we won’t consider it to be in the public interest to pursue.’ He smiled and Jenna gave a sigh of relief.

  ‘We’ll leave you in peace,’ Ray said. He looked at Patrick. ‘Take care of her, won’t you?’

  They left the hospital and drove the short distance to Swansea police station, where the local DI was waiting to speak to them. DI Frank Rushton was a few years older than Ray, with a physique that suggested he would be more at home on the rugby pitch than in the office. He welcomed them warmly and showed them into his office, offering coffee, which they declined.

  ‘We need to get back,’ Ray said. ‘Otherwise DC Evans here will be putting undue strain on my overtime budget.’

  ‘Pity,’ Frank said. ‘We’re all heading out for a curry – one of our skippers is retiring and it’s a bit of a send-off for him. You’d be welcome to join us.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Ray said, ‘but we’d better not. Will you be keeping Petersen’s body here, or do you need me to contact the coroner’s office in Bristol?’

  ‘If you’ve got the number on you, that would be great,’ Frank said. ‘I’ll give them a ring once the body’s recovered.’

  ‘You haven’t recovered it?’

  ‘We haven’t found it yet,’ Frank said. ‘He went off the edge about a half-mile from Gray’s cottage, in the opposite direction to Penfach Caravan Park. I believe you’ve been to the premises?’

  Ray nodded.

  ‘The guy who found her, Patrick Mathews, took us out there and there’s no doubt it’s the right place,’ Frank said. ‘There are marks on the ground consistent with Gray’s account of a struggle, and the edge of the cliff is freshly scuffed.’

  ‘But there’s no body?’

  ‘To be honest, that’s not unusual.’ Frank noticed Ray’s raised eyebrows and gave a short laugh. ‘That is, not finding a body straight away isn’t unusual. We get the odd jumper, or a walker slips when he’s coming back from the pub, and it takes a few days – often longer – for them to be washed up. Sometimes they never come back at all; sometimes just a bit of them does.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Kate asked.

  ‘It’s a two-hundred-foot drop from that part of the cliff to the sea,’ Frank said. ‘You might miss the rocks on the way down, but as soon as you land you’ll be smashed against them again and again and again.’ He shrugged. ‘Bodies get broken up easily.’

  ‘Christ,’ Kate said, ‘living by the sea doesn’t sound quite so appealing now.’

  Frank grinned. ‘Now, are you sure we can’t tempt you out for a curry? I contemplated a transfer to Avon and Somerset once – it would be good to hear what I missed out on.’ He stood up.

  ‘We did say we’d grab something to eat,’ Kate said, looking at Ray.

  ‘Go on,’ Frank said. ‘It’ll be a good laugh. Most of CID will be there, and some uniform.’ He took them out to the front desk, and shook hands with them both. ‘We’re knocking off now and we should be at the Raj on the High Street in about half an hour. This hit-and-run’s a big result for your lot, isn’t it? You should wangle an overnighter – celebrate in style!’

  They said goodbye and Ray felt his stomach rumble as they walked out to the car. A chicken Jalfrezi and a beer were
precisely what he needed after the day they’d had. He glanced at Kate, and thought how much he would enjoy an evening of easy conversation and some banter with the Swansea lads. It would be a shame to have to drive home, and Frank was right – he could probably swing an overnighter on the grounds that there were still some loose ends to tie up tomorrow.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Kate said. She stopped walking and turned to face Ray. ‘It’ll be a laugh, and he’s right, we should celebrate.’ They were standing so close to each other they were almost touching, and Ray imagined them leaving the Swansea boys after the curry; perhaps having a night-cap somewhere, then walking back to the hotel. He swallowed, imagining what might happen after that.

  ‘Some other time,’ he said.

  There was a pause, then Kate nodded slowly. ‘Sure.’ She walked towards the car, and Ray pulled out his mobile phone to text Mags.

  Coming home. Fancy a takeaway?

  53

  The nurses have been kind. They’ve treated my injuries with a quiet efficiency, seeming not to mind when I ask them to confirm for the hundredth time that Ian is dead.

  ‘It’s over,’ the doctor says. ‘Now get some rest.’

  I don’t feel any great sense of release or freedom. Just a crushing tiredness that refuses to go. Patrick doesn’t leave my side. I wake with a jolt several times in the night to find him instantly there to soothe away my nightmares. Eventually I give in to the sedative the nurse offers me. I think I hear Patrick talking to someone on the phone, but I’m asleep again before I can ask who it is.

  When I wake, daylight is pushing its way through the horizontal blinds at the window, painting sunshine stripes across my bed. There’s a tray on the table next to me.

  ‘The tea will be cold now,’ Patrick says. ‘I’ll see if I can find someone to get you a fresh one.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I say, struggling to sit up. My neck is sore and I touch it gingerly. Patrick’s phone beeps and he picks it up to read a text message.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he says. He changes the subject. ‘The doctor says you’ll be sore for a few days, but there’s nothing broken. They’ve given you some gel to counteract the effects of the bleach, and you’ll need to put it on every day to stop your skin drying out.’

  I draw up my legs and make space for him to sit next to me on the bed. His brow is furrowed and I hate that I have caused him such worry. ‘I’m okay,’ I say. ‘I promise. I just want to go home.’

  I can see him searching for answers on my face: he wants to know how I feel about him, but I don’t know myself yet. I only know that I can’t trust my own judgement. I force a smile to prove I’m fine, then shut my eyes, more to avoid Patrick’s gaze, than in any expectation of sleep.

  I wake to footsteps outside my door and hope it’s the doctor, but instead I hear Patrick speaking to someone. ‘She’s in here. I’ll head off to the canteen for a coffee – give the two of you some time alone.’

  I can’t think who it could be, and even after the door has swung fully open, and I see the slim figure in the bright yellow coat with its big buttons, I still take a second to register what I am seeing. I open my mouth but the lump in my throat stops me from speaking.

  Eve flies across the room, pressing me into the tightest of embraces. ‘I’ve missed you so much!’

  We cling to each other until our sobs subside, then sit cross-legged opposite each other on the bed, holding hands as though we were children again, sitting on the bottom bunk in the room we used to share.

  ‘You’ve cut your hair,’ I say. ‘It suits you.’

  Eve touches her sleek bob self-consciously. ‘I think Jeff prefers it long, but I like it this length. He sends his love, by the way. Oh, and the children did this for you.’ She rifles through her bag and produces a crumpled picture, folded in half to make a get-well card. ‘I told them you were in hospital, so they think you’ve got chicken pox.’

  I look at the drawing of myself in bed, covered in spots, and laugh. ‘I’ve missed them. I’ve missed you all.’

  ‘We’ve missed you too.’ Eve takes a deep breath. ‘I should never have said the things I did. I had no right.’

  I remember lying in hospital after Ben had been born. No one had thought to remove the Perspex cot from the side of my bed, and it taunted me from the corner of my eye. Eve had arrived before the news reached her, but I knew from her face that the nurses had intercepted her. A once beautifully wrapped present had been shoved into the recesses of her handbag, the paper creased and torn in her efforts to hide it from view. I wondered what she would do with the contents – if she would find another baby to wear whatever outfit she had handpicked for my son.

  She didn’t speak at first, and then she wouldn’t stop.

  ‘Did Ian do something to you? He did, didn’t he?’

  I turned away, saw the empty cot and closed my eyes. Eve had never trusted Ian, although he had taken care never to let anyone see his temper. I denied anything was wrong: first because I was too blinded by love to see the cracks in my relationship, and later because I was too ashamed to admit that I had stayed for so long with a man who hurt me so much.

  I had wanted Eve to hold me. Just to hold me tight and press hard against the pain that hurt so badly I could hardly breathe. But my sister had been angry, her own grief demanding answers; a reason; someone to blame.

  ‘He’s trouble,’ she said, and I closed my eyes tightly against her tirade. ‘You might be blind to it, but I’m not. You should never have stayed with him when you fell pregnant, then maybe you’d still have your baby. You’re just as much to blame as he is.’

  I had opened my eyes in dismay, Eve’s words burning into my very core. ‘Get out,’ I said, my voice broken but determined. ‘My life is none of your business and you have no right to tell me what to do. Get out! I don’t ever want to see you again.’

  Eve had fled from the ward, leaving me distraught, pressing my hands on my empty belly. It wasn’t Eve’s words that hurt me as much as their honesty. My sister had simply told the truth. Ben’s death was my fault.

  In the weeks that followed, Eve had tried to contact me, but I refused to speak to her. Eventually she stopped trying.

  ‘You realised what Ian was like,’ I say to her now. ‘I should have listened to you.’

  ‘You loved him,’ she says simply. ‘Just like Mum loved Dad.’

  I sit up. ‘What do you mean?’

  There is a pause and I see Eve trying to decide what to tell me. I shake my head, because suddenly I can see what I refused to acknowledge as a child. ‘He hit her, didn’t he?’

  She nods mutely.

  I think of my handsome, clever father; always finding funny things to share with me; twirling me round even when I was far too big for such games. I think of my mother; always quiet, unapproachable, cold. I think how I hated her for letting him leave.

  ‘She put up with it for years,’ Eve says, ‘and then one day after school I came into the kitchen and saw him beating her. I screamed at him to stop, and he turned round and hit me across the face.’

  ‘Oh God, Eve!’ I’m sickened by the difference in our childhood memories.

  ‘He was horrified. He said how sorry he was, that he hadn’t seen me there, but I saw the look in his eyes before he hit me. For that moment he hated me, and I honestly believe he could have killed me. It was as though something suddenly switched in Mum: she told him to leave and he went without a word.’

  ‘He was gone when I got home from ballet,’ I say, remembering my grief when I realised.

  ‘Mum told him she would go to the police if he ever came near us again. It broke her heart to send him away from us, but she said she had to protect us.’

  ‘She never told me,’ I say, but I know I never gave her the chance. I wonder how I could have read things so wrong. I wish Mum was still here so I could put them right.

  A wave of emotion floods my heart and I start to sob.

  ‘I know, my darling, I kn
ow.’ Eve strokes my hair like she used to do when we were children, and then she wraps her arms around me and cries too.

  She stays for two hours, while Patrick hovers between the canteen and my bedside, wanting to give us time together but anxious that I shouldn’t become too tired.

  Eve leaves me with a pile of magazines I won’t read, and a promise that she will come again as soon as I’m back at the cottage, which the doctor has told me will be in a day or two.

  Patrick squeezes my hand. ‘Iestyn’s sending two of the lads from the farm over to clean up the cottage,’ he says, ‘and they’ll change the lock, so you know you’re the only one with a key.’ He must have seen the anxiety cross my face. ‘They’ll put everything straight,’ he says. ‘It’ll be like it never happened.’

  No, I think, it could never be like that.

  But I squeeze his hand in return, and in his face I see nothing but honesty and kindness, and I think that, despite everything, life could go on with this man. Life could be good.

  Epilogue

  The evenings have grown longer, and Penfach has again found its natural tempo, broken only by the summer swell of families heading for the beach. The air is filled with the scents of sun cream and sea salt, and the bell above the door to the village shop seems never to be still. The caravan park opens for the season with a fresh coat of paint; the shop shelves stacked high with holiday essentials.

  The tourists have no interest in local scandal, and to my relief the villagers quickly lose their enthusiasm for idle chatter. By the time the nights draw in again, the gossip has all but burned out, extinguished by a lack of fresh information, and by the fierce opposition of Bethan and Iestyn, who have made it their business to set straight anyone claiming to know what happened. Before long the last tent has been packed away, the last bucket and spade sold, the last ice-cream eaten, and it is forgotten. Where once I saw nothing but judgement and closed doors, I now find kindness and open arms.