It’s almost dawn, the light outside is just beginning to tinge grey, and the rain of the last several days is still battering against the window. I won’t go back to sleep, not with my heart hammering in my chest so much it hurts.
I think, though I can’t be sure, that there’s some wine downstairs. I don’t remember finishing the second bottle. It’ll be warm, because I can’t leave it in the fridge; if I do, Cathy pours it away. She so badly wants me to get better, but so far, things are not going according to her plan. There’s a little cupboard in the hallway where the gas meter is. If there was any wine left, I’ll have stashed it in there.
I creep out onto the landing and tiptoe down the stairs in the half-light. I flip the little cupboard open and lift out the bottle: it’s disappointingly light, not much more than a glassful in there. But better than nothing. I pour it into a mug (just in case Cathy comes down—I can pretend it’s tea) and put the bottle in the bin (making sure to conceal it under a milk carton and a crisp packet). In the living room, I flick on the TV, mute it straightaway and sit down on the sofa.
I’m flicking through channels—it’s all children’s TV and infomercials until with a flash of recognition I’m looking at Corly Wood, which is just down the road from here: you can see it from the train. Corly Wood in pouring rain, the fields between the tree line and train tracks submerged underwater.
I don’t know why it takes me so long to realize what’s going on. For ten seconds, fifteen, twenty, I’m looking at cars and blue-and-white tape and a white tent in the background, and my breath is coming shorter and shorter until I’m holding it and not breathing at all.
It’s her. She’s been in the wood all along, just along the railway track from here. I’ve been past those fields every day, morning and evening, travelling by, oblivious.
In the wood. I imagine a grave dug beneath scrubby bushes, hastily covered up. I imagine worse things, impossible things—her body hanging from a rope, somewhere deep in the forest where nobody goes.
It might not even be her. It might be something else.
I know it isn’t something else.
There’s a reporter on screen now, dark hair slick against his skull. I turn up the volume and listen to him tell me what I already know, what I can feel—that it wasn’t me who couldn’t breathe, it was Megan.
“That’s right,” he’s saying, talking to someone in the studio, his hand pressed to his ear. “The police have now confirmed that the body of a young woman has been found submerged in floodwater in a field at the bottom of Corly Wood, which is less than five miles from the home of Megan Hipwell. Mrs. Hipwell, as you know, went missing in early July—the thirteenth of July, in fact—and has not been seen since. Police are saying that the body, which was discovered by dog walkers out early this morning, has yet to be formally identified; however, they do believe that this is Megan that they’ve found. Mrs. Hipwell’s husband has been informed.”
He stops speaking for a while. The news anchor is asking him a question, but I can’t hear it because the blood is roaring in my ears. I bring the mug up to my lips and drink every last drop.
The reporter is talking again. “Yes, Kay, that’s right. It would appear that the body was buried here in the woods, possibly for some time, and that it has been uncovered by the heavy rains that we’ve had recently.”
It’s worse, so much worse than I imagined. I can see her now, her ruined face in the mud, pale arms exposed, reaching up, rising up as though she were clawing her way out of the grave. I taste hot liquid, bile and bitter wine, in my mouth, and I run upstairs to be sick.
EVENING
I stayed in bed most of the day. I tried to get things straight in my head. I tried to piece together, from the memories and the flashbacks and the dreams, what happened on Saturday night. In an attempt to make sense of it, to see it clearly, I wrote it all down. The scratching of my pen on paper felt like someone whispering to me; it put me on edge, I kept feeling as though there was someone else in the flat, just on the other side of the door, and I couldn’t stop imagining her.
I was almost too afraid to open the bedroom door, but when I did, there was no one there, of course. I went downstairs and turned on the television again. The same pictures were still there: the woods in the rain, police cars driving along a muddy track, that horrible white tent, all of it a grey blur, and then suddenly Megan, smiling at the camera, still beautiful, untouched. Then it’s Scott, head down, fending off photographers as he tries to get through his own front door, Riley at his side. Then it’s Kamal’s office. No sign of him, though.
I didn’t want to hear the sound track, but I had to turn the volume up, anything to stop the silence ringing in my ears. The police say that the woman, still not formally identified, has been dead for some time, possibly several weeks. They say the cause of death has yet to be established. They say that there is no evidence of a sexual motive for the killing.
That strikes me as a stupid thing to say. I know what they mean—they mean they don’t think she was raped, which is a blessing, of course, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a sexual motive. It seems to me that Kamal wanted her and he couldn’t have her, that she must have tried to end it and he couldn’t stand it. That’s a sexual motive, isn’t it?
I can’t bear to watch the news any longer, so I go back upstairs and crawl under my duvet. I empty out my handbag, looking through my notes scribbled on bits of paper, all the scraps of information I’ve gleaned, the memories shifting like shadows, and I wonder, Why am I doing this? What purpose does it serve?
MEGAN
• • •
THURSDAY, JUNE 13, 2013
MORNING
I can’t sleep in this heat. Invisible bugs crawl over my skin, I have a rash on my chest, I can’t get comfortable. And Scott seems to radiate warmth; lying next to him is like lying next to a fire. I can’t get far enough away from him and find myself clinging to the edge of the bed, sheets thrown back. It’s intolerable. I thought about going to lie down on the futon in the spare room, but he hates to wake and find me gone, it always leads to a row about something. Alternative uses for the spare room, usually, or who I was thinking about while I was lying there alone. Sometimes I want to scream at him, Just let me go. Let me go. Let me breathe. So I can’t sleep, and I’m angry. I feel as though we’re having a fight already, even though the fight’s only in my imagination.
And in my head, thoughts go round and round and round.
I feel like I’m suffocating.
When did this house become so bloody small? When did my life become so boring? Is this really what I wanted? I can’t remember. All I know is that a few months ago I was feeling better, and now I can’t think and I can’t sleep and I can’t draw and the urge to run is becoming overwhelming. At night when I lie awake I can hear it, quiet but unrelenting, undeniable: a whisper in my head, Slip away. When I close my eyes, my head is filled with images of past and future lives, the things I dreamed I wanted, the things I had and threw away. I can’t get comfortable, because every way I turn I run into dead ends: the closed gallery, the houses on this road, the stifling attentions of the tedious Pilates women, the track at the end of the garden with its trains, always taking someone else to somewhere else, reminding me over and over and over, a dozen times a day, that I’m staying put.
I feel as though I’m going mad.
And yet just a few months ago, I was feeling better, I was getting better. I was fine. I was sleeping. I didn’t live in fear of the nightmares. I could breathe. Yes, I still wanted to run away. Sometimes. But not every day.
Talking to Kamal helped me, there’s no denying that. I liked it. I liked him. He made me happier. And now all that feels so unfinished—I never got to the crux of it. That’s my fault, of course, because I behaved stupidly, like a child, because I didn’t like feeling rejected. I need to learn to lose a little better. I’m embarrassed now, ashamed. My face
goes hot at the thought of it. I don’t want that to be his final impression of me. I want him to see me again, to see me better. And I do feel that if I went to him, he would help. He’s like that.
I need to get to the end of the story. I need to tell someone, just once. Say the words out loud. If it doesn’t come out of me, it’ll eat me up. The hole inside me, the one they left, it’ll just get bigger and bigger until it consumes me.
I’m going to have to swallow my pride and my shame and go to him. He’s going to have to listen. I’ll make him.
EVENING
Scott thinks I’m at the cinema with Tara. I’ve been outside Kamal’s flat for fifteen minutes, psyching myself up to knock on the door. I’m so afraid of the way he’s going to look at me, after last time. I have to show him that I’m sorry, so I’ve dressed the part: plain and simple, jeans and T-shirt, hardly any makeup. This is not about seduction, he has to see that.
I can feel my heart starting to race as I step up to his front door and press the bell. No one comes. The lights are on, but no one comes. Perhaps he has seen me outside, lurking; perhaps he’s upstairs, just hoping that if he ignores me I’ll go away. I won’t. He doesn’t know how determined I can be. Once I’ve made my mind up, I’m a force to be reckoned with.
I ring again, and then a third time, and finally I hear footsteps on the stairs and the door opens. He’s wearing tracksuit bottoms and a white T-shirt. He’s barefoot, wet-haired, his face flushed.
“Megan.” Surprised, but not angry, which is a good start. “Are you all right? Is everything all right?”
“I’m sorry,” I say, and he steps back to let me in. I feel a rush of gratitude so strong, it feels almost like love.
He shows me into the kitchen. It’s a mess: washing up piled on the counter and in the sink, empty takeaway cartons spilling out of the bin. I wonder if he’s depressed. I stand in the doorway; he leans against the counter opposite me, his arms folded across his chest.
“What can I do for you?” he asks. His face is arranged into a perfectly neutral expression, his therapist face. It makes me want to pinch him, just to make him smile.
“I have to tell you . . .” I start, and then I stop because I can’t just plunge straight into it, I need a preamble. So I change tack. “I wanted to apologize,” I say, “for what happened. Last time.”
“That’s OK,” he says. “Don’t worry about that. If you need to talk to someone, I can refer you to someone else, but I can’t—”
“Please, Kamal.”
“Megan, I can’t counsel you any longer.”
“I know. I know that. But I can’t start over with someone else. I can’t. We got so far. We were so close. I just have to tell you. Just once. And then I’ll be gone, I promise. I won’t ever bother you again.”
He cocks his head to one side. He doesn’t believe me, I can tell. He thinks that if he lets me back in now, he’ll never be rid of me.
“Hear me out, please. This isn’t going to go on forever, I just need someone to listen.”
“Your husband?” he asks, and I shake my head.
“I can’t—I can’t tell him. Not after all this time. He wouldn’t . . . He wouldn’t be able to see me as me any longer. I’d be someone else to him. He wouldn’t know how to forgive me. Please, Kamal. If I don’t spit out the poison, I feel like I’ll never sleep. As a friend, not a therapist, please listen.”
His shoulders drop a little as he turns away, and I think it’s over. My heart sinks. Then he opens a cupboard and pulls out two tumblers.
“As a friend, then. Would you like some wine?”
He shows me into the living room. Dimly lit by standing lamps, it has the same air of domestic neglect as the kitchen. We sit down on opposite sides of a glass table piled high with papers, magazines and takeaway menus. My hands are locked around my glass. I take a sip. It’s red but cold, dusty. I swallow, take another sip. He’s waiting for me to start, but it’s hard, harder than I thought it was going to be. I’ve kept this secret for so long—a decade, more than a third of my life. It’s not that easy, letting go of it. I just know that I have to start talking. If I don’t do it now, I might never have the courage to say the words out loud, I might lose them altogether, they might stick in my throat and choke me in my sleep.
“After I left Ipswich, I moved in with Mac, into his cottage outside Holkham at the end of the lane. I told you that, didn’t I? It was very isolated, a couple of miles to the nearest neighbour, a couple more to the nearest shops. At the beginning, we had lots of parties, there were always a few people crashed out in the living room or sleeping in the hammock outside in the summer. But we got tired of that, and Mac fell out with everyone eventually, so people stopped coming, and it was the two of us. Days used to go by and we wouldn’t see anyone. We’d do our grocery shopping at the petrol station. It’s odd, thinking back on it, but I needed it then, after everything—after Ipswich and all those men, all the things I did. I liked it, just Mac and me and the old railway tracks and the grass and the dunes and the restless grey sea.”
Kamal tilts his head to one side, gives me half a smile. I feel my insides flip. “It sounds nice. But do you think you are romanticizing? ‘The restless grey sea’?”
“Never mind that,” I say, waving him away. “And no, in any case. Have you been to north Norfolk? It’s not the Adriatic. It is restless and relentlessly grey.”
He holds his hands up, smiling. “OK.”
I feel instantly better, the tension leaching out of my neck and shoulders. I take another sip of the wine; it tastes less bitter now.
“I was happy with Mac. I know it doesn’t sound like the sort of place I’d like, the sort of life I’d like, but then, after Ben’s death and everything that came after, it was. Mac saved me. He took me in, he loved me, he kept me safe. And he wasn’t boring. And to be perfectly honest, we were taking a lot of drugs, and it’s difficult to get bored when you’re off your face all the time. I was happy. I was really happy.”
Kamal nods. “I understand, although I’m not sure that sounds like a very real kind of happiness,” he says. “Not the sort of happiness that can endure, that can sustain you.”
I laugh. “I was seventeen. I was with a man who excited me, who adored me. I’d got away from my parents, away from the house where everything, everything, reminded me of my dead brother. I didn’t need it to endure or sustain. I just needed it for right then.”
“So what happened?”
It seems as though the room gets darker then. Here we are, at the thing I never say.
“I got pregnant.”
He nods, waiting for me to go on. Part of me wants him to stop me, to ask more questions, but he doesn’t, he just waits. It gets darker still.
“It was too late when I realized to . . . to get rid of it. Of her. It’s what I would have done, had I not been so stupid, so oblivious. The truth is that she wasn’t wanted, by either of us.”
Kamal gets to his feet, goes to the kitchen and comes back with a sheet of kitchen roll for me to wipe my eyes. He hands it to me and sits down. It’s a while before I go on. Kamal sits, just as he used to in our sessions, his eyes on mine, his hands folded in his lap, patient, immobile. It must take the most incredible self-control, that stillness, that passivity; it must be exhausting.
My legs are trembling, my knee jerking as though on a puppeteer’s string. I get to my feet to stop it. I walk to the kitchen door and back again, scratching the palms of my hands.
“We were both so stupid,” I tell him. “We didn’t really even acknowledge what was happening, we just carried on. I didn’t go to see a doctor, I didn’t eat the right things or take supplements, I didn’t do any of the things you’re supposed to. We just carried on living our lives. We didn’t even acknowledge that anything had changed. I got fatter and slower and more tired, we both got irritable and fought all the time, but nothing reall
y changed until she came.”
He lets me cry. While I do so, he moves to the chair nearest mine and sits down at my side so that his knees are almost touching my thigh. He leans forward. He doesn’t touch me, but our bodies are close, I can smell his scent, clean in this dirty room, sharp and astringent.
My voice is a whisper, it doesn’t feel right to say these words out loud. “I had her at home,” I say. “It was stupid, but I had this thing about hospitals at the time, because the last time I’d been in one was when Ben was killed. Plus I hadn’t been for any of the scans. I’d been smoking, drinking a bit, I couldn’t face the lectures. I couldn’t face any of it. I think . . . right up until the end, it just didn’t seem like it was real, like it was actually going to happen.
“Mac had this friend who was a nurse, or who’d done some nursing training or something. She came round, and it was OK. It wasn’t so bad. I mean, it was horrible, of course, painful and frightening, but . . . then there she was. She was very small. I don’t remember exactly what her weight was. That’s terrible, isn’t it?” Kamal doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t move. “She was lovely. She had dark eyes and blond hair. She didn’t cry a lot, she slept well, right from the very beginning. She was good. She was a good girl.” I have to stop there for a moment. “I expected everything to be so hard, but it wasn’t.”
It’s darker still, I’m sure of it, but I look up and Kamal is there, his eyes on mine, his expression soft. He’s listening. He wants me to tell him. My mouth is dry, so I take another sip of wine. It hurts to swallow. “We called her Elizabeth. Libby.” It feels so strange, saying her name out loud after such a long time. “Libby,” I say again, enjoying the feel of her name in my mouth. I want to say it over and over. Kamal reaches out at last and takes my hand in his, his thumb against my wrist, on my pulse.