“I wonder if, now that we’ve spoken about this, now that you’ve told me your story, it might help for you to try to contact Mac. To give you closure, to seal that chapter in your past.”
I thought he might suggest this. “I can’t,” I say. “I can’t.”
“Just think about it for a moment.”
“I can’t. What if he still hates me? What if it just brings it all back, or if he goes to the police?” What if—I can’t say this out loud, can’t even whisper it—what if he tells Scott what I really am?
Kamal shakes his head. “Perhaps he doesn’t hate you at all, Megan. Perhaps he never hated you. Perhaps he was afraid, too. Perhaps he feels guilty. From what you have told me, he isn’t a man who behaved responsibly. He took in a very young, very vulnerable girl and left her alone when she needed support. Perhaps he knows that what happened is your shared responsibility. Perhaps that’s what he ran away from.”
I don’t know if he really believes that or if he’s just trying to make me feel better. I only know that it isn’t true. I can’t shift the blame onto him. This is one thing I have to take as my own.
“I don’t want to push you into doing something you don’t want to do,” Kamal says. “I just want you to consider the possibility that contacting Mac might help you. And it’s not because I believe that you owe him anything. Do you see? I believe that he owes you. I understand your guilt, I do. But he abandoned you. You were alone, afraid, panicking, grieving. He left you on your own in that house. It’s no wonder you cannot sleep. Of course the idea of sleeping frightens you: you fell asleep and something terrible happened to you. And the one person who should have helped you left you all alone.”
In the moments when Kamal is saying these things, it doesn’t sound so bad. As the words slip seductively off his tongue, warm and honeyed, I can almost believe them. I can almost believe that there is a way to leave all this behind, lay it to rest, go home to Scott and live my life as normal people do, neither glancing over my shoulder nor desperately waiting for something better to come along. Is that what normal people do?
“Will you think about it?” he asks, touching my hand as he does so. I give him a bright smile and say that I will. Maybe I even mean it, I don’t know. He walks me to the door, his arm around my shoulders, I want to turn and kiss him again, but I don’t.
Instead I ask, “Is this the last time I’m going to see you?” and he nods. “Couldn’t we . . . ?”
“No, Megan. We can’t. We have to do the right thing.”
I smile up at him. “I’m not very good at that,” I say. “Never have been.”
“You can be. You will be. Go home now. Go home to your husband.”
I stand on the pavement outside his house for a long time after he shuts the door. I feel lighter, I think, freer—but sadder, too, and all of a sudden I just want to get home to Scott.
I’m just turning to walk to the station when a man comes running along the pavement, earphones on, head down. He’s heading straight for me, and as I step back, trying to get out of the way, I slip off the edge of the pavement and fall.
The man doesn’t apologize, he doesn’t even look back at me, and I’m too shocked to cry out. I get to my feet and stand there, leaning against a car, trying to catch my breath. All the peace I felt in Kamal’s house is suddenly shattered.
It’s not until I get home that I realize I cut my hand when I fell, and at some point I must have rubbed my hand across my mouth. My lips are smeared with blood.
RACHEL
• • •
SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 2013
MORNING
I wake early. I can hear the recycling van trundling up the street and the soft patter of rain against the window. The blinds are half up—we forgot to close them last night. I smile to myself. I can feel him behind me, warm and sleepy, hard. I wriggle my hips, pressing against him a little closer. It won’t take long for him to stir, to grab hold of me, roll me over.
“Rachel,” his voice says, “don’t.” I go cold. I’m not at home, this isn’t home. This is all wrong.
I roll over. Scott is sitting up now. He swings his legs over the side of the bed, his back to me. I squeeze my eyes tightly shut and try to remember, but it’s all too hazy. When I open my eyes I can think straight because this room is the one I’ve woken up in a thousand times or more: this is where the bed is, this is the exact aspect—if I sit up now I will be able to see the tops of the oak trees on the opposite side of the street; over there, on the left, is the en suite bathroom, and to the right are the built-in wardrobes. It’s exactly the same as the room I shared with Tom.
“Rachel,” he says again, and I reach out to touch his back, but he stands quickly and turns to face me. He looks hollowed out, like the first time I saw him up close, in the police station—as though someone has scraped away his insides, leaving a shell. This is like the room I shared with Tom, but it is the one he shared with Megan. This room, this bed.
“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. This was wrong.”
“Yes, it was,” he says, his eyes not meeting mine. He goes into the bathroom and shuts the door.
I lie back and close my eyes and feel myself sink into dread, that awful gnawing in my gut. What have I done? I remember him talking a lot when I first arrived, a rush of words. He was angry—angry with his mother, who never liked Megan; angry with the newspapers for what they were writing about her, the implication that she got what was coming to her; angry with the police for botching the whole thing, for failing her, failing him. We sat in the kitchen drinking beers and I listened to him talk, and when the beers were finished we sat outside on the patio and he stopped being angry then. We drank and watched the trains go by and talked about nothing: television and work and where he went to school, just like normal people. I forgot to feel what I was supposed to be feeling, we both did, because I can remember now. I can remember him smiling at me, touching my hair.
It hits me like a wave, I can feel blood rushing to my face. I remember admitting it to myself. Thinking the thought and not dismissing it, embracing it. I wanted it. I wanted to be with Jason. I wanted to feel what Jess felt when she sat out there with him, drinking wine in the evening. I forgot what I was supposed to be feeling. I ignored the fact that at the very best, Jess is nothing but a figment of my imagination, and at the worst, Jess is not nothing, she is Megan—she is dead, a body battered and left to rot. Worse than that: I didn’t forget. I didn’t care. I didn’t care because I’ve started to believe what they’re saying about her. Did I, for just the briefest of moments, think she got what was coming to her, too?
Scott comes out of the bathroom. He’s taken a shower, washed me off his skin. He looks better for it, but he won’t look me in the eye when he asks if I’d like a coffee. This isn’t what I wanted: none of this is right. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to lose control again.
I dress quickly and go into the bathroom, splash cold water on my face. My mascara’s run, smudged at the corners of my eyes, and my lips are dark. Bitten. My face and neck are red where his stubble has grazed my skin. I have a quick flashback to the night before, his hands on me, and my stomach flips. Feeling dizzy, I sit down on the edge of the bathtub. The bathroom is grubbier than the rest of the house: grime around the sink, toothpaste smeared on the mirror. A mug, with just one toothbrush in it. There’s no perfume, no moisturizer, no makeup. I wonder if she took it when she left, or whether he’s thrown it all away.
Back in the bedroom, I look around for evidence of her—a robe on the back of the door, a hairbrush on the chest of drawers, a pot of lip balm, a pair of earrings—but there’s nothing. I cross the bedroom to the wardrobe and am about to open it, my hand resting on the handle, when I hear him call out, “There’s coffee here!” and I jump.
He hands me the mug without looking at my face, then turns away and stands with his back to me, his g
aze fixed on the tracks or something beyond. I glance to my right and notice that the photographs are gone, all of them. There’s a prickle at the back of my scalp, the hairs on my forearms raised. I sip my coffee and struggle to swallow. None of this is right.
Maybe his mother did it: cleared everything out, took the pictures away. His mother didn’t like Megan, he’s said that over and over. Still, who does what he did last night? Who fucks a strange woman in the marital bed when his wife has been dead less than a month? He turns then, he looks at me, and I feel as though he’s read my mind because he’s got a strange look on his face—contempt, or revulsion—and I’m repulsed by him, too. I put the mug down.
“I should go,” I say, and he doesn’t argue.
The rain has stopped. It’s bright outside, and I’m squinting into hazy morning sunshine. A man approaches me—he’s right up in my face the moment I’m on the pavement. I put my hands up, turn sideways and shoulder-barge him out of the way. He’s saying something but I don’t hear what. I keep my hands raised and my head down, so I’m barely five feet away from her when I see Anna, standing next to her car, hands on hips, watching me. When she catches my eye she shakes her head, turns away and walks quickly towards her own front door, almost but not quite breaking into a run. I stand stock-still for a second, watching her slight form in black leggings and a red T-shirt. I have the keenest sense of déjà vu. I’ve watched her run away like this before.
It was just after I moved out. I’d come to see Tom, to pick up something I’d left behind. I don’t even remember what it was, it wasn’t important, I just wanted to go to the house, to see him. I think it was a Sunday, and I’d moved out on the Friday, so I’d been gone about forty-eight hours. I stood in the street and watched her carrying things from a car into the house. She was moving in, two days after I’d left, my bed not yet cold. Talk about unseemly haste. She caught sight of me and I went towards her. I have no idea what I was going to say to her—nothing rational, I’m sure. I was crying, I remember that. And she, like now, ran away. I didn’t know the worst of it then—she wasn’t yet showing. Thankfully. I think it might have killed me.
Standing on the platform, waiting for the train, I feel dizzy. I sit down on the bench and tell myself it’s just a hangover—nothing to drink for five days and then a binge, that’ll do it. But I know it’s more than that. It’s Anna—the sight of her and the feeling I got when I saw her walking away like that. Fear.
ANNA
• • •
SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 2013
MORNING
I drove to the gym in Northcote for my spin class this morning, then dropped into the Matches store on the way back and treated myself to a very cute Max Mara minidress (Tom will forgive me once he sees me in it). I was having a perfectly lovely morning, but as I parked the car there was some sort of commotion outside the Hipwells’ place—there are photographers there all the time now—and there she was. Again! I could hardly believe it. Rachel, barrelling past a photographer, looking rough. I’m pretty sure she’d just left Scott’s house.
I didn’t even get upset. I was just astounded. And when I brought it up with Tom—calmly, matter-of-factly—he was just as baffled as I was.
“I’ll get in touch with her,” he said. “I’ll find out what’s going on.”
“You’ve tried that,” I said as gently as I could. “It doesn’t make any difference.” I suggested that maybe it was time to take legal advice, to look into getting a restraining order or something.
“She isn’t actually harassing us, though, is she?” he said. “The phone calls have stopped, she hasn’t approached us or come to the house. Don’t worry about it, darling. I’ll sort it.”
He’s right, of course, about the harassment thing. But I don’t care. There’s something up, and I’m not prepared to just ignore it. I’m tired of being told not to worry. I’m tired of being told that he’ll sort things out, that he’ll talk to her, that eventually she’ll go away. I think the time has come to take matters into my own hands. The next time I see her, I’m calling that police officer—the woman, Detective Riley. She seemed nice, sympathetic. I know Tom feels sorry for Rachel, but honestly I think it’s time I dealt with that bitch once and for all.
RACHEL
• • •
MONDAY, AUGUST 12, 2013
MORNING
We’re in the car park at Wilton Lake. We used to come here sometimes, to go swimming on really hot days. Today we’re just sitting side by side in Tom’s car, windows down, letting the warm breeze in. I want to lean my head back against the headrest and close my eyes and smell the pine and listen to the birds. I want to hold his hand and stay here all day.
He called me last night and asked if we could meet. I asked if this was about the thing with Anna, seeing her on Blenheim Road. I said it had nothing to do with them—I hadn’t been there to bother them. He believed me, or at least he said he did, but he still sounded wary, a little anxious. He said he needed to talk to me.
“Please, Rach,” he said, and that was it—the way he said it, just like the old days, I thought my heart would burst. “I’ll come and pick you up, OK?”
I woke up before dawn and was in the kitchen making coffee at five. I washed my hair and shaved my legs and put on makeup and changed four times. And I felt guilty. Stupid, I know, but I thought about Scott—about what we did and how it felt—and I wished I hadn’t done it, because it felt like a betrayal. Of Tom. The man who left me for another woman two years ago. I can’t help how I feel.
Tom arrived just before nine. I went downstairs and there he was, leaning on his car, wearing jeans and an old grey T-shirt—old enough that I can remember exactly how the fabric felt against my cheek when I lay across his chest.
“I’ve got the morning off work,” he said when he saw me. “I thought we could go for a drive.”
We didn’t say much on the drive to the lake. He asked me how I was and told me I looked well. He didn’t mention Anna until we were sitting there in the car park and I was thinking about holding his hand.
“Yeah, um, Anna said she saw you . . . and she thought you might have been coming from Scott Hipwell’s house. Is that right?” He’s turned to face me, but he isn’t actually looking at me. He seems almost embarrassed to be asking me the question.
“You don’t have to worry about it,” I tell him. “I’ve been seeing Scott . . . I mean, not like that, not seeing him. We’ve become friendly. That’s all. It’s difficult to explain. I’ve just been helping him out a bit. You know—obviously you know—that he’s been going through a terrible time.”
Tom nods, but he still doesn’t look at me. Instead he chews on the nail of his left forefinger, a sure sign that he’s worried.
“But Rach . . .”
I wish he’d stop calling me that, because it makes me feel light-headed, it makes me want to smile. It’s been so long since I’ve heard him say my name like that, and it’s making me hope. Maybe things aren’t going so well with Anna, maybe he remembers some of the good things about us, maybe there’s a part of him that misses me.
“I’m just . . . I’m really concerned about this.”
He looks up at me at last, his big brown eyes lock on mine and he moves his hand a little, as if he’s going to take mine, but then he thinks better of it and stops. “I know—well, I don’t really know much about it, but Scott . . . I know that he seems like a perfectly decent bloke, but you can’t be sure, can you?”
“You think he did it?”
He shakes his head, swallows hard. “No, no. I’m not saying that. I know . . . Well, Anna says that they argued a lot. That Megan sometimes seemed a little afraid of him.”
“Anna says?” My instinct is to dismiss anything that bitch says, but I can’t get away from the feeling I had when I was at Scott’s house on Saturday, that something was off, something was wrong.
He nods. “Megan
did some babysitting for us when Evie was tiny. Jesus, I don’t even like to think about that now, after what’s been in the papers lately. But it goes to show, doesn’t it, that you think you know someone and then . . .” He sighs heavily. “I don’t want anything bad to happen. To you.” He smiles at me then, gives a little shrug. “I still care about you, Rach,” he says, and I have to look away because I don’t want him to see the tears in my eyes. He knows, of course, and he puts his hand on my shoulder and says, “I’m so sorry.”
We sit for a while in comfortable silence. I bite down hard on my lip to stop myself from crying. I don’t want to make this any harder for him, I really don’t.
“I’m all right, Tom. I’m getting better. I am.”
“I’m really glad to hear that. You’re not—”
“Drinking? Less. It’s getting better.”
“That’s good. You look well. You look . . . pretty.” He smiles at me and I can feel myself blush. He looks away quickly. “Are you . . . um . . . are you all right, you know, financially?”
“I’m fine.”
“Really? Are you really, Rachel, because I don’t want you to—”
“I’m OK.”
“Will you take a little? Fuck, I don’t want to sound like an idiot, but will you just take a little? To tide you over?”
“Honestly, I’m OK.”
He leans across then, and I can hardly breathe, I want to touch him so badly. I want to smell his neck, bury my face in that broad, muscular gap between his shoulder blades. He opens the glove box. “Let me just write you a cheque, just in case, you know? You don’t even have to cash it.”
I start laughing. “You still keep a chequebook in the glove box?”