He punched the code into his iPhone and checked his texts, hoping as ever there might be one from Red. But there was nothing. His heart heaving, he scrolled back through all the texts she had sent him, which he had never erased. Scrolled right back, with tears in his eyes, to those earliest days, when she had been crazily in love with him. And he with her. When he had been on his way to her flat.
Can’t wait to see you, my gorgeous Red! XXX 3 mins!
And her reply:
Can’t wait that long! XXX
Two mins now XXX
I’m going to have to start without you! XXX
One min! XXX
God, Bryce remembered that night so clearly. And so many nights like it, when he’d driven, often at mad speeds, angry at everyone in his way who slowed him down, to see Red. He’d text his ETA as he got closer, until with minutes to go he’d text a final countdown. When he reached her doorstep, he’d buzz her flat; there would be a click and he would enter the communal porch of her apartment building, and run up the stairs. Her door would open and their lips would meet. They’d be entwined in silence, kicking the door shut, tugging at each other’s clothes, staring, grinning, lusting into each other’s eyes, and making love on the carpeted floor in her hallway, unable, because of the crazed grip of their desire for each other, to get beyond the threshold.
Now, as he stared at the monitors showing the interior of her current flat, he saw memories of their short time together everywhere. The rug that had been on the living-room floor which they had made love on. Where she had once held him in her mouth as he had crouched, his trousers and pants pulled down by her, staring into his eyes with such trust and love as he had dug his hands into her hair.
The oak table from her old kitchen on top of which he had once taken her so hard and harshly and incredibly erotically. The perspex Ghost chair on which they had made love with her sitting astride him. Staring into his eyes. Telling him to come with her eyes open, staring into his.
Where did it go wrong?
He knew. Of course he knew. Her bloody scheming mother. Her bloody weak father.
So sad what I’m going to do. But I have to move this on. As long as you are out there, Red, as long as I have the knowledge that you are kissing someone else, that you are letting someone else come inside you, I cannot live. It’s not that I really want to harm you. You need to understand that. It’s that I need to move on. And I can’t do that so long as you are seeing other men.
I can’t bear the pain.
Sorry about your car, that’s just to teach you a lesson. You need to be punished first. Then you die.
But I’ll explain all that to you soon, in another life. In our next life, you and I will be entwined for ever. Just like the lovers in that Keats poem, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’. The one I read out to you that you loved so much. You said to me that was us. Two lovers, frozen in marble, about to kiss, but not yet having requited their love. They never had and they never would. They would forever remain in that moment of anticipation, total adoration.
And no disappointment.
God, Red, why did you disappoint me? Why the hell did you ever listen to your bitch mother?
Bryce stared around his treasure trove. He felt at peace here, in his workshop, with the rain pattering down on the roof. There was no one within earshot, or sight, of this building.
No one to be bothered by the occasional explosion. Or the occasional bursts of flame as he tested his latest incendiary devices, some of which were home-made, others bought in.
The stuff he planned to use.
She was standing up now. She walked towards the front door, grabbing her raincoat off a hook, and her umbrella.
You’re in for a surprise, my angel. I’m doing it for you, to save you the humiliation of Sunday lunch with the sister and brother-in-law you hate, and your goddamn awful parents.
Trust me, that is not the way to be spending one of the last Sundays of your life.
30
Sunday, 27 October
At midday, Red left her apartment, hurried across the road through the light drizzle, then made a right turn into Westbourne Terrace Mews. After a couple of minutes, she reached the lock-up garage where she kept her beloved yellow and black 1973 Volkswagen Beetle convertible. Bryce had so not been impressed with it. The car was dangerous, he told her. It had no airbags, and with its almost fluorescent colour, he said it looked like a giant seagull had shat on it. He wanted to buy her a modern Golf convertible, but she had refused. She loved this car.
And, she’d told Bryce in no uncertain terms, the car had soul.
She unlocked the garage door and hoisted it up. The Beetle sat there, gleaming from the loving polish she had given it three weeks ago. She opened the door, climbed in, pushed the key into the ignition and twisted it. As ever, the engine turned over faithfully, clattering into life behind her, settling into its reassuring whirring sound. She loved the familiar smell of the car, a mixture of old paintwork, fabric cleaner and slight dampness.
She reversed out of the garage, got out and shut the door, then pulled on her seat belt and drove along the seafront, turning left at the statue of Queen Victoria. The rain hardened, suddenly drumming down on the fabric roof, and the windows were misting.
As she crossed over Church Road and headed up The Drive, the heater started to kick in, a steady blast of increasingly warm air against the October chill. The traffic lights at the junction with Old Shoreham Road were red, and she halted behind a row of cars. She put the gear lever into neutral and pulled on the handbrake. Music was playing on the radio from Juice FM. A Lucinda Williams song that Bryce had loved.
And which she had loved too then.
This song is all about you and me, Bryce had said.
And yes, it had been.
My day goes by . . . You’ve left your mark on me . . .
She felt a deep twinge of pain. He had. In those early days he had left his mark like no one she had ever met before. He was the man, she had believed then, she would spend the rest of her life with.
Shit, Bryce. God, what the hell happened? Why? Why did you do it? Why didn’t you tell me the truth about you from the start? Maybe it would have all been so different if you had.
Suddenly, she could smell burning. The lights turned green and the cars in front moved off. She yanked off the handbrake, put the Volkswagen into gear, and pressed the accelerator, but the engine died. Someone behind hooted. She raised an apologetic hand and twisted the key. The engine turned for some seconds, a whining metallic rattle, then stopped. Wisps of smoke curled from behind her.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
More smoke was coming out from the footwell, rising up in front of her. It had a toxic, acrid smell.
The car behind hooted again, louder, more angrily.
She coughed, feeling sudden panic. The smoke was thickening. She flung open the door, and instantly there was a sickening crunch and it flew back on its hinges as a white van thundered past, ripping it almost clean off, then screeching to a halt with a slithering sound. She stumbled out into the road in a cloud of smoke, and a car swerved around her.
‘What the fuck are you playing at?’ someone yelled at her. The driver of the van, she realized through her confusion. Then he said, ‘Oh, bloody hell. Hang on, love, I’ve got a fire extinguisher.’
She could hear a crackling sound.
The driver ran back to his van and returned moments later holding a tiny fire extinguisher in his hand. ‘How do you open the engine cover?’
She pulled the key out of the ignition, ran to the rear of the car, rammed the key in and pushed the button. Trails of smoke were rising from the grille.
‘Open it slowly!’ he said. ‘Careful!’
Cautiously, Red lifted the cover a few inches. Smoke poured out either side.
‘Call the fire brigade!’ he shouted, then took over, hoisting up the cover further.
Almost mesmerized in her panic, she watched him disappear in a cloud of smoke. She hurrie
d around to the side of the car, leaned in and grabbed her handbag, then pulled her phone out and dialled 999.
She saw the van driver, a short, tubby man in his forties, spray a jet of foam into the engine compartment.
‘Emergency. Which service please?’ a disembodied voice asked.
‘Fire,’ she gasped. ‘My car’s on fire.’
She could see flames leaping from the engine compartment now. She was dimly conscious of vehicles on both sides of the street stopping. Someone jumped out of the front of a bus holding another fire extinguisher, and ran across the road towards her. He joined the van driver spraying the contents into the engine compartment. But it seemed to make the fire worse. Flames leapt into the air, forcing both men back.
She stared helplessly in horror as she waited for the fire engine to arrive, and the entire car turned into a fireball.
31
Sunday, 27 October
Bryce Laurent had Red’s mobile phone on loudspeaker in his warehouse. He was busily opening a crate of slow-burn fuses that had been delivered from China earlier in the week.
You poor thing, Red, you sound so upset because you’ve lost your car. You need a present, don’t you? I think a present would cheer you up. I’ll give it a think. A nice present to take to the grave with you.
32
Sunday, 27 October
Pond Cottage was a long, narrow thatched house, with low beamed ceilings, part of it dating back to Tudor times. It was situated down a winding country lane to the north of Henfield, a large village eight miles from Brighton, and it had been Red’s family home – and refuge – all of her life.
It sat behind a tall, immaculately trimmed yew hedge, topped with a row of topiaried birds, which her father kept trimmed with almost obsessive care. To the rear of the low-roofed house was an equally immaculately tended garden, with a duck pond that had an island in the middle, an acre of perfect lawn, and a view over miles of farmland beyond. Since his retirement as a family solicitor in Brighton, her father divided his waking hours between working on the garden and, with her mother, sailing their small cruiser, Red Margot, in all weathers. The boat, named after her and her sister, was her parents’ real passion. Red and her sister had spent many childhood weekends and chunks of their holidays on board, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes happily, exploring the ports of Devon, Cornwall, Normandy, Brittany and the Channel Islands.
Red loved the pride her parents took in that garden, and the sight of the house now, even in the falling rain beneath a dismal sky, cheered her a little. Although in truth she wasn’t particularly excited by the prospect of seeing her sister and her tosser of a husband. She and Karl had planned a long, lazy Sunday morning in bed, then a drive out to one of his favourite country pubs, maybe The Griffin at Fletching or The Cat at West Hoathly, or perhaps The Royal Oak at Wineham, for lunch.
Arriving here today she felt even more of a failure than ever. She paid the taxi, pulling the banknotes from her purse with shaking hands, and gave the driver a large tip because he had been so kind and sympathetic to her over her car. Then she climbed out into the rain, still feeling flustered and shaken, and hurried up to the front door, pulling her key out of her handbag, conscious of just how late she was for Sunday lunch. It was 2.45 p.m., and her father was a stickler for sitting down at the table at 1 p.m. on the dot.
Her parents, her sister, Margot, and her brother-in-law, the odiously pompous Rory, were seated around the oak refectory table eating crumble and custard when she entered the kitchen/dining room. There was a cosy heat from the Aga, and the sweet smell of a log fire, which she knew would be burning in the inglenook in the sitting room.
‘You poor darling,’ her mother said. ‘What a trauma. I’m sorry we started without you, but the lamb would have been ruined.’ In her early sixties, with a tangle of shoulder-length flame-coloured hair and dressed in a baggy sweater and jeans, her mother was still a very attractive woman. But shit, Red thought, how could she still, after all these years, not be able to get her head around the knowledge that her daughter did not eat lamb? she wondered. Red had been traumatized, at the age of nine, when they had been stuck in a traffic jam behind a lorry crammed with sheep being taken to Shoreham Harbour, and had refused to eat it ever since. For much of her childhood, out of principle, she had been a vegetarian, and although she occasionally – and reluctantly – did eat some meat now because she found herself sometimes craving it, she steadfastly refused to touch lamb.
She stared at her mother, her temper already frayed enough without this thoughtless comment. Why couldn’t her mother remember that fins were fine with her, but fur, paws and hooves were mostly not. The lamb was pretty badly ruined the day someone killed it and chopped it up, Mummy, she nearly said, but kept her cool. She was in no mood to have a row right now, and nor did she have the strength.
Her father, hair awry as ever, dressed in shapeless trousers, plimsolls and a Shetland sweater over a Viyella shirt, was right behind her, thrusting a glass of champagne into her hand. ‘Kept it chilled for you, my angel!’ he said, giving her a kiss.
‘Your car caught fire?’ her elder sister said. ‘That old wreck? It’s hardly surprising, it was bound to happen one day.’
Margot had always managed to make Red feel inadequate from earliest childhood, and her cutting, supercilious smile was doing it again right now. Four years older than her, Margot had always been the apple of her father’s eye. Margot was the one who got the high scores and the great reports at school, followed by a double first at Oxford.
She was now a high-powered lawyer in the City earning, their mother had confided, close to £1 million a year. She sat at the table, with her short, razored black hair and sharp features, smartly dressed as ever in her designer maternity wear. And now, of course, she was the one who was pregnant. Seven smug months pregnant. With her immaculate, brand-new 5 Series BMW smugly parked in the driveway. Not a car that would ever catch fire.
Rory, who worked for a hedge fund and was related to a Tory cabinet minister – and harboured political ambitions of his own – was as far up his own backside as was possible without his head actually appearing out of his own throat, Red liked to tell her friends. An old Etonian with aristocratic antecedents, he was a tall, chinless wonder with a lock of floppy fair hair, dressed today in a pink shirt, red cords, and black suede Gucci loafers. ‘You’re bloody lucky it happened where it did, Red,’ he said, ever the crass politician before even becoming one. ‘Just imagine if that had happened on a major road in rush hour? Could have caused delays to hundreds – maybe thousands of people. Classic cars belong in museums, Red, not on public roads.’
Or up your rectum, Red nearly said.
‘It’s a pretty car, darling,’ her mother said. ‘But not practical, is it, for everyday use?’
‘Actually, I disagree,’ Red said. ‘There’s an argument classics are much greener than modern cars.’
‘Your mother and I are so relieved you weren’t hurt,’ her father said. ‘So what happened?’
‘The fire brigade reckon it was probably caused by the wiring – they said it happens with old cars sometimes. The car’s destroyed.’
‘Apart from the car, darling,’ her father asked. ‘How are you? How’s the new man in your life?’
‘New man?’ Margot suddenly looked interested, in the way of a vulture spotting fresh roadkill.
‘He sounds really nice,’ her mother said. ‘A doctor! Quite a contrast to that awful liar, Bryce.’
Red felt her heart twist.
‘Tell us about this new man,’ Margot said.
Red sipped her champagne, thinking. She hadn’t told her family the latest news, and she didn’t feel like telling them at this moment.
‘We’re all so bloody relieved you have Bryce out of your life. He really was a horrible little man,’ her father chipped in. ‘Of course, we could never have said that to you at the time. But what a total conman. Thank God we found out in time!’
‘You really had a l
ucky escape,’ Margot said. ‘God, how close did you come to marrying him? Darling Red, we all love you and want the best for you. But that creep, Bryce whatsisname, honestly! He was the pits!’
‘I loved him,’ Red said defiantly, draining her champagne. She wasn’t driving now, and could drink as much as she liked. And one thing she really liked about her parents was their shared love of booze. At the time, I really loved him.’
‘Out of desperation?’ Margot asked.
Red glared at her sister, then reached for the decanter of claret and filled her wine glass. ‘Is that why you married Rory?’ she said, her anger starting to boil over. ‘Because you were thirty and desperate not to be left on the shelf?’
‘I don’t think that’s the case at all, Red,’ Rory said indignantly.
Her mother broke the awkward silence that followed. ‘Margot, darling, I’m sure Red didn’t mean that,’ she said, looking pointedly at Red. ‘Did you?’
‘None of you seem to understand that I did actually love Bryce then. Yes. Totally and utterly. I’d have done anything for him.’ She shrugged, and drank some wine, then looked at her sister. ‘Okay, so maybe I fell for Bryce because I was desperate. I was never Miss Perfect like you, okay?’
‘Shall we change the subject?’ their father said. ‘Let’s talk about something more cheerful. This flat you’ve found, Red. It sounds perfect for you!’
‘I want to hear about this new man in your life,’ Margot said insistently.
Red downed her glass of claret in one, and refilled it. Getting pissed, she decided, was the best option today. She had so badly wanted to tell them all about Karl’s death, but now something held her back. Maybe it was the fear of adding yet another item to the long list of failures and disasters that seemed to catalogue her life to date. Or maybe it was simply that after the nightmare of the past couple of hours she was badly in need of some TLC from her family.