Little Face (6 page)

`Usually that's true. But not always.' Simon's body and mind felt
numb, anaesthetised. What did he know now that he hadn't before?
There was a difference between facts and truth. Very fucking profound.
It was too easy to hide behind words. Movement now seemed impossible. Talking to Charlie had trapped him in the cerebral, the theoretical. He was discussing a woman he had never met, either alive or dead.
He might never get up out of his chair.

`Okay, then, I'm listening. Why would David Fancourt want to kill
Laura Cryer? Why?' Charlie demanded.

`They were separated. Did anyone ask why? Maybe the reason
they split up was relevant. There might have been some animosity
between them.' Coward, said the voice in his head. Do something.

Charlie chewed the inside of her lip. `True,' she said. `And there
equally might not. Plenty of people separate because they fall out of love,
but they still like each other. Or so I'm told. Let's face it, you and I know
sod all about marriage. I'm sure the way we imagine it is nothing like the
real thing.' A knowing smile pulled at the corners of her mouth.

Simon cast about for a plausible change of subject. Being single was
something Charlie thought they had in common, but Simon preferred
to think of himself as not yet attached. Single sounded too defensive.
If you felt defensive, you really didn't want to sound it.

Charlie slept with a lot of men and was vocal about it at all the wrong times. Like now, when Simon had no space in his head for her
comic flippancy. If she hadn't mentioned sex yet, then she was about
to. She made a point of turning her love life into entertainment for her
team, which was enough to get Colin Sellers and Chris Gibbs in on
time every day for the next instalment. Was there a new one, daily? It
sometimes felt that way. And there was little love involved as far as
Simon could tell.

He didn't like the thought of men mistreating Charlie. He couldn't
understand why she allowed so many to use and discard her. She
deserved better. He'd raised it once, tentatively, and she had pounced
on him, insisting that she was the one who did the using and discarding, the one in control.

Simon shook his head. Charlie could distract him too easily. Alice
was the one who was missing. She was still missing. Nobody had come
to tell them it was a mistake.

`You're wasting your time and mine with all this, Simon. David Fancourt wasn't anywhere near Spilling the night Laura Cryer was killed.'

`He wasn't? Where was he, then?'

`In London, with his fiancee.'

`You mean ... ?' Simon felt heat under his skin. Charlie had been
sitting on Fancourt's alibi all this time, saving her trump card. Phase
fucking disclosure.

`Yes. Alice was his alibi, although no-one really thought he needed
one because-did I mention this?-the evidence against Darryl Beer
was beyond doubt.' Charlie leaned her elbows on the table and rested
her chin on her hands. `So, if Alice Fancourt told you her husband
killed Laura Cryer, she's lying. Or else she was lying then. Either way,
I'd say there's quite a lot pointing to her being untrustworthy. If you
remember, I said she was unhinged right from the start.' Charlie's
expression darkened. `A mad bitch, I think was how I put it.'

Simon knew that if he spoke now, he'd say something that would be
difficult, later, to take back. He grabbed his jacket and got the hell
away from Charlie as quickly as he could.

Friday, September 26, 2003

THE WORST THINGS in life only strike once. I say this to my patients
to help them move forward with their lives, to enable them to process
the disasters that have befallen them. As soon as it is over, whatever it
is, you can begin to console yourself with the thought that it will never
happen again.

It worked for me when my parents died in a car crash eight years
ago. I stood at their funeral, feeling as if the stitches that had held my
soul together all these years were now slowly, painfully coming
undone. I was a twenty-eight-year-old orphan. I didn't have any siblings to turn to. I had friends, but friendship felt thin and inadequate,
like a summer jacket in winter. I needed, craved, family. I carried my
lost, beloved parents around with me like a hole in my heart.

My friends and colleagues were surprised by how badly I was
affected. People seemed to think that, having had twenty-eight years
of love and security, I would be well-equipped to deal with my sudden loss. I quickly learned that I was expected to be somehow insulated against what might otherwise have been extreme pain by having
had a secure, happy childhood. Everyone waited for me to bounce
back, to start to focus on the good times, the fond memories. Their
complacent assumptions were an insult to my grief and pushed me
from a state of mourning into one of severe depression. I got the
impression my friends were itching to say, `Oh, well, they had a good innings, didn't they?' But my parents were only in their early
fifties when they died.

I kept in touch with nobody when I left London. The company of
my friends, when I'd really needed them, had made me feel lonelier
than any amount of solitude ever could. It wasn't their fault, of course.
They tried their best to jolly me along. They weren't to know that their
forced and ever-so-slightly impatient cheerfulness was suffocating me
like poison gas.

I survived in the only way I could-by allowing myself to feel the
worst feelings for as long as they needed to be felt. At my lowest point,
I had only one consolation. I was able to say to myself, plausibly, that
at least this would never happen to me again. I could not lose my parents twice. Whatever else my future might contain, there would be no
lorry that would skid on a patch of ice and plough on to the wrong side
of the Al near Newark, straight into my parents' car, the new Audi
they'd bought when they passed the trusty old Volvo on to me. That
had already happened. It was over.

But this nightmare, the one I'm living now, is not over. It is only just
beginning. I see now that trouble doesn't always strike, in a clean,
wham-bam-thank-you-Ma'am kind of way. Sometimes it drifts into
your vicinity like bad weather, creeps up on you and lingers, deepening with every day that goes by. I cannot see any way out of this despair
because I still do not know how much worse things are going to get.

I have locked myself in the bedroom. David has tried to reason with
me through the door, to persuade me, feature by feature, that the baby
in the house is so identical to Florence in every particular that she can
only be Florence. He has given up now. I didn't allow myself to hear
him. I blocked out his words with a pair of foam earplugs. I keep these
in the top drawer of my bedside cabinet at The Elms. Without them,
David's snoring would keep me awake. He is always indignant when
I mention this. He says I snored while I was pregnant and he didn't
make a fuss about it, but then David could sleep through a rock concert. Nothing wakes him.

This is one of the details I know about my husband. What else do
I know? That he is excellent with machines of all kinds, anything electronic or mechanical. That his favourite meal is roast beef with all the
trimmings. That he buys me flowers for my birthday and our anniversary and treats me to long weekends in five star hotels to celebrate
these and other special occasions. That he calls women ladies.

I have never opposed him before. I have always perceived him as
being too fragile. When we first met, Laura had recently left him and
he was dealing not only with the disintegration of his hopes for a
happy family life but also with the agony of separation from Felix.
Although he didn't like to talk about how much this hurt him, I could
imagine it all too easily. I handled him with extreme care, not wanting
to add to his unhappiness in any way.

When Laura died so suddenly and violently three years ago, David
stopped confiding in me altogether. He became quiet and withdrawn,
and I found myself being even more tactful and placatory around him.
Felix came to live at The Elms, which must have made David happy,
yet at the same time he is bound to have felt guilty and confused
because the event that led to his reunion with his son was one which
must have been terribly painful for him. I have learned from the counselling component of my homeopathy training that it is often much
harder to deal with the death of somebody who is close to us if our
feelings for that person are in any way unresolved or problematic.

I thought that by respecting David's emotional privacy and loving
him as fiercely as I did, I would eventually convince him that it was safe
to open up to me, but I was wrong. As he got used to life with Felix at
The Elms, and as he came to terms with the idea that Laura was not
around any more, David became, on the surface, his old, charming self,
but the emotional distance between us remained, and he seemed so
resistant to my attempts to close it that I began to wonder if he
actively wanted a barrier in place. I was reluctant to force or rush him.
I told myself that he probably still found the rawness deep down too
painful to confront, that in order to believe in his fapade of normality he might need to operate, for a while, on a more superficial level. Three
years on, we have still not discussed Laura's death, and I have never
managed to shake off the feeling that I must be careful not to say anything that will disturb his mental equilibrium.

Part of the reason I refused to open the door when he begged me to
is that I cannot bear to confront the damage all this is doing to him. I
worry that the nightmare we have embarked upon today will destroy
him.

Vivienne is coming home. She is cutting short her and Felix's holiday, as I knew she would. How could she not? I don't know what she
will say to Felix, what any of us will say. Nothing, if the past is any
kind of indicator. Neither Vivienne nor David talks to Felix about
Laura, at least not in front of me. Her name is never mentioned.

I wish I could spend more time alone with Felix. If things had been
different, he and I might by now have become close. I might have been
almost like a mum to him. I want to be a proper step-mother, but there
is no room for such a figure in Felix's life. Vivienne is his mother substitute. He even calls her Mum, because he is used to hearing David call
her that.

I'm not sure Felix realises that I am one of the grown-ups. He
relates to me as if I am another child who happens to live in the same
house as him.

David is a conscientious father. He and Vivienne make sure that he
spends at least one whole day each weekend with Felix. He regards his
son as a test that he must pass, and would vehemently deny, if I were
to suggest it, that Felix reminds him of Laura in any way, even though,
with his shiny black hair and pale blue eyes, he is the image of her.

David is good at denial. He will deny that he fell asleep and left the
front door open. He is an exemplary father, he will insist. He wouldn't let anyone abduct his beloved daughter, the child of his happy second marriage.

I am impatient for Vivienne and the police to arrive. I sit here quietly, cross-legged on the bed, pressing my back, which still aches from the months of pregnancy, against the iron frame, and await these two
very different authorities. I try to imagine the next hour, the next day
or week, but my mind is one giant blank. I simply cannot envisage any
future at all. I feel as if time stopped when I walked into Florence's
nursery and started to scream.

I wish I had cuddled her more, breathed in more of her sweet,
fresh baby smell while I could. Not to be able to hold her is torture, but
worse than the pain, far worse, is the fear. There is a horribly uncertain future ahead, one that I'm not sure I can influence in any way.

David will tell everybody that I am deluded. Who will the police
believe? I have heard that they are, by and large, male chauvinists.
What if they decide I'm an unfit mother and call in social services? I
might not spend another night in this room, with its large sash windows and real fireplace, its view of the Silsford hills in the distance.
David and I might never again sleep side by side, here or anywhere.
When we first met, I was so full of hope for our life together. To think
of that now makes me ache with sadness.

I will not speak to my husband again until there are witnesses present. How odd that only last night the two of us sat on Vivienne's sofa
drinking wine and watching a silly romantic comedy together, laughing and yawning, David's arm round my shoulder. The speed of the
way things have changed between us has left me dizzy with shock.

I hear his voice downstairs. `Come on, Little Face,' he says. That's
a new one. I make a mental note to mention this to the police when
they arrive. David has called Florence `Mrs Tiggywinkle' since the day
she was born, apart from when he calls her `Mrs Tiggy' for short. `Ten
tiggy fingers, ten tiggy toes, two tiggy ears and one tiggy nose,' he has
sung to her every day, at least once. He did so this morning.