Red Ribbons (25 page)

Pulling back into the shadows behind the deep laurel hedge, he made his final appraisal of the building. The sudden click of the garden gate was unexpected, but he remained calm. The little boy, wearing his woolly hat, rested his head in sleep on his father’s shoulders. Lucky Charlie, he thought, having a father to love him.

IT’S THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT BEFORE I WAKE. THE medication Dr Ebbs gave me rendered me unconscious from the moment I got back to my room. Now my mouth feels dry and my tongue enormous, like some savage beast wanting to choke me. It’s hard to believe, but I feel even more lethargic than normal.

I almost want to laugh out loud when I think about the woman I used to be, the one who ran so quickly through her thoughts in her eager effort to avoid them. I stumble out of bed and drink some water from the tap. It doesn’t take long for my eyes to grow accustomed to the dark. I wash my face, and the water chills from the outside in. When I sit back down on the bed, my knees curl instinctively tight into my chest. I wrap my arms around them.

The weather has changed. The wind is rising. It sounds as wild as the one from a few nights back. The pelting rain hits the small window panes in an attempt to bring freshness, fast and heavy, the wind carrying it in sheets of water, with barely time to stay on the glass. I watch the rainwater flow down in large puddles, mushrooming into one another. It’s as if the water wants to clear everything in its path, wipe away all that is no longer necessary.

Who had I dreamed about – Amy, Andrew, Joe? Yes, they’d all been part of it, all part of the nightmare that creeps into my subconscious, clawing to be realised. In the dream, I was trying to sort things out, fix things, but I couldn’t manage it no matter how hard I tried. Even in sleep, the answers to old questions still escape me.

Today with Dr Ebbs had been difficult. In many ways, once I had
written in that copybook, I should have known my change of mood would precipitate such things. Over time I’ve learned to recognise these shifts. Like most things, they have a habit of creeping up on you, disguised in subtle ways, until finally you reach the point where you have gone too far to ever go back again.

Up until now, I’ve been able to keep these changes to myself, to such an extent that no one other than me would have been aware that anything had altered. The good doctor had been surprised by what I’d told him. At the start he was sceptical, I could see that, but I’m used to their scepticism. It’s their belief I have a problem with, no longer used to such a thing.

I think Dr Ebbs thinks my whole time here has been some kind of travesty. It would be normal, I suppose, for people to think that way. Some, if they knew the truth, might even call it unjust. But I care little for injustice, at least not the injustice that has been done to me.

Today surprised me all the same. Not so much by what I’d said, more that I’d said it at all. Yes, before the meeting I’d been anxious, and I’d certainly never revealed so much before. If it had rested there, in my one act of revelation, perhaps sleep would have granted me some release. I would not have woken more distressed than ever, as I am now.

I’d been surprised by my words, taken aback by my own honesty. My voice had felt like the voice of someone else, a stranger, someone far stronger than I could ever be – someone capable of shocking me nearly as much as I might have shocked Dr Ebbs.

Fifteen years is a long time to maintain your silence. At the beginning, I’d tried to tell my story, but it isn’t easy when people don’t want to listen. I was angry, so angry, the rage inside me was black and choking. But in the end, I think the sadness won out over that.

I was taken aback by other things today, such as the strength of resolution I heard in my voice, something that seemed to have eluded me for a long time. There was a strange security to be found within
it. Then later, I had been surprised again, when Dr Ebbs asked his last question. By then I’d already felt the medication kicking in, relieved by its irresistible exhaustion. Perhaps it was because the good doctor had taken me unawares, perhaps the exposure of myself had left me raw, unravelling the layers to the point where anything other than honesty was impossible. But I‘d been shocked by my answer all the same, because I had forgotten how much I loved him.

Andrew had come to me immediately after the fire. He’d been distraught, loud and accusing, shouting at me. I remember looking at him, staring him blankly in the face, all the while thinking how different he’d been only hours before.

I knew that by going to see him that night I had taken a chance. I had tried to see him the night before, but that caretaker, Gilmartin, the one who dragged me from the fire, had spotted me. He was out doing his own bit of night roaming, poaching most like. Up until that summer, and even now, I still believe Joe had no idea about Andrew and me. If Joe had woken up on either occasion, he would have been suspicious straight away, wondered where I had gone and come out looking for me. But I’d no choice but to talk to Andrew. I’d spent days trying to find time alone with him, without success, so I chose when everyone else was sleeping, I was like a ghost who was most at home in the dark.

When he opened the door to his caravan, Andrew had not even looked surprised. It was as if he had expected me all the time. I loved him and hated him for that. There were times in the months before that summer, especially when I’d got deeper and deeper into my depression, that I’d wondered if I’d loved him at all. And yet, when he looked at me, I knew. It was in the way the words between us never mattered. The way I could feel him without touch. The way I knew he felt the very same things.

He was the first to speak. He’d asked me if I was cold. It was just a small thing, something of no relevance really, but it was enough to
soften my original intentions. In my head I had planned to argue with him, to ask him why he hadn’t been in touch, why he cared so little, rally my anger against the foolishness that I had once believed in him, thinking he felt the same about me. As on so many occasions before, he sat back and waited. It didn’t take long for me to run out of steam. While he listened, part of him was shaded by the dark. I could see only half of his face. The outside lights from the caravan park lit the seating area, as if the light was with me and the dark with him. Finally I went over and sat beside him, a willing audience. My silence lasted only a few seconds before he spoke.

He told me he had never stopped loving me all the time we’d been apart. He had felt a void in his life like nothing he had ever felt before. He admitted it was he who had suggested the holiday to Joe. A friend had owed him a favour and said he could use both the caravans if he wanted to. Almost immediately he’d jumped at the idea, knowing full well it would be an easy way for us to meet. He said all this as if everything that had happened over the previous months could be brushed aside, as if none of it mattered.

I remember wondering even then if I was mad. All those months of torment, when I believed I was losing my mind, when every waking hour was spent thinking about him, when missing him became my whole existence. Perhaps that’s the good and bad thing about love, the way you have no control over how you feel. Elation and desperation come hand in hand. In truth, even when I look back, I never had any doubt that I loved him. Or as near as anyone can feel for someone who is not their flesh and blood.

Our time apart was supposed to be temporary. It was his idea to take it ‘easy’. Over the seven months, he had thought about making contact but had held back, thinking that the more time we were apart, the easier it would be for him, for us both, to forget and move on.

He had thrown himself completely into work, painting with more zeal than he’d painted his whole life. But what he saw staring back at
him from the canvas told him everything he needed to know. And the more he painted, the more he knew he would see me again.

That morning when I left Andrew and went back to our caravan, I was happier than I had been in months. I had no idea where the rekindling of our relationship would lead us, but one thing I knew for certain: I wanted to be with Andrew more than anything else I could imagine.

But that was then.

I realise now that people think differently when real suffering visits their door. In my head, I suppose I thought that I had suffered over the previous six months, that those black days before we got back together were the worst thing possible. I had so much still to learn about suffering.

If I had the energy now, I’d laugh out loud at the person I used to be. Blind ignorance allows such flights of fancy. On that walk back to the caravan, when others, including Joe, were still fast asleep, I thought about how I would have done almost anything to keep Andrew in my life. I would have told any number of lies to be with him. Although I wasn’t altogether sure how I was going to make that happen, I was resolute in my thinking that we would never be apart again.

Like the light touch of rain, cold, sharp and pure against my skin, I felt our love alive. How was I to know that within moments those thoughts would be gone, replaced by something completely different.

Ludicrous when I think about it now, how I once believed the world spun around me. Maybe the emotions I felt for Andrew fooled me into thinking they would be strong enough, deep enough, to withstand so much. But afterwards, when I found Amy, my love for him drifted to a place kept for history, of little or no relevance any more.

When Andrew arrived after the fire, I wasn’t surprised by his anger. Joe told him how withdrawn I’d been, how dependent I had become on antidepressants, how he should have seen this coming. Andrew had
never witnessed any of these things about me, but he knew enough about his brother to know he was not a man to lie. I hadn’t helped matters. When he looked for an explanation, I gave him little in return.

Maybe Dr Ebbs was right and it had been shock. But all of them, Andrew, Joe, the rest of the world, meant little when the sheer horror of real loss hit me. I know I could have tried more, but there was so little of me left to fight, and what little there was didn’t want to. When I think about the person I was that day, the day I found my Amy, I see a woman lost, a woman who was not only beyond saving but who held no desire for it either.

I have no idea what I will say to Dr Ebbs the next time I meet him. As I sit here with my arms wrapped around my knees, my future feels emptier than before, a gaping abyss, a vast nothingness.

I don’t want to cry. I fight hard against it. The copybook and pens are down by the side of my bed, waiting for me to revisit them. I listen to the rain as it sweeps across the landscape and I wonder if it could carry me. If I could abandon this earthly body and be no more. When I was a child, I used to listen to the howl of the banshees in the night. I used to think I had something to fear from things I didn’t understand, that the unknown was the scariest thing. Now I’ve learned differently, it is the things I know that I am scared of most. And again I ask myself the question I’ve asked so many times before:
What form of man or woman would seek to live, when the world they live in is no longer a world they either care about or want?

‘WE’RE STARTING TO MAKE A HABIT OF MEETING IN dark pubs.’ O’Connor stood up for Kate to take a seat.

‘Yeah, well, rumour has it they need the business,’ Kate responded, with a smile. O’Connor looked tired and crumpled, but he still managed to smile warmly at her. She reckoned he was happy to be away from the focal point of the investigation, even if only for a short while.

‘You want a drink, Kate?’

‘Water is fine, thanks.’

‘That’s not going to do a lot for their trade figures.’

‘Okay, I’ll be wild, get me an orange juice.’

While O’Connor went to the bar, Kate took both copies of her report out of her leather satchel. Despite everyone having less money in their pocket, the place was busy, with singletons and couples starting out on their Saturday night on the town. There was a good-humoured atmosphere that was a million miles from how Kate was feeling. She looked at the people around her, and everyone looked so free and unworried. She found herself thinking that they mustn’t have children – or lukewarm marriages, or any of the other concerns that seemed to be taking residence in her brain these days. She shook her head, pulling her mind back from self-pity. This was work time, that was all.

‘Right, Kate, I’m all ears.’

‘Just read through the report first.’

O’Connor took a gulp out of his large brandy, picking up his copy
of the report and studying it. ‘You have him at thirty plus? But the guy at the swimming pool is probably older.’

‘I know, it’s just a guide. It doesn’t rule out the swimming pool guy, far from it.’

‘It also says that murder is not his main motivation?’

‘He’s looking for something, O’Connor. If he did court Caroline, he was looking for something from her and if it isn’t sexual or motivated by a desire to kill, then it has to be some kind of relationship. He likes to get close, to study the girls and get to know their movements before he makes his own. But murder isn’t his primary motive. It might have become necessary with Amelia, but only because things changed once you found Caroline. And that’s the other thing. The burials could have a two-fold reasoning for him. One to presumably protect himself, but based on their elaborate nature they could also be a form of protection for the victims too.’

‘A strange protection,’ O’Connor said. ‘You’ve listed burglary, why do you think that?’

‘He calculates risk. He abducted Caroline in broad daylight. If he did something like that, he has already tested the waters, developed confidence in breaking the law and probably getting away with it. With the snooping, it makes sense he’s watched people before, broken into places just for the thrill of it, that sort of thing. Anyhow, what I really wanted to talk to you about is that while there’s a lot in the report we’ve already covered, there are a couple of things I’ve purposely left out.’