Remember Me This Way (37 page)

The fact is, Onnie was already an inconvenience. I wanted rid of her, so I could read Lizzie’s letter in peace.

Could she have something of mine to take with her? Yes, yes, a picture, I said, scanning the room, letting her choose. I put it in a bin bag along with her filthy clothes. (Annoying, actually. It’s one of my favourites.) I was running out of patience. ‘Where shall I go?’ Find Kulon, he’ll look after you. ‘Will you come and get me later?’ she cried, barefoot on the doorstep, clutching her swag. ‘Will you leave your wife?’ ‘Yes. Yes. Yes. I’ll come and get you.’ ‘Do you promise? Whatever happens?’ Yes. Yes. Yes. ‘Keep the faith!’ I shouted after her.

I seem to have got through rather a lot of whisky. More in the car. The plastic bag is looking depleted. I have to wash and change my clothes. Lizzie. She’s the only woman I’ve ever trusted, because I do trust her, despite everything. All the rest – they turn against you in the end. Betray you, tread your heart in the dust.

A love letter: I turn it in my hands. It’s all I needed.

Thank God for Lizzie.

It’s not about houses, I realise that, or finding the right location. It’s not about the sea. It’s about love. I’ll put the light on now and open her letter, inhale her soft words, and then I’ll ring her. I’ll think of a way out of the mess I’m in. As long as I have Lizzie, everything will be all right.

Chapter Twenty-four

Lizzie

It’s a cold, sharp day. The sky has cleared, blue sky for the first time in weeks, but a bitter wind flaps at the awning above Londis and flattens the long grass on the common. I run as soon as I am off the bus, down the last bit of Trinity Road and left into my street. The disloyalty to Zach has released something wild and unstoppable. It’s the final treachery. I feel the fear and freedom of it in the soles of my feet.

I know something bad has happened the moment I reach the house. The front door is open a crack. I push past and into the hall, and stand there, my breath still hot in my chest.

The tiled floor is covered in envelopes and pizza flyers, unopened bank statements, hair ties, a bottle of de-icer and keys. Lots of keys. The pottery pot they were kept in is in pieces on the ground too.

For a moment, I just stare. The shelf where all this lay yesterday is empty but for one thing. A small painting is propped there now. It’s of a young woman with dark hair in a doorway. She’s looking down at her arms, her face distorted by the angle of perspective. It’s an uncomfortable picture, shadowy and lonely. The room looks cold and she’s wearing too few clothes. It’s hard to look away.

It’s one of the best pictures Zach ever painted, the picture you might show if you ever felt his talent was in doubt. It used to hang at Gulls. It’s the one that was missing.

A pile of clothes is at the bottom of the stairs. I step towards them, as if in a trance, and pick them up, one by one – his old navy shorts, faded on the seat, the zip bent; a grey sweatshirt, with an ink blot on the hem, a worn brown leather belt. I hold the sweatshirt to my face, rub it against my mouth, run the heavy buckle of the belt down my cheek. There’s a towel at the bottom and something falls out of it – a shiny blue photo album. I flick it open with one hand. Each page holds a single photograph. The first shows Zach, smiling, in his charity-shop suit. He is standing outside Wandsworth Town Hall. Our wedding day. You can still see half my arm across his shoulder, but my face has been cut out. Through the jagged hole, a piece of the photograph beneath shows through. A fragment of the slate house sign fixed to the porch in Cornwall: ‘Gulls’.

A jolt above my head. A scrape. I drop the album and lay the shorts down on the bottom step. I am breathing so lightly it’s as if the air is hardly moving past my lips. I’m so faint I’m not sure I can do it, but I begin to climb the stairs. I put one foot in front of the other. One foot in front of the other: it’s what I’ve been doing all year. One foot in front of the other; it’s how you survive. He has come back from the dead, but I am the ghost. I am so quiet, so light, I seem to move soundlessly, up to the bathroom, and then the final flight of stairs to the two top rooms. A moment of dizziness. I put my hand on the wall to steady myself. The door to the bedroom is open, and I can see the mess inside. The bedclothes are on the floor and the contents of the cupboard emptied on top of that. The bedside lamp, switched on, lies on its side, casting a strange yellow shadow of itself on the wall.

I lean against the bannisters. The study door is closed. He’s moving around inside, shifting objects.

I don’t know what’s going to happen now, whether I hate him or still love him, whether he has come back to apologise or to kill me, whether I’m scared of him or whether – I haven’t thought of this before – he’s scared of me. I forget he’s a killer and a liar. All that matters in this small moment is that I’m about to see his face.

Tears are pouring down my cheeks. I can taste the salt.

I push the door. It catches on the carpet, and I have to push harder to make it budge. I’m not sure if I have stopped breathing completely or not.

I say, ‘Hello, Zach.’

Stillness. But a small creak – at once movement and sound, the rasp of fabric against wood. Someone is here, a figure by the desk. I can see the shape of them against the light. Jeans, boots, draped shirt, long hair.

The wave that has been building inside me rises and breaks.

I lean back against the door. Somewhere on Trinity Road, a motorbike squeals.

‘You,’ I say.

The figure moves towards me. ‘Oh. I’m sorry. The door was open.’

I feel myself sink. The muscles in my legs are worn thin, like paper. Perhaps I’m dead. Perhaps I am a ghost.

‘Sorry. I don’t know what you must think. I . . .’

‘What are you doing?’

‘I was looking for Onnie. The door was open and . . . I came in. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.’

Victoria is poised for departure, slinging her bag over her shoulder, pulling back her blonde hair, securing it at her neck with a tie.

‘Onnie?’ My voice sounds squeezed and odd.

‘I’ve looked everywhere.’

I’m staring at her, but she won’t meet my eyes.

‘Sorry about your photographs,’  Victoria says. ‘Do you have backups?’

‘What?’

I look down. The floor is covered in fragments of torn paper – an arm, a corner of sea. My photographs. The room has been destroyed. The books have been pulled off the shelves. The box that was under the desk has been shredded, stamped on with violence. I’ve got here too late. He has been and gone. I’ve slipped to the floor. I think about Zach’s anger, how he’s kept it down for a year, held it close to his heart, and how it will have grown and intensified in force. How frightening he could be, when he was in control of himself; how much more frightening when he wasn’t.

The door is still open and I push it shut with my hand and press my back against it. ‘Ring the police,’ I say. ‘My phone is in my bag downstairs. Could you ring the police? Please?’

Victoria takes another step towards me. She puts her hands out. ‘Wait a minute. Let’s talk about this calmly, can we? I’m furious with her. She isn’t always in control of her actions. But the police – well, if you could just think about my, our position.’ She sits down at the table and, removing her bag from her shoulder, pulls out a long leather-encased chequebook. ‘A terrible mess and an awful inconvenience for you. Let me pay for all the damage. Up here it’s mainly cosmetic, though downstairs there’s some smashed crockery and I think the glass in the back door might need replacing. Shall we say £1,000 – just to be on the safe side?’

I stare at her. Her left hand fusses at her neck, smoothing the hair into her ponytail, checking and checking for a loose strand. A nerve is pulsing to the side of her cheek.

‘You think
Onnie
did this?’ I say. ‘Why would Onnie have done this?’

She sighs, spreads her hands again to express hopelessness. But it’s fake. She’s pretending to be open and honest, but beneath the surface, I can sense panic. ‘It’s a pattern with her.’

‘I don’t think Onnie did this,’ I say carefully. ‘Downstairs, someone’s left some stuff – clothes and a painting. The person who brought those things into the house left them there for me to see. And that person—’

‘No. No. No.’ Victoria stands up and steps towards me. ‘That was me,’ she says. ‘I brought those things. I know . . . they belonged to your late husband. And again, I can’t apologise enough.’

I stand up. ‘You had Zach’s clothes? That painting? You brought them here?’

‘Yes. No. Not exactly. Look.’ She puts one long elegant hand under my elbow.

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ she says. Her mouth is stretched in a peculiar way. ‘I’ve handled it all very badly. I’ve been away all week. I got back last night to an empty house. Alan, when I finally spoke to him, said Onnie was staying in London with the friend whose aunt runs the fashion house.’

‘Shelby Pink.’

She glances at me and then away. ‘Well, it was lies. Onnie isn’t answering her phone, but she hasn’t been there all week. So then I went through her bedroom with a fine-tooth comb and that—’ she gestures to the door ‘—is what I found. Now you might be wondering why Onnie had some of your late husband’s possessions.’ She tries another ghastly smile. High spots of pink have appeared in her cheeks. ‘Nothing sinister. It dates back to the time he was tutoring her. I think it was raining once and he lent her some clothes to go home in, and the picture she borrowed for inspiration. So – there. I think I’d better try and find my daughter before she does anything silly.’

She moves towards the door. I can’t let her leave.

‘I know about Onnie and Zach,’ I hear myself say. ‘You don’t have to hide that from me.’

‘You know?’ She stares at me in horror. She seems to be having trouble controlling her mouth. ‘What do you know?’

‘That they had an affair.’

‘Oh.’ Her head jerks back. ‘An affair? I wouldn’t dignify it with the term “affair”. Perhaps a one-night stand.’

‘I think it was more than a one-night stand.’

‘I don’t think so.’ She shakes her head, and then wipes some invisible dust from her cheeks, light sweeping gestures: an attempt at dignity. ‘I’m sorry that you had to find out. You didn’t know when you came to Gulls. Did she tell you?’

‘She did. Yes.’

‘Typical. It’s just pure destruction. I’m sure your late husband and you were very much in love, that it wasn’t his fault at all.’

‘Why do you keep calling him my late husband? You knew him well. It’s Zach we’re talking about.’

She glances at me and then out of the window. ‘My daughter . . .’ She looks quickly at me again. ‘If we made it £5,000, would that go some way to compensate for the hurt and damage my family has caused you?’

I shake my head, baffled. ‘Are you paying me off?’

‘I wouldn’t put it that way.’ Her mouth is a firm line. ‘Please understand. My husband is about to stand as leader of the Conservative Party. It’s a sensitive time for us.’

I stand up and open the door. ‘You don’t need to pay me for anything.’

I walk down the stairs ahead of her. I want her out of the house now. If Onnie took Zach’s holdall, and clothes, and the picture, then
he
didn’t. But Onnie wouldn’t have added the figure to the painting in the studio, or wrecked it, or left the messages for me in the house. She wouldn’t have taken the china houses from the Beeches. It wasn’t Onnie I saw in the car park by his studio. It wasn’t Onnie who almost killed Sam. He’s still out there, violent, out of control, beyond reach. Last night, I slept with someone else. I still have reason to be afraid.

In the hall, I pause. The kitchen door is open. I can see right through, past chair legs and broken china, to Howard’s upended bed. Victoria is a few steps behind me. ‘She really did excel herself this time,’ she says. ‘Did the two of you have an argument?’

I don’t answer. My eyes are still on the kitchen. I walk into it, full of dread. Howard isn’t in his bed. He didn’t come to greet me earlier. He isn’t here. As I open the back door, a hunk of glass falls out of the frame. The garden is bright under a thin sky, empty.

‘At least she hasn’t broken your laptop,’ Victoria says behind me.

I turn round. Zach’s MacBook Air is on the kitchen table.

‘My dog’s gone,’ I say. ‘I don’t know what’s happened. He’s not here.’

‘The front door was open,’ Victoria says. ‘He might have just wandered off.’

I’m beginning to panic. ‘I’m going to drive round and look for him.’

I grab my keys and go back into the street. I run to where I thought I’d left the car. It’s not there. I stand on the pavement. Where did I park it the last time I used it? I run up and down the road, and then back into the house. I have an increasing sense of foreboding. I have started wringing my hands.

‘My car’s gone,’ I tell Victoria. I scoop up all the keys that were on the floor and start sifting through them. The spare car key isn’t here.

‘I can take you,’ Victoria says, hovering.

‘No. No.’ I’m trying to stay calm. ‘My car’s gone. Onnie, or someone, has taken my car. And maybe—’ my voice is out of control ‘—maybe they’ve taken Howard too.’

‘OK. Now calm down.’ Victoria steers me into the kitchen. ‘Where would she have gone?’ She’s talking to herself. ‘I just need to think it through.’

‘Not Onnie,’ I say. ‘It’s not Onnie who has done this. It’s Zach. It’s Zach who wants to punish me. It is Zach who wants to ruin my life.’

Victoria says, ‘Can you just think what might have upset her? Why would she have snatched your dog? Where would she have taken him?’

‘Not Onnie,’ I repeat. ‘Zach.’

I’m sitting in front of the laptop. It’s open and plugged in. There’s a sheet of lined paper in front of me, covered in scrawls. It’s the scrap of notebook Onnie was writing on the other night. I focus my eyes. There are various headings. Under ‘
Pets
’, Onnie has written
Howard
and crossed it out. There is a heading for ‘
Memorable Places
’ and crossed out under that, among other random places, are
Cornwall
and
Gulls
and
Sand Martin
,
Isle of Wight
,
Marchington Manor
,
Stepper Point
,
Blue Lagoon
,
Wandsworth Common
. The third heading, one that she has added since Thursday, is ‘
What meant most to him? Who did he truly love?
’ Under this, she has written,
Onnie Murphy
,
Aine Murphy
,
Zach Hopkins
.
Glengoyne
. All of these have been scored through.