What She Left: Enhanced Edition (21 page)

Staring up at that bridge, I realized something, Larry. It was how utterly useless all this knowledge was. Were I to take up a knife, plunge it into the left side of my abdomen and draw the blade across to the right then turn it upwards, would that knowledge stop the blood pooling around my
feet? None of it meant a jot, any more than having learnt such words as ‘brachytherapy’ and ‘zoledronic acid’ could make my illness dissipate.

‘There’s nothing like cancer to expand your vocabulary,’ I’d said to Fliss, after one of my hospital visits.

‘I love you,’ she said, and I’d decided: I’m going to tell you. When this is done, when I’ve gathered all the information about Alice I can, I’m going to tell you what she meant to me, her and her mother. I’m going to tell you and the whole world, because how will you believe I’m being honest about
anything
– how will you believe how much I love you – if I can’t be honest about the positions they’ve variously occupied in the recesses of my heart?

‘It’s nice how you’re putting this girl back together again,’ she once remarked, as we were flicking through a slideshow of photos of her on my laptop.

‘You make her sound like Humpty Dumpy,’ I joked, recalling how all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t manage it with that poor little fellow.

‘Presumably you’re not intending to publish any of it, though?’ she’d asked.

Bless her, she had no idea.

I’ve worked out what this new feeling is that prompts me to say to the principal, ‘I’m doing this with or without your blessing’, or to the chancellor, ‘I don’t give a toss what your view is’, or to our latest departmental recruit, a square-jawed barrel-chested brute, ‘Are you as boring in the bedroom as you are in the laboratory?’ I felt it after I had the first inkling of what it might be that sent me scuttling four times a night to the toilet. Again, when I spotted the momentary flash of recognition in my doctor’s eyes. Later still, when the consultant uttered the word ‘terminal’. I’ll tell you what it is, Larry, it’s a lack of fear. Finally, a complete and utter lack of fear.

‘I’m not giving you any more money,’ I said to the tattooed boy. The faint sound of music had reached me from his earphones. Perhaps this is what it’ll be like after I’m dead, I’d thought: echoes of the world. He’d reached down into his rucksack and I was expecting another Alice item, but he retrieved a glass figurine that should have been on the sideboard in our dining room. I’d bought it for Fliss for an anniversary, when we were in the old house.

‘Fuck you,’ I heard myself saying.

He was momentarily dumbfounded. Why did I never stand up to bullies as a child, Larry? ‘I don’t
care
what you do with the letter,’ I said. ‘I’ll be dead before long. You’ve got another fifty years to live. Imagine that, another half-century of being you – that must be torture. You’ve got more to hide than me, more to lose. You’ll not get another penny out of me.’

He always locked the door behind him, but I’d wondered what our tableau would resemble if anyone had come in. A lecturer and one of his students? A scientist and one of his assistants? A father and his son – a young one, admittedly, perhaps from a second marriage who’d dropped by to say hi or extract some cash from his old dad?

‘You only hate me because we’re the same,’ he said. ‘You might dress it up, but you’re the respectable face of what I am. You’re me in a tweed jacket.’

I laughed out loud at that one.

‘Fuck you, Iceman,’ he said.

I wondered if I’d had a son whether we’d have ever spoken to each other like this – whether we’d have fought, got on, admired each other, trusted each other, loved each other. I went to grab the figurine and it tumbled to the floor, smashing. ‘I’m going to beat you to the truth,’ I said. ‘I’m going to put it all in a book and you, you little shit, might even feature.’

‘Looks like Mr and Mrs Salmon are going to get a bit of new reading material then!’ he’d replied.

We’re all going to get some reading material, if I get my way.

The coroner’s verdict was tantamount to admitting we’re stumped. White froth in her mouth and nose, fluid in her lungs, aquatic debris in her stomach – such observations would have suggested to those examining Alice that she drowned, that she was alive when she entered the water, but that doesn’t explain what came before. Doesn’t it strike you as ironic, that in a world where our every step is watched, monitored and filmed, she took her last few unseen? At least, by the wider world. Should someone be behind bars for this? There are those who would probably argue I should be for what I did that December evening in 2004, although that’s another story.

When I’d visited the river after my session at the police station, I’d sat there until it got light, scanning the water and debris and the deep, fast-flowing inky-black water whipping by. And I watched Alice Salmon. I remembered my Humpty Dumpty book, its yellow cracked cover, touching the spine, feeling the story, feeling that baby egg himself.

‘It’s anthropomorphic,’ my father had said. ‘Do you remember what that means, Jeremy?’

For the life of me, I couldn’t; all I wanted to do was to say the story out loud, for once to hear
him
say it out loud, the familiar reassuring shape of the rhymes. ‘We’ve been through this,’ he said tersely. ‘Will the taste of this help you remember?’ he said, unbuckling his belt.

It’s a single quatrain. But it doesn’t mean a thing, being enlightened about its form. So what that I know that brittle, bulbous egg makes an appearance in
Through the Looking Glass
, discussing semantics with its protagonist Alice.
Wonder if
our
Alice ever read that book? She’d have loved the eponymous hero. I’ll put you together again, dear sweet Alice, and when you’re convoked in my book – when we’re together in my book – maybe it’ll be the right time for me to have a great fall.

Thing is, old chap, I saw her on the night she died. I didn’t mention this to the police; they’d only get the wrong end of the stick. Not that anyone saw us when we’d talked, when we’d argued, but it would only fuel further speculation. I’d charted her movements on Twitter: a list of pub and bar names, pins in a map. It was on the aptly named Above Bar Street when I eventually caught up with her and heard laughter pealing from a huddle of smokers in a pub doorway.
I recognize that laugh
, I thought. Its pitch, its timbre. I turned and gawked.
I recognize that hair
, I thought.
Alice
.

‘
You
,’ she’d said, shocked, scared. A few minutes later, a slap across my face.

Why couldn’t she have been wearing shoes not boots, Larry? Then they wouldn’t have dragged her down so much. There’d been marks on her face, the man in Debenhams had told me. Presumably, he said, from where the current had battered her against hard surfaces. That’ll have been the steps, I thought. The swell of the water had bashed her repeatedly into those.

In my head, I replayed the scenario: her gliding downstream, yet I knew deep down she wouldn’t have been like Ophelia because of another thing I’ve learnt. Bodies in water always float face down.

Yours as ever,

Jeremy

Alice, do me a favour, sweetheart: I can’t open my email. Can you log in from your phone …? Am at the garden centre and need a voucher code. Will be on the email that arrived yesterday. Hope your weekend in Southampton goes well. Your father says don’t drink too much. Love you x

Frankly it was the usual ghastly affair, Larry. Shallow, futile conversations. Professional point-scoring. Anthropological one-upmanship. At least there was plenty of booze, which salved the pain.

We were at a gathering of scientists after a conference. Not creeping around in a tawdry hotel, not grabbing a half-hour assignation in my office with the blinds shut, not in my car by the side of the road in the New Forest. Liz and I were at a party. This is what she’d wanted. Us, out together, in public.

Every time the front door opened I couldn’t help checking who it was.

‘Relax,’ she reassured me, ‘you’re miles from home. We don’t know anyone here. Besides, everyone’s preoccupied with themselves – you’ve said as much yourself. It’s human nature.’

We stood in the kitchen. A few people were dancing to Abba in the living room. No one was my age; everyone was
either in their twenties or middle-aged. Liz was wearing a black dress and the necklace I’d bought her; she looked divine. I was captivated by her neck on that particular night: the long, white curve of it, like a swan or an orchid’s stem or a piece of ornamental blown glass. I felt like a character in a movie – Charlton Heston, say, or Gregory Peck.

A procession of men homed in on her. ‘Are you two together?’ one asked brazenly.

‘Well, I’m not her father, am I?’ I snapped, jealousy spearing me. I put my arm round her, felt her small shoulders. ‘You look beautiful,’ I whispered.

I could feel the tension in her body. I should have anticipated this: there’d been silences over lunch when she’d poked at her mackerel and when I’d enquired how her food was she’d merely replied ‘dry’. Even attempts to pull the conversation back on to a more satisfactory plane by talking about a topic I knew – or guessed – would fascinate her, the raising of the
Mary Rose
, hauled from its ocean grave after 437 years, were unsuccessful.

‘I can’t go on like this,’ she said.

‘This wine isn’t up to much, I’ll give you that.’

‘I need to feel I’m on a trajectory.’

I waited for the moment to pass. When it didn’t, I said: ‘Easy to tell you’re in the English department. You’ll be referring to our
arc
next!’

‘Don’t make fun of me,’ she said. ‘It’s not unreasonable. What we’re doing, it’s all so shoddy and it’s not fair on anyone, least of all Fliss.’

My wife’s name passed like a shadow across the room. The kids of whoever was hosting the bash – they’d been terrorizing guests all night – ran into the kitchen. Poor little wretches, their parents had made them dress up: ties and
tank tops. These academics, they couldn’t even leave their offspring out of their obsessions.

‘Why is it men always think different rules apply to them?’ Liz asked.

I waited, hoping it was a rhetorical question.

‘Can’t you see? If there is going to be an
us
, I want it to be something I can be proud of.’

One of the children, a precocious little fellow – he reminded me of myself at that age – came over and introduced himself. It had been one of the names on my and Fliss’s list, but we’d long since given up talking about names. We’d long since given up talking about children. I knew at home she’d be watching
The Two Ronnies
, laughing at the bit where they pretended to be newscasters, making coffee in the part where Ronnie Corbett told the shaggy-dog story.

‘You’re never going to leave your wife, are you?’ Liz said, when the child had wandered off.

‘Steady on,’ I said. ‘We’ve only known each other for a few months.’

‘A few months, a few years – it makes no difference. You’ll never leave her.’

‘Isn’t loyalty a good trait?’

‘Now’s not the time for your facetiousness, Jem. We all need to be in control of our own destinies and I’m no more than a passenger in yours.’

I glanced at my watch. She took a big swig of gin.

‘Do you love me?’ she asked.

‘Wow, there’s a question.’

‘Yes, there
is
a question – and now I want an answer.’

‘Us anthropologists struggle with that concept,’ I said. ‘It’s generally accepted that love, specifically romantic love, evolved to focus one’s mating energy on one partner as that
attachment enabled us to rear progeny as a team. An American’s been doing some fascinating work in this field. This whole area of what love is
for
is very stimulating.’

‘I don’t care about that. God knows why, but what I care about is
you
. I thought you cared about me.’ Liz sparked up another cigarette. Seemed like the only time she didn’t smoke was when she was
in flagrante
or eating. I recalled how my wife and I had given up together shortly after we’d met.