AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Night. Nice to meet you.’
‘You too,’ she called over her shoulder, one arm up in the air by way of a last wave.
I watched her walk over to her car. For some reason, there was a tight sensation under my skin. Mind how you go, I almost called after her but didn’t. I felt weird, really weird. I walked over to my own car and got in. I drove off before she’d even started the engine. I know now why she didn’t, obviously.
Blue Eyes scrutinises me. ‘And that’s all you remember?’
‘Honestly,’ I say, ‘I’m telling the truth. I don’t remember getting into the car. Hers, I mean. I think I’d remember if I’d got into another woman’s car, especially a sporty one like that, but at the same time, I know I could have forgotten. I know I could have said yes to that lift, got into that car and…’ I shudder. ‘I forget things all the time, walk into a room with no idea what I’ve come in for. I know that the mind is capable of anything so if there’s my DNA in her car, I don’t know how it got there but I’ll accept that it did. It’s as if someone else did it, do you know what I mean? Like it’s me, but another me, someone I can see as separate to myself. The woman that used to be Rachel Ryder. Or that other woman, the one who doesn’t know who she is anymore.’
I think therefore I am. I’m pink therefore I’m Spam. I think I must have got into her car. Therefore I did get in it. I did. I got in that car and I… Oh God. God help me.
36
Rachel
Blue Eyes hands me the umpteenth tissue. That’s her job, I suppose, to wring these tearful confessions from criminals. Criminals like me. I will have a profile, I imagine, like any serial killer. Serial killer. How ridiculous it sounds, even in my head. It isn’t something from life, from any life I can identify with, least of all my own. My life is almost defined by how normal it is. And that was all I wanted: to be normal, to be boring, two kids, a house, enough money to afford what I need, some of what I want, friends. Love. If you’ve got love, you’re rich, that’s what I think.
‘So you believe you left Anne-Marie at the door of the leisure centre?’ Amanda asks me again, and once I’ve got myself under control, I tell her yes, and that I can’t remember anything about the drive home, but that when I did get back, the kitchen smelled of stale cigarettes yet again. I could hear the television blaring from the lounge, but as usual no one had shouted hello at the sound of the front door.
‘And how did you feel?’
‘I felt good,’ I say. ‘I felt pretty happy apart from the smell.’
It’s the truth. That’s all that bothered me. I popped my rucksack on the stairs. I went into the kitchen. I wasn’t crying, I wasn’t shaking, I wasn’t upset in any way. At the sink, I drank a tall glass of cold water and it felt good, better than any bar of chocolate, better than wine, as if the taste of it was clearer somehow, like I was alive, or more alive, or something. But then yes, the smell of stale smoke got to me. I looked over the worktops for signs of an ashtray. Nothing. I looked in the kitchen bin. I did more than look. I dug around in the rubbish. And sure enough, hidden inside a yoghurt pot under a crisp packet that had been stuffed inside, were two fag butts. The bugger. That’d be him and bloody weeping willow Ingrid, I thought. And then I wondered if it was her when Mark’s clothes smelled too, if what I’d thought was just the pub was in fact him going to meet her rather than Roy. The idea didn’t bother me as much as it should have done. I was numb to it.
And don’t ask me why I did this next thing – maybe because I was thinking I would confront him later – but I took the dog ends out, put them in one of the bread bags I keep back to save on using new plastic bags, went through the side door to the garage and stuffed it in the drawer where I’d found Mark’s knife months earlier. I couldn’t face asking him about them now. I was tired. I’d had my first good day in a long time.
‘So that was it?’ Amanda asks. ‘Your only concern was the cigarette ends?’
I think back, really think. ‘No. There was something else. I rummaged to the back of the drawer. There were some charger cables, an adaptor plug, a packet of paper napkins, but the knife wasn’t in there – and now I think about that, I’m thinking, why would I check? What was in my subconscious that would make me do that? I tried to think when I’d last seen it. I thought I remembered putting it back in its sleeve and into the cutlery drawer… ages ago. I hadn’t taken it with me on my walkabouts. I hadn’t dared. I was sure I’d seen it in there the other day. Almost sure. I went back into the kitchen and straight to the drawer.’
‘And did you find it?’
‘No. There was only the potato peeler, serving spoons, salad tongs. A chopping knife, a meat knife, a cheese knife with the curly end, you know? The hunting knife wasn’t there.’
‘And how did you feel?’
‘Nothing. Other than a bit bamboozled. I should have worried. I mean, I should have panicked. But at that point, don’t forget, I had no idea what had happened to poor Anne-Marie, I only knew that meeting her had, for a few precious minutes, made me almost happy.’
On the Friday morning, I didn’t check the iPad. I didn’t know why at the time, but now I think that maybe a tiny chink of light had entered my world and that tiny chink had been enough to let me almost forget my routine. I even shared a joke with Katie, something about Dave and what an arse he is, how I’d put rat poison in his tea one day, and it seems to me, remembering, that Mark even smiled at me that morning, and I at him.
By the time I set off to see Dad, I felt almost cheerful. The September sun was on my face and I’m sure I caught the first fresh smells of autumn. It had been a couple of weeks since I’d last stolen a packet of sweets or a can of pop or anything at all. I walked. I breathed the air, took it into my lungs. I didn’t know if I could see a future, but maybe I could sense one, just out of reach. Whatever, for that brief period, I felt more all right than I had in a long while.
At the home, Dad was agitated, as per. The weather was warm that day and he couldn’t be doing with the heat.
‘Linda, love,’ he wheezed at me no sooner than my foot was in the door of his room. ‘Where the bloody hell have you been?’ Linda was my mother. Who’s dead, as I think I said. And I know I was used to him saying it, but whatever fleeting good mood I’d felt on the way here evaporated.
‘It’s not…’ I began, but then I thought, what’s the point? I wasn’t his daughter, not anymore. I hadn’t been his daughter for a year or two. I was his wife, my mother. Linda. I was standing in front of him like an old photograph of the woman he used to love, the woman he loved so much that as a child I used to wonder sometimes whether he even saw me. For crying out loud, I thought. Even now, when he does see me, it isn’t even me. He was like Katie, full of false logic. Lunacy of age, lunacy of youth – in both cases you had to humour their nonsense while looking after them as best you could. I was middle-aged, in the middle of ages, stuck between the demands of both as many women were – like Lisa was, between her girls and her own very difficult mother. So many women were on this train, trying their best to keep steaming forward, too many passengers, engines failing.
Dad fidgeted in his chair. ‘They’re stealing all my stuff, Linda, and you’re off gallivanting.’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t gone long, though, was I, and I’m here now.’ I opened the little cupboard by his bed, had a quick shufti inside and shut it again, for show. ‘It’s all right, whoever took your stuff has put it back. Nothing to worry about.’
That seemed to appease him. I sat down beside him on the visiting chair next to the commode. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Rubbish,’ he said. ‘Absolutely rubbish.’
‘Oh dear, I’m sorry to hear that.’ And I was. Desperately. But what could I do besides sit with him and listen? ‘What’s the matter?’
