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ME: I spoke to her briefly that morning when she was on her way out. I called her later but she didn’t pick up. She often left her mobile at home. I called her work phone but no one answered. I should have kept calling. She said she was doing the double shift – she was set on it. I should have stopped her. I was giving up, I know that. On her, on both of us, like. I should’ve fought for her. For us. I didn’t know how to talk to her. We couldn’t talk to each other. It was like a bomb had gone off and we both had this ringing in our ears that blocked everything out. That’s what it was like for me, anyway. Like I was blind, deaf and dumb. And even though when Kieron went to uni she told me she was struggling, that she felt unsettled, like it was all coming to an end, I didn’t listen, not really. They were a pair together, heads in books, always laughing at some joke only they got. I used to feel a bit on the outside, to be honest, so when he left – and I feel terrible about this – I thought, good, I’ll have more time with Rach. I had that thought.
HS: For the benefit of the tape, Mr Edwards is composing himself.
ME: Our first date was sharing a bag of Hula Hoops on a park bench, do you know that? Of course you don’t, sorry. But that’s all we needed, do you see what I’m getting at? There’s too much materialism in the world now, too much stuff… and it all gets in the way of everything and there’s all this hate. Hate, hate, hate, everywhere you look, everything you read. No wonder people are stabbing each other. I see it at work, people jumping to conclusions, never seeing the best in people, never giving the benefit of the doubt. And they want all this stuff, the young ones. They want film-star weddings and cars and designer clothes and the latest iPhone and the latest laptop and all this stuff they haven’t earned the right to yet and it’s really really important to them and when they don’t get it, they’re raging, you know? They’re furious, as if it’s their right to have it all, as if they really believe it’ll make them happy. And where does all that rage go? I mean, I can understand why some people don’t understand someone else’s lifestyle; I had difficulty understanding it myself, at first, with Kieron, thought it was something I’d done, but Rachel helped me get my head round it, showed me that being gay wasn’t anything wrong in the first place. But hate? I never hated. Hate doesn’t solve anything, does it? Never has, never will. Love solves things and that’s my biggest failure of all. I… I should’ve picked her up from work that day. I should’ve… and now it’s all…
HS: For the tape, I am pausing the recording.
HS: Mr Edwards, when you’re ready, and I know this is difficult… we have CCTV of a Vauxhall Astra, registration DM11 VCP, on Barnfield Avenue at eight thirty-five on Thursday evening. Barnfield Avenue runs adjacent to Brookvale Leisure Centre, where your wife went to her spinning class. She says she went there in her own car. You say that you were in the Norton Arms, which is at the top of Halton Brow, as I’m sure you’re aware, nowhere near Barnfield Avenue. Can you explain what your car might have been doing in the vicinity of Brookvale Leisure Centre at that time?
39
Rachel
Saturday, 28 September. My first memory of that morning is sitting at the kitchen table, iPad open, weeping into my hands. It was half past six in the morning. I’d been awake since three, had lain there trying to keep my eyelids shut over my stinging eyeballs, but in the end I’d come downstairs, made myself a hot milk with honey and sat on the sofa in my dressing gown crying throughThe King’s Speechon DVD. I’d drifted off until six or so, but then I’d needed a wee so I’d given up and decided to start the second-worst day of my life. Sooner it started, the sooner it would end.
And now I was sitting in the kitchen in the bright light of an early autumn morning, staring at a headline with tears rolling down my face.
‘Is this the article?’ From her notes, Amanda pulls out a sheet and hands it to me. I scan it briefly. There is a black smudge on it, which tells me it’s been photocopied.
‘Yes,’ I say, and take a moment to reread it.
Local mum fatally stabbed in car
Mrs Anne-Marie Golightly was found fatally wounded in her car outside Brookvale Leisure Centre in Halton in the early hours of this morning. Police were alerted to the incident late on Thursday night.
‘Leisure centre manager Mr Timothy Dyer called the emergency services at approximately five minutes to midnight after spotting Mrs Golightly slumped at the wheel of her sports vehicle in the car park,’ said police spokesperson Paul Gowers. ‘An ambulance arrived a little after midnight but the attending paramedics had difficulty accessing the victim as the car had been locked from the outside. After breaking into the car, they pronounced Mrs Golightly dead at the scene. She had been stabbed in the ribs and died of her injuries.’
‘I only went back because I’d forgotten to set the alarm,’ said Mr Dyer. ‘Thought she’d fainted after a gym session or something. I only noticed the car after I’d locked up for the second time, as it was over on the far side, by the trees. It’s a nice motor, not the kind anyone would leave, but I thought maybe someone had had a few drinks at the bar and decided to come back for their wheels tomorrow. When I saw her inside, I couldn’t believe it, to be honest. Not here. I can’t take it in – it’s just an absolute tragedy. I hope the police catch whoever did this and put him away for a very long time.’
Mrs Golightly’s family are asking for privacy at this time. The police are urging anyone who might have any information, no matter how insignificant, to call them immediately on the number below.
‘Rachel,’ Amanda says. ‘Are you OK?’
I nod, yes. But I’m not. I’m not OK.
The report had been posted the evening before. I’d not looked at the news at all. I’d been distracted, eating spaghetti and listening to Katie, thinking how passionate she was, actually, about what she was doing. All thoughts of Lisa and Mark together had been hovering somewhere else, somewhere I had to push them to until I no longer had the strength to hold them there. And strangely, we’d almost been a family in that moment. I’d been almost happy.
I printed Anne-Marie off.
‘I enjoyed meeting you,’ I told her as the letters washed across the page. ‘You were such a nice person.’ I carried her carefully to the kitchen and laid her to rest in my file. ‘I’m sorry we’ll never be friends now. May you rest in peace.’
I looked at the police contact details at the end. I dialled the number, wiping my eyes with my hands. The dial tone sounded once, twice. I hung up. What to say? Whatwasthere to say?
I’d had nothing to do with it. I’d chatted to her, that was all. I’d chatted to her and then I’d come home and had a shower. I remembered the cigarettes, putting them with the others… Had I looked for the knife? I could remember checking the cutlery drawer and feeling a bit confused that it wasn’t there. I had no memory of checking my handbag. But even if the knife were in my handbag, I hadn’t taken my handbag to the leisure centre, only my rucksack with my towel and my hoody. I’d left the rucksack on the bedroom floor, forgotten it until now. The hoody and the towel would still be in there. But where was the knife?
I stood up, crossed the kitchen, opened the cutlery drawer. The knives and forks crashed as the drawer hit my stomach. I scrambled through the serving spoons, the knives, the salad tongs, the corkscrew… Mark’s knife had to be in there, even if I hadn’t seen it last night. I’d seen it recently, I was sure, and it had been in this drawer. I’d taken it out and closed my fingers around its leather handle, pushed the button, and now, remembering, it seemed to me that I’d seen the blade glint under the kitchen light. But had I? A different memory surfaced. Me, rummaging in the drawer, finding nothing. The two memories sat side by side, each as clear as the other.
Had I after all returned it to the garage? Perhaps when I stashed the dog ends?
I slammed the drawer shut, ran through to the garage. In the old dresser, in the top-left drawer, were the two cigarette ends balled up in cling film next to the other two in the bread bag. But no knife. No knife in the right-hand drawer, on the top of the unit, in the cupboards, on the shelves. A missing knife. A woman stabbed in her own car, children left without their mother, a man widowed in the blink of an eye. My eyes clouded. I wiped at them with the backs of my hands.
I am wiping my eyes with the backs of my hands now. There will never be enough tears and yet they will never stop.
‘Do you need another break?’ Blue Eyes sounds like she’s calling to me from another room, but when I look up, she is there in front of me. ‘Rachel? Do you need another break?’
I shake my head. ‘No. No thank you. I want to get it over with. There’s not much more and then you’ll know everything there is to know and you can send me where I belong.’
Outside, a bus rumbles past. After a moment, I tell her the rest. About how I got through that awful day, about how I killed that poor lad and how I eventually made the call.
