After the Party, page 23
‘Yes, okay.’
I hang up and rise to my feet, flinging open the kitchen door. Marie was hiding something from me, they both were. Robbie knew. I think about the car that followed me, Robbie’s car. The phone submerged in mud. Did they plant it … together? The tip, the phone, the shadow outside my door, the witnesses that saw me and Dean. Now a body. Rebecca’s body. Marie is the one person who knows I love him, that I would have done anything to be with him. Was she trying to frame me?
I close the door and walk into the hallway to look at the picture of Rebecca I’d drawn at the office. ‘You’ve captured me perfectly.’ That’s what she’d said. It’s the same distant look, the way she stared out of the window at the procession of fields. It’s the look I saw when we sat on the bench and stared over my shoulder at the tree-lined verge and into the black forest.
‘Why were you calling me? What were you going to say?’
I lean forward and touch the picture, like she’s trying to speak to me through it, to tell me what happened. It loosens and floats to the floor, landing further up the hallway.
I pick it up to put it back, but I notice something.
I trace my steps back to the picture again, but not the one of Rebecca.
Chapter Twenty-Six
When I’m standing in front of the yellow cottage, I will myself to turn back. I’ve torn the painting out of the sketchpad and it’s folded in my coat pocket. I glance up the street, a winding country road with no pavements or public footpaths. No way here. Three miles down the road is the fork and Church Corner, and beyond that the small stretch of road with a cluster of houses where the accident happened.
My parents’ car isn’t on the driveway. I tread across the gravel, past my bench and the swaying willow tree, its dangling tendrils slipping across my shoulder, as if pleading with me to not go any further.
Then I see it, beyond the muddied grass verge and gnarly brown plants. It’s what I painted but didn’t really see. I hold up the painting. Next to the garden shed a grey tarpaulin is loose and flapping carelessly in the breeze. A harsh stroke of red, incongruous against the pale green backdrop, but when I lower the painting, the red isn’t there.
As I approach, the corner of the tarpaulin hesitates and recoils violently, slapping the paving in front. Pieces of brick weigh down the edges, but this corner is stubborn, whipped into a frenzy by the strong gusts of tempestuous wind.
I peel it back slowly, but it’s empty apart from a few logs.
I twist to the side as I hear my parents’ car pull onto the driveway. Mum’s in the driver’s seat and spots me straightaway, clambering over the grass verge. Through the tinted windows I see the confusion and alarm as she races to turn off the engine and rushes towards me, leaving the car door open. She bends down and clutches my wrist.
‘What are you doing?’
She claws me into her, pulling me across the verge into her lap. She tries to brush the dirt and mud away, pushing my hair back from my face to gauge me.
‘Elizabeth?’ she says, concern rising in her voice as she repeats my name, but I can’t speak.
She carefully moves me off her lap and rises, staring down at the loose tarpaulin. I push myself to sit upright. I stare up at her. She’s staring at the painting clutched in my hand. Her green parka is zipped up to obscure her chin, her eyes dark and stormy, set in a hard line. I go to ask her why, but she breaks away. She grapples with the cover and tucks it under again, grabbing bricks to weigh it down. She turns to me and I’m numb, as her hard gaze breaks into a soft smile.
She lowers herself to the ground and pries the painting out of my hand. She studies it, looking carefully at the log store, at the red dress, the pale limb just visible under the loose tarpaulin.
My head swims. The accident. The car. Rebecca.
‘It’s her,’ I whisper. ‘What did you do?’
Her wispy blonde hair is bunched up around her ears, hiding most of her face. ‘I did nothing,’ she says, unemotionally. Like it’s the easiest thing in the world to say. We sit in silence staring at the cover. I twist towards her: Mum, her practicality, her broad figure, her devotion. As much as I try to make sense of it, I can’t imagine what happened that night. She reaches out a gloved hand and places it over mine.
‘Let’s go inside.’
Then, much as when I’m painting, I start positioning and framing all the pieces. The night she picked me up from the Christmas party, the way she held me and soothed me as I cried about Dean. She wasn’t there in the morning, was she?
‘I don’t understand.’
She squeezes my hand. ‘I didn’t hurt that girl.’
‘It’s her in the picture, isn’t it?’
She hesitates before straightening her back. ‘What else could I do? It really isn’t what you think.’
‘Then tell me.’
‘What do you want me to say? I’ve spent your whole life shielding you from pain, protecting you, so don’t make me say it,’ she says.
‘What?’
She drops my hand and turns away. ‘I did this for you.’
I press my eyes shut, willing the image of Rebecca to fade away, but I just imagine her purple contorted body, her wide, lifeless eyes. I see her looking out of the window at work, her slim body leaning forward in her tight red dress, the look she flashed me, the look I painted.
‘You did what for me?’
‘I saw an opportunity and I took it, to relieve your pain, like any good mother would do. I didn’t kill her,’ Mum says. Her eyes widen and her mouth falls open slightly, almost like she hadn’t thought of it before.
‘What happened that night?’
She leans her head on my shoulder like a child and scoops both my hands in hers.
‘Mum,’ I whisper.
‘Like I told you, I did nothing.’ She mutters softly, ‘in the hopes that nothing was enough.’
‘Tell me what happened.’
‘Okay, Elizabeth, but you won’t like it.’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Mum smooths a hand over the cold, damp grass like she’s about to lay something down. She speaks slowly but with a rigidness, her tone slightly manic and jerky.
‘When I got the call from you that night, I’d never heard you sound so defeated. I don’t remember ever having to pick you up in the early mornings from drinking too much. It was the first thing that threw me off that evening. When I arrived you looked awful, doubled over on a bench, your pretty velvet dress covered in flecks of sick – it was distressing. I took you home, don’t you remember?
‘I was patient. I waited for you to shower, to get dressed and look more like you again. Then you padded back downstairs, looking distraught and exhausted. Something was eating at you, gnawing at you from the inside. I made you a cup of tea, and waited. I was so patient,’ she repeats.
That’s not how I remember it, but none of that night went as it was supposed to go. Even her reaction when I climbed into the car wasn’t right.
‘I asked you what was wrong, and you told me. It was heartbreaking, to hear you speak about someone like that. To hear you speak about love. I’ve heard you mention Dean before and I had an inkling that you liked him, from that little upturned smile on your face or whenever you looked at that painting above your desk, but love?’
Had I told her I loved him? I stretch my legs away from her and stare at the empty log store. The painting is now folded away in Mum’s coat pocket.
‘Did you try and ruin it? The painting?’ She looks at me coldly. ‘You saw what I had painted. You saw what I saw, and when I came back the next day, it was stuck together.’
‘You were about to throw it all away, Elizabeth. You were about to leave when you have everything, a family, a promotion at work, a beautiful house and someone that you love. I was annoyed at you. How could you be so careless? That’s not my daughter, she isn’t irresponsible.
‘No, I wasn’t annoyed at you, I was annoyed at myself. I’d been oblivious to how dear you are, I hadn’t tried to talk to you about matters of the heart, I’d been blind to that. There you were, offering it all up to me. You were so small, bent over the kitchen counter sipping your tea, a dazed sad look in your eye. I wanted to help, don’t you remember?’
I shake my head. She had watched me paint it. She sat with me on the bench under the willow tree, side by side, and the whole time Rebecca was there.
‘You didn’t tell him how you felt, so how could you expect him to make a decision when he didn’t have all the facts? I waited for you to trek upstairs and crawl into bed and wallow in your pity and I drove away from you that night so mad, I sped around the empty streets trying to relieve that anger, but it remained.
‘It was late, and the village was empty. The rain was relentless, so I could barely see, and I drove home through the dark streets hoping to find some resolve. I turned around Church Corner and that’s when I saw it. A car had collided against a tree, but the headlights were on and both front doors wide open, the windshield wipers still thrashing. I pulled over immediately and ran over to help. The front of the car had caved in slightly, like two small arms grabbing the tree, and then I saw a flash of red. I peered in the car and a girl was sitting in the passenger seat, hunched over. There was blood on the dashboard and smeared down the back of her bare neck coiling down a bright red dress. She was clutching the side of her head and muttering under her breath.’
‘What happened?’ I asked, but she didn’t reply.
‘I pulled up my hood and looked around, but I couldn’t see anything through the blanket of rain. There wasn’t anyone in the driver’s seat. I stepped back into the road and yelled for help, for anyone, but there was no reply. I went back to the car and asked if she was alone.’
‘She shook her head slowly then groaned in pain and I asked if she’d hit her head. She spoke then, she told me that she was okay. She looked familiar, I must have seen her around the village, but it wasn’t until she turned to face me, twisting her body, and the moonlight hit her face.’
‘You knew it was Rebecca,’ I whisper.
She nods. ‘Just not right away. I asked her who she was with, but she wouldn’t respond. I was about to call an ambulance, but she insisted I didn’t. I got my phone out anyway and that’s when she yelled, ‘No.’ She said it would get her friend in trouble. That her friend was drunk. I asked again where she was, but she shrugged, and muttered that she’d gone to get help.’
‘Why didn’t you call an ambulance anyway? She was clearly hurt.’
‘I did, but I helped her out of the car and she really did seem okay when she stood up. She swayed slightly then nodded purposefully and let go of her head. She kept saying over and over again that the police would arrest her friend if they came. I asked where I could take her and she whispered that she didn’t want to go home, that she couldn’t.’ Mum stares at me now, like the next part will sting. She smooths the grass again, mud clinging to her woollen gloves.
‘I got her into the car and switched on the overhead light and asked if I could take a look at her head. She nodded and let me examine her.’ Mum balls her hands into fists and forces herself to look ahead at the log store. ‘She looked at me and said quietly, “You’re Lizzie’s mum.” She told me she works with you. Maybe it was the adrenaline, the shock of seeing the crash, or seeing you so heartbroken, but I understood then. Rebecca.’
Mum starts to cry, silent tears running down her mottled red cheeks. ‘She told me you’re a good person.’ Now she’s sobbing, uncontrollably, punching her fist lightly into the ground. ‘I saw the blood, I saw the haziness in her eyes, I heard it as she slurred the words, “Lizzie’s in love with Dean.”’ She brushes her nose with her glove and takes a deep breath. ‘I started driving, I was going to take her to the hospital. I realised then that she wasn’t okay, her head started to loll back and forth, she started to hunch slightly, like her bones had melted away and her limbs were like jelly, but—’ She starts to breathe more quickly, like the words are trying to escape her but she’s doing all she can to keep them in. ‘I didn’t drive her to a hospital. I imagined her in a hospital bed, I imagined Dean rushing to her side, I imagined you standing like I stood in the hospital room door and looking at two people that love each other, all the pain that it would cause you.’
‘What happened?’ I whisper.
‘I drove home and when I got there she was limp and cold, but alive.’
‘Mum…’
‘I waited in the car until she wasn’t breathing, until she wasn’t alive anymore. I watched the blood soak her cadaverous, sunken cheeks, I watched her eyes slowly close.’ She bites her lip. ‘I watched her die.’
The tarpaulin has loosened again and slaps against the bare concrete like it’s demanding attention.
‘The body they found?’
She stiffens, wincing with every smack of the sheet on the ground.
‘I took her to the woods when I heard you were arrested. I got rid of the body so it wouldn’t implicate you.’ She sniffs and looks at me, her grey eyes drowsy and half closed like I imagine Rebecca’s were. ‘I didn’t kill her, Elizabeth. I just did what any parent would do to protect their child. I made the problem go away.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I drive towards the hospital. I imagine I’m snaking along the roads on the wine-stained map, following the red marker route. A to B, B to C, where does it end? I drive past Church Corner, past The Swan, past the little white cottage, past Tom’s barn. It all seems a little clearer now; the clouds have dissipated and the sun gazes hopefully on the village green, drying up the drenched grass. The trees glisten with frost, like they’re covered in white blossom.
When I arrive at the hospital, I check my phone and see a missed call from Marcus. I close my eyes and see Rebecca’s small, bunched fist, her body pale and bruised, her hair a dark crimson flat against her scalp. Mud and dried blood claw her body and creep up her colourless face. Her lips parted as if she’s trying to whisper something. Her eyes wide and alarmed, staring up at the canopy of trees. She’s blue and red and pale all at the same time. I imagine Mum walking away from her, leaving her like that.
I walk down the corridor towards Dean’s room. What will I tell him? The nurse from reception is coming up the hall towards me, already smiling as she clutches a bundle of sheets. She nods at me.
‘He’s awake, room at the end.’ Like I’d forgotten.
I feel myself slow, the squeak of the heels of my boots as I turn back. I can’t do this. The nurse is observing me, she’s frozen by an open door. She nods.
‘You can go in,’ she says. ‘The police have already been.’
I nod back, forcing a smile. The police have already been? I turn around and edge towards Dean’s room. What have they told him?
I knock lightly on the door before stepping inside. The room smells like him, that sweet smoky scent. His beanie is lying across the back of the armchair in the corner of the room. The curtains are drawn, but there’s a lamp on in the corner. Dean is lying where I left him, tucked under the covers, completely still. The nurse said he was awake, but his eyes are closed, deep black bruises now sprawled across his entire face, his hair greasy and pinned back from his forehead.
‘His parents are on a flight today,’ the nurse says, appearing in the doorway. ‘The police came this morning.’ She pulls the door towards her, ready to give us some privacy. ‘They told him that they found her, Rebecca,’ she whispers. She points at Dean. ‘He might be a little tired, it’s been an emotional morning.’
She closes the door and the noise stirs Dean. He opens his bloodshot eyes, but they rest lazily on me like he’s trying to register where he is.
‘Rebecca?’ he says.
I shake my head, biting my lip, trying to hold back the tears. ‘It’s me,’ I say, taking his hand in mine. I lower myself into the chair next to him. His eyes open and close slowly. ‘How are you feeling?’
He swallows and clears his throat, releasing a horrible rasping that catches on his lips. I reach forward and dab them with the sleeve of my hoodie, bringing a cup of water to his lips and tilting the straw towards him. He leans forward and takes a small sip, red eyes gazing at me in the darkness.
‘Lizzie.’
I smile at him, but realise it’s not Dean who said it. I pull the cup away and place it on the table, twisting in the chair to see the door open and Marcus standing watching us.
‘I thought you might be here,’ he says.
Dean has let his head fall back into the pillow. His eyes are closed, but I reach forward to push his hair back. He flinches slightly when I touch him. His skin feels clammy and warm as I brush my fingertips across his forehead.
‘Have you seen the news?’ Marcus says.
‘Is it her?’ I ask, biting my lip, knowing the answer.
‘Yes.’ He takes a step forward. ‘I need to speak to you. I’ll wait outside.’
I lean forward and kiss Dean on the cheek. His skin is salty and sweet. He stirs, but his swollen eyes are lost in the swirls of purple bruising.
‘Goodbye, Dean,’ I whisper.
Marcus is waiting for me in the empty reception area, sitting on one of the blue plastic chairs by the window, staring out at the carpark. The nurse is watching us from the desk. She spots me and smiles sadly.
‘I’m sorry I missed your call,’ I say, sitting next to him.
He won’t look at me. His eyes are pinched at the side, and deep lines furrow his cheeks. He looks exhausted. ‘I’m so sorry about Rebecca,’ he chokes, his voice sounding uncertain. He thinks he failed, but he hasn’t, I’m the one that’s sorry, I’m the one that…
‘We also arrested the man that assaulted Dean.’ He pauses. ‘Graham.’
‘Graham?’
He nods.
‘But why?’
He clasps his hands. ‘He was hired by Rebecca’s dad. He thought Dean was involved in her disappearance. He wanted to send a message.’ He leans forward onto his knees, burying his head in his hands.
