Silent Waters, page 15
She ignores him, stalks back, her arms laden.
‘This is my private space. How dare you.’
She shoves all the pictures in a kitchen cupboard and then thinks it’s all useless anyway. Sam has a bedroom for Christ’s sake. Jen can’t erase all evidence of him.
‘But it’s Claudia, Jen. The chips are down and she needs us. She wants to leave Mark, but she was waiting for Paris, when he would be distracted with the Olympics.’
‘She wanted to disappear and not tell him?’
‘Yes, and she was going to pay me for helping her. I’ve been emailing real estate in Canada. I’ve been the one making calls to Victoria Franklin about selling Oak House so Claudia could free the money and move. Victoria isn’t too happy about it, but it’s the only option.’
‘Is that what you meant by Claudia giving you money?’
‘From the sale, yeah.’
‘But why did she want to leave Mark? Why all this secrecy?’
‘You wouldn’t believe—’
A bleeping causes her to look down, and she sees that her watch alarm is firing.
‘Shit, Sam’s school – I didn’t sort pick-up for this afternoon . . . God, maybe someone might be able to’ – she fiddles with her phone, taps on the screen – ‘bring him back here or . . . Shit, shit.’
‘Go and get him,’ Bill says. ‘But we all need to talk. Come back after?’
‘And bring Sam with me? Are you for real?’
‘Can you leave him with Kerry?’
She looks at him coldly. ‘You’re calling all the shots, are you?’
‘I know it’s been crap of me to keep you in the dark, but we can’t go to the police until we’ve all spoken.’
‘You know what trouble I could be in?’ she says. ‘You know what I’ve put on the line with all this? I want you gone by the time I’m back.’
‘But what if someone sees her coming out of your flat? We have to stay here, Jen.’
She makes a noise, high-pitched, frustrated and torn. ‘Why didn’t you just call me, prick? I hate this. I hate her, and I hate that you brought her here!’
‘I tried to leave her in the Lakes.’
‘That’s where you’ve been?’
‘Not the whole time – just for a few days. A holiday house as far away as I could get for a while. I told her she should stay there, but she wanted to come back with me. She’s terrified.’
‘Of what? Sheep?’
‘Of Mark. Anyway, she had to come back at some point. She needs the ID and the money. I couldn’t find them when I went in.’
She narrows her eyes. ‘In where? You went to Oak House? When? After she’d been declared missing?’
‘Yes—’
‘How did you get in?’
‘I went through the garden.’
‘Through the fence panel, right?’
‘Yes?’
‘Jesus, Bill.’
‘I know. I feel like I’m hanging on by a fucking thread. I had to help her? Don’t you see? I owe her. Go and get Sam and then come back here, OK? You’ll know what to do when we explain it all.’
She wants to kick him in the face, in the bollocks.
‘But I don’t know what to do!’ she hisses. ‘And I’m tired of being responsible all the time! What have I found in the—’
‘Found?’
‘You disappeared and I found a . . . I thought you’d . . . I thought . . .’
‘You thought I’d hurt Claudia? Is that why you were asking about where I was that night?’
‘You lied to me, Bill.’
He looks upset. ‘You think I would hurt someone? You think I could do that? I’ve been trying to help her!’
‘But do you know how reckless you’ve been? My God, Bill.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You’re going to be.’
She gores him with a look as she opens the door and then, on the other side of it, she starts to cry.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Bill exhales into the silence.
He feels bad. He knows that Jen’s diving is dangerous, he knows too that causing a false investigation like this is a criminal offence. He and Claudia had expected Mark to have declared her missing at some point, but to have a random dog-walker spot something in the river on that Monday elevated everything to a height they could never have foreseen. They thought it would just fade away into nothing and then they could get Claudia safely away to Canada, but instead they watched the news, saw that the divers were called out again, and then again the following week, there were more appeals made for more witnesses. In the quiet of number ten’s garage, they talked about coming out to the police, but that would have ruined her chances to properly vanish later. The investigation grew.
There was no question of helping her when she came to him four months ago. After what happened at the barn, there was a debt to be repaid, and a chance for him to prove his worth in repaying it. The added incentive, of course, was the money she promised him – five thousand pounds immediately (in the envelope that he couldn’t find in Oak House) and forty thousand from the sale of the house. Enough to cover his financial debts and all the money he’s borrowed from Andy without Andy noticing. Christ, it’s so much money that he’s racked up, a staggering, eye-watering amount, and the stupid thing was that the bigger it got, the less it felt like when he lost a fifty here, or a hundred there. Pittance against the monster of debt already accrued. The thought of it makes his stomach lurch.
He goes into the living room, watches Claudia sleeping. It was a risk returning, but she’d backed him into a corner with her stunt with the pool liner.
‘Why did you do that, Claud?’ he’d asked her in dismay when he’d returned home from the drive, after he’d talked to Andy.
She was sat still in the armchair of the vast living room of the house in Cumbria.
‘Why did you write that in the bottom of the pool?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly.
‘I put you in that house to keep you safe,’ he said. ‘So no one would be suspicious of where you’d gone.’
She nodded. ‘I know. God, I know, and I’m sorry.’
‘What did you even use? One of the knives I gave you to eat with?’
‘Yes.’
He wanted to shout at her stupidity, her thoughtlessness, but he couldn’t articulate it because it was confused – it’s still confused – with so many other emotions. He loves her, he always has, and he needs her for his financial security.
She had put her hand to his shaking shoulders. ‘I did a stupid thing. I should have told you about it. When you left me each night, I felt like I was in this weird time warp. Invisible. And I was angry. I was so angry at having to be in that house, alone, with none of my things, and frightened of the future. The night you said we had to go to Cumbria, I had left the garage and just wandered the house and found the pool. It drew me in, I guess.’
She looked at Bill with those beautiful eyes, those thick lashes.
‘I had scratched out those words because he used to say them to me. And I wanted to tell myself that I did take that moment and so I carved it out to tell myself that I was alive and that I was worth something, despite him.’
She’d pulled him towards her in a hug, and then she’d cried, huge sobs against his chest so that his T-shirt was wet with tears.
Maybe it’s good they’ve come back, he tells himself. Because Mark will go to Paris soon – he’s been cleared for travel, so Claudia can try to get into the house for the passport and money. Possibly this could all work out. Breathe, he tells himself now. Go back to the site, try to sort more of the shit he’s gotten himself into with Andy, and then back to Claud, speak to Jen. He also needs to email Victoria Franklin about furthering the sale of Oak House. He has a list of things to do the length of his arm.
He clicks on his emails. Victoria’s last correspondence is full of fury, directed not at him, of course, but at Claudia.
Claudia, how dare you even consider selling Oak House, which was my father’s beloved project all those years ago?
How dare you contact buyers without my permission?
Claudia has emailed her twice since then from Bill’s email account, but she’s not replied. Bill chews at his nails. What will happen if Victoria tries to stop the sale? What would happen to his debts then?
With a final glance at Claudia, he grabs the keys to the black van, and locks the door behind him.
TWENTY-NINE
Claudia wakes.
She’s lying on a sofa, covered with a fleece blanket which smells of things she remembers; of jasmine, peaches, and of chlorine – Jen’s smell. There’s safety in the memory of it because it belongs to Claudia’s childhood, when life was hopeful and free and not like it is now. Now it’s toxic and all the bricks she built her life on are crumbling.
The light has faded and she wonders briefly if it’s dusk or dawn before she sees a clock on the wall. It’s seven in the evening. She thinks how strange it is to wake like this. She was dreaming again about the diving pool agitator, that when she jumps from the platform, it suddenly turns off, and she’s spinning faster and faster into a sheet of water that now looks like glass. She’s can’t tell where the bottom of the pool is, and she’s going to crash into it like it’s concrete and her body will break. She’s been long used to waking to the immediate sense of dread, she’s had years where’s she’s tried to work out what mood Mark might have been in before he’s even rolled over to face her. Even on the good days, she couldn’t trust Mark’s smiles – they could change very suddenly, like a cloud that turned the sky black.
‘Hello?’ she calls quietly, but she’s met with silence.
She sits up and takes in her surroundings. The lounge is small and compact, with a tall standing lamp in one corner, a mirror, and a huge TV. On the walls are framed pictures of stock internet phrases on well-being – Believe you can and you are already halfway there and Life beats down and crushes the soul but art reminds you that you have one – and they make Claudia laugh because Jen was always the most capable person Claudia knew, so what on earth is she doing with all this rubbish? Jen was always driven and ambitious and determined – all the things that Claudia wasn’t but pretended to be. She can see numerous hooks on the wall too, noticeable gaps where frames should be. Was it that way when Bill brought her in here? They’d driven all night and she was so tired and now can’t remember.
There is a bookcase with shelves filled with books with titles like Into The Deep, The Wave, Something Beneath the Sea, and this brings a smile to Claudia’s face. Jen, a human whose heart and soul belong in the water.
She’s thought about Jen a lot over the years; has wondered who she is now, what makes her laugh, and what makes her cry. She remembers years ago they used to do both at the same time. She remembers a day at the river, where they’d floated along where the water became rapid-like. It had shot them downstream alongside little gathered icebergs of dun foam, beneath a canopy of yellow leaves. Claudia went so fast that she clung wildly to Jen’s legs and Jen got her foot stuck down Claudia’s cleavage and couldn’t pull it free. Claudia thinks that she’s never laughed so hard before or since. She wonders if Jen ever thinks of this memory, if she’s kept it close to her heart or thrown it away like she did the friendship they had. Or was it Claudia who had thrown it away?
She shivers because she’s wearing only Bill’s T-shirt and her jeans and she’s cold, she wants a cup of tea, or maybe something stronger. She definitely wants a jumper and she wants Bill here, but he’s not. She looks around for her bag to see if he might have messaged her on the phone he bought her, but she can’t see it by the sofa or, indeed, anywhere. She gets up to find a jumper in Jen’s bedroom and wonders what Jen would think of her entering her most intimate space – it feels like something utterly forbidden.
The bedroom is as messy as it has always been. The bed – a simple navy duvet cover and white sheets – is unmade and there are clothes strewn around the floor, books in a stack on the bedside table with a teacup perched on top of it, the remnants of it cold and discoloured. There’s a dressing table opposite, with an assortment of cream tubes and cosmetics without lids littering it and Claudia can bet most of them are out of date. On closer inspection, she’s right.
Jen was never a girlie-girl. When they were teenagers and they used to spend hours in front of Claudia’s vanity complete with Hollywood-dressing-room-style light bulbs, Jen would prefer to make herself up to look like a gargoyle and make them both laugh than try to enhance her features. Claudia used to roll her eyes, thought Jen wasn’t confident in her own skin, wasn’t brave enough to see the woman beneath the surface of her girlhood, but now she thinks Jen was actually just above it all – she wasn’t in a hurry to be something she wasn’t. She was always just herself.
Claudia tilts her head, sees a few strips of photo-booth photographs tucked into the back of the mirror and lifts them out. Black-and-white pictures of Jen and Bill, and Jen with a few men she doesn’t recognise. There are some too of Jen with Kerry Westbrook, Jen’s best friend who idolised Jen and who loved Bill. Claudia never liked her.
She looks for photos of Jen’s child – Bill told her of a son – but where is he? Claudia can’t imagine Jen as a mother, though she couldn’t imagine her as a police officer either. It would be like a dress-up day at school and not real life, not her Jen. But Jen hasn’t been hers for so long, so what would Claudia know about anything. She doesn’t know Jen any more, just like she doesn’t know herself. The woman she used to be was brave and strong, and above all, a good person, but she’s not brave or strong any more and she’s definitely not good.
She goes to the wardrobe, pulls the door. Inside is a jumble of jeans and jumpers on a shelf, and countless shirts immaculately ironed that she realises must be part of Jen’s police uniform. She selects a generic, brandless, grey hoodie and puts it over her head, immediately engulfed by the comfort of Jen’s smell once again.
Some of Claudia’s favourite memories are of the two of them sitting at her kitchen table, their hair damp from practice, and wearing each other’s clothes. Claudia thought that it must be like having a sister. It became tradition after every Friday practice, and on Mondays after they’d finished their school days, they would meet in the Tea For Two cafe and swap them back again. They used to order salted caramel milkshakes, talk about their days and then move onto more serious things – their dives, their tucks, the modifications they needed to make to be tighter, better, stronger. Jen always made Claudia work harder, made her want more, push her body more aggressively. But every time Claudia improved at arching, or tightening her tucks, Jen would match it all effortlessly. She recalls Victoria commenting once on how naturally talented Jen was.
‘Claudia is as good as me,’ Jen would say.
‘I think you have the edge,’ Victoria would say and Claudia would wilt beneath this degradation.
She turns to leave, is hungry and wants to make herself something to eat, when she catches sight of a small cube on the bedside cabinet. It’s a photo cube and in each tiny face are pictures of Jen with a little boy and in that instant she knows. She picks up the photograph, puts it so close to her face that her breath fogs the gloss of the picture. Jen and her son are on a beach with their arms wrapped tightly around each other, and sunshine in their hair. They look alike – so alike that not many people would see what she sees, but she’s studied Mark’s face for decades. She knows that slight upturn in the lips that this boy has, knows the way Mark’s hair falls in a curling lock over his forehead, the same as this boy.
Claudia stalks out, and straight into the boy’s bedroom, her hunger forgotten. Like Jen’s, this room is messy, but God, it’s full of life and vibrancy. Little Lego creations on the windowsill, his clothes messy in open drawers, a toy cow on the bed. On the wall is a drawing tacked up, of a person with three fingers on each hand, hair zigzagging across their head in black triangles, a mouth that is drawn in red and runs literally from ear to ear. She takes it down, stares at it. There’s a rainbow, and a thin blue line to represent the sky, except she frowns, because, no, there’s blue for the sky and also for the ground and Claudia realises that it’s because it’s a pool or the sea. It’s water, of course. To my Superhands Mummy, it reads, beecos you are like a murmayd and a fish and a shark. love from Sam.
Claudia is taken by surprise by the emotion that rushes to her heart. She imagines that’s what it’s like to have a child – that you fall in love with them as you do a partner, except the love is deeper, unparalleled. Your own ego doesn’t need to be satisfied when you have a child – you just love them. Or, she imagines, that’s how it should be. Her own mother was far from it. Rich in material wealth but not in love.
She puts the picture on the duvet, tries to control the angry heat of betrayal, because this boy is Mark’s son, and Mark is a liar, a cheat, and worse. So much worse. When did this happen? She can’t remember what age Bill said the boy was, but she places him at about seven.
She exhales. She remembers seeing Mark for the first time – everyone remembers where they were when they first saw Mark Mason, like they can recall the moon landing, the Twin Towers falling, Princess Diana’s death, the Queen. Jen hadn’t stopped talking about him for months, so Claudia had finally decided to see for herself what the fuss was all about. One Saturday morning, she’d cycled to the pool and had sat with Bill in the viewing gallery, her trainers up on the chairs in front.
‘Come on then,’ she said. ‘Where is he? Jen’s obsession?’
Bill pointed. ‘There. Ripped as shit and drives an old Nighthawk apparently. Dick.’
She followed his finger to see a man coming into view. She blinked, breath knocked, at the sight of this lean, muscular figure, with dark curls and an olive complexion, and she’d smiled in understanding.
‘Oh yeah. What a shitty Adonis he is.’
‘Whatever,’ Bill said. ‘I have beauty and youth.’
‘He’s how old?’
‘I don’t know, do I? Ask Jen – she’ll probably know his star sign and whatever animal he’s supposed to be on the Zodiac.’
