Nicci French - Killing Me Softly

Byrne looked between us. Then his face relaxed into a sardonic smile. He sighed. ‘All right,’ he said. Then he looked over at Adam. ‘Don’t worry, sir. We’ll take good care of your wife.’

‘Goodbye,’ I said to Adam. ‘Goodbye, Adam.’

He smiled at me, a smile of such sweetness that he looked like a little boy, full of terrifying hope. But he didn’t say anything, just looked at me as I walked away, and I didn’t look back.

WPC Mayer looked about sixteen. She had bobbed brown hair and a round, slightly spotty face. I sat in the back of the car – a plain blue one, not the police car I’d been expecting – and looked at the back of her plump neck above her crisp white collar. It looked stiff to me, disapproving, and her listless handshake and brief, shallow glance had seemed indifferent.

She made no effort to talk to me, except to tell me at the start of the journey to fasten my seat-belt, please, and I was grateful for that. I leaned against the cool plastic and stared at the London traffic outside, seeing almost nothing. It was a bright morning, and the light gave me a headache, but when I closed my eyes it was no better, for then images chased across the lids. Particularly Adam’s face, my last sight of him. My whole body felt sore and hollow. It was as if I could feel all the different bits of me: my heart, my guts, my lungs, my aching kidneys, the blood coursing round me, my ringing head.

Every so often, WPC Mayer’s radio would crackle into life and she would speak into the car, a strange formulaic kind of language about rendezvous and times of arrival. Outside this car was ordinary real life – people going about their daily business, irritated, bored, contented, indifferent, excited, tired. Thinking about their work, or what to cook for supper, or what their daughter had said at breakfast that morning, or thinking of the boy they fancied, or how their hair needed cutting or how their back ached. It was hard to imagine I had ever been there, in that life. Dimly, as in a dream half forgotten, I remembered evenings in the Vine with the Crew. What had we talked about, night after night, as if time didn’t matter, as if we had all the time in the world? Had I been happy then? I didn’t know any more. I could barely recall Jake’s face now, or not Jake’s face when I was living with him, not his lover’s face, not the way he had looked at me when we lay in bed together. Adam’s face got in the way, his gazing eyes. How he had pushed his way between me and the world, blotting out my view so that all I could see was him.

I had been Alice-with-Jake, then Alice-with-Adam. Now I was just Alice. Alice alone. No one to tell me how I looked or ask me how I felt. No one to make plans with or test thoughts against or be protected by or lose myself in. If I survived this, I would be alone. I looked down at my hands, lying inert on my lap. I listened to my breathing, steady and quiet. Maybe I wouldn’t survive. Before Adam, I had never been too scared of death, mainly because death had always seemed far off, happening to some comfy white-haired old woman whom I couldn’t connect with myself. Who would miss me, I wondered. Well, my parents would miss me, of course. My friends? In a way – but for them I had already gone missing when I walked out on Jake and the old life. They would shake their heads over me as over a curiosity. ‘Poor thing,’ they would say. Adam would miss me, though; yes, Adam would miss me. He would weep for me, genuine tears of grief . He would always remember me and he would always mourn me. How strange that was. I almost smiled.

I took the photograph out of my pocket again and stared at it. There I was, so happy at the miracle of my new life that I looked like a madwoman. There was a hawthorn bush behind me, and grass and sky, but that was all. What if I couldn’t remember? I tried to recall the route from the church but as I did so a sense of utter blankness came over me. I couldn’t even visualize the church itself. I tried to stop myself thinking about it, as if by doing so I might drive away the last shreds of memory. I looked at the photograph again and I heard my own voice: ‘For ever,’ I had said. For ever. What had Adam said back? I couldn’t think about that, but I remembered that he had cried. I had felt his tears on my cheek. For a moment, I nearly cried myself, sitting in that chilly police car, on my way to find out if I was going to win or be defeated by him, live or be destroyed by him. Adam was my enemy now but he had loved me, whatever that meant. I had loved him, too. For one disastrous moment, I wanted to tell WPC Mayer to turn round and go home; it was all a terrible mistake, a mad aberration.

I shook myself and looked out of the window again, away from the photograph. We were off the motorway now, and driving through a little grey village. I remembered nothing of this journey. Oh, God, maybe nothing would come back to me at all. WPC Mayer’s neck was unyielding. I closed my eyes once more. I felt so frightened that I was almost calm with it, sickly calm; frozen calm. My spine felt thin and brittle when I shifted in the seat; my fingers were cold and stiff.

‘Here we are.’

The car drew up at St Eadmund’s church, a stocky grey building. A notice outside announced proudly that the foundations of the church were more than a thousand years old. With a surge of relief, I remembered it. But this was where the test began. WPC Mayer got out of the car and opened the door for me. I got out and then saw that three people were waiting for us. Another woman, a bit older than Mayer, wearing slacks and a thick sheepskin jacket, and two men in yellow jackets, like the jackets that construction workers often wear. They were carrying spades. My knees felt wobbly, but I tried to walk briskly, as if I knew exactly where I wanted to go.

They hardly looked at me as we approached. The two men were talking to each other. They glanced up at me then resumed their conversation. The woman stepped forward and introduced herself as Detective Constable Paget, took Mayer by the elbow and steered her away from me.

‘We should be finished with this in a couple of hours,’ I heard her say. So no one believed me at all. I looked down at my feet. I was wearing inappropriate ankle boots with heels, hopeless for walking over moorland and through muddy fields. I knew which direction we were going to set off in. I was just going to continue walking up the road, past the church. That much was easy. It was what happened next that was the problem. I caught the two men staring over at me, but when I stared back at them their glances fell away, as if they were embarrassed by me. The madwoman. I pushed my hair behind my ears and did up the top button of my jacket.

The two women returned, looking purposeful.

‘Right, Mrs Tallis,’ said the detective, nodding at me. ‘If you’d like to show us the way, then.’

My throat felt as if there was some obstruction in it. I started to walk along the lane. One foot in front of another, clip clop along the silent lane. Childhood surged back on me in a rhyme: ‘Left, left, had a good home and I left. Right, right, it serves you jolly well right.’ WDC Paget walked beside me and the other three fell behind a little way. I couldn’t make out what they were saying to each other, but every so often I could hear one of them laugh. My legs felt heavy, like lead. The road stretched out in front of me, on and on, featureless. Was this my last walk?

‘How far is it from here?’ asked WDC Paget.

I had no idea. But round a bend, the road forked and I saw a war monument with a chipped stone eagle on the top.

‘This is it,’ I said, trying not to sound relieved. ‘This is where we came.’

WDC Paget must have heard the surprise in my voice for she cast me a quizzical glance.