Clare Mackintosh - I Let You Go

There is a pause and I see Eve trying to decide what to tell me. I shake my head, because suddenly I can see what I refused to acknowledge as a child. ‘He hit her, didn’t he?’

She nods mutely.

I think of my handsome, clever father; always finding funny things to share with me; twirling me round even when I was far too big for such games. I think of my mother; always quiet, unapproachable, cold. I think how I hated her for letting him leave.

‘She put up with it for years,’ Eve says, ‘and then one day after school I came into the kitchen and saw him beating her. I screamed at him to stop, and he turned round and hit me across the face.’

‘Oh God, Eve!’ I’m sickened by the difference in our childhood memories.

‘He was horrified. He said how sorry he was, that he hadn’t seen me there, but I saw the look in his eyes before he hit me. For that moment he hated me, and I honestly believe he could have killed me. It was as though something suddenly switched in Mum: she told him to leave and he went without a word.’

‘He was gone when I got home from ballet,’ I say, remembering my grief when I realised.

‘Mum told him she would go to the police if he ever came near us again. It broke her heart to send him away from us, but she said she had to protect us.’

‘She never told me,’ I say, but I know I never gave her the chance. I wonder how I could have read things so wrong. I wish Mum was still here so I could put them right.

A wave of emotion floods my heart and I start to sob.

‘I know, my darling, I know.’ Eve strokes my hair like she used to do when we were children, and then she wraps her arms around me and cries too.

She stays for two hours, while Patrick hovers between the canteen and my bedside, wanting to give us time together but anxious that I shouldn’t become too tired.

Eve leaves me with a pile of magazines I won’t read, and a promise that she will come again as soon as I’m back at the cottage, which the doctor has told me will be in a day or two.

Patrick squeezes my hand. ‘Iestyn’s sending two of the lads from the farm over to clean up the cottage,’ he says, ‘and they’ll change the lock, so you know you’re the only one with a key.’ He must have seen the anxiety cross my face. ‘They’ll put everything straight,’ he says. ‘It’ll be like it never happened.’

No, I think, it could never be like that.

But I squeeze his hand in return, and in his face I see nothing but honesty and kindness, and I think that, despite everything, life could go on with this man. Life could be good.

Epilogue

The evenings have grown longer, and Penfach has again found its natural tempo, broken only by the summer swell of families heading for the beach. The air is filled with the scents of sun cream and sea salt, and the bell above the door to the village shop seems never to be still. The caravan park opens for the season with a fresh coat of paint; the shop shelves stacked high with holiday essentials.

The tourists have no interest in local scandal, and to my relief the villagers quickly lose their enthusiasm for idle chatter. By the time the nights draw in again, the gossip has all but burned out, extinguished by a lack of fresh information, and by the fierce opposition of Bethan and Iestyn, who have made it their business to set straight anyone claiming to know what happened. Before long the last tent has been packed away, the last bucket and spade sold, the last ice-cream eaten, and it is forgotten. Where once I saw nothing but judgement and closed doors, I now find kindness and open arms.

True to his word, Iestyn cleared up the cottage. He changed the locks, fitted new windows, painted over the graffiti on the wooden door, and removed all traces of what happened there. And although I will never be able to erase that night from my mind, I still want to be there, high on the clifftop with nothing but the sound of the wind around me. I’m happy in my cottage and I refuse to let Ian destroy that part of my life too.

I pick up Beau’s lead and he stands impatiently by the door while I put on my coat to take him out for a final run before bed. I still can’t bring myself to leave the door unlocked, but when I’m inside I no longer lock and bolt it, and I don’t jump when Bethan comes in without knocking.

Patrick stays more often than not, although he recognises my occasional but urgent need for solitude almost before I can see it myself, discreetly taking himself back to Port Ellis and leaving me to my thoughts.

I look down on the bay at the tide coming in. The beach is scuffed with the prints of walkers and their dogs, and from the gulls that swoop down to pull lugworms from the sand. It’s late, and there’s no one else walking along the coastal path at the top of the cliff, where the newly built fence carries reminders to ramblers not to stray too close to the edge. I feel a sudden shiver of loneliness. I wish Patrick was coming back tonight.

The waves break on the beach, surf running up the sand in white foam that bubbles and disappears as the wave pulls back again. Each wave advances a little more, exposing smooth, glistening sand for a matter of seconds before another rushes forward to fill the space. I’m about to turn away when I catch sight of something etched in the sand. In the blink of an eye it is gone. The sea washes over the writing I’m now not certain I saw at all, and when the water catches the setting sun it sparkles against the dark, damp sand. I shake my head and turn towards the cottage, but something pulls me back and I return to the edge of the cliff, standing as close as I dare, to look down on the beach.

There is nothing there.

I pull my coat around myself to ward off the sudden chill that surrounds me. I’m seeing things. There’s nothing written there on the sand; nothing carved in bold, straight letters. It is not there. I cannot see my name.

Jennifer .

The sea doesn’t falter. The next wave breaks over the marks in the sand, and they are gone. A gull gives a final sweep of the bay as the tide comes in, and the sun slips beneath the horizon.

And then it is dark.

Author’s note

I began my police training in 1999 and was posted to Oxford in 2000. In December that year a nine-year-old boy was killed by joyriders in a stolen car on the Blackbird Leys estate. It was four years before the inquest ruling of unlawful killing, during which time an extensive police investigation was carried out. The case formed the backdrop to my early years as a police officer, and was still generating enquiries when I joined CID, three years later.

A substantial reward was offered, as well as the promise of immunity from prosecution for the passenger travelling in the car, should they come forward and identify the driver. But despite several arrests, no one was ever charged.

The aftermath of this crime made a big impression on me. How could the driver of that Vauxhall Astra live with what they’d done? How could the passenger keep quiet about it? How could the child’s mother ever come to terms with such a terrible loss? I was fascinated by the intelligence reports that came in following each anniversary appeal, and by the diligence of the police in sifting through every single piece of information in the hope of finding that one missing link.

Years later, when my own son died – in very different circumstances – I experienced first-hand how emotion can cloud one’s judgement and affect behaviour. Grief and guilt are powerful feelings, and I began to wonder how they might affect two women, involved in very different ways in the same incident. The result is I Let You Go .