Helen Callaghan - Dear Amy

The evening was already drawing in, amazing me by how dark it had grown so early. It always catches me off guard at this time of year, a constant revisiting of annual surprise. Sometimes I feel like a goldfish, with the glass walls of my bowl providing a continuous source of novel amazement each time I swim around them.

Once safe in the car I drew the letter out of my pocket and leaned back.

Dear Amy,

Please please PLEASE help me! I have been kidnapped by a strange man and he’s holding me prisoner in this cellar. He says I can never go home. I don’t know where I am or what to do and nobody knows I’m here.

I don’t even know how long I’ve been gone, but it seems like for ever. I’m afraid that people will stop looking for me. I’m afraid he’ll kill me.

Please help me soon,

Bethan Avery

There was nothing else except for the panicked, childish handwriting. No return address or clue as to where it had come from. There was a postmark on the envelope declaring it was mailed in Cambridge yesterday, but that was all the help I was getting.

‘This is a prank,’ I said aloud, but my voice quavered, and I didn’t really believe it. Occasionally I get some very shocking letters, nothing more than extremely nasty sexual fantasies seeking some kind of release from the subconscious void their creators imprison them in. I’d rather they were released via the post than any other way, but there was something about this letter that got to me.

Other thoughts were brewing in my mind too. Thoughts about Katie Browne, the girl who went missing, who vanished with nothing but a small bag of clothes. She was a scholarship girl, a county-level swimmer from one of the council estates in Cambridge, and had never been genuinely happy in the rarefied atmosphere of St Hilda’s. I could sympathize.

Frankly, I was very worried for Katie Browne.

As for my letter, it was easy enough to sort out. I started up my car and headed for the police station. If there’s no Bethan Avery reported missing, then I hope the sod that wrote this is enjoying the belly laugh they’ve had at my expense.

‘What are you doing here?’ I demanded, surprised.

My not-quite-ex-husband was standing on the front doorstep, leaning against the door when I arrived home with the early darkness and mist. In his slim-fitting dark suit and neat small collar he looked like a particularly stylish missionary, or perhaps an urban vampire summoned out of the fog. Something about his posture appeared studied, composed for my benefit.

I narrowed my eyes at him.

Eddy’s full lips compressed. ‘You said you wanted to talk about the settlement.’

I sighed, exhausted, as I walked past him to the front door and turned the key. ‘Haven’t you heard of calling first?’

‘Your phone was off.’

I had been telling Eddy for weeks now that we needed to talk about the division of the household, of our shared lives. I had noted each morning as I came down the stairs that he had not yet made any moves to redirect his post. That he’d shown up at all to discuss the mediation was an excellent sign, though of course he hadn’t bothered to ask first. It was still a point of principle for him that this was his house too.

I see it all rather differently. I came into this marriage with this house, which I had bought as little more than a run-down shell when I first moved to Cambridge, and thriftily renovated over the course of seven years; each improvement, each upgrade, was a reflection of my own internal home improvement, my recovery. I sat in its dusty, bare living room on the threadbare sofa the owners bequeathed with it, and dreamed of the house’s better days. I chose each of the paints – striking violets, subtle lemons, warm greys – and applied them to the walls and trimmings with the sort of passionate focus usually associated with Great Masters in their ateliers, each night looking over my shoulder at the clock and realizing with a little patter of shock that it was three, four in the morning, and my arms ached and I had to go to work in five hours’ time. I chose the unfussy dull pewter of the fittings in the bath that I sit in for hours, the spiky light fixtures, the contrasting rugs (the stains seem to choose themselves). I scoured and treated the reclaimed furniture myself, sitting in my varnish-spattered dungarees on the grass in the tiny garden with my cup of tea, admiring the deconstructed pieces drying on their sheets of newspaper – a wooden picnic spread out on my lawn.

It was partly my determined independence in this, and in other things, that attracted Eddy to me in the first place. Not that he is big on DIY. He uses his hands for other things, as it turns out.

‘Come in,’ I called over my shoulder, just to establish who was in whose territory, though as I did, I felt a little shiver of superstition – vampires must be invited over the threshold, after all.

I shook it away. Yes, we were strangers now, perhaps we always had been, despite our best efforts, and it felt very painful, as though emotions, like body parts, could be sprained or dislocated. On the other hand, we should at least be able to have a civil discussion about practical matters without mauling one another any further.

We went into the kitchen, and within seconds were blinking in the glare of the overhead fluorescents. Outside, the wind was drumming impatiently on the windows. I rubbed my eyes and stretched, hearing my bones click.

‘Coffee?’ I asked.

He nodded and I switched on the kettle, throwing my coat over the back of a chair.

‘Bad day?’ he asked.

‘Huh?’ I asked, fishing two mugs out of the cupboard.

‘Did you have a bad day?’

‘School was the same. I almost ran down some of the kids on the way to the Examiner .’

‘Hit any?’

‘Um, no.’

‘Just kidding.’ He shot me a look. ‘And you’re well?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘I mean, in yourself.’

‘I know perfectly well what you mean,’ I replied precisely, closing the topic off.

I spooned ground coffee into the scratched cafetière, aware that of the two of us, I was being the difficult one. I hadn’t even returned his query and asked about his day at work, nor would I, considering the reasons we were getting divorced.

But I could concede something; make conversation.

‘I made a big prat of myself at the police station, though,’ I muttered.

‘You went to the police station over it? Did their parents…’

‘No, not about the kids,’ I said. ‘I got a letter today at the Examiner .’ Suddenly I didn’t want to tell Eddy about this – I was asking to be patronized – but it was too late now. I stood up and walked over to the window.

‘What kind of letter?’

Behind me, I could hear him foraging through the fridge for milk – he took his coffee white. Outside, the fog drifted over the hedges, veiling the surrounding houses.

‘I wouldn’t like to get caught out on a night like this,’ I said to myself after a moment.

‘Are you going to tell me what kind of letter it was?’

‘A crank letter,’ I said. ‘Somebody claiming to be Bethan Avery.’

‘Who?’

‘Bethan Avery. She was a teenager who was kidnapped and presumed murdered in the nineties.’

Eddy blinked and squinted, as though consulting some lost vault of memory. ‘Bethan Avery… I know that name. She was from around here.’ There was a pause. ‘I remember it being in the local papers. So you thought this letter was real, did you?’

I offered an acceding shrug. ‘I thought it might be.’

‘Huh. That’s pretty sick. Why did you take it to the police? I wouldn’t have thought there was anything they could do.’