Claire Allan - Forget Me Not

‘Surely you don’t have to do that tonight?’ Paul asked, his face tilted, brow furrowed. He nodded surreptitiously towards Beth, as if to tell me she needed me more than the police did.

‘I want to do whatever I can to help,’ I said. ‘I want this man found, Paul, and soon. They want to build a complete picture of her life.’

‘But it’s weeks since you saw her,’ he said.

‘We talk, Paul. You know that. She’s one of my oldest friends.’

I was starting to feel irritated now. I felt myself tense. I knew I was being terse with him and it wasn’t right – not in front of Beth. Not now.

‘Of course,’ he said, almost apologetic. ‘You do what you need to do. Should I come with you?’

I bristled again. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I think it’s best you stay with the girls. I don’t think Beth here is in any state to mind Molly. Are you, Beth?’

My beautiful daughter blinked up at me, her eyes red and puffy. In that second she looked very much like my little girl again, not the young woman she’d blossomed into. My heart ached for her. She shook her head.

‘Okay, then,’ Paul said. ‘I’ll stay here with the girls. Maybe once Molly’s in bed, we can order in some Chinese food?’ he said to Beth, who nodded.

‘I’m going to get a shower and change into my pjs,’ she said and stood up.

I hugged her and told her that I loved her before changing into a linen skirt and white T-shirt.

‘Dressing up for the police station?’ Paul asked.

‘Hardly,’ I said. ‘But my blouse is a bit stained, with tears and make-up from our beloved daughter, and I just want to be comfortable. I’m hot and sweaty, and I don’t know how long I’ll be there.’

Suddenly, I was very tired. And hungry. I realised I’d not finished my lunch, or eaten anything since, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep anything down now if I tried.

‘Well, hopefully they won’t keep you too long,’ Paul said, standing. ‘I’m really, really sorry this has happened,’ he said, pausing to look me up and down before leaving the room.

I’m sure he was talking about Clare, but he could just as easily have been talking about the ongoing disintegration of our marriage.

As it happened, I wasn’t in the police station all that long. Less than an hour. I didn’t have much to tell them, really. I just let him copy all the messages from Clare from my phone then talked about her life and if there was any way she could have enemies.

Even the thought of Clare Taylor having enemies was laughable. She was the most easy-going person I knew.

Of course they asked again about her new man, but I couldn’t tell them much more than what I’d told them at Julie’s. He was handsome, according to Clare, and kind-hearted. He’d insisted on paying for dinner on their first date. But that was about it. I didn’t have his name. There weren’t any pictures of them together anywhere. I didn’t know where he worked or even where he was from. I’d assumed he was a Derry man, but I didn’t know for sure. We’d just never had that conversation. Clare had always been one to play her cards close to her chest and that was okay.

‘Maybe I’ll introduce you all at our annual August barbecue,’ she’d told me, ‘if it keeps going well.’

They asked me how Clare got on with her ex-husband, James. Was there any residual animosity between them?

I told them that as far as I knew, they rarely spoke. They’d both moved on since the divorce – which was as amicable as could be in the end. There’d been tears and a lot of soul-searching. She’d been hurt when he’d told her he didn’t love her any more, of course she had. And then angry when she’d found out he already had someone else lined up. But when all was said and done, they’d simply grown apart. He’d never, to my knowledge, been violent towards Clare and I didn’t think he was the kind of man who would be. There was no reason to suspect that he’d have murdered his ex-wife. But then again, the notion that anyone at all would want to murder Clare seemed completely absurd.

I felt as if I was being singularly unhelpful, unable to give the police anything to go on. Any questions I’d asked, they didn’t really answer. Everything was ‘too early to tell’, or they weren’t ‘at liberty to say’. They’d assured me no stone was being left unturned, that every avenue was being explored.

They used all the clichéd terms that police could use, which just made it all feel even less real. As if we were all acting in a TV show, saying our lines. A grisly-faced detective would show up at any minute and swear at his underlings before declaring there’d been a murder, in a thick Scottish accent.

It was impossible to get my head around the idea that somewhere my friend was lying cold, dead, carved up by a pathologist. I shook that image from my head each and every time it pushed back in and tried to focus on what the police were saying.

By the time I left, all I wanted to do was to feel something tangible. Michael replied to my text message almost immediately – telling me that of course I could call round. He looked forward to it. He hoped I was okay.

A wave of something I couldn’t quite put my finger on washed over me. It was desire, mixed with affection, mixed with guilt. I looked at myself in the rear-view mirror, glad I’d fixed my make-up and brushed my hair at home. My look still screamed middle-aged teacher, but it was presentable. I didn’t look as haggard as I had earlier.

Guessing I could probably spend an hour at most with Michael before any suspicion was aroused, I set off, eager to get to him as soon as I could.

Michael lived in a house close to the Irish border at Ballyarnett. It was an old house that he was midway through renovating. Still a bit ragged around the edges, there were more than a few half-finished projects on the go; the kitchen was minimal and due to be replaced by something sleek and modern, the bathroom was basic but work had begun on replumbing, and a new floor had been laid in the living room. Half of the house’s rattling old windows had been replaced with double-glazing. The whole thing was starting to take shape, but Michael didn’t seem overly bothered about getting it done quickly. ‘I’d rather take my time and do it right,’ he’d said. And being a single man living alone he had the luxury of being able to do that.

We didn’t spend an awful lot of time there, anyway; in fact, I’d only been to his house a handful of times. Most of the time we’d spent together had been walking through the nearby country park and sitting in my car, talking and kissing, of course. His kisses took me to somewhere where I felt like an unburdened teenager again.

I rang his doorbell and he answered within seconds – a sight for sore eyes. Standing there in his jeans and a red T-shirt, his dark hair messy and curly, unshaven but with deep green eyes that looked at me with such concern I felt myself melt into them. He pulled me into a hug, a hug that I didn’t let Paul give me earlier. He told me he was so, so sorry for what happened. That he wished he could make it better for me.

He poured me a glass of wine, which I knew I shouldn’t drink because I had the car with me, but I gave in to the temptation anyway. Just as I gave in to the temptation of his kiss – his lips full, soft, determined. His hands roaming. His body pushing against mine. It was wrong, but it felt right. It felt as if it was the perfect thing to do – to allow my nerve endings to fizz into life as a big two fingers up to death.

I needed to feel alive. I needed him. So when he wordlessly led me from the kitchen up the stairs to his bedroom, I didn’t hesitate. When he took the wine glass from me and sat it on his bedside table – before gently pushing me back onto his unmade bed, his eyes filled with longing – I responded by reaching for his belt and unbuckling it, desperate to feel as alive as I possibly could.