His and Hers

Him

Tuesday 09:30

My ex-wife knows more about this than she is letting on.

I don’t understand how, but then I lived with the woman for fifteen years, was married to her for ten of them, and still always struggled to tell the difference between her truth and her lies. Some people build invisible walls around themselves in the name of self-preservation. Hers were always tall, solid, and impenetrable. I knew we were in trouble long before I did anything about it. Truth in my work is everything, but truth in my personal life can feel like a bright light I need to turn away from.

Nobody here knows that I was married to Anna Andrews. Just as I expect nobody she works with knows about me. Anna has always been intensely private, a condition she inherited from her mother. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Don’t ask, don’t tell works for me too when it comes to my life away from the job.

Like a lot of people who have been in a relationship for a long time, we would regularly say ‘I love you.’ I don’t remember exactly why or when it started to lose its meaning, but those three little words turned into three little lies. They became more of a substitute for ‘goodbye’ – if one of us was leaving the house – or, ‘goodnight’ – when we were going to sleep. We dropped the ‘I’ after a while; ‘love you’ seemed sufficient, and why waste three words when you could express the same empty sentiment with two? But it wasn’t the same. It was as though we forgot what the words were supposed to mean. My stomach rumbles loudly and I remember how hungry I am.

When I was a child my mother didn’t let us eat between meals, and sweets were banned from the house. She worked as a receptionist at the local dentist and took tooth decay very seriously. The other kids would all take snacks to school – crisps, candy bars, biscuits – I got an apple, or, on special occasions, a tiny red box of Sun-Maid raisins. I remember the rush of anger I felt whenever I found them in my packed lunch – the box said the raisins came all the way from California, and I realised that even dried fruit had a more interesting existence than eight-year-old me. The most I could hope for was a Golden Delicious, which was a misleading description because in my opinion those apples were neither.

The only time I ever tasted chocolate as a child was when my grandmother came to visit. It was our little secret, and it tasted like a promise. Nothing else I remember from my childhood gave me more unadulterated pleasure than those small brown squares of Cadbury Dairy Milk melting on my tongue.

I eat a chocolate bar every day now. Sometimes two if things are bad at work. No matter which one I buy, or how much it costs, it never tastes as good as the cheap chocolate bars my grandmother used to bring. Even they don’t taste the same. I think when we finally get what we think we want, it loses its value. It’s the secret nobody ever shares, because if they did, we would all stop trying.

Anna and I got what we thought we wanted.

It wasn’t a never-ending supply of chocolate bars, or a private island in the sun. First it was a flat, then a car, then a job, then a house, then a wedding, then a baby. We followed the same safe paths that older generations had carved out for us, trampled into permanence by so many previous footsteps that it was only too easy to follow. We were so certain we were headed in the right direction, we left tracks of our own, to help future couples find their way. But we didn’t discover a pot of golden happiness at the end of the rite-of-passage rainbow. When we finally got where we thought we wanted to be, we realised that there was nothing there.

I think it’s the same for everyone, but as a species we are pre-programmed to pretend to be happy when we think we should be. It is expected of us.

You buy the car you always wanted, but in a couple of years you want a new one. You buy the house of your dreams, but then decide that your dreams weren’t big enough. You marry the woman you love, but then you forget why. You have a baby because that’s next on your list of things to do. It’s what everybody else does, so maybe it will fix the thing that you’ve been pretending wasn’t broken. Maybe a child will make you happy.

And she did for a while, our daughter.

We were a family and it felt different. Loving her seemed to remind us how to love each other. We had somehow made the most beautiful living thing that my eyes had ever seen, and I would often stare in wonder at our baby, amazed that two imperfect people could somehow produce such a perfect child. Our little girl saved us from ourselves for a short while, but then she was gone.

We lost a daughter and I lost my wife.

The truth is that life broke us, and when we finally acknowledged that we didn’t know how to fix each other, we stopped trying.

‘The body has been moved, sir,’ says Priya.

I don’t know how long I have been standing outside the tent in a world of my own. Even if nobody else finds out about last night, I can’t help worrying that Anna somehow knows something. She could always see through my lies.

We both ran away from what happened. She hid inside her work, and I came back here – to a place where I knew she wouldn’t follow me – not because I wanted to, but because I couldn’t bear the way she looked at me anymore. Anna never actually blamed me for what happened, at least not out loud. But her eyes said all the things she didn’t. Full to the overflowing brim with hurt and hate.

‘Sir?’ says Priya.

‘That’s good, well done.’

I had deliberately asked the team to move the body from the scene while I was giving the press conference. There are some things that should never be captured on camera.

Priya is still waiting beside me, I’m not sure what for. When I don’t speak, she does, and I find myself staring at her rather than listening. She always looks the same to me: ponytail, old-fashioned hairgrips pinning any stray strands off her face, glasses, shiny lace-up shoes, and ironed blouses or whatever it’s called when a woman wears a shirt. She’s like a walking Marks & Spencer catalogue; lamb dressed as mutton. Not like my ex-wife, who is always so stylish. Anna looks even better now than when we were together, unlike me.

I think maybe solitude suits her. She’s lost some weight, I notice, not that I ever minded. She was never big, even when she thought she was. She used to say that she was a size eleven – always somewhere between a ten and a twelve. Christ knows what she is now… an eight perhaps. Loneliness can shrink a person in more ways than one. Unless perhaps she isn’t lonely.

I always used to wonder about the cameramen Anna went on trips with. She was sometimes away for days at a time, staying in hotels, covering whatever story she had been deployed on as a correspondent. Her job always came first. Then what happened, happened. Anna was broken, we both were. But when she got her lucky break and started presenting, things were better between us for a while. She worked more regular hours and we spent more time together than we had before. But something was missing. Someone. We could never seem to fully find our way back to each other.

It was Anna who asked for the divorce. I didn’t feel like I had any right to argue. I knew she still blamed me for the death of our daughter, and that she always would.

‘I don’t understand how she knew.’

‘Sorry, sir?’ Priya asks, and I realise that I said the words out loud without meaning to.

‘The object inside the victim’s mouth. I don’t understand how Anna could have known about that.’

DS Patel’s eyes look even bigger than normal behind her tortoiseshell glasses, and I remember seeing her and Anna talking before the press conference.

‘Please tell me that you didn’t tell a journalist something which I specifically told you not to?’

‘I’m so sorry, sir,’ she says, sounding like a child. ‘I didn’t mean to. It just sort of slipped out. It was as though she already knew.’

I don’t blame Priya, not really. Anna always found the right questions to ask in order to get the right answers. It still doesn’t explain why she is really here though.

I start walking back towards the car park. Priya practically runs beside me, trying to keep up. She’s still apologising, but I’ve tuned out again. I’m too busy watching Anna talk to her cameraman, and I don’t like the way he looks at her. I know men like him; I used to be one. She climbs into the red Mini convertible she bought after the divorce – probably because she knew I’d hate it – and I’m surprised to see that it looks as if she is going to leave. I have never known her to give up easily on a story or anything else. Which makes me wonder where she is going.

I walk a little faster towards my own car.

‘Are you OK?’ DS Patel asks, still chasing after me.

‘I’d be a lot better if other people did their jobs properly.’

‘Sorry, boss.’

‘For Christ’s sake, I’m not your bloody boss.’

I search inside my pockets for my keys as the Mini disappears towards the car park exit. Priya stares at me, in silence for a change, with a hint of defiance in her eyes that I don’t think I’ve seen before. For a moment I worry that even she knows more than she should.

‘Yes, sir,’ she says in that tone of hers that makes me feel old and awful all at once.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you. I’m just tired. The kid kept me up half the night,’ I lie.

I live with a different woman and child now, but unlike me, the kid never has any trouble sleeping. Priya nods, but still looks unconvinced. I get in the car before she has time to ask where I’m going, willing the damn thing to start as I turn on the engine. I don’t know what I’m doing or why I am doing it. Instinct, I suppose; that’s how I will justify this to myself later. I don’t make a habit of following my ex-wife, but something tells me I should on this occasion. More than that, it feels like I must.

There are always unanswered questions when it comes to Anna.

Why is she really here? Does she already know who the victim is? How did she know the exact location of the murder scene before we told the press? Does she miss me? Did she ever really love me in the first place?

The one about our little girl is always loudest.

Why did she have to die?

There are so many unanswered questions keeping me awake at night. Insomnia has become a bad habit I can’t break. Every day seems to start backwards – I wake up tired and go to bed feeling wide awake. It isn’t the guilt about killing Rachel – it started long before that, and nothing I do seems to help. The sleeping pills the doctor gave me are a waste of time, and I get terrible headaches if I take them with alcohol, which of course I find hard not to do. Wine is always the most reliable crutch when it feels like I might fall.

I do my best to completely avoid doctors if I can. Hospitals are filthy places, and no amount of sanitiser, or handwashing, ever seems to remove the stench of illness and death from my skin after visiting one. Medical establishments are filled with germs and judgement, and I find the people who work in them always ask the same questions, so I always give the same answers: no, I’ve never smoked and yes, I do drink, but in moderation.

There is no law I know of saying that you have to tell your doctor the truth.

Besides, lies told often enough can start to sound true.

My mind tends to wander most when I am in the car, but that’s nothing new, I have always been prone to daydreaming. Not that I’m a danger to myself or others in that regard. I’m a very safe driver, I just do it on autopilot sometimes, that’s all. The roads are mostly empty around here anyway. I wonder if that will change now? It will initially, of course – the police, the media circus – but I wonder what will happen afterwards. When the show is over and all the… mess has been cleared away. Life will surely return to normal for most of the locals. Not those directly affected, of course, but grief is always sharpest at the point of impact. I wonder whether the coachloads of tourists will still come to visit in the summer months? No bad thing if they don’t, if you ask me. Popularity can spoil a place just like it can spoil a person.

I don’t worry about my lack of remorse, but I do question what it means. I wonder whether I am fundamentally a different person from the one I was before I killed her. People still seem to look at me the same way they did yesterday, and when I stare in the mirror, I can’t see any obvious change.

But then maybe that’s because it wasn’t really my first time.

I’ve killed before.

I bury the memory of what I did that night because it still hurts too much, even now. One wrong decision resulted in two ruined lives, not that anyone ever knew what really happened. I never told a soul. I’m sure plenty of people could understand my reasons for killing Rachel Hopkins if they knew the truth about her – some might even thank me – but nobody would ever understand why I killed someone I loved so much.

And they never will because I’ll never tell them.

Her

Tuesday 10:00

There are so many things I never tell people about myself.

Too many.

I have my reasons.

It’s raining again, so hard that it is almost impossible to see the road ahead. Angry fat drops of water relentlessly slap the windscreen, before crying down the glass like tears. I continue to drive until it feels like there is enough distance between me and the crime scene, as well as me and my ex-husband, then I pull over into a layby and sit there for a moment, transfixed by the sight and sound of the wipers:

Swish and scrape. Swish and scrape. Swish and scrape.

Leave this place. Leave this place. Leave this place.

I check ahead and then behind in the rear-view mirror. When I’m satisfied that the road is empty, I down another miniature whisky. It burns my throat and I’m glad. I savour the taste and the pain for as long as I dare, then toss the empty bottle in my bag. The sound of it clinking with the others reminds me of the windchime that used to hang outside my daughter’s nursery. Alcohol doesn’t make me feel better; it just stops me feeling worse. I pop a mint, then blow into the breathalyser, and when my routine self-loathing and self-preservation are complete, I carry on.

On my way back to town I pass the school I used to go to. I see a few girls standing outside, wearing the familiar St Hilary’s uniform that I always hated so much: royal blue with a yellow stripe. They can’t be more than fifteen years old, and they look so young to me now, even though I clearly remember how old I thought I was at their age. Funny how often life seems to work in reverse. We were children masquerading as adults and now we are adults acting like children.

I feel a bit sick as I pull up outside the house, but that’s not because of the drink. I park the Mini a little further down the street so as not to be seen; I’m not sure why. She’s going to know that I’m here eventually. The guilt over how long it has been since I visited this place seems to trap me inside the car. I try to remember when exactly it was that we last saw each other… more than six months this time, I suppose.

I didn’t even visit last Christmas. Not because I had other plans – Jack and I were divorced by then and he was already living with someone else – but because I felt like I couldn’t. I needed to be alone. So, after an afternoon volunteering at a soup kitchen on Christmas Eve, I spent three days locked inside my flat, with nothing but wine bottles and sleeping tablets for company.

When I woke up on December 28th, I didn’t feel any better, but I did feel able to carry on. Which was both a good thing and my best-case scenario. There was a plan B if I hadn’t managed to feel differently about the future, but I flushed that option away and I’m glad. Christmas used to be my favourite time of year, but now it is something that needs to be got through, not celebrated. And the only way I know how to do that is alone.

Sometimes it feels as though I live just below the surface, and everyone else lives above. When I try to be, and sound, and act like they do for too long, it feels like I can’t breathe. As though even my lungs were made differently, and I’m not able, or good enough to inhale the same air as the people I meet.

I lock the car and look up and down the old familiar street. Nothing much has changed. There is a bungalow that has morphed into a house, and a garden that has become a driveway a little farther down the road, but otherwise, everything looks just like it used to. Like it always has. As though perhaps the last twenty years were a lie, a figment of my tired imagination. The truth is, I feel like I’ve been teetering on the edge of crazy town for a while now, but have yet to fully cross the border.

My feet come to a standstill at the last house on the lane, and it takes me a while to look up, as though I am scared of making eye contact. When I do turn to stare at the old Victorian cottage, it looks exactly the same as it always did. Except for the peeling paint on the window frames and ageing front door. The place looking old is new to me. The garden is what shocks me the most: an overgrown jungle of uncut grass and heather. The two lines of lavender bushes on either side of the path have also been neglected; crooked, woody stems reach out like twisted, arthritic fingers, as though to prevent anyone from going in.

Or getting out.

I stare down at the garden gate and see that it is broken and hanging off its hinges. I lift it to one side and navigate my way to the front door, hesitating before ringing the bell. I needn’t have bothered. It doesn’t work, so I knock instead. Three times, just like she taught me all those years ago, so she would know it was me. For a long time, she wouldn’t let anyone else into the house.

When nobody answers, I stare down at the faded welcome mat and see that it is upside down. It’s as if it isn’t for visitors at all, but there instead to welcome her into the real world, should she ever decide to step outside and rejoin it. I silently scold myself, and try to put the unkind thoughts to bed, tucking them in as tightly as possible. Then I see what I’m looking for: a cracked terracotta flowerpot on the doorstep. I lift it up and am a little surprised that she still keeps a key hidden underneath.

I let myself inside.

Him

Tuesday 10:05

I lost her at the second roundabout – she has always driven faster than she should – but it didn’t matter. I had already guessed by then where she was going. I’ll be honest, I was surprised after all this time. As soon as I see her car on the street confirming my suspicions, I pull over a bit further down, turn off the engine and wait.

I’m good at waiting.

Anna looks different from earlier this morning. Still beautiful, with her shiny brown hair, big green eyes, and little red coat, but smaller. As if this place has the power to physically do that to her. She looks more fragile, easy to break.

My ex never did like coming back here, even before our daughter died, not that she would ever talk about it or explain why. After it happened, she stopped going anywhere except the newsroom. Even shopping was something that she would only do online, so that she rarely left the flat except for work.

She couldn’t even bear to say our little girl’s name, and was furious if I ever did, covering her ears as though the sound of it offended them. There are things that have happened in my life – mistakes I have made, people I have hurt – that I seem to have almost completely deleted from my mind. It’s as though the memories were too painful to hold on to, and needed to be erased. But, despite my guilt, my daughter isn’t one of them. I sometimes still whisper her name inside my head. Unlike Anna, I don’t want to forget. I don’t deserve to.

Charlotte. Charlotte. Charlotte.

She was so small and so perfect. Then she was gone.

When you find out you’re allergic to something, the logical thing to do is to avoid it. And that’s what Anna did with her grief. She kept busy at work in public, and in private spent all of her time hiding at home, trying to protect herself from the rashes of fear that seeing other people inflicted on her. She’s learned to hide her anxiety from others, but I know worry makes her world go round.

My stomach starts to grumble and I realise I still haven’t eaten anything today. I usually have a few sugary snacks in the car. If my dead mother knew, I’m sure she would haunt me with a ghostly toothbrush. I open the glove compartment, but instead of the chocolate bar or forgotten biscuits I’d been hoping to find, I see a pair of black, lacy knickers. I’m guessing they must have belonged to Rachel – women taking their clothes off in my car is not a regular occurrence – though I’ve no idea how they got in there.

I reach inside the glove compartment again and spot some Tic Tacs. They remind me of Anna – she always had little boxes of mints – and while they won’t do much to satisfy my hunger, they’re better than nothing. I shake the small plastic box, then flip open the lid and tip a few out. But the white shapes are not mints. I stare at the thick fingernail clippings on the palm of my hand and think I’m going to be sick.

A car door slams down the street. I throw the underwear and the Tic Tac box back inside the glove compartment, slamming it closed seconds afterwards, like a nervous echo. As though if I can’t see them, they were never really there.

Someone knows I was with Rachel last night, and now they are fucking with me.

I can think of no other explanation, but who?

I stare out of the car window and watch Anna’s every move. She took her time getting out of the car, despite her rush to get here. I can’t help thinking it’s because she is afraid of what she might find behind closed doors. I sympathise with that because she is right to be.