Can't Let Go (23 page)

When I was eighteen I killed a man and got away
with it.

I had never said those words out loud. I had
hoped I would never have to. But now the time had come.
The axe had finally fallen.

Edinburgh's old town loomed above me like an
illustration from an old-fashioned book of fairy tales,
from an era when it was acceptable to terrify children.
Tall, crooked, pointed grey buildings huddled around the
giant's castle. It was a city from a nightmare: a city of
ghosts and goblins and witches, of dark alleys and
whispers and hauntings. Looking up at it made me dizzy.
I felt that I might fly away on a broomstick or on the
wings of a bat.

Help me. I need a friend.
That was how I would begin
the call. I held the phone in my hand and searched the
contacts list for Danny's number. He'd be up by now, just
drinking his first cup of coffee, listening to the
Today
programme on Radio 4, maybe checking his emails:
ordinary, mundane stuff. He wouldn't be expecting to
hear from me.
Help me, Danny; I need a friend.
And he
would listen to me and say the right things and maybe he'd
make everything okay. But in my heart I knew that
nothing could ever be okay again because today – in just
a few minutes – I would have to say those words out loud
for the first time.

When I was eighteen I killed a man and got away with it.

Just before I made the phone call, just before I dialled
Danny's number, just before I told him my awful secret,
while I was still sitting there in the stasis of that preconfession
moment, I reached into the deep back pocket
of my jeans. I pulled out the piece of paper. My hand
trembled as I straightened out the creases. There was
blood on the paper, blood from my fingers. I read it over
again to myself.

You murdering bitch. Now you know what it feels like.

His voice sounded tired and detached. He didn't want
to speak to me; he made that clear with his tone of
voice. My first words didn't help much. 'Danny, I need
you. I need a friend.' I tried not to cry as I spoke.

'Beth, this is not the time. I'm in a hurry. I need to be at
work early. Let's talk later, okay?'

'Danny, no. Stop . . .' I thought he was about to put the
phone down and I was desperate. He must have heard
something in my voice, because he gave a resigned sigh.

'OK, I'm listening. What is it? What's so important?'
I opened my mouth and nothing came out.

'Come on, tell me.' His voice was gentler now.

'Danny, something awful has happened. Zoey's dead.
He killed her. And it's all my fault.'

'What? What are you on about? Is this a joke?'

From nowhere I could feel a hideously inappropriate
laugh start to bubble up in my chest. I opened my mouth
to let it out and it turned into a sob. Before I knew it I was
weeping loudly, hysterically. I didn't care if the silver
statue heard me. I just didn't care. And on the other end of
the phone there was Danny, all sensible and kind, saying,
'Shhh. Beth, shhh. Calm down. Calm down. Please. Just
tell me all about it.'

So I did. In a tiny, shaky voice I told him about Zoey,
and about how I found the body. I told him what it looked
like, how she'd been sprawled on the sofa, and how much
blood there'd been. I told him about how scared I'd been,
and how I had run for my life, and he interrupted me.
'Why didn't you call the police?'

'I was scared, Danny. He was after me. He wants to kill
me. I know he does. I know, I know, I should have called
them. But I had to run. There was a note, you see. He left
me a note.'

As I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the
letter again, I was going to read it to him, but he
interrupted me again. 'Beth, you're not making sense.
Who was after you? What note? What on earth are you
talking about?'

'The man who killed Zoey. He left a note on her
body. A note for me. I've got it here, with me. I can read
it to you.' I wasn't telling the story very clearly. I knew
that. It wasn't coming out properly. I wasn't explaining
myself.

'Beth, if the killer left a note on the body, why have you
got it? Why didn't you leave it there for the police to
find?' Danny's voice was sharp, as if he was trying to trip
me up. I realised that he didn't believe me.

'The note was left for me. It's for me. It's written to me.
He killed Zoey to get back at me. He wanted me to know
that.'

'Beth, what the hell are you talking about? I'm sorry, I
really don't know what you're saying. I don't think you
know what you're saying. Are you okay? I mean, of
course you're not. That's obvious. Are you ill? Are you in
shock? Because you're making no sense at all.'

I tried to pull myself together, to make my voice stop
shaking. I tried to make sense: one final effort to get
him to believe me. 'Danny, I've been getting notes.
Anonymous letters. All summer. Someone's been
watching me and threatening me. And the man who killed
Zoey is the man who's been writing those notes to me. It's
the same handwriting, the same paper, the same man.'

'Christ, Beth, why didn't you say so? Please tell me the
police know about this. Please tell me you've reported it.'

'No. I haven't told anyone any of this. Until today. I've
been so scared and I didn't know what to do. And now this
has happened.'

'One more time, Beth: why not?'

'I couldn't. I couldn't tell the police, I couldn't tell
anyone, because . . . God, Danny, there's all this stuff I
need to tell you, and I've wanted to for so long, and . . .' I
put my hand over my face and I started to hyperventilate.

'Beth, what is it? Why is someone sending you
anonymous notes? Why did he kill Zoey?'

'To get back at me for something terrible I did.'

'Okay, I'm listening.' Danny sounded grim. He
sounded like he was bracing himself for the worst that I
could tell him. I wasn't sure if the worst he was imagining
went far enough.

I sat there on that bench in Princes Square Gardens and
looked up at the narrow grey skyline of the Old Town
that loomed above me. The living statue had moved. Now
he was standing on a podium on an open paved area by the
National Gallery, and a small group of people had
gathered to watch him. It was the start of another day in
the life of the festival city, and here I was about to tell
Danny everything. Danny Fairburn, serious, caring and
kind. This was it; this was the end. I needed to do it. I
needed to tell Danny all about Rivers Carillo, and about
my summer in San Francisco. I needed to tell him about
Alcatraz and Sausalito, and how Rivers and I slept
together, and how he was an itch I couldn't scratch, and
then everything – almost everything – that happened after
that. Nothing in my life would ever be the same again. I
took a deep breath and started to tell my story.

'Danny, when I was eighteen I killed a man and got
away with it. At least, I thought I'd got away with it. I've
been looking over my shoulder ever since and now
someone's found out. He's stalking me. He's trying to
punish me. And he did it by killing Zoey.'

I killed Rivers Carillo on my last day in San Francisco.
I hadn't planned to kill him. I didn't go out that
morning saying: 'Today's the day I'm going to kill a
man.' But the opportunity presented itself, like a little
demon sitting on my shoulder, whispering in my ear. I did
it, and I've been paying the price ever since.

My last day in San Francisco, I woke up feeling sore but
excited. I'd changed, I'd grown up, I'd become a woman.
I felt myself 'down there', fondling my tender skin. My
breasts felt tender, too: bigger and fuller than before, the
nipples harder and more distinct. I'd forgotten all the
squalor and the discomfort of the previous day, of that
wretched houseboat in Sausalito. All I could think about
was the huge thing that had happened: the excitement, the
awesomeness of losing my virginity. And the fact – or
rather the assumption – that it tied me to Rivers Carillo in
some mystical way.

Romantics need things to mean something.
Romantics look for meaning in everything: in gestures,
in words, in things unspoken. So when something this
big happens, it has to mean everything – love, at the very
least. Perhaps romantics with a religious background are
the worst. Naive romantics with a religious background.
Naive, flirty, romantics with a religious background. I
operated on the assumption that other people thought
like me, had the same values that I did. I'd been brought
up to believe that sex was a dangerous, threatening
thing; something that was safe only in the confines of
marriage – or, if your faith was a bit liberal, a little fuzzy
around the edges, as mine was, within the confines of a
loving relationship. I'd been brought up to regard my
body as a temple, to exercise self-respect and control. I'd
been brought up to believe that my virginity was the one
thing I should keep; something that I should only hand
over to the right man at the right time; something nonnegotiable.

So maybe when I woke up that morning feeling full of
love and tenderness towards Rivers, I was merely
justifying my own behaviour to myself. I woke up telling
myself that I loved him – and so he must surely love me. I
had to tell myself that, or else there was no justification for
what I had done. That's what had motivated me as we
waited for the ferry in Sausalito; why I'd flirted with
Rivers again and kissed his fingers. You see, sex couldn't
be the end. Our romantic idyll couldn't end that way, with
bloody sheets on a squalid houseboat. I couldn't have
given away my virginity as cheaply as that, just bartered it
away in return for a hug and a slow dance to Bob Dylan in
the cramped cabin of that horrible boat. That wasn't how
the story went. Sleeping with Rivers Carillo was so big
and so significant to me that it had to be the start and not
the end. It had to be a prelude to something better, or else
why had I done it?

I know all this now. Back then, as I woke up that
morning, all that hopelessly romantic Lizzie Stephens
could think was:
Today's the day that Rivers Carillo will tell
me he loves me.
As if those words – those three words –
were like a precious diamond on an engagement ring.

We met, as usual, secretly. We pretended to bump
into each other in the food court in the basement of
Macy's on Union Square. 'Hey, look who it is!' Rivers
said.

'Fancy meeting you here,' I replied, my usual arch,
jaunty self.

'How're you doing today?' he asked, and there was an
extra note of tenderness in his voice that made my
romantic little heart leap for joy.

'I'm very well indeed, thank you,' I replied and he
laughed. I knew he would. It was simple to make him
laugh: just a few words of very proper English were all it
took. He hadn't touched me; I knew he wouldn't until we
were somewhere alone. But that was okay. It could wait.
It would happen.

We caught a bus and sat on the back seat – together, but
not too close. It was a long bus ride, through endless
streets of Victorian wooden houses. We passed close to
Joanna's house and skirted a little green square. 'Look
back at the view,' he told me, and I did. It was the famous
view of San Francisco: a row of Victorian houses, the city
skyline in the background with the Transamerica
Pyramid stretching high into the sky. I was glad to see it
on my last day. I would store that picture in my memory
bank.

Rivers didn't say much on that journey. Occasionally
he'd mutter something about the scenery or where we
were. 'Haight-Ashbury,' he said at one point, and I looked
out of the window to see the same type of Victorian
houses, but this time painted in gaudy colours, or allowed
to get tatty, and shops selling vintage clothes, secondhand
records and drug paraphernalia. We skirted Golden
Gate Park and drove into a coastal fog. And then we were
the only two remaining passengers, and the bus stopped
and we were at the beach, on the far western tip of the city.
It was chilly, and we were swathed in swirling damp fog.
But we were alone, and we were together, and he let me
wear his jacket.

We played on the beach for a while, skimming stones
into the sea that was virtually invisible behind a thick
shroud of grey fog. He taught me how to skim the stones
properly: standing behind me, touching me, his hand on
mine, his chest against my back. This is it, I thought: any
moment now, the declaration. But it didn't come. Instead
he looked at my shoes.

'Are those comfortable?' he said. 'Can you walk in
them?'

I was wearing trainers: jeans and trainers. I hardly ever
wore jeans and trainers that summer in San Francisco.
Almost every other time I'd been out with Rivers, I'd
worn skirts with flip-flops or sandals or something else
flattering. But that day I was wearing jeans and trainers. I
had packed my suitcase and was dressed in the clothes and
shoes I was planning to wear on the flight home. I
emphasise this, because it's one of those 'if only . . .'
things. If only I'd been wearing sandals, Rivers wouldn't
have taken me on that walk. And if he hadn't taken me on
that walk, I wouldn't have killed him.

'It's foggy now,' he said. 'But the fog's going to lift
later today. There's this amazing path around the cliffs,
right round to the Golden Gate Bridge. It's a few miles,
and it's kinda rocky, but it's not too difficult. And it's
worth it, because you get an unforgettable view of the
bridge, especially just as the fog is lifting. It's amazing,
and I think you'll like it.'

With hindsight, he was trying to say sorry. Rivers
Carillo was a sleaze, but not an evil sleaze. He was
probably genuinely upset by what had happened in
Sausalito. He probably hadn't expected it to end like that.
He probably just wanted to give me a nice day out, to say
sorry; to give me a memorable end to my summer in San
Francisco. He wanted to give me a treat, and his treat was
to give me a chance to see one of his favourite parts of the
city. He simply wanted to share a beautiful view with me.
It wasn't meant as a declaration of love; I just took it that
way.

It reminded me of Devon, of trudging around the
coastal cliff path, following my father and his map,
footsore and sunburnt but enjoying the views. Except this
time there were no views. A blanket of fog out to sea on
our left-hand side, crumbly cliff to our right, a dirt path
underfoot, bits of spiky bushes and trees grabbing at my
clothes. I was getting warm and I'd given Rivers back his
jacket. He crumpled it up and shoved it in the backpack he
was carrying. I followed him, keeping his strong, sturdy
back in sight. Every few minutes he'd look behind him to
check I was okay, or to apologise for the weather. 'It'll be
worth it,' he kept saying.

The path levelled out and suddenly we were on a flat,
grassy headland. A few yards away, incongruously, stood
a huge, elaborate building that looked like a palace. In
front of it was a sculpture – twisted bodies and a barbed wire
fence. 'The Palace of the Legion of Honor,' Rivers
told me. 'It's an art gallery. And that's a memorial to the
Holocaust.'

I ran in to use the loo. Stupid, the things you remember.
I ran into the museum and persuaded the woman on the
desk to let me in without paying so that I could use the loo.
'The restroom,' I remembered to call it. And I had always
wondered – did she remember me? Did she read about
Rivers's death, about how they discovered his body, and
then remember the English girl, hot and red-faced, in
jeans and dirty trainers, running into the museum that day
to use the restroom? Was she a witness to what happened?

Beyond the museum, the path turned into tarmac and
took us down into a curved road full of huge, luxurious
houses. Rivers took a left-hand turn down a narrow
alleyway and there we were on another beach. 'Look,' he
said, and pointed around the curve of rocks to our right.

Sure enough, the fog was beginning to lift and I could just
make out the top of the Golden Gate Bridge, absurdly red
against the grey sky. We climbed back to the dirt path,
and now we could see glimpses of the sea far beneath us,
jagged rocks at the foot of the cliff we were walking along.
We didn't talk much; we were putting all our efforts into
the trek.

And then it happened. There was a point on the path
where you could – carefully – step out to your left
onto a little piece of headland. We ducked under some
trees and found ourselves right on the edge of the cliff.
And from where we stood we had the most extraordinary
view of the bridge. It was suddenly enormous, looming up
bold and red from the mist that swirled around its girders.
I tried to get closer to the edge, to get a better view, but
felt the dirt and gravel slip under the treads of my shoes.
Rivers caught hold of my arm to steady me, and then put
his arm around my waist and kept it there. Looking down,
I could see that the cliff dropped almost straight down –
there was a ledge a couple of feet below us, and then the
cliff fell down to the sea and the rocks hundreds of feet
below.

Rivers had his arm around me because he was just
trying to hold on to me, to keep me safe. But my romantic
teenage head told me that this was the moment. I reached
my arm around him and hugged him closer to me. He
fidgeted slightly, but didn't pull away. I reached up and
kissed him on the cheek. He looked at me, puzzled. 'It's
beautiful,' I said.

'Isn't it?' he said, and tousled my hair.

What he needed to say next was, 'And so are you.' But
he didn't. He said nothing. He just stood there, holding
me, gazing at the bridge.

Something had to happen. I had to make something
happen. I kissed him again, this time reaching around for
his lips. He pulled away; I was insistent and eventually he
kissed me, closed-mouthed but tenderly. I moved closer.
'Careful,' he said, and 'What are you trying to do?'

I settled for snuggling up against him. I had to say
something. I had to initiate a romantic moment, and the
kiss hadn't really worked. 'When will I see you again?' I
said.

Rivers laughed. 'You're going home tomorrow.'

'We can see each other again, can't we? You could
come to England. Or I could come back here. We'll keep
in touch, won't we? This is special, isn't it? I mean, I want
to carry on seeing you.'

This was his moment; the moment where he should
gruffly declare his love and ask me to marry him. But he
didn't. He just laughed again, a little uneasily.

I can still hear my voice getting desperate and shrill. I
can still almost taste the panic I was feeling. 'I love you. I
want to stay with you. I want to live with you.'

'Ha!' he said, abruptly. 'I don't think my wife would be
too happy with that.'

I thought he was joking. For a split second I thought it
was an awful joke. I started to laugh – and then I saw his
face. He'd turned to face me, his back to the cliff edge. He
was serious. 'Look, kiddo. You know the rules. You
know the game. We've had fun. But it ends here. I'm
going back to Indiana in September, back to my job, back
to my wife. You're flying back to London tomorrow. It's
been fun. I like you. I've enjoyed it. But the game is over.
We won't be seeing each other again.'

Rivers was actually quite tender, quite caring as he said
these words. He was trying to let me down as gently as he
could, I'm sure of it. He wasn't a bad person, he wasn't
evil. He didn't deserve to die. If only I could have left it
there. But my whole world, everything I'd spent the last
few weeks dreaming about, had just been ripped apart. My
brain was muddled. Where to start? He was married. It
was all a game. He didn't want to see me again. 'But we
had sex!' I shouted it, as if it was irrefutable proof that he
was wrong, that this wasn't just a game.

'Sure we did. And I'm sorry it wasn't better for you.
But you wanted it. I didn't hear you complaining.'

'It was horrible.' I was crying now. 'The sex was
horrible, but I wanted to do it again. I didn't want that to
be the only time with you. I wanted you to show me what
I'm supposed to do. I love you. That can't be all.'

Maybe it was that second 'I love you' that made Rivers
angry. He took me by the shoulders and shook me. 'You
stupid girl. Y o u stupid little girl. You want sex? You want
to sleep with me again? Here? Will this do? Now?'

He pushed me back against the tree behind us. He
pushed himself against me. He kissed me, hard, forcing
his tongue into my mouth. I could feel his growing
erection as he forced himself on me. One of his hands was
working its way into my blouse while the other held me
firmly by the shoulder. I could feel his finger and thumb
tweaking my right nipple, hard. He pulled his mouth
away from mine and said, 'You want this, do you?'

I hit him on his arms and against his chest. I struggled
against him. I slapped him around his face and he just
smiled. And then I started kicking. I kicked him in the
shins, over and over again, hard, just in the centre of the
shin where it really hurts. And he started moving
backwards, almost dancing, to get away from me. While
he was off balance I pushed him, hard, with the heel of my
hand, right in the middle of his chest. And he fell
backwards over the cliff.