Can't Let Go (26 page)

Zoey had never seemed to care much about her
own personal safety. She was bold and brave and
she said what she thought, and she took risks. Of
all the women I knew who lived alone in London she was
the only one without a whole series of bolts and locks on
her front door. Just a Yale lock. Just a solid wooden front
door with a Yale lock. I let myself in and pushed away the
pile of letters behind her front door. I slammed the door
behind me, and despite everything I felt comparatively
safe for the first time since it had happened. I felt like I had
come home.

The hallway, with its deep blue-green paint, was dark
even in the daylight. I flicked the light switch and all the
fairy lights lit up, reflecting in the distorted antique
mirrors that hung along the wall. Her dark red studio
room was snug and inviting. I threw down my bag and
kicked off my shoes, and slumped onto the bed. I looked
around me at the shelves filled with books and CDs and
DVDs, the pictures and ornaments everywhere. Even
without her – even now she had gone – this room was still
full of Zoey. You would never have been able to say the
same thing about my flat. I ran my fingers along the spines
of the books, all alphabetised and themed. There was a
book lying on the small table next to her bed, a book of
David Sedaris essays, and it suddenly seemed important
to me to put it back on the shelves in its rightful place. But
I couldn't find the gap. She had a particular order to her
books, everything in the right place, and I couldn't find
out where the book was supposed to go. I told myself it
didn't matter, but it did. I found myself crying tears of
frustration.

On one of the shelves there was an old black and white
photo from her parents' wedding. What on earth could it
possibly be like to lose a daughter? Parents weren't
supposed to have to deal with the death of their children.
I wondered whether they'd been told yet; whether the
police had notified them and whether they were flying
over to sort things out. I wondered if I should get in touch
and introduce myself, or whether I should just slink away
into the background: the woman who had caused their
daughter's death.

I ran myself a bath. I wasn't sure if I should. It seemed
weird, taking a bath in Zoey's flat, but I was dirty and
smelly and I wanted to wash away everything that had
happened, and I felt safe and at home there. I poured
scented bubbles into the tub, and ran it as hot and deep as
I could stand it, and I lay in that bath for twenty minutes
or more. I thought I could hear my phone ringing, over
and over again. The sound seemed to be coming from
miles away, from another city, another life. I tuned the
sound out. I tried to empty my mind. I wanted to fall
asleep and slip under the hot water and leave everything
behind. I even thought about slitting my wrists. I got as
far as picking up Zoey's razor, which was in a pot at the
end of the bath. It was one of those weird disposable ones
with the razor part encased in a white block of shaving gel.
I gave a grim laugh. No good at all for my purposes.

I pulled on Zoey's thick, luxurious bathrobe and I
gathered up my dirty clothes from the bathroom floor. I
noticed a couple of T-shirts pushed into the corner by the
laundry hamper. I picked them up and looked at them.

They'd been worn. They needed washing. Zoey must
have dropped them last time she emptied the hamper. I
gathered them together.
I'll put them in the machine with
my clothes,
I thought. And then I realised. What was the
point? She was dead. She didn't need those T-shirts. She
wouldn't wear them again. What are you supposed to do
with a dead person's dirty clothes? I buried my face in
them as another wave of grief shuddered through me.
And then I did the only constructive thing I could think of
doing. I went into the tiny kitchen area, found some Persil
capsules, and stuffed the whole lot – my clothes and hers
– into the washing machine. It was the least I could do for
her.

I looked in her wardrobe to find some clean clothes to
put on. Again, weird, I know. It felt odd, but she had
given me her key for a reason. She had told me to make
myself at home, and I was desperate. I just wanted to feel
clean and halfway normal again. I pulled out a faded black
vest top, an old pair of jeans and a red V-neck sweater
with holes in the elbows. Despite the heat of the day I felt
cold. I put them on. They fitted well. They felt soft and
comfortable and familiar. Zoey and I: we were so alike
and yet so different. I could have been her. I could have
been like her if my life had been normal. And now she was
like me. Now she was dead instead of me. Now she was
dead and it was my fault.

It was when I went across to the mirror on the wall of
the bed-sitting room to comb my wet hair that I saw it.
There was a large envelope on top of the bookshelf
immediately below the mirror. The envelope was A 4 ,
manila, the same size and colour as my Rivers Carillo
file. There was a note scrawled across the front of the
envelope, in the loopy foreign-looking writing that I
recognised as Zoey's. 'Dear Beth,' it said. 'If you're here,
then it probably means something bad has happened.
Please make sure the police get the contents of this
envelope.'

What did she know? What had she guessed about me? I
fumbled with the flap of the envelope. I reached in and
pulled out some sheets of paper, maybe twenty in all. It was
white A4 paper, laser-print quality, nothing special or
particularly distinctive about it. Each sheet seemed to have
been folded in three at some point, to fit in an envelope. I
turned them over and as I read the top sheet I started to
shake. I recognised the handwriting immediately.

To the murdering bitch. Does your new friend know what
you did?

And the next one:
I'm outside right now, watching you.

And again:
Don't think you can escape me, you murdering
bitch. I know where you're going.

And:
One day I'm going to get back at you, but not yet.

I was sitting on Zoey's bed with the letters on my lap. I
was counting them. It seemed really important to
count them. My first count was eighteen, and then next
time I made it twenty; and then I counted them again and
this time I couldn't remember which order the numbers
came in. I couldn't work out what these letters meant. I
knew what the words said, but I didn't know what they
meant. My brain felt a little bit like it did at the start of a
migraine. My brain could not process the information in
front of me. How come Zoey had these letters? Did she
write them? Had she been sending me the letters all
along? Were these the ones she hadn't got around to
sending? But they were folded, as if they'd already been
sent. Had she intercepted them somehow? Had she been
trying to keep away from me? Had she been watching out
for me, trying to keep me safe? Had she known all about
it from the start? I couldn't make it make sense. I couldn't
fit the pieces together.

From where I was sitting I could see out into the
hallway. There was one of Zoey's antique mirrors directly
across from me. I looked up, looked at the mirror and it
showed me my reflection, distorted. My face was all out of
shape and looked horrific, like a gargoyle. I couldn't work
out whether it was really me or not. It made almost as little
sense to me as the letters did. And as I sat there, staring at
the mirror, trying to work out what was going on, I saw
some movement in the corner of the mirror. Someone was
there. Someone was outside in the hallway.

I clutched the letters to me, and picked up one of Zoey's
ornaments, a big red 1970s glass vase. Slowly a face
appeared around the door frame. It was a man's face. I
screamed and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

He jumped too. He put his hand on his chest as if to
slow down his fast-beating heart. 'My goodness,' he said,
in a posh voice. 'I thought for one moment that you were
Judith.'

I recognised him, I thought, but my befuddled brain
was not working as fast as it should have done. 'Judith?'
That was all I could think of to say.

'You would have known her as Zoey.' He came
towards me with his hand outstretched. He was fortyish,
with fair hair that fell into a floppy fringe over his
forehead. He was wearing smart lightweight trousers and
an open-necked blue shirt. I stood up, put the vase down
and shook his hand.

'I know you,' I said. All of a sudden I had realised
where I'd seen him before. It was the polite Englishman
that I'd seen on the Royal Mile, the one who came to
Zoey's show, the one I ran away from. I felt the hairs on
the back of my neck start to prickle. 'What are you doing
here?'

'Sorry,' he said. 'I startled you.'

I ignored that. 'What are you doing here? How did you
get in?'

'I had a key. I let myself in. I never did introduce
myself properly, did I? I'm Edward Moore.'

'I'm Beth,' I said, no wiser. 'I'm – I was – a friend of
hers.'

'I know,' he said. 'I know who you are.'

Edward Moore said those words very precisely, with a
lot of weight.
I know who you are.
What did he mean? Who
was he? Why was he here? What did he know?

'I'm glad I've found you here, anyway,' he said,
pleasantly. 'I wanted to say sorry to you.'

'What do you mean?' I was starting to back away from
him. Something indefinable about him was giving me the
creeps.

'It must have been dreadful for you, finding her like
that.'

He looked concerned and sympathetic. There was
nothing threatening about his face or his body language,
but all at once I was aware of how tall he was, how he was
looming over me. 'What do you mean?' The same
question I had already asked.

'Finding her body. It must have been awful for you.'
And then he looked closely at me, at what I had in my
arms – the pile of letters. 'But maybe it wasn't entirely
unexpected?'

'Who are you?'

'You know perfectly well who I am.' And with that he
did become threatening. His sympathetic smile, his
pleasant face, had been replaced by a blank mask.

'No, I don't.' My memory was whirling around, trying
to place his face, his name, somewhere in my past, trying
to place him in San Francisco all those years ago.

'Of course you do. I can see you've found my letters.'

'You wrote these?'

'Of course I did.'

'Why?'

'Because she was a murdering bitch.'

The world flipped around.
She?
'What do you mean,
she
was a murdering bitch?'

'Judith. Zoey, as you knew her.'

'You wrote these to Zoey?' I felt as if the whole world
had suddenly fallen off its axis.

'Yes.' He smiled. 'Oh, I know. You got caught up in it,
didn't you? I think I dropped off one or two of them at
your flat, or when you were with Judith. That's why I
addressed them so carefully.
"To the murdering bitch."
So
she'd know they were for her.'

Edward Moore's voice was so calm and reasonable. He
was smiling a dreadful smile, revealing teeth that were
long and yellowish, with receding gums. His diction was
so perfect, such correct English with such a stiff upper lip.

'I don't understand. Why was Zoey a murdering
bitch?'

He'd been leaning over me but suddenly he stepped
back on his heels. He put his hands in his pockets and
pursed his lips. He seemed to be weighing up his options.
There was something ominous about his implacability. I
wondered if his final conversation with Zoey had been
anything like this. I was scared. I darted sideways and
tried to get around him, but he simply put out his left arm
and grabbed my right shoulder with a strong hand. He
grabbed it so hard that I dropped the pile of letters and
they fluttered to the floor. He pushed me backwards and I
slammed into one of Zoey's bookshelves. He pulled his
right hand out of his pocket. There was something shiny
in it. I opened my mouth to scream, but that strong left
hand was instantly clamped over my mouth, digging into
the flesh of my cheeks. The shiny thing in his right hand
became a knife – a flick knife, I think. He was just holding
it casually, like an extension of his hand.

'Now, don't be stupid,' Moore said. 'You're just trying
to change the subject. You weren't supposed to be here,
you know. You shouldn't have been here. I came here
because Judith has some things of mine, some things she
took, some things that I want back. But in fact I'm glad I
found you here. It's good to talk to someone about Judith,
someone who understands. It's good to speak to you
because you know all about it. I think you're the only one.
You've seen the notes. Y o u know why I killed her.'

His right hand, the hand with the knife, was between us
now. He was holding it at stomach level, and all I could
think about was how he'd torn Zoey's stomach apart. I
was trying to bite his hand but I couldn't get my teeth into
it. His hand was so big that it covered my entire mouth,
and all I could do was to nip harmlessly at the fleshy part
of the palm. His hand was so big that it was partly
covering my nostrils as well, and I was struggling for
breath.

'I had to kill her.' His voice was still soft and beautifully
spoken. 'You know why. I'm sure she told you about me.'

I couldn't speak. I could barely breathe. I shook my
head to tell him no, and also to try to shake him off, but he
just squeezed my mouth harder.

'I did love her, honestly. But she was a bitch. A
murdering bitch. She killed our child. I ask you, what man
could stand for that?'

Christ. This was crazy. Zoey, a child-killer? What was
he on about? I couldn't clear my head. I was panicking. I
could feel bile rising in my throat. I was going to choke.

Moore leaned his forehead against mine. It was an
intimate gesture. It felt almost as though he was going to
kiss me. I would have kicked him in the shins, my
favourite self-defence move, but I was pinned against the
bookshelf and it was cutting into the back of my knees,
cutting off my circulation, making my legs go numb.