Escaping Life (31 page)

In her waking
hours, she kept visualising how it must have been for Jack to wake up in that
hospital bed, lost and dazed, with no clue as to where he was or what had happened. 
She thought about the starched white sheets that would have felt rough against his
skin, the pillows propped up on a metal rest, the tubes and dressings and wires
that would have only further increased his anxiety.  She thought back to her
own sense of incapacitation when she had first heard about Rebecca, when stood at
the edge of the ravine, with the rain beating down on her shoulders pitter-pattering
onto the umbrella held up for her by an officer.  When she recalled those
memories there were little details.  She couldn’t even remember Graham at the scene;
she couldn’t remember the police, or the flashing blue light flickering onto
her face rhythmically as she sat in the back of the ambulance, her clothes
soaked through and her skin cold.  She could barely remember what her father
had said after the crash.  Her first solid memory of that whole time was the
day of the funeral; her father’s steely gaze, Graham’s tears, and her own
absolute belief that she had no solid evidence to prove to herself or anybody
else that Rebecca was dead.  Eventually, she had accepted it as a matter of
practicality, because for all purposes, Rebecca was indeed dead, but Elizabeth
knew in her heart that she’d never really believed it.  That’s why she could
never stop looking for Rebecca.  She would see her everywhere:  the beach, the
supermarket, in cafés and restaurants.  She always believed that one day
she might find her.  She thought it a torture worse than her own that Jack must
have been living:  to continue to search for them, even after having had to
identify two blackened and charred bodies.  To look for their faces, whilst
haunted by the memory of the last time you saw them in that way.  She couldn’t
imagine it.  She knew now that she would never search for Rebecca again.  She
hoped for his sake, that Jack could get to the same point, for it was ultimately
better than where she had existed up until now. 

It was ten-thirty
when she heard the crunch of the gravel under the tyres of a heavy saloon car. 
With Graham home, it could only be her father.  She had opened the gate earlier,
ready for him to park directly in the driveway.  She left her comfortable
garden spot, her ever-changing vista a natural canvas, and walked round to the
front of the house.  They had spoken only once since the argument on the
telephone.  He had called her the following day, after having seen the press
conference.  It was then that he had said he was coming to Haven.  He didn’t
want to stay in the city where people were talking about the case and making
suppositions about the nature of what had happened.  He had apologised for
shouting, and had invited himself to stay. 

She walked
around the corner of the cottage, and sure enough, parked on her white gravel
driveway was the dark grey monstrosity of a car on which she believed he had no
right to spend such a large amount of money.

“Elizabeth,
there you are.”  He held open his hands, as if he were about to embrace her. 
Instead, he clasped his hands over her upper arms and kissed her on the
forehead, in the way he used to when she had been in trouble with her mother
and was therefore deemed unworthy of a proper kiss and cuddle sat on his knee. 
His kiss at least, was warm and lingering.  “It is good to see you, and the
house.  My, you must have made some changes since I was last here.”

She wanted to
say that of course they had, because it had been so damn long since he had been
here.  “Well, you haven’t been here much, Daddy.”  Her words were not laced
with vilification, but there was a tone of vindication in them, and she wanted
to make sure that he understood as much.  “But that gives us plenty of spare time
to get things finished,” she added with a half smile, as if to cushion the
blow.

“Yes, I suppose
I don’t really come enough, do I?  But that will change now.  You’re my only
girl now.  I have to be here for you.”

“Daddy, don’t
talk about her like she doesn’t exist.  I know I’m the only living child of
yours, but Rebecca shouldn’t be forgotten.  Not anymore.”  She had found a new
place for rationale now; she no longer wanted to run from Rebecca.  She wanted
to bring her back into her life.  She wanted to put her back into her memories.
 He didn’t answer her, but they walked together amicably enough around to the
back of the house to where Graham was coming out of the kitchen, aware of the
arrival of their house guest. 

“Graham.” 
There was a tension in his voice.  With Graham being older than Elizabeth, he
always assumed a natural role of authority in their relationship.  Not in a
controlling way, but with a gently grounded attitude that grows with the simple
passing of time.  Edward knew this, and he treated him more on a level playing
field.

“Edward.”  They
shook hands, never yet able to shake the sense of formality between them.  It
was true that Graham had been of great assistance to Edward over the years,
none more so than following the deaths of Alice and Rebecca.  When Alice had been
murdered, Graham had tried to support him, and after the disappearance of Rebecca,
even more so.  He had helped practically, as men do, arranging the legalities
and ensuring that David had as much support as he needed to make the insurance
claims happen.  Edward had been truly grateful for the help, and Graham had
hoped that it might unite them, but it only functioned to separate them further,
to the point that Elizabeth and Graham barely saw him.

Graham had
managed to convince Elizabeth that they had to leave the house at some point
over the weekend and that they couldn’t just sit around.  He had spoken to
Charles Stewart, who had reserved for them a table overlooking the sea, but in
a private corner of his restaurant.  He promised them privacy, with no
questions.  It was a busy weekend in August, and there were still a couple of
weekends of enjoyment to be milked before the tourists would return to their
city homes, once again to be consumed by piles of household chores and new school
year homework and after-school clubs.  Haven would claim its village back, and
that would make ‘outsiders’ even easier to spot for the likes of Charles, Mr.
and Mrs. Lyons and Mr.
Madden
.  Charles had promised
them privacy, and his actions were as good as his words.  After finishing their
cups of tea in the garden, where Edward lamented the view and offered his understanding
of their decision not to remain in the city, they ambled slowly down the
coastal road, until they came near to the bay.  From a distance, they could
have looked like any other ordinary family, but their discomfort was clear to
see in their suspicious eyes and Elizabeth’s hunched up shoulders.  She was uncomfortable
with Edward’s apparent lack of concern; he was speaking quite loudly and this
would be sure to attract attention should they stumble upon a hidden reporter. 
It was easier for her father, Elizabeth thought.  He was invisible and
unrecognised here.  He may as well have been incognito.  From Elizabeth’s point
of view, she knew that she now shared her face with a dead woman, too similar
in characteristics to Rebecca to remain unseen and pass by undetected.

They took their
seats in Charlie’s fish restaurant, his greeting friendly and sympathetic, with
only the smallest hint of pity.  This was another reason that Elizabeth had
wanted to stay at home; she didn’t need people’s pity, she simply needed
answers.  She needed Jack to find the answers.  In fact, she almost felt as if
Jack had become her only friend over the course of the week.  Their shared
seafront conversations and time spent in the bus station had been only the
start, for since then they had kept in almost constant contact.  Since the
press conference, several people had called in to say that they knew Rebecca,
but none of them had yet revealed themselves to be anything more than another
acquaintance.  In fact, Barry was still the most significantly connected person
to Rebecca’s life, and this very fact had done little to make the ongoing
investigation any easier for her to bear.  Jack had called her almost as many
times as she had called him, and they exchanged thoughts and information on a
more than daily basis.  There had still been no further developments with the
newly discovered key; they hadn’t found any bank or health records; there had
been no mortgage payments, no good friends.  Rebecca’s life was still a
mystery. 

They had
enjoyed their meal at the restaurant, and it had passed without incident or interruption. 
The fish was always fresh, and even when the restaurant was empty, there was
still an indisputable atmosphere, courtesy of the sound of the waves as they
hit the shore and the sides of the fishing boats moored just ten feet away. 
They discussed Edward’s retirement, and what he had been doing with his time:  his
salsa classes were incredibly time-consuming, and his gentlemen’s only club,
where he spent his free evenings, was always a good environment in which to
discuss the headlines of the day and the impending general election next year. 
He had never felt able to return to work, and with Alice
’s and Rebecca’s
life insurance money it
had been an acceptable alternative to retire and take an early pension. 
Elizabeth had always found it a little strange that he had chosen to retire
after her mother had died:  most people at least, she thought, when they lost a
loved one tried to cling on to any routine that they had left.  As far as she
could see, he couldn’t wait to retire, desperately calling David and telling
him to push the case forward so that he could
‘leave the mess behind him’. 
David
had done an excellent job, by all accounts, and had argued the case that the
police had managed the scene of the crime very poorly, beginning their searches
in the dark and in the rain.  It was impossible, he argued, that the scene had
not been contaminated, that evidence hadn’t been lost, and that therefore, under
no circumstances, did the insurance agency have any right to withhold payment. 
There was no evidence, he argued, that the case was a suicide.

As they walked
back to the path and climbed the steep uphill section towards their cottage,
she could see her father’s car protruding out from the end of the driveway. 
She had taken an instant dislike to it the first day that she had seen it in
the car park of the police station in Chesterwood.  She thought it crude and
pretentious to drive such an outwardly showy car.  Graham, too, drove a car for
which she saw no purpose:  a huge saloon that haemorrhaged petrol on his daily
commute, and was a waste of time and money, if you asked her. 

“Why the hell
did you buy that thing, Daddy?”  She pointed at the car, its rear end on view.

“You don’t like
it?”  He sounded shocked, almost hurt.

“She’s
beautiful, Edward.”  Graham didn’t share his wife’s viewpoint.  He had clocked
eyes on it straight away, after listening to Elizabeth complaining about it
since her return from Chesterwood.  In all honesty, Graham had been anxiously
awaiting its arrival.

“
She,”
Elizabeth mocked sarcastically, “is not a she.  It’s an It.  And a damn
expensive It, at that.”  Graham gave Edward a little wink, throwing him both
his approval at the car and disagreement with his wife.  For the first time in
their relationship they appeared to be in cahoots.  They all wandered around to
the back of the house, and took a welcome breather, sitting at the table. 
Edward’s lungs were not what they once were, and whilst he might be able to
enjoy a bit of salsa dancing, buoyed on no doubt, Elizabeth thought, by the
instructor whom he
had
described over
lunch in just a little too much detail, walking up that hill was another thing
entirely.  Graham grabbed the silver kettle from its position on the base and
filled it with water.  He noticed Elizabeth’s mobile phone next to the
microwave.  The little green light at the top of the phone was flashing
frantically and he felt the skin in his face tighten as he realised that she
had forgotten to take it with her.  He set the kettle to boil, and then reached
over to grab the phone.  As he did so, the large oversized screen responded and
sprang into life.  He saw that she had eight missed calls.  He turned around
quickly, making both Edward and Elizabeth jump.

“Elizabeth, you
didn’t take your phone.”  His slowly spoken words dragged her immediately back
to reality and she reached forward, snatching it from him.  Without saying
anything, she dialled Jack’s number, as Graham and Edward stared at her anxiously. 
She listened intently to what Jack had to say, and apologised for having
forgotten to take her phone with her.  Before she had hung up she was already
on her feet, her last words, ‘W
e are on our way.’

Graham’s and
Edward’s faces mirrored each other’s; they were both standing up and waiting,
desperate for answers.  She put the phone down on the table and looked first at
Graham, and then at her father. 

“Well?” said
Edward, impatiently.  Elizabeth took a big breath in, bracing herself before
she spoke.

“They found her
house.”

The journey
back to Chesterwood passed by in a silent daze.  Elizabeth sat in the back
seat, her mind desperately juggling the pieces of her conversation with Jack,
trying to piece together exactly what it was that he had said, and exactly what
he had meant.  Short of telling her that they had found Rebecca’s house, he
wouldn’t go into any details on the telephone. 
Was that a police thing,
she
thought to herself. 
Was he just not prepared to talk over the phone?
 
She recalled the day that he had turned up on her doorstep, and had driven her
to Chesterwood.  He hadn’t spoken to her on the telephone on that morning
either.  But he had since; he had called her every day, sometimes twice and had
related what had happened during her absence.  He had been prepared to tell her
that the local shopkeeper had been in touch with him to say that Rebecca used
to shop in his store.  He’d told them that Rebecca would pass by the shop, and
that she would always ask if there was any out-of-date food destined to be
thrown away that he could give her to eat.  He told her that they had received
regular sightings of her in Chesterwood, and that even another person from the
bus station had remembered seeing her regularly talking with a short red-faced
man.  Barry had been interviewed; his house, work lockers, and every minute
detail of his financial life had been searched more thoroughly than Jack had
really thought necessary, and he had told her that he hadn’t been at all
surprised to find that he had come back clean as a whistle.  Barry hadn’t even
protested once, such was his own eagerness to help.  He had shared all of this
information on the phone, and yet wouldn’t tell her anything about the house.  She
couldn’t shake the thought of Rebecca begging for food, like a common street
beggar asking for handouts.  It was an image that refused to stop playing over
and over in her mind, and she found it hard to equate the Rebecca that she once
knew, the well dressed city banker who would dine out five nights out of seven,
with a lonely isolated woman living off the handouts of strangers.  Now, as
they drove towards the place where Rebecca had been living, Graham continuously
tried to lighten the mood:  small talk about the traffic;  he questioned them about
stopping for a coffee break;  he asked Edward trivial questions about the
smooth and even ride of his slate grey Jaguar that was steadily purring along
the road.  Edward had agreed, against Elizabeth’s wishes, to stop for a coffee
break and they had continued their discussion regarding the car.  Edward had
told him that he had paid for it outright.  When Edward had gone to use the
toilet, Elizabeth had scolded Graham harshly for his banal conversation and
irritating questions.  He had snapped back at her, something that she wasn’t
used to.  He was usually so calm.  He had clenched his teeth together as he
spat that her
f
ather was stressed too, and
all he was trying to do was support him and take his mind off the situation.