Let Me Lie(5)

Happy Anniversary!

I recoil as if I’ve been punched. Is this some kind of sick joke? A mistake? Some well-meaning, short-sighted acquaintance, mistaken in their choice of missive? I open the card.

The message is typed. Cut from cheap paper and glued to the inside.

This is no mistake.

My hands shake, making the words swim in front of my eyes. The wasp in my ears buzzes louder. I read it again.

Suicide? Think again.





THREE


It wasn’t the way I wanted to go. Not the way I always thought I’d go.

If I imagined my death I pictured a darkened room. Our bedroom. Pillows plumped behind my back; a glass of water touched to my lips once my own hands became too weak to hold it. Morphine to manage the pain. Visitors tiptoeing in single file to say their goodbyes; you red-eyed but stoic, absorbing their kind words.

And me; gradually more asleep than awake, until one morning I never woke up at all.

I used to joke that in my next life I wanted to come back as a dog.

Turns out you don’t get that much choice.

You take what you’re given, whether it suits you or not. A woman just like you. Older, uglier. That or nothing.

It feels strange to be without you.

Twenty-six years, we were together. Married for almost as long. For better or for worse. You in a suit, me in an empire-line dress picked to hide a five-month-old bump. A new life together.

And now it’s just me. Lonely. Scared. Out of my depth in the shadows of a life I once lived to the full.

Nothing worked out the way I thought it would.

And now this.

Suicide? Think again.

The words aren’t signed. Anna won’t know who they’re from.

But I do. I’ve spent the last year waiting for this to happen, fooling myself that silence meant safety.

It doesn’t.

I can see the hope on Anna’s face; the promise of answers to the questions that keep her awake at night. I know our daughter. She never would have believed that you and I would have stepped off that cliff of our own free will.

She was right.

I see too, with painful clarity, what will happen now. Anna will go to the police. Demand an investigation. She’ll fight for the truth, not knowing that the truth hides nothing but more lies. More danger.

Suicide? Think again.

What you don’t know can’t hurt you. I have to stop Anna going to the police. I have to stop her finding out the truth about what happened, before she gets hurt.

I thought I’d seen the last of my old life, the day I drove to Beachy Head, but I guess I was wrong.

I have to stop this.

I have to go back down.





FOUR


ANNA


I ring Mark back. Leave a message about the card that makes so little sense I have to stop, take a breath, then explain myself again.

‘Call me as soon as you get this,’ I finish.

Suicide? Think again.

The meaning is clear.

My mother was murdered.

The hairs on the back of my neck are still prickling and I turn slowly around, taking in the wide stairs behind me, the open doors on either side with their floor-to-ceiling windows. No one there. Of course there isn’t. But the card in my hand has unnerved me as surely as if someone had broken into the house and put it directly into my hand, and it no longer feels as though Ella and I are alone in the house.

I stuff the card back into its envelope. I need to get out of here.

‘Rita!’

There’s a scuffle from the kitchen, followed by a skittering of claws on the tiles. The result of a rehoming appeal, Rita is part Cyprus poodle, part several other breeds. She has auburn whiskers that fall over her eyes and around her mouth, and in the summer, when she’s clipped, the white patches on her coat look like snow. She licks me enthusiastically.

‘We’re going out.’

Never one to be asked twice, Rita races to the front door, where she cocks her head and looks at me impatiently. The pram is in the hall, tucked beneath the curve of the stairs, and I push the anonymous card into the shopping basket at the bottom, covering it with a blanket as though not seeing it changes the fact that it’s there. I pick up Ella just as she’s morphing from contentment to grouchiness.

Suicide? Think again.

I knew it. I’ve always known it. My mother had a strength I wish I had a tenth of – a confidence I covet still. She never gave up. She wouldn’t have given up on life.

Ella roots for my breast again, but there’s no time. I don’t want to be in the house for another minute.

‘Let’s go and get some fresh air, shall we?’

I find the change bag in the kitchen, check for the essentials – nappies, wipes, muslins – and throw in my purse and the house keys. This is usually the point at which Ella will fill her nappy, or throw up her milk and require a full set of clean clothes. I sniff cautiously at her bottom and conclude that she’s fine.

‘Right, let’s go!’

There are three stone steps that lead down from the front door to the gravelled area between the house and the pavement. Each step dips in the middle, where countless feet have trod over the years. As a child, I would jump off the bottom step, my confidence growing with my years until – accompanied by my mother’s ‘do be careful!’ – I could leap from the top step and land square-footed on the drive, my arms raised before invisible applause.