Page 78 of Close to You
‘We’ll do what we can,’ the officer says. ‘We’ll check his bank records and see if there are any reports of him getting onto a flight out of the UK.’
‘How long will that take?’
Her features soften, seeing me as a concerned wife – even though I’m more curious about how long this will drag on.
‘I wish I could give you a precise answer,’ she says, ‘but I don’t know. If anything happens, you’ll be the first to know.’
I watch them head to their car and then pull away. Unless David’s body floats to the surface of the lake, I’m not expecting to hear anything soon. A thought niggles away that I’m not as smart as I think. That a detail will have escaped me somewhere along the line.
But there’s the fact that I am, apparently, good at this sort of thing. Everyone has their talents. I’m not sure what it says about me, but perhaps mine lie with deception. I suppose the truth of that will be shown by what happens over the next few months. If I get a year or two along the line and things have gone quiet, then that will be that.
‘Goodbye,’ I say – and then I turn and walk back into the flat.
Thirty-Seven
THE NOW
Thursday
The world swims into focus as I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling. Whoever decided that people should sleep together – literally sleep – was an idiot. There’s so much more space and freedom when a person has a bed to themselves. I starfish my arms and legs wide and close my eyes again, breathing in the morning. I’m inmybed, inmyapartment. The idea that I decided to share this with David seems so outlandish that I sometimes have to remind myself that it happened.
And now I am giving it up again… this time for Andy. Except that this is different. I know what I’m letting myself in for this time – and Andy isn’t David.
It’s a few minutes after nine, so I yawn myself into a sitting position, before padding into the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee. I check the front door, though it’s still on the latch. There have been no more mysterious texts, or possible sightings of David. If Mr Patrick is correct about the police, then they can’t be far away from concluding that there’s no proof I was driving my car, which means that should be finished with.
Is this it?
Thirty-six hours of mystery, suspicious police, and now everything goes back to normal? Perhaps the past can finally go back to being the past.
I return to bed for half an hour and sip the coffee while skimming through the emails on my phone. I answer a call from Jess at the studio, who’s querying something about the rota, and then get on with the job of packing.
David’s things are long gone. I went for a long drive and left his clothes with a charity shop. I could have taken them to one more locally, but it would have been too strange to see someone local wandering around in something David owned. It also might have aroused suspicion if I was seen dropping off his things when he was supposedly only missing.
Everything else was either taken to the tip, or sold – including his car. The police returned me the keys and it sat outside the flat for almost a year until I was sick of the sight of it.
I find myself flicking through old fitness magazines, wondering why I ever kept them. I think part of it was being with David and somehow believing that one person’s junk was another’s treasure. It doesn’t matter now, because I end up putting more of my things into bin bags than I do the boxes that I will be taking to Andy’s. Some people are apparently addicted to the endorphins that come from buying things, but I think there’s something equally intoxicating about heading to the tip with a carful of junk, while wondering why it was ever bought in the first place.
It’s less than half an hour until I’ve packed enough rubbish bags to fill my car. I head outside and only then remember that I have Andy’s BMW. I dump everything into the back and then go for a drive out to the tip.
When I get there, some burly bloke offers to help and everything is dispatched with maximum prejudice. Apart from the magazines that will go off to be recycled, the man reckons everything else will be in landfill by the weekend. How easy it is to shed an old life.
Back at the flat, I struggle to reverse-park Andy’s BMW into the space. The car is needlessly big and the mirrors seem to move themselves. I’m never convinced that I’m in control. It takes me three attempts and then I figure it’s close enough.
I spot the package straight away.
It’s sitting on my step, neatly wrapped in brown paper and thirty or forty centimetres square. When I reach it, I see the rectangle of white paper that’s been taped to the front. ‘Morgan’ is printed in capital letters and sans serif font, with no last name. I pick up the box and it’s surprisingly light. There’s no rattle from inside.
I turn and take in the street. The box has been hand-delivered in the half-hour I was out, so it’s either a coincidence, or someone was watching and waiting for the moment. I walk to the pavement and look both ways, then follow the street until it gets to the turn that leads to the alley that runs around the back of my flat. There is no one hanging around; no mysterious out-of-place cars. It’s the type of street where an unknown vehicle outside someone’s house will get a series of angry curtain-twitches at least and a letter on the windscreen if someone’s really annoyed.
A sniper’s dot is prickling the back of my neck. I’d swear I’m being watched, except there is no one in sight. I hurry back to my flat and open the door, before waiting in the frame; one foot in, one out.
‘Hello?’
There’s no answer and, when I poke my head inside, no obvious sign of anyone being there. I tell myself that I had the locks changed.
After a final check towards the empty street, I move fully into my flat and lock the door behind me. There’s warmth and safety here. The worst thing I ever did happened steps from where I am – but I’m still here.
I put the box on the counter and then get the scissors from the kitchen drawer. The corners of the brown paper have all been meticulously taped down, so I’m left snipping away at the package until there is enough room to slip my fingers inside. I pull the paper apart to reveal a plain brown box. It gives me a vision of boxes within boxes all the way down to some sort of thimble in the centre.
