24 Hours: An intense, suspenseful psychological thriller (26 page)

Vindication, perhaps.

‘But you killed her instead.’

‘I didn’t kill her.’ Her voice rose with petulance. ‘It was her. It was self-defence. She went absolutely mental with me.’

‘Mental?’

‘Yeah, mental. She came at me, when I said you deserved to know. And … well, I hit her.’ She shrugged thin shoulders inside her grey sweatshirt. ‘I just whacked her, not even that hard, because she was telling me to “shut up, silly little girl” and go away. She was so worried about you coming back and hearing what I was saying, I think. She even wedged a chair under the door handle.’

‘Emily did?’ I thought about trying so frantically to open the door, feeling something solid and heavy against it. ‘Why? Why would she? I don’t believe you.’

‘Well, believe!’ For a second the old Jolie was seated there. ‘Think about it, Laurie. She wanted to stop you getting in if I was still there. And I laughed at her; said I wasn’t going anywhere till she ’fessed up. So then she just came at me, and I just … I panicked. I hit her in the face, and …’ she trailed off.

‘And?’ I urged her.

‘She fell back. She must have banged her head on the corner of the chair, ’cos she fell like a bloody tree. And I couldn’t wake her up, she was, like, unconscious then and I panicked even more.’

‘But … the fire?’

‘I was smoking and the fag must’ve fallen when I hit her and the next thing I knew, the curtain went up. So I ran.’

‘You ran?’

‘Out of the French windows. I shut them behind me and I ran.’

‘
You locked her in
.’

It wasn’t a question.

‘No.
She
locked that door.
She
put that chair there. I couldn’t move her. She was too heavy.’

I stared at her. ‘But the fire … you knew the room was on fire—’

‘I didn’t. Not really. There was just a bit of smoke at first. And I thought she’d wake up.’ For the first time, I thought she might cry. ‘She should have woken up.’

We sat in silence for a moment.

‘So,’ gradually I was processing everything she’d just said. ‘It wasn’t me you were trying to kill?’

‘I wasn’t trying to kill anyone,’ Jolie moaned. ‘I wasn’t, I swear to God. I just wanted to tell her to leave my man alone. I read their texts and it made me sick to my stomach.’

‘So
that’s
how you knew which hotel,’ I said slowly. ‘Emily told Sid. Because I never did.’ I was hiding from him – but Emily wasn’t.

‘Yeah well. Everyone wanted my man.’ Jolie looked at me again, tears in her limpid eyes. ‘Only Sid wasn’t my man, was he? Bloody bastard.’

‘He wasn’t anyone’s,’ I said quietly. ‘He never will be.’

Soon after that, I left.

Jolie didn’t react to my departure; just kept sobbing quietly and swearing she ‘never meant it’. The sophisticated woman had vanished; only the little girl remained.

I made it to the loo just in time to throw up my breakfast.

T
here was
no solace to be had from anything Jolie had told me. I didn’t know how much to believe of her story anyway, and wearily I accepted that it was best to leave it for the courts to decide now. Jolie’s driver had come forward to confirm that he had driven her to the hotel briefly that night. He swore that they had left under her instruction before he knew the fire had taken hold.

Slowly my anger was beginning to dissipate. Mostly, I felt sorrow.

The only small comfort I could derive at all from the conversation was the knowledge that, at the very least, Emily hadn’t died
instead
of me. I hadn’t been, as I had believed, the sole architect of her demise.

But in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t make it any better.

L
ater
, I remembered Emily’s fury when she’d discovered I’d slept with Sid again. Was that before or after she’d fallen into the abyss of betrayal? Of what must have been a horrible and guilty lust? And had it been only once, Emily and Sid? Or had it been ongoing? Is that why Sid had tired of Jolie? Because he’d started up with Em?

Was it never about me?

I remembered something else that had niggled at the time. I hadn’t even told Emily about me and Sid, the time he and I had slept together, that one day and night after we’d split – and yet she’d known. She’d arrived at my house, all guns blazing, and she’d known already. Was that anger fuelled by her concern for me – or was it fuelled by jealousy?

I chose to believe the former.

I
dreamt
my dad came to see me.

When I woke, I realised it was less a dream and more a memory, about our final meeting. Then he had looked old, stooped, incapable of harm to anyone. We had little to say to one another; he told me he just wanted to make sure I was ‘all right’, mumbling something about getting to know his grand-daughter, who was at school that day. And we both knew that was unlikely to happen, because we both knew he would disappear back into his own life, closeted and afraid of his spectres.

Sometime during that meeting, I asked him why. He sat silently for a long time, and then eventually he said, ‘I wasn’t good at words. I got angry. It came out wrong.’

I considered this for a moment.

And what I said was this: something I had waited a very long time to say. I said ‘I forgive you, Dad’ and he started to say ‘What for?’ – and then he thought better of it.

After he left, I sat for a very long time in the dark.

He had made me think of before.

Of when I had hope, when life seemed fresh and exciting; of when I first met Sid. Of a time when I returned from visiting friends in Wales, filled with the thrill of being back in the big city and knowing, somewhere out there, waiting for me, was the love of my life: as I sat on the tube in somnolence, as I boarded the bus and swayed within centimetres of that fat man’s sweat, that
he
was out there, my love, in London town, old London town. Back where I have felt most alive.

It was what I always loved, when we first lived together: the thought that somewhere in this huge city, there was him. And he was going about his business and I didn’t know what exactly he was doing – it could have been any one of a hundred things, and it didn’t matter what it was, it just mattered that he was out there, and yet I couldn’t see him.

As if I’d dreamed you into being
.

I
t took
me a long time to realise that maybe I
had
dreamed Sid into being. Into being what I thought he was, what I wanted him to be. Not what or who he actually was.

But one part of me will never ever be sorry. Because I was living. Until the very last part, I was living every inch of life. I tried it, and it didn’t work, but Polly came from that deep dark love, and in the end, I had lived to my fullest degree with Sid, every nerve and fibre alert and sentient.

We are born searching for something. Food, warmth, comfort. If we’re lucky, life is one long voyage of discovery – and then we die. It may sound harsh, but it isn’t really. If we’re not lucky, we just exist.

I had done more than exist. I had fully lived life, in all its pain and glory, and then I got out, just in time, before it killed me.

I
only ever saw Sid cry twice. Once was at Emily’s funeral, which was both a tragic but also a strangely joyous occasion. Joyous because she was so loved, had so many friends. The church was packed; the eulogies were utterly heart-felt; the songs were sung with passion and force by those otherwise numbed or lessened by her death. Nirvana, The Charlatans; all her favourites blared out afterwards.

Pitifully sad because if anyone should still have been here, vivacious and bursting with life, it was Emily.

I sat next to Pam Southern, who wore red because it was Emily’s favourite colour, with my mother on the other side. I put my arm around Pam’s sloping shoulders every time it got too much to bear.

I’d asked Polly if she wanted to come; I thought, six or sixteen, she had the right, because no one had loved Emily the way my daughter had. But on the day, she decided not to. ‘I’d rather go and play with Bernard at Robin’s,’ she said flatly, and I knew she was scared of the dark place she thought Emily had gone to.

‘Come to the party afterwards?’ I said to her. ‘Auntie Pam would like to see you.’ She pondered this for a moment. ‘All right, Mummy,’ she agreed eventually. She didn’t say much else.

I didn’t think Sid would come, but in the end, he did, and it did feel brave. He must have arrived late. I spotted him sitting at the very back of the church as I walked out after Emily’s family, following the brightly painted coffin.

Afterwards, he found me outside.

‘I’m sorry, Laurie,’ he said, and his eyes were very dark. He’d cut himself shaving, so unused to the blade, a nick of blood beside the handsome hard mouth.

About which bit?
I nearly said, but in the end, I didn’t. I just said ‘Yes, me too.’

I couldn’t really be angry about him and Emily. I didn’t want to taint my love for her with jealousy over him, and the funny thing was, I
wasn’t
really jealous. Mistakes happen; all the time. We are only human. It almost seemed natural, the fact they’d briefly been together – which was impossible to explain to anyone else; would only sound warped to those who couldn’t understand. I knew Sid loved me above all else, I knew he was only trying to fill the void. I knew his attraction was powerful, even if you half-hated him.

Jolie was still in police custody; awaiting a date for trial for manslaughter, still hoping for bail. It seemed unlikely, apparently, that she’d get it.

I reached up and kissed Sid, and even in his smart Paul Smith suit – the trousers perfectly pressed, his blue shirt immaculate – he still smelt of paint and turps and cigarettes, and his unusually clean-shaven cheek was wet with tears – and we both knew it really was the end this time.

‘Take care,’ I said, and then I walked away. And this time, it was easier.

We buried Emily, alongside her feckless father, and I cried so hard I couldn’t see the trees behind, the sky, the ground that Emily went into.

I forgave her her small slip. I just wanted her back.

Afterwards I went home, where Mal waited with Polly and Leonard, and together we all drove to the restaurant in Kentish Town where we’d organised a wake Emily would have been proud of. And the saddest thing was that she would have bloody loved it, my darling Em. She would have been in her element, earrings swinging, hair flying as she laughed uproariously and dosey-doed to the Country and Western we had carefully chosen. We didn’t play any Johnny Cash though. We didn’t play ‘Hurt’.

I
went
to one more funeral that winter, driving down through deepest, bleakest Kent to Dungeness on the bitterly cold Tuesday just after Christmas. I was grateful that Mal had stayed the night with me before, insisting he accompany me for ‘support’.

And as we drove, I recollected the last time I’d been on these roads, heading the other way, racing to find Polly, and I remembered how frantic and delirious with worry and grief I was then.

Now I just felt a heavy sadness – but no panic any more. The adrenaline and stress had stopped the day we buried Emily; the day I’d said goodbye to Sid.

Still, I was dreading this funeral, I could hardly bear more grief – but I knew I had to be there. It was the right thing, entirely.

On this morning, I walked into the tiny grey crematorium, and I clutched Mal’s hand harder. And finally my heart lifted just a little as I saw my friend.

Saul looked good in pin-stripes, even if the suit was a bit short in the leg for him. Binny looked, frankly, odd in a dark purple gothic dress. But the outfit didn’t matter. She was totally distraught.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I hugged Saul, feeling his ribs as I put my arms around him, and he muttered ‘S’all right’, because he wasn’t the kind of man to show his feelings if he could help it – but the pain was scored clearly across his face.

Binny fell on me as if we were far better friends than our brief acquaintanceship would suggest, sobbing damply into my neck. ‘I couldn’t save her,’ she wept, ‘I tried so hard, but I couldn’t reach her. She just wouldn’t bloody listen.’

‘Sorry, lovie,’ I said, because I truly was, and because there was little else to say. Although perhaps more than most, I understood the true desolation of that feeling; of being unable to change the path of someone’s self-destruction.

And so I never met Janie, who had no doubt been some kind of feisty firecracker, if her brother was anything to go by. Janie, blank-eyed and beautiful in the photos they’d put up as posters on the walls, who had succumbed aged just twenty to the fierce dragon that she’d chased with absolute futility.

But I had hope for Saul. I knew he would be all right. He was one of life’s survivors, and he looked infinitely better than he had the last time I’d seen him, when I’d truly feared for his life. He was better fed now; had filled out a little, the hard angular planes softened somewhat – though he bore a new and permanent scar over his eyebrow from where Barrel Man had kicked him.

Fortunately for Saul, it only added to his tough but boyish charm.

After the cheap coffin slid through the cheap curtains to the strains of a song about diamonds, a song a weeping Binny informed me later was by Rihanna, chosen ‘’specially, in memory of her beautiful Janie’, and that I just thanked God wasn’t one of Jolie’s classics, we went to a pub on the beach. There we ate curled-up ham sandwiches and Pringles; toasted Janie with beer and vinegary wine. Saul’s uncle got his accordion out and they sang Irish ballads and cried a lot and hugged each other with a sort of fierce desperation. It was more than a little different to Emily’s wake.

Later, Saul and I stood on the shingle outside the pub so he could smoke. It was freezing and the vast rolling sea was a dark grey, the sky hardly any brighter. But amongst the stones, pink and green lichen still grew.

‘Come and see me, won’t you?’ I watched a valiant blue buoy bob up and down far out amongst the choppy waves. ‘We’re moving down to Sussex for a bit. Giving the rural thing a go. It’s not far. You’ve got my number.’

‘I will,’ he tried to smile, and my heart bled for him – this boy-man, old before his time.

‘Promise? I’d really like you to meet Polly.’ I absolutely meant it. ‘Please do come.’

‘Yeah, I will. I’d like to meet her too.’

Saul gazed out at the forlorn sea, and I guessed he was thinking about his twin, about how they’d played down here as kids, chasing one another between the boats and the fishermen’s huts; deriving comfort in happy childhood things like ice-creams and sea-shells and daring each other over the little trainline from Hythe; drinking Merrydown on Camber Sands, and getting served in the local where their mum
didn’t
drink, aged just fourteen – before it all got too dark. Before Janie descended into a place Saul couldn’t quite reach her; couldn’t haul her up from.

I slipped my hand into his and squeezed his long fingers, and I felt him shudder slightly, desperately stifling a sob.

I held his hand a little tighter.

And then Mal came out with more drinks, coffee for me, and a pint of shandy for Saul – and Saul straightened up to his full height, clearing his throat. He wouldn’t show his tears to another man. He took the drink, thanking Mal politely. Inside, Binny was very drunk in the corner, singing along to sad songs they put on the jukebox, and crying all over Saul’s poor mother.

Soon after that Mal and I left.

I
strip
it back to where it began. Naked want; unadulterated lust. A love that grew from that want, becoming something too complex, too tangled and sinuous to do us anything but harm in the end.

But in its purest form, my love for Sid and his for me was not a bad thing.

Sid was my love story. It might have been wrong, but it was my decision;
my
wrong.

My dad broke something in me; so in turn, I chose Sid, who only made the injury worse, and was broken too.

I knew, very soon after I met him, that I would never love anyone again the way I loved him. That I
could
not. I knew it even after he raised a hand to me.

And I knew too that he couldn’t help it; that he was so destroyed by his past, by his family, by his demons, that it wasn’t me he was hitting. It was them he struck out at.

‘I see the goodness in you,’ Sid said to me the first night we got the keys to the Cornwall studio. Long before the violence began, when it was new and fresh; setting out on our adventure.

It was January and well below freezing. We had one electric heater approximately the age of Moses, that smelt constantly of burning; we had to keep unplugging it in case it blew up. Shivering, we lay in one thin sleeping-bag, beneath a scratchy blanket, on the floorboards of the studio, wrapped round each other in the vague hope of warmth. The window was vast, the wind rattled the loose panes and moaned around the house, but from where we lay, we could see the stars; the vast cavernous sky. The gales had blown the clouds away.

It was infinite outside.

I’d never seen a sky like that before. I haven’t since.

Sid lay on his side, staring at me, staring at the sky. Absently, he wound a strand of my hair around his finger, gentle enough not to hurt me – but only just.

‘I never met anyone like you before,’ he said.

Sometimes, I can still feel his fingers.

‘You are good,’ he whispered it again. ‘You are my salvation, Laurie Smith.’

In the darkness, he was crying. He tried to hide it but I knew; his face was wet.

That was his proposal. The ‘Smith’. It went without saying. I would be him. I would be his.

S
o
.

Sid was my love story.

But Mal is
my
salvation.

Different. Safe, steady. Not dull, I realised in time, but calm. I am done with the fear and the rollercoaster ride of that dark love. I have learnt too much about myself. I have travelled away from that path, and I cannot go back.

I have travelled here, and it is the right place, I find.