Bones Under The Beach Hut (29 page)

    Carole
nodded. 'We've heard her views on the subject.'

    'Anyway,
to keep her out of the scene and to let me get on with my life with Philly, I
made this arrangement to ... I don't know what you'd say . . .'

    'Buy
her off?' suggested Carole.

    'Yes,
that's what it effectively was - buying her off. And she insisted that it was
done properly, with a legal agreement, which may give a pointer to the kind of
character she is. But at least it got her out of my hair. Anyway, that was all
fine, so long as I had this big income, but when things started to go
pear-shaped on the money front, oh God, I couldn't keep Philly in our Smalting
lifestyle and I couldn't pay what I'd agreed with Nuala, and ... I was very
stressed.'

    Mark
Dennis was silent for a moment. Neither Carole nor Jude said anything, giving
him time to gather his thoughts.

    'Well,'
he said eventually, 'I still thought I could sort things out. I thought I could
do it on my own. And I didn't think it would take long. I only intended to leave
Philly for a few days. Go up to London, borrow some money from various City
friends to dig me out of my financial hole, then meet up with Nuala, somehow
get her off my back . . .'

    'And
what happened?'

    He
shook his head wryly. 'Should have known, really. Most of my City mates were
feeling the squeeze as much as I was. Some of them actually asked to borrow
money from me before I could put in my own request. Then I met up with Nuala .
. .'

    'At
the Oxo Tower.'

    'Yes,
Carole. At the Oxo Tower. Typical of bloody Nuala, that. She knows I haven't
got two penny pieces to rub together, so she books in at one of the most
expensive bloody restaurants in London.'

    'How
did you pay for it?'

    'Oh,
credit cards.' He let out a bitter little laugh. 'Same way I'd been paying for
everything else for the previous few months.'

    'So
there was quite a big debt built up there too, was there?' asked Jude.

    'I'll
say. And of course I'd been a very high earner, so I had no problem getting new
cards or increasing my credit limit, which meant the debts just spiralled
upwards and upwards.' He sighed. 'And the pressure on me was getting more and
more intense . . .'

    Carole
broke the silence that followed this. 'What happened?'

    Mark
Dennis shook his head in bewilderment. 'I don't know.'

    'What
do you mean - you don't know?'

    He
sighed. 'I literally don't know. I had ... I suppose you'd have to call it some
kind of breakdown. I mean, when I left Philly, I can remember that happening. And
I can remember having dinner with Nuala at the Oxo Tower - that was on the
eighth of May - but . . .' He shook his head again, unable to fill in the gaps
in his recollection.

    'So
where have you been for the last few weeks?' asked Jude gently.

    'I've
been in a psychiatric hospital for most of it. Only came out a couple of weeks
ago.'

    'How
did you get in there? Did you go in voluntarily?'

    'No,
I was sent there. Look, I can't actually remember a lot of this stuff myself,
but from what the doctors and nurses have told me, I've kind of pieced together
what happened. As I say, the last thing I can clearly remember was having that
dinner with Nuala at the Oxo Tower on the eighth of May. What I did for the
next few days I have no idea, but I was found on Dover Beach on the morning of
the eleventh. I had been in the sea, was drenched through and was only wearing
a pair of boxer shorts. What was more, I couldn't speak.'

    'And
you have no recollection of how you got there?'

    'None
at all. And only hazy recollections of the following weeks. Because of the
location, because I had apparently come out of the sea, and because I couldn't
- or perhaps wouldn't - speak English, the fairly reasonable assumption was
made that I must be an illegal immigrant, who had been shipwrecked, or perhaps
dumped in the English Channel by some unscrupulous trafficker. So I was handed
over to the police, who apparently questioned me for some time.'

    'Do
you remember any of that?'

    'Only
vague sort of impressions - and not very pleasant ones at that. I think the
police thought I was holding out on them, that I actually could speak but was
just pretending to be traumatized to conceal my identity. So they didn't
exactly treat me with kid gloves.'

    'Are you
saying they beat you up?' asked Carole, whose Home Office background made her
particularly sensitive about criticisms of the police.

    'No,
I'm not saying that. I don't think there was any violence involved, just a lot
of suspicion. And my recollections are so hazy that I don't know which bits
really happened and which I've invented. Anyway, after a few days the police
must have decided that I was suffering from some genuine psychological
condition - amnesia at the very least, and possibly some other arcanely named
syndromes. So I was then sent to this secure psychiatric hospital in Lewes.
Which is where I've been until a fortnight ago.'

    'But
clearly your memory's come back. You know who you are now, don't you?'

    'Yes,
Jude, I do. The process was gradual. The psychiatrists who worked with me were
very good. And I had a lot of medication too.' He gestured to his flabby body.
'I think that's probably why I put on so much weight. The medication and lack
of exercise.'

    'Did
the psychiatrists have any explanation for what had happened to you?'

    'Conjectures,
nothing concrete. They reckon that I'd just got to a point of stress where my
system couldn't cope, so everything kind of shut down. I couldn't deal with the
world around me and so my body reacted by excluding me from that world,
shutting me off from it.'

    The
two women exchanged looks. Something in Jude's expression prevented Carole from
expressing the scepticism Mark Dennis's words had engendered in her.

    He
shrugged. 'Anyway, that was what the psychiatrists reckoned. Whether it's true
I've no idea, but I suppose it sounds like a kind of explanation.'

    'When
you went down to Dover Beach,' asked Carole, 'do you think it was with the
intention of drowning yourself, of escaping your problems that way?'

    Mark
Dennis pursed his lips. 'To be honest I don't know. I don't think so. During
the last few months I've never contemplated suicide, however bad things have
been. And before that, when I was normal, if that's the right word . . . well,
the idea of me topping myself would have been laughable. I've never suffered
from depression. I've always been told I'm a rather annoyingly positive
person.'

    Jude
nodded. 'Yes, but depression can lie low in someone for a very long time. And
your lifestyle had always been pretty pressured, hadn't it?'

    'That's
exactly what one of the psychiatrists said to me. Almost word for word. Do you
have special expertise in that area, Jude?'

    'I do
a bit of healing.'

    'Ah.'
He looked at her appreciatively. 'I would imagine you're very good at it.'

    'Thank
you.'

    'What
I can't understand,' said Carole, 'is when you did finally begin to remember
who you were, why you didn't make contact with anyone?'

    'I
hadn't got many people to make contact with. My parents are both dead. There
was no way I wanted to see Nuala again until I was sure I was firing on all
cylinders.'

    'But
what about Philly?'

    'Yes.'
Mark Dennis looked sad and confused. 'Yes, I know I should have got in touch
with Philly as soon as I could, but . . . it's complicated. I guess it's
something to do with our relationship. Philly . . . she's . . . well, she
hasn't got a lot of confidence. She doesn't show it, she always seems bright
and bouncy, but her self-esteem is actually very low.'

    Jude,
who knew this all too well, didn't say anything, as he went on, 'And the
previous men in her life haven't done much good for her. From what I can
gather, they were mostly inadequates, needy emotional vampires who monopolized
all of her energy with their problems rather than her giving any time to her
own.

    'But
when we met, it was different. I was used to being in charge, I was full -
perhaps over-full - of confidence, and I loved her. And the fact that someone
like me loved her, that gave
her
a lot of confidence. And the fact that
I enjoyed being in charge, and that I sort of protected her, she liked that
too. Then of course I'm that much older, so a bit of a father figure maybe. I
was like her rock. She knew that, whatever happened, she could rely on me.'

    Carole
and Jude guessed more or less what he was about to say, but they did not break
the silence. 'Well, when our finances started to go belly up, I wasn't so much
of a rock, was I? No more Mr Reliable.'

    'But
Philly didn't take it out on you for what had happened?' asked Carole.

    'Good
Lord, no. It's not in her nature to do that. No, she was very understanding and
supportive. And very practical. She said we'd have to sell Seashell Cottage,
and I knew how much she loved the place, but she didn't put any pressure on me.
Philly is entirely incapable of emotional blackmail.'

    'Which,
after Nuala,' Carole suggested tartly, 'must have been quite a relief for you.'

    'God,
you can say that again.'

    'So,
when you got your memory back, the reason you didn't contact Philly,' said Jude
perceptively, 'was because you were afraid you had become needy, like all her
previous men.'

    'Exactly
that. I wanted to wait till my own confidence had built up a bit, till I could
once again be the person she needs. But I'm afraid getting to that situation
promises to be a horribly slow process.'

    'You
could at least have just given Philly a call, though.' There was a note of
reproach in Carole's voice. 'Assured her you were still alive. She's been
worried sick about you.'

    Mark
Dennis looked shamefacedly down at the sticky table top. 'I know. I should have
done it. But I didn't want her to see me . . . damaged.'

    'You did,
however, come down to Smalting last week, didn't you?' continued Carole in the
same tone. 'Why didn't you see her then?'

    'Ah.'
His naughty schoolboy expression was just the same as Gray Czesky's in similar
circumstances. 'I didn't know anyone had seen me down here.'

    'You
must've lived in a country village long enough to know that nothing -
absolutely nothing - you do in a place like that is unseen.'

    'Yes,
I suppose you're right.'

    Jude's
approach was, as ever, less confrontational than her neighbour's. 'So why
didn't you contact Philly?' she asked gently.

    'That
was what I meant to do. I'd been out of the Lewes hospital for over a week, I'd
sorted out the rather dingy room I've got here in Littlehampton, and I felt
ready to at least try and see Philly. So I took a cab to Smalting that Monday
evening.'

    'Without
ringing Philly to tell her you were coming?'

    'Yes,
without doing that. And I think I know why. If I'm brutally honest with myself,
I didn't ring her because that meant I could still duck out of the meeting if I
wanted to. You know, if when I got to Smalting I lost my nerve.'

    'And
I assume you did lose your nerve. That was why you didn't go to see her.'

    'Well,
it wasn't exactly losing my nerve, though I suppose it was in a way. I got to
Smalting and rather than going straight to Seashell Cottage, I . . . well, I
thought I might drop in on Gray Czesky, just to see if he'd heard anything
about Philly, to see if he knew whether she was actually still in Smalting and
. . . Yes, I suppose I did lose my nerve.'

    'And
you also, I assume, knew,' said Carole, 'that going to see Gray Czesky would
inevitably lead to another drinking session with him.'

    Jude
continued the chain of thought. 'And you wouldn't want Philly to see you in a
drunken state, because that is one of the few things you argued about. So the
moment you decided to go and see Gray was the moment you decided you weren't
going to see Philly that evening.'

    Mark
Dennis's nod confirmed that she'd got it right. 'And I did get very drunk, I'm
afraid. I'd been off the booze since I'd had the breakdown. No bars in
psychiatric hospitals - at least not that kind of bar. So the stuff I drank at
Gray's went straight to my head. And I don't think it mixed very well with the
medication I was on. Am still on, actually.' He gestured to his mineral water.
'That's why I'm drinking this. Anyway, that night I was certainly in no
condition for a heart-warming, violins-in-the-background reunion with Philly.'