Authors: Ashe Barker
“Hello. Mike?”
“Hi. You must be Faith.”
“Yes. It’s nice to meet you. I’m sorry about Caroline. For your loss.”
“Same goes. Ed, was it? Your husband?”
“Yes. Ed.” I brace for the recriminations I expect him to heap, if not on me then on Ed. At one time I would have taken such remarks more personally. These days I see Ed’s behaviour for what it was—the catastrophic combination of too much testosterone and a powerful machine. Fatal.
“It was hard on you too. A tragedy. So, you and Ewan are friends then?”
“Yes. He’s been very kind.”
“And now you’re repaying the favour.”
Hardly. This doesn’t touch the sides.
Mike continues. “I appreciate this, I really do. It would have been awkward if I couldn’t get this sorted now.”
I lead the way to Ewan’s front door, my key at the ready. “You know which room was Caroline’s?”
“Yeah. At the back, right?”
I nod and stand aside as he passes me to cart the first of his boxes upstairs. I trail after him. “Ewan says to take as much time as you need, and to help yourself to any of Caroline’s belongings. Once you’re sure you’ve got all you want, he’ll dispose of the rest. Charity shop, probably.”
“It’s been good of him to wait so long. I kept meaning to come, but, it’s been difficult. Something of an emotional journey. She was my only sister.”
“I’m sorry. I realise how hard this is.”
He turns on the landing to smile at me, his expression sorrowful. There’s the suggestion of a glitter in his eyes. I’m reminded of my own tearful efforts to sort out and dispose of Ed’s clothing, a task I accomplished within weeks of his death. Helen helped. She did most of it, in fact. I was relieved when his side of the wardrobe was emptied, his drawers ready to be filled with my stuff. And now Ewan’s too. I suspect Mike will find this therapeutic, but no less painful for that.
“Do you need any help?”
He opens Caroline’s bedroom door and steps through. “No. I can manage. Will you be downstairs?”
“I’ll be next door, working. Give me a ring on my mobile when you’re ready to go.”
He offers me a watery smile as I stand, framed in the doorway. I nod and leave him to grieve in private.
* * *
“Hi. It’s Mike. I think I got everything.”
“Great. I’ll be right there.” I press the end call button and close down the file I was working on before making my way back next door.
I’m greeted by the sight of half a dozen boxes piled up in Ewan’s hallway. One is full of books, autobiographies and books on antiques for the most part, as far as I can see. Not my taste in reading, but clearly Caroline liked them. Another box is piled high with knick-knacks and other possessions, ornaments, her mobile phone, her iPad, a set of expensive-looking speakers, a collection of fancy wine glasses. There’s a small, velvet-covered box on the top, which I assume contains her jewellery.
Caroline’s CD collection is stacked in a third box, and spills over into a fourth. I knew her taste in music, I heard it often enough through the open windows when I was in my garden. She had a fondness for Bon Jovi, Nickelback, The Script, Kaiser Chiefs, and all those are represented here. The rest of Mike’s choices seem to be her clothes. By no means all of them, Ewan will need to make a trip to the Barnardo’s shop in the village, I expect. I daresay I’ll help him with that. If he wants me to.
“Did you get everything? Ewan won’t mind if you want to come back another time.”
“No, this is it. I left the rest upstairs. It’s all tidy.”
“Okay. Do you need a hand to load this lot into your car?”
“Thanks. You can take the clothes if you would. I’ll manage the books and other heavy stuff.”
Between us it doesn’t take long to stack the boxes in the huge rear of Mike’s Volvo. Mike has already let the rear seats down so there’s plenty of room. He could easily take more stuff if he wanted, but he does seem adamant that he has all he came for. The driver’s window glides down and he waves to me as he reverses out of the drive. I give him a final salute as he disappears along the road taking what’s left of Caroline with him.
The end of an era, and I can’t say I’m sorry.
I turn and go back into Ewan’s house. I wander upstairs, stopping at the door of what used to be Caroline’s room. It’s ajar, so I push gently and step inside.
Mike told the truth, he has left it tidy. The cosmetics are still on the dressing table, but now arranged in a neat row. It’s as though Mike picked them up, perhaps considered adding them to his collection, but thought better of it and replaced them.
I open the wardrobe door. Maybe half the clothes are gone. The bookcase against one wall is virtually empty, the dressing table cleared. I open the top drawer to find that empty. The second one too. I crouch to check the bottom drawer.
This is where Mike has stored the stuff he left behind. He’s left a copy of the National Trust Handbook from 2013, a pile of magazines, a rolled-up poster sporting a picture of the Grand Canyon. I wonder if Caroline ever went there.
I lift the magazines to find a small stack of birthday cards underneath. I recall Caroline had a birthday about six weeks before her death; perhaps these were her last cards. I wonder if Mike even knew they were here—surely he’d have wanted these. These are personal.
I lift the cards out and spread them on the bed.
For a wonderful daughter.
To my sister, on her birthday.
Happy birthday to a dear friend.
For the One I Love, on her special day.
I stare at the collection in front of me, my stomach churning.
The One I Love?
I know messages on cards are cheesy, not heartfelt. People just make do with whatever they can find on the newsagents’ rack. But Ewan told me, on more than one occasion, that he did not love Caroline. So why, then, was he sending her a card just weeks before she died, saying that he did?
My fingers tremble as I pick the card up, the black front embossed with a metallic red heart. It certainly looks the part. Lover-like. Affectionate. Sexy. I open it to read the message scrawled inside. The familiar handwriting leaps off the inner page, screaming at me.
For my dearest, beloved Caro, on your birthday.
I love you, and I can’t wait until we can be together for good.
Yours always.
E
I drop the card, my heart lurching. I cover my mouth with my hand, the gesture instinctive, my disbelief absolute. No. It can’t be. No!
No, no,
no!
Not Ewan’s handwriting.
This card came from Ed.
My Ed. My husband, Ed.
How? Why? When?
I stand, pace the room blindly, my hands in my hair as I attempt to make sense of this.
Ed?
Ed?
Was this some sort of joke? Some meaningless flirtation? Wishful thinking on Ed’s part? Surely, it must have been. He fancied Caroline, I knew that. He made no secret of it. But to send her a card? And why did she keep it? She must have hidden it. Why?
Did this mean something to her as well? Were they…?
No, impossible. I’m not buying that. There has to be some other explanation. There must be.
I whirl and run from the room, narrowly avoid pitching headfirst down the stairs in my mad rush to escape. At the front door I stop, turn on my heel, and march back upstairs. I grab Ed’s card from the bed, leave the rest scattered there. I march out, slamming the door behind me.
Back in my kitchen I prop the card on the table and stare at it. My initial shock receding, I sift back through my recollections of Caroline and Ed, both separately and together. Did I ever see…? Were there any clues? Am I reading more into a silly birthday card than there really was?
Ed worked from home. I was out at work all day back then, commuting to Leeds and back. Conveniently out of the way. Caroline worked part-time as a driving instructor. Most of her pupils wanted lessons at weekends or in the evenings so she was often here all day too. They had no shortage of opportunity. But even so.
I wish Ewan were here. He’d know what to do, what to think. He’d be able to make sense of this.
Or would he? Why should he find sense where there is none?
And now they’re gone, both of them long gone. No one to ask. No way to know.
Do I want to know?
Yes!
I have to. Need to.
An hour later I’m still glaring at that lump of black paper. How can something so trivial, so unimportant, so fleeting, carry such significance? Damning evidence, that on its own means nothing. Tells me nothing. And everything. There must have been more. Some clue, some… some something left behind.
If only I’d known, suspected. I could have searched her room. If there had been any sign, any residual trace of Ed left behind there, I could have found it. But even if there was, Mike probably has it now; he took her personal possessions. I toy with the notion of phoning him, asking him to come back so I can check through his boxes, his memories of his only sister. Or maybe I could go to his hotel—he mentioned he’s staying at the Holiday Inn in Bradford.
I dismiss that notion. What would I say? That I believe his sister might have been screwing my husband, and could I just rifle through her things to find some way to prove it?
Hardly.
That just leaves…
I dial Ewan’s number, hoping that he won’t be tied up in a meeting, or in a dead zone somewhere. The connection takes half a minute to navigate the stratosphere and finally reach him. I hear the dial tone, and close my eyes.
Please be there. Please answer.
“Hi, darling. All go okay with Mike?”
“Ewan? Sir?”
“Faith? Are you alright? You sound upset.”
“Can you talk? I mean, I’m not disturbing you, am I?”
“Of course I can talk. What’s wrong? Is it something to do with Mike?”
“Yes. No. I found something. In Caroline’s room.”
“Yeah? What? What did you find?”
“Birthday cards.”
“I see. Cards. Cards she was going to send?” His voice is level, enquiring. It’s easy for him.
“No. Her cards, from her birthday. Just before she died.”
“Right. Okay. It was her twenty-eighth birthday a couple of months earlier. I missed it because I was away.”
“Did you send her a card?” I think I probably know the answer to that already, but I ask anyway. I trust Ewan, and I’ve already seen the evidence of Ed’s deceit with my own eyes, but still I need to hear him dispel any last shred of doubt that might remain.
“Of course.”
“What did it say on it?”
“How the fuck should I remember? It’s over a year ago now. Anyway, you won’t have found that. It was an e-card. Unless she printed it off, I suppose, though I don’t see why she would.”
“An e-card? You sent an e-card? Not a proper one, a black card with a heart on it? A card that said on the front that it was to the one I love?”
“No. Faith, what did you find?”
I drag in a long, deep breath, then spit out the words quickly. “It was from Ed. I recognised his handwriting. Ed sent Caroline a card. He said he loved her.”
Ewan’s muffled curse draws on vocabulary he normally reserves for the bedroom. Or the dungeon. I remain silent, let the bizarreness of all this sink in for both of us.
As if our lives were not already hopelessly tangled by fate, that this final, cruel blow should land now.
“Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?”
“It’s his handwriting. He’s written inside that he loves her, that he wants to be with her.”
“What exactly does it say? Do you have it there with you?”
“Yes.”
“Read it out to me. Now.” His tone has hardened. This is his dom voice, and my emotional response is instant.
I open the card, though the words are etched on my memory. I have no need to read them, but I do anyway. “For my dearest, beloved Caro, on your birthday. I love you, and I can’t wait until we can be together for good. Yours always. E.” I pause, then, “It’s his writing. No mistake about that.” Then, in a whisper, “Did you know?”
“No, I fucking didn’t.”
“Wouldn’t she have told you? I mean, if you weren’t exclusive? You wouldn’t have minded if she slept with someone else, so why would she keep it from you?”
“I wouldn’t have minded for me, but I’d have been fucking furious for you.”
“You didn’t know me then.”
“I knew
of
you. I knew Ed was married. Carrie would have known full well I’d never stand for her screwing around with my next-door neighbour. I wouldn’t have tolerated her dumping on my own doorstep. Literally.”
“So that’s why she hid the card then. So you wouldn’t find out.” I’m starting to piece bits of this together.
“Maybe. Where did you find it?”
“In the bottom drawer of her dressing table. Under some magazines.”
Ewan says nothing for a few seconds. I can hear his low breathing on the other end of the line, as though he’s considering carefully what to say next. “Faith, I always try to avoid saying anything negative about Ed. He was your husband, and I know you loved him even though I wasn’t fond of him. But… you know better than anyone that he was a womaniser. He flirted with any woman he saw, especially if they encouraged him… Could this have been just more of that? It might not mean anything. Not really. Just a bit of flirting gone too far.”
I’d already explored that possibility, but in my gut I don’t accept it. Hearing the suggestion stated out loud by Ewan further convinces me. I can tell by his voice he doesn’t believe it either. I don’t answer him. There is no answer. Ewan picks up the theme again.
“Did you ever see anything, anything at all to make you suspicious? Ed wasn’t exactly the soul of discretion.”
“No. Nothing.” I can hear the hitch in my voice. In moments I’ll be in tears.
“Baby…” Ewan has heard it too. The compassion in that one word almost melts my heart.
“I wish you were here.” My tears are flowing now, unheeded down my cheeks.
“Me too, love.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too. I’ll be there soon.”
“I know. I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to wreck your day. I know you have business, and…”