A Twist of Fate (25 page)

‘Again, I had to reassess my life, take stock. I got a job abroad, as far away from England as I could. I worked with Nick and we did all right. We set up our own company and you know the rest.

‘Do you know what? I'd almost allowed myself to forget about it. I'd almost just got on with my life. Even a plane crash couldn't bother me anymore. And then there was you. When you came along, I knew I must be doing something right. Suddenly, for the first time, my life was sorted.'

He stopped and stared ahead of him, completely still and silent.

I wanted to believe him. I craved believing him. ‘So why has this happened now?'

‘She saw me. The girl in the shop saw me on the
Jack Northam Show
. She recognised me from that night. And she's right. I was there.'

‘But if you were helping her, why didn't she remember that?'

He turned to me, his eyes damp, dismay etched on his face. ‘Callie! I didn't do it,' he said, pleading for me. ‘Believe me, please, believe me.'

I wanted to. I wanted to so much I was in agony. I'd never seen Paul like this. Paul, my rock, my support. What struck me at that moment was not only what he had told me, but the fact that, for the first time ever, he looked vulnerable. He was as human as I was, and, despite his revelations, I adored him even more for it.

We just looked at each other, our souls open and raw. He leaned in, seeking my understanding. Our mouths met and the sense of completion that always rushed headlong into me when we kissed happened again. We kissed as if our lives depended on it, as if, as long as we kissed, it didn't matter what else happened.

But it
did
matter. The images in my head returned: blood, fear, anger.

I pulled back and turned away.

‘Callie?' he asked, fearful.

‘What do you have to do now?' I questioned, not looking at him.

‘Wait. You know how long these things take. There'll be a hearing in a day or so, but then it'll be months, years maybe.'

‘Do you have freedom?'

‘Can't leave the country. I have to report to the local police station every other day.'

‘How can you live like that? What about your job?'

‘I'll have to explain to Nick. I can survive for a time.'

Despite the heaviness with which he spoke, he had still reconciled himself to it calmly. I couldn't help but admire his good sense.

He put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Callie, look at me. Let me make love to you.'

His hand stroked down my side, that warm, strong hand I relied on. But this time I moved away from it and stood up.

‘Callie. Believe me. I've only ever been truthful with you.'

I stood, unmoving. Silence fell like a sudden fog around us.

‘I can't do this,' I said.

‘What?'

I turned round to him. ‘I can't be with you. Too much … too much has been said.'

‘You told me you trusted me.'

I looked at him, my eyes blurred. ‘I want to.'

He approached me, fast movements which made me take a step back. ‘Then do. I was helping her, Callie. If I hadn't come in then Christ knows what would have happened. I was helping her.'

‘Why didn't she realise you weren't the one who'd hurt her?'

‘I don't know! She was distressed, confused, I guess. I had a dark cagoule on. The guy who did it had a black hoodie. It looked similar to her, maybe.'

I stood firmly. ‘She's remembered your face after all this time. You must have made quite an impression on her.' I sounded accusatory, I knew it.

‘Callie! Don't talk like this, don't say these things. I've been completely honest with you.'

‘You didn't think of going to the police with what you knew? You could have helped find the perpetrator.'

‘Of course I bloody thought of it. Thought of nothing else, but … the evidence was against me, I'm no fool. I left blood everywhere. If they had anything on me, I knew it would look bad, especially after I found out there was no CCTV.'

‘So the evidence will still be against you.'

He said nothing but sat hunched tautly forward, staring at the floor.

I continued, my voice measured. ‘Why didn't you mention it before? It's quite a thing to have witnessed.'

He gave a non-committal shrug. ‘I wasn't ready. I don't have to tell you every single detail of my life in the first twenty-four hours of knowing you. Don't you have any secrets, eh?'

‘No. I don't,' I murmured, tears falling.

‘Course you do, Callie. I remember. I remember you saying on the island that you wanted someone to wake up with and still have things to discover about them each day. You said that to me. Yes, there are things about me you don't know, and I bloody hope there are things about you I don't know.'

I couldn't stop crying now. ‘I thought you were …'

‘What?'

‘I thought you were so easy.'

He stood, his height and inherent strength almost intimidating. ‘Is that it? Hey? You want easy? No, Callie. Life doesn't work like that. I'm not easy, and I'm not perfect, but I try to do the right thing. It's fucking hard sometimes, but in all that's happened to me, Callie, I have tried to do the right thing – my mother, work, Afghanistan, the jewellers. Is that not good enough for you?'

I looked at him. He deserved my honesty. ‘I don't know.'

He paced around, pulling his hands through his hair, at a loss for what to do. ‘I think I should go now.' He paused and looked back at me, like a little boy willing me to disagree. ‘Do
you
? Do you think I should go? Do you want me to go?'

I clutched my arms around me but then looked up at him solemnly and felt myself nodding.

All that visceral, reliable strength seemed to drain from his body. He stood like a condemned man, his limbs and face empty of energy and life. ‘There it is then. What more can I do, Callie? I love you. I love you so fucking much.'

‘I love you too.' We both knew it was the truth. ‘But I don't think I know who you are.'

His face twisted in agony, but then, with exhausted resignation, Paul turned and left.

Twenty-nine

I sat there on my sofa. The sky turned from russet to gunmetal grey to an inky black diffused by the glow of London.

I didn't move. I had run out of thought or emotion. I had no tears left, and I certainly had no reason left.

I had doubted and now I could feel vindicated in that. I'd told myself time and again from the start that he wasn't right for me. And now it was proven.

But then why was I doubting now?

Why did I long for him? Why did I think of my times with him and know that they were as good as it was ever going to get? I would never feel as complete, as settled. The certainty of that thudded away inside, refusing to be banished.

I battled with myself. I was wrong. I had been wrong. I had stepped off the path and was paying the price.

I let time tick away. Cars passed my window with their familiar rising then falling hum and swish.

In the evening Tina rang.

‘How are you doing?' she asked gently.

‘Not great.'

‘What happened?'

‘I let him go.'

‘How do you mean? You make it sound like you made him redundant.'

‘I can't do it. I can't be with him. He's a violent criminal.'

‘Oh, come on, Callie! You don't know that at all. How did he explain things?'

‘He said he arrived on the scene as the real perpetrator was in the act. He beat him up. The guy ran off and Paul went to help the girl, but she was so delirious that she thought it was him who'd attacked her. She's remembered him again after seeing him on TV.'

There was silence down the phone before Tina asked, ‘So why don't you believe him?'

I rubbed my head and squeezed my eyes shut. ‘Because … I don't know … It's as if I'm not allowed to. We're not meant to be together, Tina. We're not meant to be.'

‘Callie, for God's sake. Have you ever heard the expression cutting off your nose to spite your face?'

‘Oh, stop it. He's going to be on trial, Tina!'

‘All the more reason why he needs you.'

‘He can look after himself. He always has.'

‘Everyone needs somebody.'

‘Look … I can't. I keep going over and over everything, trying to make sense of it, and for now, this is my sense. I can't see him. I can't let him confuse me even more. It's best this way. No matter what, it's best this way. It always was. No one is supposed to get together in the way we did. It was bound to go wrong.'

‘I understand your confusion and uncertainty, Cal, but really …' She sighed. ‘Look, you need some head space, you really do. I'll give you a few days then ring you, OK? Make sure you're OK. If you want me in the meantime, call.'

‘Yeah … Thanks, Tina.'

‘OK. Bye for now.'

The call ended. My friend wasn't impressed.

I barely slept. I deliberately kept my phone out of the room. In the morning I paced myself, making coffee, putting on the TV, before checking to see if he'd rung or messaged. He hadn't. It made me sick to the stomach.

I went into school later. Term was due to start the following week. The burden of a school teacher could always distract from other matters. I threw myself into my work and fed off the company of my colleagues.

In the afternoon I had a text from my mother. ‘Can't talk as have the Walkers round, but do watch the news tonight. Mummy xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'

With dread, I sat in front of the TV at a minute to six.

‘From hero to zero,' announced the headline. ‘Police have today confirmed that Paul Mason, one of only two survivors of the Maldives air disaster, has been arrested and charged over a crime that took place several years ago.'

I couldn't listen to the rest, or at least I didn't hear it. There was his face, images of him from the shows we'd been on, only this time they had chosen ones in which he looked most sinister. Other pictures appeared too: the jewellery shop with crime scene tape around it. A grainy CCTV image of a man walking down the street in a dark hooded coat. Was that him? And then a photo of the girl, her face swollen and bruised. A violent sob burst from me suddenly and I felt the bile rising in my throat. I threw up a hand to my mouth. Oh God, where was he now? Was he alone? I reached for my phone and brought up his details, my thumb hovering over the call button.

But, with my head spinning, I threw the phone down and buried my head in my hands.

I heard nothing from Paul over the next few days and resisted getting in touch. It was agony, but it was right. Right. I kept repeating it. His silence convinced me I had done the right thing.

Term started. The open, attentive faces of my pupils were a daily balm. Here, I could forget. Of course, I was a celebrity around the campus when I went back, all wanting to know what happened, all asking about the TV shows. They asked about Tom Yearsley. I laughed and told them how gorgeous he was. Then they asked about Paul and whether he'd tried anything dodgy on the island.

No. Nothing dodgy. It was at those times that I told them off for tardiness and hurried down the corridor.

It was over a week later that I was sitting in the living room when I heard my phone ping with a text. I'd by now grown accustomed to it not being him and went to pick it up with no concern.

‘I'm here, Callie. I'm still here.'

My heart leapt into my mouth. My eyes absorbed the words and I heard his voice in my head. I felt my belly untwisting, its released desire coiling out of me and yearning for him.

I should have deleted the text. I came close, I really did.

I didn't delete it, but I didn't reply. That, at least, gave me some sense of achievement.

But I slept beside my phone, calling up the text and staring at it, imagining his fingers tapping out each individual letter.

I longed to contact him. I rolled over onto the pillow he'd slept on, imagining I could smell him. I lay on it and inhaled deeply, remembering the deep masculine scent of him which seemed to pervade me. Tears threatened again, but I was so angry with myself they held themselves back. I rarely cried, and I'd cried more since the crash than I could ever remember. Many people would have excused a little emotional excess in the wake of surviving a plane crash, but I had been brought up with crying as a last resort.

Days passed. I learnt not to check my phone all the time, and I eventually learnt to stop my heart thudding every time I received a text.

It was the little things that got me. One morning I was turning the cushions on the sofa. Down the back I picked out a dark hair. It was his. I didn't know anyone else who'd sat there with dark hair that length.

I held it up, studying it, as if somehow I could picture him through it and draw him closer. I wound the hair around my little finger and left it there for the rest of the day.

It took me some time before I felt like going out again. Friends would come to me and I would go round to theirs but I had no wish to go out happily in public for some time. I wasn't happy. I knew it, even though I told everyone – and myself – I was.

Tina in particular tried to set me up with men. I put up with her first couple of attempts – a sweet but opinionated wine merchant and a professional rugby player whose nose had clearly taken a very different path from that his Creator had intended – but the thought of even looking at another man turned my stomach. I asked her not to try again.

Did I miss sex? No.

I rarely even touched myself. It seemed like a betrayal. My body was Paul's. Nobody made me feel like him. I simply couldn't switch my mind into the state I needed.

A letter arrived one morning in early December. It had a Central Criminal Court stamp on it. I opened it with trembling fingers and read. It was a court summons. I had been summoned by the defence as a character witness. Oh Christ, how could I tell the truth if I didn't know the truth myself? I had tried so hard to move on – failing, I know – but I couldn't get away. Paul was holding onto me. Or I was holding onto him. I pushed the letter back in the envelope and tucked it into a drawer, determined to put it out of my mind until I needed to attend the trial.