The Carrier (21 page)

He turns away from me, takes a couple of steps towards the top of the stairs.

‘Go on, then, down you go,’ I say. ‘Except you won’t, will you? You don’t want to end up in the kitchen with Sergeant Zailer. Has Kerry told you to stay out of sight in case you give something away?’ As soon as I’ve said it, I have a better idea. ‘She’s playing the martyr, isn’t she? You both hate lying, but Kerry would rather put herself through it than you. You’re being spared the ordeal.’

‘Gaby, please stop and think,’ Dan whispers forcefully.

‘About what?’

He looks past me. I turn. There’s nothing there apart from a long corridor with five doors on either side and another one at the end.
Upstairs at the Culver Valley Door Museum
. A window somewhere would have been a good idea. Is everything grey-brown up here, or is it the lack of natural light that makes it appear that way?

When I turn to face Dan again, he still isn’t looking at me. ‘I’d love to stop and think,’ I tell him. ‘I’d love to think about exactly what you’re thinking about right now, but I can’t, can I, unless you tell me what the fuck’s going on?’

‘Gaby.’ He places his hands gently on my arms. ‘I’m not your enemy.’

‘Great. Now tell me who is.’

‘I’m Tim’s friend. His best friend. Remember that.’

I’d like to scream the roof off this house that my work made it possible for him to buy, but it wouldn’t do any good.

‘Do you know what, Dan? I’d rather you told me nothing at all than things I already know. The meaningful look on your face isn’t adding an extra layer of significance, not for me – it just makes you look stupid. Yes, you’re Tim’s best friend. I know that. But in this context, the way you said it just then, I have no idea what you mean. Whatever I’m supposed to be getting, I’m not getting. Tim’s your best friend, so . . . what? That makes it okay for you to lie about him killing Francine?’

‘Tim’s confessed, Gaby.’ Another meaningful look. ‘He’s confessed.’

‘All right, so you and Kerry aren’t plotting to send Tim to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Or, rather, you
are
, but he is too. He’s plotting against himself, and you and Kerry are supporting him. Right?’

Dan says nothing. He’s switched off his intense stare.

‘Tim’s never had his own best interests at heart,’ I say quietly. ‘You know that as well as I do. Has it occurred to you that backing up his false confession might not be the right thing to do? How can it be good or right for him to go to prison for the rest of his life if he’s innocent? Lauren doesn’t think it’s such a great idea. How come she feels worse about it than you do? Because her husband killed Francine? Is that why?
Tell
me, Dan. If we all have to lie for Tim’s sake, explain to me why and I’ll lie too! I’d do anything for him – you know that!’

Dan’s breathing as if he’s been running, sweating from the effort of saying nothing.

‘You won’t tell me because you know I wouldn’t go along with it,’ I say. ‘Tim’s taking the blame for Francine’s death for some stupid, crazy reason, and you’re letting him. And you know I wouldn’t. You know how much I love him. Or maybe you don’t – in which case, you do now!’

Does Dan think it strange that I still love Tim? Yes, it’s been years, but it’s excessive proximity, not separation, that wears love away. And I never really had Tim; he wasn’t mine.
My craving for him was never satisfied.

That’s not love. That’s need. Addiction.

I push the thought away. Moving will help.

‘Where are you going?’ Dan calls after me as I run along the corridor of doors.

‘Which room is Tim’s?’

‘Gaby, you can’t just—’

‘Stop me, then. This must be Lauren and Jason’s room.’ I stand in the doorway and stare at the pictures on the wall opposite the bed: two framed black and white photographs of Lauren glammed up: full make-up, a clumpy retro hairstyle like a forties film star, a floaty evening dress and a fur wrap over her shoulders. This must be Jason’s idea of tasteful. ‘Lucky she’s got the wrap to cover her “FATHER” tattoo,’ I say to Dan, blinking away tears.
Have you lost it, Struthers? Getting sentimental over a couple of pictures of Lauren Cookson, the thickest care assistant in the western hemisphere?

The only one brave enough to speak up. Even if she changed her mind as soon as she’d said it.

‘Gaby? You okay?’

I tell Dan I’m fine and focus on the physical details of the room. I don’t expect it to tell me anything helpful, but I look anyway. A wall of built-in wardrobes, two bedside tables, a lamp on one of them. No books. A pine bed with a pale pink flowery bedspread; drawers underneath, built into its frame, all open. Three cuddly toys – a bear with a red heart for a nose, a duck and an owl – are sitting on the pillows, leaning against the headboard. There are clothes scattered on the floor on both sides of the bed, mainly thongs in various colours on what must be Lauren’s side. On Jason’s, there’s a white T-shirt, a pair of jeans, a few socks and a ripped silver condom packet.

‘I don’t think Lauren and Jason would want you in here, Gaby.’ Dan approaches me tentatively, as if we’re at the zoo and I’m a lion on the loose.

‘You all sleep within a few feet of one another? How cosy: you, Kerry, Tim, Lauren and Jason, all sleeping symmetrically behind your symmetrical closed doors. And Francine, before she died.’

‘Francine had a room on the ground floor,’ says Dan. ‘Not that it matters. What do you care where we all sleep?’

‘I don’t,’ I tell him. ‘Convenient for you, though. Do you all meet on the landing at midnight every night, make sure you know all your lies by heart?’

‘I think you should leave if you’re going to be like this.’

‘I’m not leaving until I’ve seen Tim’s room. Where is it?’

‘No.’

I assume that the door Dan has hurried over to block with his body is the one I want.

‘Kerry and I don’t go in there and it’s our house. Our cleaners don’t even go in there. Tim prefers to clean it himself. That’s how much he values his privacy.’

‘Sometimes,’ I say. ‘Other times, he’s happy to sign up for a lifetime of shitting in front of his cellmate in a shared toilet with o door, and having prison warders stare at him through bars as if he’s a monkey in a cage.’

I see the effect my words are having on Dan and press home my advantage. ‘I’d say I value Tim’s privacy a whole lot more than he does at the moment – and his happiness, and his freedom. How many times have the police been in his room since Francine died?’

Dan sighs and stands to one side. ‘Don’t touch anything,’ he says.

I swear under my breath and open the door. Soon as I’m in, I pick up a book from one of the piles on the floor beside the bed and wave it in the air, to show Dan that I intend to ignore his no-touching rule. Having made my point, I’m about to put the book back when I notice what it is: e. e. cummings’
Selected Poems 1923–1958
. A strong jerk-back sensation takes hold of my body, as if my blood vessels are reins and someone’s tugged them taut, pulling me away from the brink.

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)

Did Tim first read the poem in this book? If I look at the index of first lines, will I find it?

I mustn’t look. If I read that poem now, in front of Dan, I’ll fall apart.

‘Are you okay, Gaby?’ His voice seems to come from a million miles away.

Why do people ask that? It’s such a pointless question. What’s ‘okay’? I’m still able to stand up and breathe; I think that’s pretty good going. I think I’m doing better than okay.

‘I need to take this book,’ I tell Dan.

‘No!’

I recoil at the sound of his raised voice. Dan Jose doesn’t yell. Ever. Then I realise it’s himself he’s angry with, not me. He’s embarrassed by his inability to take control of the situation. He has given an inch, several inches, and now I want to take a poetry book.

‘It’s Tim’s book,’ he says.

‘I’m taking it. Tim wouldn’t mind. You know he wouldn’t.’

Dan stares out at the view that was Tim’s before he had himself moved to HMP Combingham: a vast expanse of green and then Lower Heckencott Hall beyond, in the distance. Having used up all his energy, Dan’s decided the best thing he can do is avert his eyes and let me get on with it.

Good.

I am in Tim’s bedroom for the first time. Only Tim’s; nothing to do with Francine. I want to stay in here forever. I want to examine each of his possessions in detail, but I’ve frozen. This is too important. I’m looking but not seeing; my mind’s too jittery to process the visual data.

Calm down, for fuck’s sake.

It’s smaller than Lauren and Jason’s bedroom, though still a large room. There’s a single bed pushed up against one wall. The sight of it makes me angry. ‘Single beds are for children,’ I say. ‘Tim’s a grown man in his mid-forties.’

‘His choice,’ says Dan. ‘Kerry tried to persuade him to get a double, but he insisted.’

The pillow and duvet are white. There’s no headboard, no bedside table, two tall piles of books by the side of the bed. A wardrobe, a desk and office-style swivel chair, a leather armchair in the corner. I walk over to the desk and look at the spotless stack of notepaper, the pile of matching envelopes, three pens that look expensive. It all looks brand new and untouched. I flinch, thinking that Tim might have bought these things because he wanted to write to people who aren’t me.

Or he bought them because he wanted to write to me. Desperately. But didn’t know how, or what to say, and so never did.

My scientist’s mind points out that there is no evidence to support my preferred theory, so I mustn’t allow myself to believe it.

On the wall there are poems – unframed, Blu-Tacked – that look as if they’ve been cut out of magazines: George Herbert, W.B. Yeats, Robert Frost, Wendy Cope, someone called Nic Aubury. His poem – or hers, if Nic is short for Nicola – is only four lines long.

I smile. Tears snake down my cheeks from the outer corners of my eyes.

What’s going to happen to me without Tim? With Tim in prison for . . . how long?

‘Dan,’ I whisper.

‘What?’

‘I need Tim not to be locked up. You have to help me.’

‘Gaby, I . . . Jesus!’ Dan leans his forehead against the windowpane. He might be crying too. ‘I’ve done everything I can, trust me.’

‘Before, when Tim and I were apart, it was okay, I could live with it . . .’

‘You live with someone else,’ Dan says accusingly.

‘Sean. Yes. Is that supposed to be proof of my disloyalty to Tim? You know what happened. I’d have left Sean like a shot.’

‘I know.’ Dan holds up his hands. ‘I didn’t mean it to come out like that.’

‘I always knew that if I wanted to find Tim, I could. He didn’t want me, he’d made that clear, and I could live with it, as long as I knew that he was
there
, out there, reachable when I was ready to try again. To persuade him he’d made a mistake. I hadn’t given up, Dan. I was . . . waiting.’
Procrastinating. Treading water in my relationship with Sean until I felt the time was right to approach Tim again.

If I’d been pregnant, I’d have done it. It would have been the perfect excuse to contact him:
Look, I’ve got exciting news!
I’m having Sean’s baby, I’m no threat to your marriage any more, please can we be friends?

I’d have lied through my teeth to trick my way back into Tim’s life. He’s not the kind of man who would tell a pregnant woman to fuck off and leave him alone.

And you knew that when you came off the pill, didn’t you?

‘Dan, if Tim’s convicted of murder—’

‘What? It’ll ruin your happy-ending fantasy?’

‘Fuck you!’ Did Lauren feel the way I feel now when she laid into Bodo Neudorf at Dusseldorf airport? Desperate, out of control?

‘I’m sorry,’ Dan murmurs. ‘I really am, Gaby. You’re not the only one, you know. We all . . .’ He can’t finish his sentence.

I aim a brittle smile in his direction. ‘Things seem to go wrong when we try to talk, so let’s not bother.’

Dan shrugs:
whatever you want.
The easy way out. ‘You all done in here?’ he asks.

Panic starts to build inside me.
All done
. I’ve seen what there is to see. I want to linger, but how can I justify it? What else is there for me to do in this room? Dan is plainly eager to get me out.

‘Tim wouldn’t treat me like this if he were here,’ I say. I am not someone who gives up. At work, I have a reputation for laying waste to every problem that crosses my path. ‘He’d welcome me in, show me his books, read me extracts from his favourite poems.’

‘I think you were right before, Gaby. We shouldn’t talk about this, and I’m not comfortable that we’re still in Tim’s bedroom. Shall we—’

‘No! Wait.’ I kneel down beside the two piles of books. How could I have forgotten to look at Tim’s twin poetry towers? Poetry is all he’s ever been interested in reading. ‘The second most important thing in my world, after you,’
he once said to me. I laughed and asked him if he’d really said it or if I’d imagined it. ‘You imagined it,’ he told me with a smile. ‘But that’s okay. It’s what I would have said, if I were the sort to get carried away. And I’ve made nearly a whole personality out of your imaginings of me.’ For the forty-three thousandth time since we’d met, I asked him what he meant. ‘You’re an inventor,’ he said, as if it should be obvious. ‘You’ve invented me.’

Wrong, Tim. It was the other way round. Why can you never take credit for anything?

Unless it’s something you haven’t done, something horrific like murder. Then you can.

I lift a book off the top of one of the piles.
Selected Poems
by James Fenton.

‘Gaby . . .’ Dan tries to pull me away.

I shake him off. My eyes make their way down the tower, spine by spine, title by title. Minus the e. e. cummings that I’ve taken, there are only four collections of poetry here. There’s a voice in my head that’s whispering in protest before I’ve worked out what’s wrong; it takes me a few seconds to catch up with it. ‘What are all these?’ I ask Dan. ‘Where did they come from?’