What We Did_A gripping, compelling psychological thriller with a nail-biting twist Page 7

  The log came down.

  It hit them both, a glancing, hard, painful blow to her shoulder and upper arm but the heaviest part, the big trunk, had come down on his head. There was blood, she saw a bright rush of it filling his eye: he staggered and fell to his knees, a hand to his face.

  The log had broken in two: Carmichael was on his knees half in half out of the kitchen door, and as she stared down at the blood, he lurched against her. His green woollen arms were around her legs. He made a sound, mumbling, and his grip tightened, dragging on her. His bald spot, thin hair caked with blood. She found herself with a piece of the branch in her hand and she brought it down on him, to get him off.

  He fell back.

  Dropping the wood and kneeling, the buzzing in her ears still, she took hold of his shoulders and shook him, feeling no resistance. Nothing. And a whole train of consequences unfurled in an instant. It was as if they were already in there, bodies piling into her shop and an ambulance outside in the lane, people staring through the window. Men in fluorescent jackets kneeling over him, looking up at her and asking questions.

  Police. If he was dead – police.

  The images beat against her, meaningless as rain, set against the thought of him dead. It flooded her with a great sudden rush of warmth, like ecstasy, it coursed through her body, warm and fast as fire.

  And if he lived.

  As she stood staring down Finn and Matt were there then, in her head, filling it. Finn turning over in bed that morning, mumbling that he had no lessons to go to; Matt saying, leave him. Matt’s wide smile, his arms around her, the smell of him – and the smell of this man, at her feet, something had happened, piss on his trousers and the wool coat stained with blood. She heard a sound rise in her throat, a hoarse panting breath that someone would hear. Stop. She stood up, numb and silent.

  Stop.

  Make sure, then. Watching, looking in from outside, from behind the glass, Bridget saw herself. Practical Bridget, methodical Bridget. Quiet, steady, useful Bridget. She stepped over him, she didn’t need to put out a hand to keep herself upright, and she walked away, calmly, into the stockroom. She took hold of an armful of polythene that had been covering the clothes and she walked back. It was as if she knew what to do. As if she had been a long time rehearsing this, in the dark dreams that shifted under her everyday life.

  Looked down at him. Was he dead? As she looked, watching for movement, something rang in her ears, high-pitched, almost beyond her range. It sang to her. She knew how this worked. She knelt down and in one smooth, unhesitating movement she pulled a length of plastic over his head and tied it tight around his neck. She held on.

  She pulled tight enough that she could feel the plastic cut into her hands: it seemed important that she should be quite aware of what she was doing, on her own here, no one telling her to do this. No going back and undoing it.

  Good.

  It sang to her, high and piercing, threnody: it sang and whispered and listening, she looked down as if from a great height. Glazed under the polythene was his ear, like a pig’s bristly with hairs. She held on. There was a drumming in some part of his body, a tension under her hands, then he was gone. He had stopped breathing.

  He was dead.

  If anyone looked through the window, between the backboards to her display, they might see part of her shoulder. His body was almost all crumpled inside the kitchen. Bridget didn’t know how long it was until the sound in her ears receded, and she let go and got stiffly to her feet, but once upright she worked quickly. To and fro from the stockroom: she wrapped him in plastic first. There was plenty after her unpacking session, heaps, layer after layer. Then the duct tape. Round and round. He was trussed like a mummy, he was smaller than she had thought.

  More plastic, more tape: Bridget worked on steadily until at last, feeling the heat under her arms and across her forehead, she sat back on her heels: done. How long had it taken? No more than twenty minutes. But quick, quick. She dragged him fast, before he could look like anything but a roll of plastic should anyone glimpse anything from outside, knowing that the world was used to her humping furniture around the place, boxes of clothing, rolled carpets. Across her freshly painted floor, carefully around the pale, silky rug and through the stockroom door to where an empty cardboard hanging box stood, ready to be flattened and recycled. She laid it on its side and taped him into it, rolled it right around his body. Shoved the wadded shape under the stock rails that lined one wall of the little room, until it was hidden.

  She went back for the remains of the log, wrapping them round with newspaper carefully and heaving them piece by piece into the organic rubbish bin that would be collected tomorrow. If Laura noticed the wood was gone she’d only be pleased, wouldn’t she? Bridget rehearsed her reasons. It kept dropping bits on the kitchen floor, bark and moss, unhygienic. And back inside, making herself walk into the stockroom as if nothing had happened.

  The first thing she saw was the awkward corner of cardboard still protruding, but would anyone else see it? No one else would come in. She could come back for him later, when—

  With that thought it loomed, gigantic, a vast dark wave about to crash down over her. And then what? Then what?

  As if on cue she heard the bell over the door jangle, and voices. She heard footsteps. And someone called her name.

  Chapter Nine

  She wasn’t even ten minutes later than usual getting home: the kitchen clock as she let herself in said five past six.

  No one else was home yet: a relief. Bridget went straight upstairs to brush her teeth.

  It had been Justine from the jeweller’s, asking if someone would be there to receive a parcel the next morning, she couldn’t get in early enough herself. Bridget had stared at her just a fraction too long, but she didn’t seem to notice. ‘Sure,’ she’d said, willing herself not to look round, to check what might or might not be visible through the stockroom door. Just shifting, one step over, to block Justine’s view.

  Leaving the shop, locking the door behind her in the gathering dark she had found herself desperate for something, a drink, a pill. As she unlocked her bike a lad had walked past smoking and on impulse she called after him.

  ‘Sorry,’ he turned, wary, and she was conscious of not knowing the etiquette, after all this time, and they’d got so expensive. ‘Can you spare one of those?’

  He hesitated, shrugged, took a step back toward her, fishing in his pocket. She hadn’t smoked in twenty years: more. Skinny and coughing behind the bike sheds at school. Matt hated it.

  The lad – more of a young man, skinny himself and wearing a cheap narrow-cut suit, on his first job after school, she guessed, automatically – didn’t seem to notice the state she was in, only shifting from foot to foot in the cold as he lit it for her and impatient to be gone.

  She wished she could start again. Be young again. Be a different person. She drew on the cigarette too deeply and began to cough. Too late to start this all over again.

  And there was Finn. There was Matt.

  The cigarette had gone to her head, made her woozy in the dark street. But at least she hadn’t gone into a pub, got drunk. Chaos would ensue: she needed to stay in control now. She needed to move Carmichael’s body.

  But not tonight. With a fumbling hand she fixed the lights on to her bike and set off shakily, the nicotine still buzzing her, the long-ago drug. Tonight Matt would ask why she had taken the van out, Finn would ask why she wasn’t home when he got back, no groundwork had been laid for her absence, with the van.

  And there was Phoebe. She’d forgotten about Phoebe.

  By the time Bridget had got to the edge of town, the red lights of the towers on Rose Hill dead ahead and above her, she’d re-estimated. Tomorrow. She could keep Laura from seeing, somehow, during the day. Keep her out of the stockroom altogether. Distract her with talk of Moses baskets and Nick.

  Now standing in front of the bathroom mirror Bridget didn’t dare look at herself in it, just scrubbed an
d scrubbed at her teeth until she spat blood because Matt would notice cigarette smoke on her breath, on her fingers, before she even walked into the room. But as she tugged on the bathroom light pull before the light went out she caught a fleeting glimpse of her face, ghost-white in the mirror. She had to stop that, sort that. Because Matt was never going to know: she couldn’t run and ask him to look after her, to sort this out. Never.

  Around her the house was cool and dark. Bridget went into the dim utility room to turn up the heating and stood there a moment in among the hum of machines they’d bought and installed: freezer, washing machine, overhead the airer and the cupboard full of cleaning stuff. If she stood here long enough would everything beyond these walls disappear? The box on its side in the stockroom. She knew it wouldn’t: she could feel the scale of what she’d done, shifting huge just out of sight, like the sea. It wasn’t going to go away on its own.

  But one thing at a time. Cleaning stuff: she’d need that. One thing at a time: Phoebe was coming for tea.

  Reaching for the tap in the kitchen to fill a pan for vegetables she saw a mark on her shirt cuff and the world tilted: she made herself stop and examine it. Brownish, a smear of green, the bark and lichen from the log – and some blood. Quite a lot of blood. Bridget set the pan on the stove, went upstairs, stood on the bathmat in the bathroom and removed everything she had on: grey skirt, white cotton blouse, cardigan, underwear, shoes, and rolled it in the bathmat. She thought of the boy with his narrow, pale face and cheap suit, impatient to get somewhere else, who’d stopped all the same to give her a cigarette. Would he remember her, the woman white with fear, shaky: would he have seen blood on her cuff as she leaned down to get a light?

  Take care, now. Watch out for the detail.

  She put on a dress. Dark blue silk: she knew the designer, she knew how much it had cost her at trade price but for a second Bridget couldn’t remember how to get dressed, what came next. She told herself: this is shock. Get over it, or live with it. You can’t go back.

  How long did she have? It was six fifteen now. She made a calculation and went downstairs, into the sitting room. They’d made a fuss, offplan, saying they wanted a working fireplace, but it had never been quite big enough. But she laid and lit the fire and walked back into the kitchen to prepare the chicken. She opened the cellophane and braced herself against the smell of the pale flesh, the clammy feel of it. Salt, pepper, butter, half a lemon inside. Bridget was putting it in the oven when her phone made a sound in her handbag and her heart started up again, pattering.

  back by seven sorry. From Matt.

  Taking the stairs three at a time she grabbed the rolled bathmat. The shirt and skirt and underwear – unwired bra, she was grateful for that – she put on the fire, one piece at a time: the underwear flared and sputtered. There’d be buttons, there’d be hooks and eyes. The rubber-backed bathmat and the shoes she took out to the garage, running swift and barefoot in the blue silk dress: the door made a loud rattle in the quiet close as she heaved it over her head. She stowed the roll in the darkest corner, beyond the van. Hauling the heavy garage door back down in the dark she heard something. The trudge of feet, very close.

  Finn came out of the dark. ‘Mum?’ He was wheeling his bike, shoulders down, preoccupied. His mind was clearly somewhere else because it took a moment to take in her appearance.

  ‘Did you get a puncture?’ Bridget said, groping for the everyday, something normal. He stared at her blankly.

  ‘What?’ he said, then registered her. ‘No – no – I— Aren’t you freezing?’ he said and Bridget almost laughed because it was the kind of thing she said to him, in another life, as he cycled off without gloves in a hard frost.

  ‘Oh, just had to – something I’d forgotten to put away, you know what Dad’s like—’

  He shrugged, not paying attention and she felt herself unwind, just a fraction. People didn’t see things.

  ‘Nice dress,’ he said vaguely as she lifted the door again for him to wheel the bike in, then put an arm round him.

  ‘Well—’ she hesitated, ‘You know. For Phoebe? We want to make a good impression, Dad’s—’

  But he was shaking his shaggy head, side to side, gloomy.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Opening the door they were inside. Finn was just standing there looking down at the cycle helmet dangling from his wrist. She could hear the fire crackling in the sitting room. She resisted going in there, resisted even glancing towards the sitting-room door.

  ‘Oh, nothing – well. She can’t come tonight after all,’ Finn said, in a monotone, head down. ‘Phoebe.’ And then at last with her name he lifted his head and she looked into his sad brown eyes.

  ‘Oh, Finn, that’s—’ But she felt only relief.

  ‘Mum, don’t. It’s fine,’ and he dropped his helmet and was on the stairs. ‘She’s – it’s fine.’ Mumbled as he went.

  Then Matt’s key was in the front door behind her. ‘You lit a fire,’ he said immediately.

  ‘Yes, I—’ and his eyes were on the dress, her damp bare feet.

  She made herself grimace. ‘Yes, I thought – well, Phoebe, you know she’s well, was—’ She made herself start again. ‘I was trying to get ready for Phoebe but it looks like she’s not coming after all.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Matt. ‘Oh well—’ turning to put his stuff down, bike pannier, backpack, hanging up his weatherproof jacket and knowing him as well as she did, knowing every droop of his shoulders, she could see where his mind was going. It made him nervous, this stuff: not Finn having a girlfriend exactly but the complications it introduced, the pain of it, the upset, if it went wrong. It wasn’t something he would necessarily be able to fix.

  ‘I could smell the fire,’ Matt said instead, his back to her as he hung his weatherproof jacket up. ‘Coming into the close I thought someone was burning something. Did you—’

  ‘I’ll just check on it,’ she said. And flew. Flew.

  By the time Finn trudged back downstairs she’d changed into jeans and sweatshirt, laid the table for three, and the chicken was on the side, waiting for Matt to carve it. Mashed potatoes because she hadn’t had time to do roast. Would they notice? They didn’t seem to.

  Matt would have known something had been put on the fire: fires were his responsibility, which was why he’d been unnerved by her lighting it. The underwear had disappeared, melted into the ash although it had left a smell, and the skirt she had poked under, but the blouse had been visible on top, a papery black ghost of itself, its edges glowing. She prodded until it was gone too and set another log on top.

  Finn loped in, in a T-shirt and pyjama bottoms. ‘All right?’ said Matt, warily. Sitting down Finn nodded.

  ‘We’ll rearrange it,’ he said, certain. ‘We decided.’

  ‘You haven’t had a row with her or anything?’ asked Bridget. ‘You got in very late last night.’ Wondering if she could take the van tonight after all, deciding she couldn’t. Matt looked up from his plate, his eyes warning her not to pry.

  ‘We didn’t have a row, Mum,’ said Finn patiently.

  ‘So what was – what was—’ But Bridget caught Matt’s frown, warning her off the subject but Finn still didn’t seem put out.

  ‘She had maths tutoring tonight and her dad wouldn’t let her skip it. He’s very strict.’ His spirits not quite undented but determined.

  ‘Well, that’s—’ ‘I think—’ Matt and Bridget both spoke at once, both relieved.

  ‘Fair enough.’ Matt finished for both of them.

  ‘We’ll make another date,’ said Bridget.

  Just not tomorrow.

  Bridget cleaned her teeth again before bed: Matt had gone up early, tired, he’d said, though she would have to ask questions if she wanted to know why. He was lying there, next door, the light still on and the thought of being alone with him was suddenly frightening. Was this what it was like, having an affair? The dread. Bridget turned off the light but she didn’t leave the bathroom: instead she stood at
the small window that looked out down a dark field to the estuary. There was a dull sheen on the water, shed by a moon blurred behind cloud. She could make out the slope of the hill, the dark clumped hedges. If it was just her, she could walk out of this little close-walled house that had seemed so safe for so long, walk out of the back door into the wide darkness and never be found again. Walk into the muddy river and disappear.

  From across the landing Matt cleared his throat.

  He was looking at something on his phone – it was usually the news – propped in the bed, his glasses on his forehead. She would be blurred to him as she came through the door: she placed a kiss on his cheek as she climbed in and he sighed. She took the book from her bedside table and opened it on her knee: she couldn’t remember how long ago she’d begun it, but she hadn’t looked at it in weeks. It was a history of Paris under the Occupation, with old photographs she liked to look at, turning page after page to see how people had lived. What they put up with, got on with: a woman scrubbing a doorstep, one with bad teeth, laughing in a bar while she danced lopsidedly with a man. Another world.

  ‘You’re tired,’ she said, nudging Matt, gently. ‘Hard day?’

  ‘Oh, well—’ He hesitated.

  Bridget stayed quiet. He sighed again. ‘We’re installing new software,’ he said, letting his glasses fall back on to his nose, turning to look at her. ‘It’s no big deal. Well, it is, in fact – the internet, you know – the university isn’t really prepared for how quickly this stuff changes, not many universities are.’

  ‘What kind of software?’ But she could guess.

  ‘Anti-virus and screening software. To protect the university server. And to stop the students streaming stuff illegally, or downloading porn.’ Turning to look back at his phone, uncomfortable. ‘The students or the lecturers for that matter,’ he said, frowning down.

  ‘Is Finn OK?’ she said, urgently needing to say something else. To change the subject.

  Bridget was familiar with the silence that followed: Matt was giving it some thought. ‘You need to give him some space,’ he said, eventually. ‘Who knows what they got up to last night. It might not be the right time for her to come round.’