It’s almost dawn, the light outside is just beginning to tinge grey, and the rain of the last several days is still battering against the window. I won’t go back to sleep, not with my heart hammering in my chest so much it hurts.
I think, though I can’t be sure, that there’s some wine downstairs. I don’t remember finishing the second bottle. It’ll be warm, because I can’t leave it in the fridge; if I do, Cathy pours it away. She so badly wants me to get better, but so far, things are not going according to her plan. There’s a little cupboard in the hallway where the gas meter is. If there was any wine left, I’ll have stashed it in there.
I creep out on to the landing and tiptoe down the stairs in the half light. I flip the little cupboard open and lift out the bottle: it’s disappointingly light, not much more than a glassful in there. But better than nothing. I pour it into a mug (just in case Cathy comes down – I can pretend it’s tea) and put the bottle in the bin (making sure to conceal it under a milk carton and a crisp packet). In the living room, I flick on the TV, mute it straight away and sit down on the sofa.
I’m flicking through channels – it’s all children’s TV and infomercials until with a flash of recognition I’m looking at Corly Wood, which is just down the road from here: you can see it from the train. Corly Wood in pouring rain, the fields between the tree line and train tracks submerged.
I don’t know why it takes me so long to realize what’s going on. For ten seconds, fifteen, twenty, I’m looking at cars and blue and white tape and a white tent in the background, and my breath is coming shorter and shorter until I’m holding it and not breathing at all.
It’s her. She’s been in the wood all along, just along the railway track from here. I’ve been past those fields every day, morning and evening, travelling by, oblivious.
In the wood. I imagine a grave dug beneath scrubby bushes, hastily covered up. I imagine worse things, impossible things – her body hanging from a rope, somewhere deep in the forest where nobody goes.
It might not even be her. It might be something else. I know it isn’t something else.
There’s a reporter on screen now, dark hair slick against his skull. I turn up the volume and listen to him tell me what I already know, what I can feel – that it wasn’t me who couldn’t breathe, it was Megan.
‘That’s right,’ he’s saying, talking to someone in the studio, his hand pressed to his ear. ‘The police have now confirmed that the body of a young woman has been found submerged in flood water in a field at the bottom of Corly Wood, which is less than five miles from the home of Megan Hipwell. Mrs Hipwell, as you know, went missing in early July – the thirteenth of July, in fact – and has not been seen since. Police are saying that the body, which was discovered by dog walkers out early this morning, has yet to be formally identified; however, they do believe that this is Megan that they’ve found. Mrs Hipwell’s husband has been informed.’
He stops speaking for a while. The news anchor is asking him a question, but I can’t hear it because the blood is roaring in my ears. I bring the mug up to my lips and drink every last drop.
The reporter is talking again. ‘Yes, Kay, that’s right. It would appear that the body was buried here in the woods, possibly for some time, and that it has been uncovered by the heavy rains that we’ve had recently.’
It’s worse, so much worse than I imagined. I can see her now, her ruined face in the mud, pale arms exposed, reaching up, rising up as though she were clawing her way out of the grave. I taste hot liquid, bile and bitter wine, in my mouth, and I run upstairs to be sick.
Evening
I stayed in bed most of the day. I tried to get things straight in my head. I tried to piece together, from the memories and the flashbacks and the dreams, what happened on Saturday night. In an attempt to make sense of it, to see it clearly, I wrote it all down. The scratching of my pen on paper felt like someone whispering to me; it put me on edge, I kept feeling as though there was someone else in the flat, just on the other side of the door, and I couldn’t stop imagining her.
I was almost too afraid to open the bedroom door, but when I did, there was no one there, of course. I went downstairs and turned on the television again. The same pictures were still there: the woods in the rain, police cars driving along a muddy track, that horrible white tent, all of it a grey blur, and then suddenly Megan, smiling at the camera, still beautiful, untouched. Then it’s Scott, head down, fending off photographers as he tries to get through his own front door, Riley at his side. Then it’s Kamal’s office. No sign of him, though.
I didn’t want to hear the soundtrack, but I had to turn the volume up, anything to stop the silence ringing in my ears. The police say that the woman, still not formally identified, has been dead for some time, possibly several weeks. They say the cause of death has yet to be established. They say that there is no evidence of a sexual motive for the killing.
That strikes me as a stupid thing to say. I know what they mean – they mean they don’t think she was raped, which is a blessing, of course, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a sexual motive. It seems to me that Kamal wanted her and he couldn’t have her, that she must have tried to end it and he couldn’t stand it. That’s a sexual motive, isn’t it?
I can’t bear to watch the news any longer, so I go back upstairs and crawl under my duvet. I empty out my handbag, looking through my notes scribbled on bits of paper, all the scraps of information I’ve gleaned, the memories shifting like shadows, and I wonder, why am I doing this? What purpose does it serve?
MEGAN
Thursday, 13 June 2013
Morning
I CAN’T SLEEP in this heat. Invisible bugs crawl over my skin, I have a rash on my chest, I can’t get comfortable. And Scott seems to radiate warmth; lying next to him is like lying next to a fire. I can’t get far enough away from him, and find myself clinging to the edge of the bed, sheets thrown back. It’s intolerable. I thought about going to lie down on the futon in the spare room, but he hates to wake and find me gone, it always leads to a row about something. Alternative uses for the spare room, usually, or who I was thinking about while I was lying there alone. Sometimes I want to scream at him, Just let me go. Let me go. Let me breathe. So I can’t sleep, and I’m angry. I feel as though we’re having a fight already, even though the fight’s only in my imagination.