Zara placed three mugs of tea on the coffee table and sat down on the sofa beside me. She stroked my arm and I took her hand and held it tight.
I turned to Catherine, who was sitting on the floor, hugging her knees. “Promise me you won’t tell Sky about any of this?”
Catherine nodded. “Yes. Of course. I promise. He’ll have heard some of it, of course.”
”He’ll have heard Martin’s version,” I said. “But I don’t want him to know what I’m planning next. Promise me.”
“I promise,” she said again, and added, “In fact, I’d rather Sky wasn’t involved.”
I thought of Sky’s grinning, meddling face. As if this isn’t all his fault in the first place, I thought. I said, “So, you know where she works?”
“Who?” asked Zara.
“Lindsay. Martin’s girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend.”
Catherine nodded. “Yes. At the Complex, I think. If she’s still there, that is. She was running classes and stuff there, dance and spin, I think.”
“Well, that’s easy enough to find out,” I said. “We just book up for a class.” I looked at Zara. “All three of us.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Zara. “I’m not really very coordinated.”
“You don’t have to actually take the class,” I said. “And it doesn’t matter if you can dance or not. We just need a way to get to talk to her.”
Catherine looked worried. “What about your bail conditions?”
“I don’t have bail conditions,” I said. “The case is finished. I just got a warning. I’m not allowed to go near Martin or his house. I’m not banned from the whole of Cambridge.”
Catherine leaned forward and picked up her cup and took a sip of her tea. “You don’t think the police might see that as you trying to get in touch with Martin, indirectly.”
I sighed. “Look, Catherine, I can understand you feeling conflicted, what with Sky being your son. I do get that. If you don’t want to be involved...”
“It’s not that,” Catherine said. “I just don’t want you to get arrested again. But I want to help you. If he tried to turn Sky against me, I’d be devastated.”
“Not to mention what he did to Lizzie,” Zara added.
“I know,” Catherine agreed. “He obviously hasn’t changed a bit.”
I looked at her. “You do believe me, don’t you? That he attacked me.”
“Of course I do!” Catherine protested. “I’m on your side, Lizzie.”
“He didn’t just attack you, he tried to rape you,” Zara pointed out.
Catherine looked uncomfortable. “Well, he was probably just trying to frighten you. He grabbed me and pinned me down like that, loads of times. Held my arms so that I couldn’t move. Then once I’d said I was sorry, for whatever it was I was supposed to have done, he’d let me go.”
Zara wasn’t letting up. “He pinned her to the ground,” she insisted. “He tried to get her jeans off.”
Catherine looked doubtful. “I know that,” she said.
“He only stopped because there was a noise outside. God knows what would have happened if...”
“So that’s the interesting thing,” I interrupted Zara, changing the subject very slightly. She was trying her best to be a good friend to me, but I could tell that Catherine wasn’t comfortable with that aspect of my account. There was only so much that she could hear, only so much that she could accept. She had been Martin’s partner. She had been the victim of Martin’s bullying behaviour, for years. I was her friend. She just wasn’t ready to hear too much about what he had done to me too, either in the past or in the present, and that was the way things were. I could understand how she felt, in a way. She, at least, seemed to recognise the real Martin that I was talking about – as opposed to the saintly trod-upon version of him that Helena had been acquainting herself with recently. That was good enough for me, and besides, my fan club was pretty low on numbers right now; I had to take whatever support I could get.
“What is? What’s the interesting thing?
“The noise outside the house,” I said. “I mean, what was that?”
“Milk bottles, you said.” Zara shrugged and picked up her tea and leaned back on the sofa.
“But who knocked them over? Was it really cats? Or was someone there?”
“Well, it certainly wasn’t that neighbour,” said Zara. “That Mrs. Busybody. Otherwise she’d have told the truth.”
“Exactly. And don’t knock busybodies, Zara,” I said. “If it was a neighbour and not a cat, then they will almost certainly have been looking in through the window, and they will have seen exactly what happened. I could use that help.”
I glanced at Catherine, who was kneeling up at the coffee table, poking around in her mug of tea with a pen, trying to scoop out a piece of soggy biscuit. “So?” I said, waiting for her input.
“So, if we could find out from Lindsay who the neighbours are, and who might have access to their back garden,” offered Zara, “Then you might have a witness. And you could take that back to the police.”
I nodded. “Right.”
Catherine looked up. “Except that it might not have been a neighbour. It may have just been cats.”
I shrugged. “Maybe. But it’s worth asking around.”
Catherine drained her tea. “You need to be careful,” she said. “If you start snooping around his neighbours, then you could get arrested again.” She put the cup back down on the table and started to scoop soggy biscuit out of the bottom of the mug with her finger.
“That’s the best way to eat biscuits,” commented Zara.
“It’s the only way to eat biscuits,” Catherine smiled.
I sighed. “I should never have gone round there.”
Zara looked up at me. “Nobody blames you for going round there, honey.” I raised my eyebrows. “Nobody here,” she added. “I’d have done the same thing in your situation. You went round to his house, that’s all. You didn’t ask him to attack you. Don’t you dare blame yourself. I can’t believe what he did. And I can’t believe he’s turned Helena against you.”
I looked at Catherine. “What do you think?”
“She thinks he’s a pig,” said Zara.
“I know he’s a pig,” said Catherine, in a Southern drawl, doing a good impression of Susan Sarandon in Thelma and Louise, which we’d all watched the evening before when I’d been in need of some form of vicarious retribution.
“So do we get to shoot him and take off in a ’66 Thunderbird?” I smiled.
“Oh, I love that car,” Zara sighed. “Can we? Where do you get one of those?”
“I think my first idea was probably more sensible,” I said. “The dance class. So who’s game?”
“Can I just watch?” asked Zara.
“Okay,” Catherine agreed. “I’ll phone up and check that she still runs the classes there and what the times are. No one needs to dance. We can just pick a class and wait outside until it’s finished.”
“What are you going to say to her?” asked Zara.
“I want to know why they split up,” I said. “I’m going to ask her.”
“She might not want to tell you,” Catherine warned me.
“Well, there’s only one way to find out.” I stood up and went to the kitchen. I filled the kettle and switched it back on again. I poked my head back out into the living room. “I don’t believe that she left because of me, because I was harassing them. That part just doesn’t make any sense.”
Catherine looked thoughtful. “She’s quite meek and mild,” she said. “She seems like a person who’s easily scared.”
I walked back over and sat down on the sofa again. “Of me? Of a couple of phone calls? Of a woman that’s just worried about her daughter? Who’s just gone round there, a bit upset.”
“Who’s gone round there and threatened Martin with a knife,” Catherine corrected me. “That’s what she’s been told.” She thought about it for a moment and then smiled. “Mind you, after living with him for all these years, she probably wants to give you a flipping medal.”
“You deserve a flipping medal,” said Zara.
“Well, she must know that I’m not the enemy,” I persisted. “She must know what he’s like. I just want to talk to her. Find out the truth about their break-up. And if she’s willing to hear my side about the knife incident, she may be willing to talk to the neighbours for me, to make some enquiries.”
“Okay,” said Catherine. “As you say, it’s certainly worth a try.”
“So. It’s agreed?” asked Zara. “We’re off to Cambridge? The three musketeers are back. All for one and one for all.”
Catherine looked at her. “Zara, if I remember rightly, the last time you said that about us, you went off with a man five minutes later, leaving behind two musketeers and no horse.”
I smiled. “Don’t worry. This time, she’s got her sights set on a man with a horse.”
Zara looked at me and grinned. She jumped on top of me, grabbed my wrists, and pinned me to the sofa.
“Really? Who’s that?” Catherine sat up.
“Ouch! Ouch! Let go of my wrists! No!” I screamed. I giggled as Zara let me go and pushed a cushion into my face instead. I pulled back the cushion. “Lester Piggott,” I screeched out loud, and we all screamed with laughter as Zara wrestled me to the floor.
*
As it turned out, there was a fourth musketeer. Tim phoned that evening and said he had a few days off. When I told him what had happened, he insisted on driving us all to Cambridge the following day. Neither Catherine nor Zara had plans that couldn’t be changed and they were both keen to have a day out. We met at his house at eight and set off early. We decided that we’d deal with ‘business’ first and then hire a punt and have lunch on the river.
“You need to have some fun,” said Catherine. “Whatever happens. You need to stop worrying and forget about it all. And if you just give her some space, I’m sure Helena will come round, in time.”
I wasn’t so sure. But it was a comfort to be in the passenger seat, with Tim at the wheel, in charge of the journey. We drove in companionable silence and I was glad to be able to sit back and have a think about things en route, while Zara and Catherine chatted in the back.
I realised I hadn’t spoken to Oli since I’d phoned him on Monday morning and told him my mother was sick. He in turn had left me two voicemail messages, the first giving me some useful information about stroke after-care and the second saying that he hoped that everything was okay – that I was okay – and telling me to take as much time as I needed and not to hurry back.
I felt slightly guilty that I hadn’t updated him since my mother’s health had improved, but I really didn’t know how to begin to tell him what was going on for me right now. Telling him that I’d been arrested just wasn’t an option. No matter how understanding I imagined him to be, it would hardly create a good impression. He didn’t know me well enough to know how out of character it was for me to be locked up in a police cell for carrying a knife.
As we drove up the M11 and into the outskirts of Cambridge, I felt a curious combination of nostalgia and estrangement from my surroundings. I hadn’t made this particular journey, up this stretch of the motorway into this corner of the city, for years. The journey had once been more than familiar to me, but it now felt as though Cambridge was a different town. Even as we drove round the ringroad, past Mill Road and the building that had once been the College of Arts, where I’d studied, it didn’t feel entirely like the place that I’d once called home. Everything had changed so much. New buildings had sprung up and old ones had disappeared. It was unnerving. Everything was the same, but different, as if we had entered a parallel city in a parallel universe. I gave Tim directions round to Newmarket Road. At least I remembered the way.
It was a quarter to one when we walked through the revolving door into the Sports Centre. I looked at the clock on the wall above the reception desk. It would be another ten minutes or so before Lindsay’s class was finished. We walked down a corridor and I checked out the pool where I’d swum on a daily basis at one time. It had been upgraded too, and was gleaming and new, with new diving boards and a big viewing window next to a modern seating area. Tim bought a cup of coffee and sat down, while Catherine and Zara took it in turns to poke their heads through the small glass panel above the door to the dance studio.
Zara waved as she saw me walking over.
“Yep, that’s Lindsay,” said Catherine. “You can’t miss her. She’s so thin. Although, she’s wearing glasses. I’ve never seen her wear those before.”
I stood on tiptoes and peered through the glass. A petite woman in a pink leotard and leggings was heading up the class. I smiled. She still liked pink spandex. But they weren’t glasses she was wearing, they were sunglasses. An image of Catherine standing on the doorstep of my Baker Street flat flashed before me. She’d been wearing sunglasses that day, the day she’d lost her tooth.
“He’s hit her,” I said. “She’s got a black eye. I’d put money on it.”
Catherine looked through the glass again. “Oh yeah,” she said. “I bet you’re right.”
“Poor girl.”
The music stopped and the sound of clapping erupted from inside the studio.
“They’ve finished,” I said. “Okay. Let’s not all go in together.”
“Maybe I should talk to her first,” Catherine said. “Test the water. Soften her up, just in case she does think you’re crazy.”
I thought about that for a moment. “Okay,” I agreed. “That’s a good idea.” I took Zara’s arm and we walked over and sat down beside Tim.
We watched as the door to the studio opened and several women began to filter out.
Catherine disappeared inside.
The door opened and shut several more times as more and more women left. After what seemed like an eternity, the door opened again and Catherine appeared. She beckoned towards me and I got up and walked over. We stood at the door to the studio. Lindsay was across the room, putting CDs into a case and winding up the lead of an enormous ghetto blaster. She looked up as I entered the studio and then looked away again.
Catherine looked excited. “I’ve talked to her,” she whispered. “She said she’ll speak to you.”
“What did you say?”
“Not much. I just told her that you were my friend, and that you were worried you were going to lose your daughter. That Martin had lied and you weren’t really some crazy knife-woman.”
“Thanks. What did she say?”
Catherine smiled. “Well, that’s the thing. She said she didn’t know what I was talking about. She didn’t know anything about any knife. So he obviously is lying about her reasons for leaving him.”
“Okay. That’s good. Thanks.”
I walked over to Lindsay and Catherine left the room.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hello.” She stopped what she was doing and looked at me through her sunglasses and pushed back her hair, which was not as blonde as I’d remembered it being all those years ago, though she must now have been in her late thirties. She was very petite still, though. She looked very slim and toned and her waist was still tiny.
“Thank you for... for letting me talk to you,” I said, gratefully.
“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to help you,” she said. “I’ve broken up with Martin and I don’t expect I’ll be seeing him again anytime soon.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. What happened?”
She pulled off her sunglasses. Her left eye was shocking. It was half closed, and very swollen on her brow and underneath. It looked as though someone had painted it purple, black and blue.
“This,” she said.
I gasped. “Why? Why did he hit you?”
She looked at me with her good eye. “Because of you.”
“Really?” I felt a pang of guilt. “It was my fault then.”
Lindsay didn’t answer. She put her sunglasses back on again.
“So what happened?” I asked again.
“It was you who phoned, right? Not your sister. I recognise your voice.”
“Yes,” I admitted. “I’m sorry I lied. I was just worried, about Helena. I needed to know if she was in touch with him. I wanted to know where he lived, just so that I could... so that I’d know where she was... was spending her time.” I was aware that I was rambling. “I suppose,” I smiled, and added, “You never really stop being a mum.”
Lindsay wasn’t smiling. “Well, I wish you hadn’t brought me into it. I realised after I’d put the phone down that I’d probably messed up. So I phoned Martin at work and he came straight home. We had an almighty row.”
“What about?”
“Me telling you everything and giving you our address. He didn’t want you to know he was in touch with Helena. It was supposed to be a secret. But as you had the phone number and you said you were her aunty, and you were acting like you knew and everything.... well, I guess I’m an idiot.”
I put my hand on her arm and she flinched as if I’d hit her. I took it away again, quickly. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I really am. I didn’t stop to think about the trouble it might cause you.”
She breathed in and out again deeply, her chest rising visibly inside her pink leotard. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, more kindly. “It’s not as if it’s the first time.”
“I take it you didn’t call the police?”
She laughed. “No. I’m not stupid. You think he’d let that go? He’d make my life hell.”
“So why were you with him?” I asked.
She gave me a look of disdain. “You think I got to make any decisions? Like, whether I was going to stay or go?” She glanced round the room, as if she thought he might be hiding there somewhere. “You think it was easy just to walk away?”
“No,” I said. “Of course not. I’m sorry. I truly am.”
She sighed again. “Please. Stop apologising. Truth be told, you did me a favour. Maybe now he’ll leave me alone.” She looked at me. “I think he might have been hoping to have a crack at you.”
I was confused. “What do you mean?”
“Well, ever since he found out about Helena, he seemed to lose interest in me. Completely. I got the feeling that he was hoping that the two of you might get back together.”
“’The two of us’? You’ve got to be kidding me? There was no ‘me and him’. And I thought you said that he was mad at you for letting me in on the big secret?”
She shrugged. “It was probably just an excuse to get rid of me.”
“Is that when you left?” I asked. “That morning? Monday morning? Before I came round with the wallet?”
She nodded.
“And you didn’t come back again?”
“No. That was it. It was over. Like I said, he threw me out. I went to my sister’s.”
“And you’ve been there ever since?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
I thought about that for a moment. “So you don’t know anything about what happened next?”
She looked at me again for a long moment but there was no emotion on her face. “No.”
“Well, he attacked me,” I said. I thought of Catherine’s reaction when I’d told her what Martin had then tried to do to me, and I wondered if I should just stop now. This man was her partner, after all, or had been, until very recently. I’d caused her enough pain.
But what if she could help?
I took a deep breath. “He tried to rape me,” I continued. “In the kitchen. We were on the floor, right by the back door. Someone knocked over some bottles and they broke and it stopped him in his tracks. It distracted him, and I managed to get away.”
Lindsay carried on looking at me, without saying a word.
“I managed to get up and grab a knife from the draining board next to the sink. I managed to get out of the house. So, whoever it was who broke those bottles, they saved me from being raped,” I said. “And I wondered if...”
“If what?”
“If you knew who that might have been? Martin seemed to think it was cats, but I wondered if any of the neighbours might have got into your garden? A kid, even? If someone saw what happened, if they were looking through the window just before they knocked the bottles over, then they may be willing to give a statement to the police. They may want to help.”
Lindsay pursed her lips and shook her head. “I can’t think who that would be,” she said, quietly. “Sorry,” she added.
My heart sank. “Really? There’s no-one who...?”
We looked at each other for a moment. It was hard making eye contact with someone in sunglasses. “Please,” I said. “Would you just talk to your neighbours? The police don’t believe me. If someone saw what happened, Martin could be prosecuted.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment. “We don’t use milk bottles,” she said. “We use cartons.”
“Well, they were bottles of some sort. I don’t know. It was glass smashing, the sound I heard.”
Lindsay took off her sunglasses again, as if to say, ‘I’ve got my own problems, thanks to you’, and I felt guilty as I looked at her swollen eye again. But she didn’t ask me to leave, so I carried on talking, quickly, in the hope that she’d be persuaded to help.
“You said he wanted another ‘crack’ at me, but there never was any ‘me and him’,” I told her. “I never gave him any reason to think that there was. There was just one night, the night that Helena was conceived, and that time... that time he did manage it. He managed to have sex with me without my consent.”
Lindsay carried on staring at me, her one good eye piercing mine while her poor bruised eye tried its best to see. “What did he do?”
“He had sex with me while I was asleep. I think I was drugged.”
“He drugged you?”
I shook my head. “Not him. Someone else. He came to my flat after I was already out of it. He kicked my friends out under the pretext of taking care of me. And then he.... well, he did what he did. I didn’t know anything about it ‘til the morning when I woke up next to him naked. I had no idea how he’d got there, into my bed. When I asked him to leave, he went crazy. He pushed me against the wall and threatened me. Then I found out that I was pregnant and so I decided to go and live in France. I was scared of him. I didn’t want him in our lives, mine and my daughter’s. I’d seen what he was capable of.”
Lindsay nodded, very slightly.
“After we came back to England a few months ago, after I knew he’d found out about Helena, I was frightened. Really frightened. When I came to your house on Monday to drop off the wallet, I wasn’t expecting him to be there, to open the door. But, when he did, I knew I was going to have to confront him. I had to. He wouldn’t talk to me on the doorstep. He insisted that I come in, if I wanted to talk. But then he got really angry and... well, you know the rest. But I’m sure someone saw what happened. Those bottles smashing like that, just as he was about to... I mean, what do you think?”
Lindsay continued to look at me, blankly, for a moment. Then she shook her head and pursed her lips again. “Probably just cats,” she said, finally. “They’re always getting into that garden. Fighting. You know.”
My heart sank. I was fighting a losing battle. Lindsay didn’t want to get involved, and how could I blame her? But there was no way that I, or any of my friends, could risk cold-calling all the neighbours; there was a far greater chance of me being arrested again for harassment than there was of uncovering anything that would lead to Martin’s downfall.
“Okay. Well, thanks for your time. And I’m sorry. It can’t have been very easy – hearing all that, I mean.” As I turned to go, I looked her in the eye. “Although, you don’t seem very surprised by anything I’ve said.”
She didn’t answer.
“He’s done it to you too, hasn’t he?” I asked her. “He’s raped you?”
Lindsay’s good eye continued to bore into mine, but she said nothing for a few moments. Then she said, “I’ve got to go. I’m late for my next class.”
I picked up my bag, gave her a quick smile and walked towards the door.
“Lizzie,” she called, as I pushed it open.
I turned and looked back at her. She said, “I’m really glad you managed to get away.”
“Thanks.” I closed the door behind me.