Friday 8th December 2023
Alice
Peter is gone when Alice goes back to his house to check on him. She sees he’s finished the washing-up she started, and emptied the bin, and she hopes it means he’s back to some kind of normalcy. Where has he gone, though? She feels a pang of sadness as she looks at the dent he’s left in the sofa, the fabric of the arm flattened where his long legs hung over the edge.
She crumples into the same spot, the initials from the pub wall dancing in front of her eyes. Other fragments crowd in: Robbie on the floor, Leo standing over him, Chrissy’s hand slipping out of hers. Chrissy’s face whenever Ethan … Stop. She opens her eyes, feeling as if she’s emerging from a dark room into harsh, blinding light. Then she sees the note on the coffee table.
Sorry sis, it says, in Peter’s recognisable scrawl. Sorry for fucking up. Will call you. Love you. P x
She is choked again. He never says ‘love you’. He would sometimes murmur it, gruffly, to Robbie, but always left it unspoken and implied with her. She doesn’t know whether to be moved or worried. Picking up the note, she studies it as if she’ll see something else between the lines, then folds it into her pocket and leaves.
*
As she drives up to her house, still lost in thought, she snaps alert to see two officers in high-vis jackets at her door. She runs her tongue over her furry teeth and gets out of her car, walking tall.
‘Hello.’ She injects a question into her voice as she approaches them. The officers, a man and a woman who used to work with Peter, look slightly awkward, caught between smiles and poker faces. ‘Kiri … and Ben?’ she remembers.
‘Hi, Mrs … Miss Lowe,’ Ben says.
‘Never been a Mrs!’ Alice says, trying to cover her unease with a weird sing-song voice. ‘I’d say Robbie’s dad wasn’t the marriage type but …’
He was so preoccupied with his wife and more important kids that he missed his firstborn’s funeral, she thinks, but swallows it, keeping things light.
‘… But we were never that kind of couple,’ she finishes awkwardly instead. ‘And … you can just call me Alice. We’re not strangers, are we?’
There is a stilted pause. Kiri clears her throat. ‘Can we come in?’
Alice sees them looking around as she shows them in, Beech buzzing curiously about. Her house is emptier than it once was: no tangled PlayStation wires, no size-eleven trainers abandoned in doorways. Not even much of her own clutter, anymore; no pens and half-filled notebooks waiting on every surface.
‘Make yourselves comfy.’ Alice gestures them into the living room. ‘I’ll just be a second …’
She doesn’t wait to see their reaction, but hurries into her study. Pulling the door closed behind her, she wakes the laptop, jumping reflexively as Leo’s face greets her. With a final hesitation, she closes the tab. There is a strange feeling of loss – a lost chance, perhaps, to peer into Leo’s head – but what would it look like if the police saw him on her screen?
She takes a moment to compose herself, then fetches two glasses of water from the kitchen, as if that was what she left for in the first place.
‘Sorry to disturb you, Alice,’ Kiri says, as Alice returns. ‘We just need to ask you a few questions about Leo Dean.’
‘Leo?’ Alice says cautiously. ‘What about him?’
‘We’re aware that he …’ Ben visibly squirms, looking over at his colleague.
‘He killed my son,’ Alice finishes for him, pulling herself up straighter.
‘Yes.’ He’s blushing beneath that big beard. ‘And I’m sure you know he was recently released—’
‘I know that, yes.’ She tries not to betray how she felt, still feels, about it. That his early release was another giant cut to her heart.
‘His mother, Chrissy Dean, has informed us that he’s disappeared.’
Alice does her best to look taken aback. ‘Disappeared?’
‘You didn’t know?’
‘Well, people had mentioned they hadn’t seen him …’
‘When did you last see him?’
‘Um …’ She pauses a second too long. ‘I guess it would’ve been his trial.’ She thinks of him in the defendant’s box, head bowed. The surge of elation when he was sentenced, just to know he’d be locked up at all. But then the fury, and then the numbness: four years, which would probably, in reality, only be two?
She remembers catching Chrissy’s eye as she left court, feeling a shock of deep familiarity. Noticing – before she shut herself off from it – that Chrissy looked as bewildered and broken as her.
As if reading her mind, Kiri asks: ‘What about Chrissy, when did you last speak to her?’
Alice pauses again. Her kitchen table. The spilled tea. Get out of my house. Now, though, her mind fills up with dozens of other ‘last times’. The last time they shared a bottle of wine and couldn’t stop laughing at something ridiculous. The last time they watched their sons play a gig and squeezed each other’s hands in mutual pride.
The last time they promised each other, you can trust me. Her hand goes to her throat, reaching for the locket as if for a phantom limb, but of course it isn’t there.
‘I can’t remember,’ Alice says. ‘I wrote to her …’
This seizes their attention. ‘In what sense?’
She detects dangerous ground and rushes to explain. ‘I emailed her. On behalf of the pub committee. To say Leo wouldn’t be allowed back in the pub. Obviously.’ She regrets adding the last word, regrets spitting it out so vehemently.
‘And when was this?’
‘Um …’ Alice looks at the clock as if it’s relevant. ‘Yesterday. The day of his release.’
‘I see.’ Ben takes over again, leaning forward. ‘We have to ask, Alice … where were you yesterday? The morning, in particular?’
‘I was at home. I took Beech for a walk.’
‘Did you see anybody else?’
She shakes her head. ‘Not on my walk. Later on … I saw my brother. Peter. Who you know, of course.’
She bats away the memory of him swaying by the side of the road. It isn’t how she likes to think of him. She’s normally the one leaning on him, not the other way around.
‘Okay.’ Kiri writes for a disproportionally long time, and Alice reaches for Beech’s soft ears. He rests his head in her lap and its weight is so comforting she wants to cry.
‘One more thing.’ Ben’s awkwardness is back. He shunts even further forward in his chair, and it takes Alice a moment to realise he’s trying to show her a photo on his phone. ‘Do you recognise this?’
Alice’s stomach jumps as she sees vivid red capitals.
KEEP HIM AWAY FROM OUR VILLAGE.
‘No,’ she says, jerking back. ‘What … what is it?’
‘A note sent anonymously to Chrissy Dean. One of several, in fact.’ He starts scrolling, showing her other pictures – Why are you still here? Haven’t you got the message yet? – and her vision becomes a streak of red.
‘Oh … wow. That’s …’ She drops her gaze back to Beech, pretending to pick something out of his fur.
‘Have you any idea who might have sent them?’ Kiri asks, and Alice can feel that she’s being carefully studied. She should look up, meet their eyes, but she hasn’t the guts. Not even drawing herself up to her full height seems like the magic trick it usually is.
‘Obviously, people are angry. But I don’t know …’
‘Alice, have you any idea where Leo Dean could be?’
Thoughts collide in her head. The high prison gates glinting in the sun. A hand with scarlet stains on the fingertips, bleeding into the skin. But she can’t connect the images with herself, can’t tell, in this moment, whether they’re even real. She hooks her hands into Beech’s collar and holds tight.
‘I have no idea,’ she says. ‘Perhaps …’ She swallows and moistens her dry lips. ‘Perhaps he realised coming back here was only going to cause more pain.’
Kiri shifts in her seat. ‘Pain … for him? For you?’
Alice pulls Beech closer and he whimpers, his ears shooting back. ‘Pain for everyone.’
They leave a few minutes later, telling her that some detectives may be in touch. Alice stands in her hallway, her ears ringing as if they’d stood either side of her and yelled, rather than questioned her in those quietly awkward tones. She goes back over everything she said to them: had she lied? Or dropped herself in it? She doesn’t think so, but why won’t her heart stop hammering?
She hears a knock at the door and nearly leaps out of her skin. She frowns, then opens it to see Ben standing there, alone, one finger scratching the side of his beard.
‘Alice.’ He looks up. ‘Sorry. I left my notebook.’
‘Oh …’ She lets him back in, half-wishing she’d spotted it before he returned, taken a peek at what he’d written about her.
She leads him into the living room but there’s no sign of the notebook. He doesn’t even seem to be searching for it.
‘Are you sure you—?’
‘Alice, just quickly …’ His eyes dart towards the door. ‘Have you spoken to Pete?’
She blinks slowly. ‘Not today …’
‘I think you should … maybe let him know …’
‘About Leo?’ She steps a little closer. Ben’s face is lightly sweating. Beech trots forward and starts sniffing his hand.
Absent-mindedly, Ben nudges the dog away. ‘No … well, yes … That this is happening. That I was here.’
‘You specifically?’ Confusion makes her thoughts messy. She stares at his face, trying to read him.
He drags a hand over his mouth and all the way down to his collar. ‘Just … give him a heads-up. Maybe don’t use my name if it’s a text …’ He shakes his head vigorously. ‘Look, I’ve gotta go. Just tell him there might be an investigation, okay?’
‘But …’ Alice shakes her head, too, wondering what she’s missing.
Outside, a car engine revs up. Ben makes for the door.
‘Ben … Are you talking about …?’ But he is gone, pulling the front door closed behind him. She hurries to the window to watch him getting into the car next to Kiri, taking his notebook out of his jacket and waving it around as if to say, got it!
Alice pulls her phone out of her pocket to text her brother. But she doesn’t know what to say. What she’s supposed to be saying.
There might be an investigation.
Why do those words seem bigger than just Leo skipping parole? Why do they send a shot of fear right to her core, to a place she thought she’d closed off long ago?