Saturday 9th December 2023
Georgie
It’s pitch-dark by the time Georgie leads Ben towards her rented cottage. She lives in the least ‘villagey’ part of the village, she often thinks. Two of the houses on her small street are empty and most of the rest are occupied by commuters who leave early in the morning and come back late at night. As she unlocks her door, ushering Ben inside, she still feels as if Ethan is watching. She imagines him jealous – maybe wants him to be jealous? – though she isn’t sure why. Sometimes she sensed that he could be a jealous man. His questions about what she got up to when they weren’t together, the way he would watch her talking to the room service guy or the hotel barman.
Nothing to worry about here, my love, she reassures him in her mind. At least, not on that score.
She remembers the kindness of the hotel receptionist on that final night, the many times she went downstairs to ask if he’d seen the man who was supposed to be joining her. ‘My husband hasn’t arrived,’ she kept saying to the staff, and maybe they knew he wasn’t her husband but it comforted her, somehow, to call him that.
Shaking off the memory, she wipes her boots on her doormat, scattering the last few clumps of earth from his grave. She takes Ben through to the living room. The fireplace is cold and dark. Last night’s wine glass sits next to her armchair, her checked blanket thrown over the back. A sad scene, she thinks, looking around. No photos on display. None of the expensive scented candles and potted plants she used to have in her London flat. She hasn’t unpacked anything personal or beautiful, can’t make this a home until she’s done what she came here for.
‘I’ll go and grab the scrapbook,’ Georgie says, leaving Ben in her living room.
Going upstairs to the heavy wooden wardrobe, she pushes aside her new array of countryside-appropriate clothes and reaches to the back. She’s about to leave the room with the scrapbook when she pauses, turns around, and opens one of the drawers on the right-hand side of the wardrobe. Inside is a carboard box. She hesitates, a faint flutter in her chest, then takes it downstairs with her too.
Ben is inspecting her wood burner. ‘What make is this?’ he asks, suddenly conversational.
Georgie looks at him blankly. ‘I have no idea.’
‘My wife wants one like this. We’ve got an open fire at the moment but it’s messy and she thinks a burner would be—’
‘Here,’ Georgie interrupts, thrusting both the scrapbook and the cardboard box towards him.
‘This is the …?’ he says, accepting the scrapbook.
She watches him turning the pages, the muscles around his eyes getting tighter. Eventually, he snaps it shut. ‘Well, thanks. I believe Peter’s been taken in for questioning at Derby police station. I’m sure there’s an explanation.’
‘Are you?’
‘Well …’
‘Because he’s your buddy?’ She mimes a playful cuff of his arm, but her smile is a grimace.
He doesn’t answer. He nods at the cardboard box she’s still holding. ‘Was there something else?’
She hesitates again, cradling the box. When she finally hands it to Ben, she feels as if she’s passing over a baby or a pet. Be gentle, she wants to say.
Ben looks more like she’s handed him a bomb. He peels the lid off nervously and peeks inside. Georgie hears the items moving as he puts his hand in and shuffles them around; she knows what they are just from the sound of each one. He lifts out a silver ballpoint pen with a hotel name on the side. A cloth napkin. A black cocktail stirrer. A cufflink that Ethan left by the bed, once, when he had to leave in a hurry. Then Ben gets to the photo. The only one Georgie has of the two of them: a selfie she begged him to pose for.
Ben stares at it, as the wall clock ticks in the silence.
‘You … and Ethan Dean?’ he says at last.
Georgie nods without dropping her gaze.
‘You … you should’ve mentioned this earlier,’ he says, sounding unsure of himself. ‘We’re investigating the disappearance of his son.’
‘Well …’ Georgie’s pulse pounds in her ears. ‘I suggest you also investigate Ethan’s death. Properly this time. Otherwise, I’m going to take my concerns higher. As high as possible.’
‘It was suicide.’ Ben looks at her as if she’s unhinged. ‘There was no doubt.’
‘According to who?’
‘A coroner, of course.’
‘Based on what?’
‘He was found hanged!’
Georgie flinches and closes her eyes. Not that image. She never lets herself picture that.
She opens her eyes, lifting her chin. ‘Did you see him?’
‘Yes, actually. I … I was one of the first responders. And I can assure you—’
‘You and Peter Lowe, by any chance?’
Ben puts the box down on the arm of a chair. There is a glow to his skin now. A new heat in the room.
‘Look, Georgie. I’m here about Leo Dean. If you’ve nothing else to add on that subject, I’m going to take the scrapbook to the station and then I’m going to go home.’
She steps forward. ‘He wouldn’t have killed himself. Not without severe provocation. Or … force.’
His expression flounders between sympathy and frustration. ‘I know it must be hard to accept—’
‘We were supposed to meet, that night. In our hotel. He wouldn’t have let me just sit there. He even ordered room service in advance; it arrived while I was waiting. Lobster and chicken supreme.’ She almost breaks, thinking of the two meals congealing under the metal domes. ‘Why would he, if he knew he was going to die?’
Ben passes a hand across his eyes. ‘I don’t know what you’re trying to—’
‘He had no reason to do it,’ she presses on. ‘We had plans. And not just for that night.’
‘Clearly, his state of mind—’
‘You know nothing about his state of mind! I did!’ She thumps her own chest. ‘He loved me, and he wouldn’t have just abandoned me. He left no note. Gave no signs.’
‘He was a troubled guy, Georgie.’
She falters slightly. ‘What?’
Ben lets out a heavy sigh. ‘I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but maybe he wasn’t the person you thought he was. How do you know you saw the real him?’
Her chest heaves. ‘Because I know.’
He steps closer now. She feels him swinging the power balance, using his stockiness, his uniform, trying to close her down. ‘It was a suicide, Georgie. I’m sorry for your loss. But there was nothing more to it than a man with … problems. Big problems.’
She won’t have it. She makes herself as tall as possible and looks directly into his face. ‘I think someone killed him.’
He laughs. He actually laughs. She feels rage clawing its way up her throat.
‘Do you have any evidence?’
‘Chrissy was awful to him.’ Her words pour out too fast now. ‘Alice resented him. Peter does whatever Alice needs him to. It’s not hard to see how, between the three of them, they might have got away with it.’
Ben shakes his head. ‘This is an actual conspiracy theory!’
Georgie resists the urge to grab his jaw, push her nails into his skin, make him see how serious she is.
‘He had you fooled,’ Ben adds, his laughter disappearing. ‘He had you totally fooled.’
She goes very still and gazes up at him. ‘No,’ she says crisply. ‘Chrissy and Alice and Peter had everybody fooled. And I’m going to prove it. I’m going to get it reopened as a murder case—’
‘He was a bad guy!’ Ben erupts, his whole face turning bright scarlet. He winces, as if he hadn’t intended to say it, then jerks his shoulders resignedly. ‘He was … a shit.’ His voice quietens. ‘And he probably knew it. And that was probably why he took his own life.’
Georgie stares at him, speechless for a second. She touches her ring. Glances at the photo jutting out of the top of the shoebox. ‘That’s really unprofessional,’ she says coldly.
‘Well, I think this whole conversation has gotten a little—’
‘Everyone loved Ethan! I loved him! He was a wonderful man and his family didn’t deserve him, didn’t want him—’
‘He was a brute!’ It’s another eruption. But this time he doesn’t look shocked or sheepish in its wake; he looks exasperated, wild-eyed, his hands in his hair.
Georgie breathes hard. ‘What would you know about it?’
‘I … I heard things. Saw things …’
‘You’re lying!’
‘Why would I? That night, when I saw him hanging there, saw the state Chrissy was in, blaming herself, hiding old bruises … I understood the whole situation like that …’ He clicks his fingers in her face. ‘I’ve seen the likes of it before. A fucked-up guy, an abuser who couldn’t live with himself anymore—’
‘No!’ Georgie’s insides burn, bile flooding her mouth. She shoves his chest and he staggers but he’s still talking. He won’t stop talking.
She is overtaken by fury. All she wants is to stop the poison spewing out of his mouth. Evil, he’s calling Ethan. Brainwashed, he’s calling her. Suicide, he’s still insisting, but he doesn’t sound sorry about that anymore.
She backs towards the fireplace, fending off the words. She almost trips over the edge of the hearth but her hand finds the metal poker in its holder, something to anchor herself with. As she pulls it out, black ash flurries in the air. Ben is talking, still talking. People talk too much when they’re guilty, when they’re lying, when they’re in the wrong but too far gone to take it back. She knows this but she just wants him to stop, wants to keep his lies from burrowing into her brain. She screams and lifts the poker, swinging it into the side of his head.