Thursday 7th December 2023
Alice
Driving to Peter’s house on the other side of the village, Alice thinks of Nadia waiting in her clinic room and feels a pang of guilt. The old Alice wouldn’t have dreamed of missing an appointment or standing anybody up. She wouldn’t have dreamed of leaving the house like this, with unwashed hair, no make-up, clothes she hasn’t even checked in the mirror.
The old Alice wouldn’t be gripping the steering wheel this hard, either. Letting her speed creep up and up.
She still has her eye out for Leo, imagining him emerging from buildings, lurking down lanes, leaping out in front of her car. Would she slam her foot down? Watch him fly across her bonnet?
It isn’t as if she’s never thought about it.
So why, when confronted with his private Facebook account, had she balked and run? She wants to yell at herself now, swing the car around, but she’s on the fast road running parallel to the village and there’s nowhere to U-turn. And what is she expecting to find among his messages and posts? He killed Robbie and that’s the end of it. A punch or a push, it doesn’t matter. A reason or not. Admitting there might be something to discover would make her as bad as Chrissy.
Alice often thinks back on that moment, in her kitchen, a week after the last New Year’s Eve she would ever celebrate. She and Chrissy sitting numbly at the table, still hoping to be woken from their nightmare. Leo in custody. Robbie’s belongings everywhere she looked. She wonders whether things might’ve been salvageable – maybe, just maybe – if the excruciating silence had simply remained. But Chrissy looked up from her undrunk tea and asked Alice if she knew what Robbie had said to Leo.
What he said? Alice was confused at first. Her thoughts were so slow at that time. Even lifting her head was an effort.
He must’ve … In Alice’s memory, Chrissy looks defensive, almost defiant. She’d seen that look in her eyes before. There must’ve been something …
What she can’t remember is whether Chrissy actually used the word ‘provoked’. She drives herself mad, some days, trying to recall her phrasing. But she knows it was implied. Knows Chrissy was trying to share out the blame, twisting the knife in her wound.
Get out. Get out of my house.
The tea spilling everywhere as she stood up and knocked the table with her shaking legs.
It was the last time they’d properly spoken. Even the pub sale, over a year later, went through solicitors and third parties as if they were strangers. Alice never saw Chrissy’s face as the lease passed to her. Chrissy never got to ask her why on earth she wanted it.
Now Alice is shaking as hard as that day in her kitchen. There’s no tea to spill but her car weaves in the middle of the icy road. She wrangles it under control and something snags at the edge of her sight. A familiar figure standing by the side of the road, half-camouflaged against a dark hedge.
She hits the brake, skidding to a stop. Peter’s collar is caught skew-whiff inside his jacket, his left bootlace trailing, hat lolling out of one pocket. And he is swaying. Almost imperceptibly, but Alice can tell; she knows the signs. ‘Shit,’ she hisses under her breath, unsnapping her seat belt. Perhaps she should’ve been more worried when he didn’t answer his phone. But it’s been so long since this last happened.
‘Peter!’ she calls, thrusting open her car door.
He turns, staggering. His eyes are bloodshot and unfocused. She hurries closer and smells the confirmation on his breath, sees regret tugging down the corners of his mouth.
‘Oh, God,’ she says. ‘Have you been drinking since you left mine?’
His only answer is a long sigh. Alice takes his arm and helps him into her car. Fastening his seat belt, she notices a bright red scratch across the back of his hand, a smear of rusty-brown dirt on his jacket. She used to look for clues to what he’d got up to on these days and nights. But at some point she stopped agonising. He would tell her once he’d sobered up, then go to a meeting, everything reverting to normal. But will this time be different? When the trigger, the obvious trigger, is living a stone’s throw away?
She drives around the top of the village and down the track towards his house. Peter moans softly as they bump over the cattle bridge, lifting a hand to his temple. Alice lets them inside and flicks on the lights. There is a whiff of stale food. In the living room she sees a bowl of congealed noodles, several empty beer bottles rolling on their sides, a couple of greasy chip wrappers. Peter collapses onto the sofa and she starts gathering up the mess. The kitchen is worse: crusty dishes in the sink and the smell of old onions wafting from the overflowing bin. How had she not realised he was living like this? He comes over to hers all the time, checking on her, but it’s a while since she’s been here.
Racked with guilt, she fills the sink with ballooning suds and brings him some water. She inspects the graze on his hand, dipping her fingers into the glass of water to clean away some dirt.
He flinches, but lets her keep washing it. ‘Sorry, sis,’ he slurs, and she draws a blanket over him.
It isn’t the right time to ask him about Leo’s Facebook, but the question gnaws at her.
‘Pete,’ she says, leaning in close as he verges on sleep. ‘Did you use my laptop last night, or this morning?’
He squints at her groggily. ‘Uh? Maybe. Can’t remember.’
‘Did you … Were you on Leo’s Facebook? In it, in fact? The weirdest thing …’
He opens his glazed eyes more widely, looking up at her. ‘What?’
Then he waves a hand in front of his face and his eyes droop closed.
The message comes through the next morning. A buzz pierces Alice’s dreams and she wakes in a muddle on Peter’s other sofa, pale light streaming through the windows. Peter is still sleeping. She grabs her phone, opening a WhatsApp from Georgie.
Did you hear? Leo isn’t back. He was nowhere to be seen, apparently, when Chrissy went to pick him up from prison. He’s basically vanished.
Alice stares at the message, white noise building in her ears.
What do you mean, va— she types, but another message drops into the top of her screen.
There’s something else as well, Georgie says. Can you meet me at the pub? It’s something you really need to see.
Alice’s breath comes shallow and quick. She felt Leo’s presence, yesterday, from the moment she woke. Felt his nearness like a charge in the air. How can he have vanished?
She looks over at Peter, anxiety shifting and re-forming inside her.
I can be there in five minutes, she replies to Georgie, then stands up and slips out of the room.