“It’s not new,” I tell him.
“It looks pretty new,” he says.
“Well, not new today.”
“Been in the wars, have we?”
“I bumped it getting into a car.”
He examines my head for a good few seconds and then says, “Is that so?” He stands back and looks me in the eye. “It doesn’t look like it. It looks more like someone’s hit you with something,” he says, and I go cold. I have a memory of ducking down to avoid a blow, raising my hands. Is that a real memory? The doctor approaches again and peers more closely at the wound. “Something sharp, serrated maybe . . .”
“No,” I say. “It was a car. I bumped it getting into a car.” I’m trying to convince myself as much as him.
“OK.” He smiles at me then and steps back again, crouching down a little so that our eyes are level. “Are you all right . . .” He consults his notes. “Rachel?”
“Yes.”
He looks at me for a long time; he doesn’t believe me. He’s concerned. Perhaps he thinks I’m a battered wife. “Right. I’m going to clean this up for you, because it looks a bit nasty. Is there someone I can call for you? Your husband?”
“I’m divorced,” I tell him.
“Someone else, then?” He doesn’t care that I’m divorced.
“My friend, please, she’ll be worried about me.” I give him Cathy’s name and number. Cathy won’t be worried at all—I’m not even late home yet—but I’m hoping that the news that I’ve been hit by a taxi might make her take pity on me and forgive me for what happened yesterday. She’ll probably think the reason I got knocked down is because I was drunk. I wonder if I can ask the doctor to do a blood test or something so that I can provide her with proof of my sobriety. I smile up at him, but he isn’t looking at me, he’s making notes. It’s a ridiculous idea anyway.
It was my fault, the taxi driver wasn’t to blame. I stepped right out—ran right out, actually—in front of the cab. I don’t know where I thought I was running to. I wasn’t thinking at all, I suppose, at least not about myself. I was thinking about Jess. Who isn’t Jess, she’s Megan Hipwell, and she’s missing.
I’d been in the library on Theobalds Road. I’d just emailed my mother (I didn’t tell her anything of significance, it was a sort of test-the-waters email, to gauge how maternal she’s feeling towards me at the moment) via my Yahoo account. On Yahoo’s front page there are news stories, tailored to your postcode or whatever—God only knows how they know my postcode, but they do. And there was a picture of her, Jess, my Jess, the perfect blonde, next to a headline that read CONCERN FOR MISSING WITNEY WOMAN.
At first I wasn’t sure. It looked like her, she looked exactly the way she looks in my head, but I doubted myself. Then I read the story and I saw the street name and I knew.
Buckinghamshire Police are becoming increasingly concerned for the welfare of a missing twenty-nine-year-old woman, Megan Hipwell, of Blenheim Road, Witney. Mrs. Hipwell was last seen by her husband, Scott Hipwell, on Saturday night when she left the couple’s home to visit a friend at around seven o’clock. Her disappearance is “completely out of character,” Mr. Hipwell said. Mrs. Hipwell was wearing jeans and a red T-shirt. She is five foot four, slim, with blond hair and blue eyes. Anyone with information regarding Mrs. Hipwell is requested to contact Buckinghamshire Police.
She’s missing. Jess is missing. Megan is missing. Since Saturday. I Googled her—the story appeared in the Witney Argus, but with no further details. I thought about seeing Jason—Scott—this morning, standing on the terrace, looking at me, smiling at me. I grabbed my bag and got to my feet and ran out of the library, into the road, right into the path of a black cab.
“Rachel? Rachel?” The good-looking doctor is trying to get my attention. “Your friend is here to pick you up.”
MEGAN
• • •
THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 2013
MORNING
Sometimes, I don’t want to go anywhere, I think I’ll be happy if I never have to set foot outside the house again. I don’t even miss working. I just want to remain safe and warm in my haven with Scott, undisturbed.
It helps that it’s dark and cold and the weather is filthy. It helps that it hasn’t stopped raining for weeks—freezing, driving, bitter rain accompanied by gales howling through the trees, so loud they drown out the sound of the train. I can’t hear it on the tracks, enticing me, tempting me to journey elsewhere.
Today, I don’t want to go anywhere, I don’t want to run away, I don’t even want to go down the road. I want to stay here, holed up with my husband, watching TV and eating ice cream, after calling him to come home from work early so we can have sex in the middle of the afternoon.
I will have to go out later, of course, because it’s my day for Kamal. I’ve been talking to him lately about Scott, about all the things I’ve done wrong, my failure as a wife. Kamal says I have to find a way of making myself happy, I have to stop looking for happiness elsewhere. It’s true, I do, I know I do, and then I’m in the moment and I just think, fuck it, life’s too short.
I think about that time when we went on a family holiday to Santa Margherita in the Easter school holidays. I’d just turned fifteen and I met this guy on the beach, much older than I was—thirties, probably, possibly even early forties—and he invited me to go sailing the next day. Ben was with me and he was invited, too, but—ever the protective big brother—he said we shouldn’t go because he didn’t trust the guy, he thought he was a sleazy creep. Which, of course, he was. But I was furious, because when were we ever going to get the chance to sail around the Ligurian Sea on some bloke’s private yacht? Ben told me we’d have lots of opportunities like that, that our lives would be full of adventure. In the end we didn’t go, and that summer Ben lost control of his motorbike on the A10, and he and I never got to go sailing.
I miss the way we were when we were together, Ben and I. We were fearless.
I’ve told Kamal all about Ben, but we’re getting closer to the other stuff now, the truth, the whole truth—what happened with Mac, the before, the after. It’s safe with Kamal, he can’t ever tell anyone because of patient confidentiality.
But even if he could tell someone, I don’t think he would. I trust him, I really do. It’s funny, but the thing that’s been holding me back from telling him everything is not the fear of what he’d do with it, it’s not the fear of judgement, it’s Scott. It feels like I’m betraying Scott if I tell Kamal something I can’t tell him. When you think about all the other stuff I’ve done, the other betrayals, this should be peanuts, but it isn’t. Somehow this feels worse, because this is real life, this is the heart of me, and I don’t share it with him.
I’m still holding back, because obviously I can’t say everything I’m feeling. I know that’s the point of therapy, but I just can’t. I have to keep things vague, jumble up all the men, the lovers and the exes, but I tell myself that’s OK, because it doesn’t matter who they are. It matters how they make me feel. Stifled, restless, hungry. Why can’t I just get what I want? Why can’t they give it to me?
Well, sometimes they do. Sometimes all I need is Scott. If I can just learn how to hold on to this feeling, this one I’m having now—if I could just discover how to focus on this happiness, enjoy the moment, not wonder about where the next high is coming from—then everything will be all right.
EVENING
I have to focus when I’m with Kamal. It’s difficult not to let my mind wander when he looks at me with those leonine eyes, when he folds his hands together on his lap, long legs crossed at the knee. It’s hard not to think of the things we could do together.
I have to focus. We’ve been talking about what happened after Ben’s funeral, after I ran off. I was in Ipswich for a while; not long. I met Mac there, the first time. He was working in a pub or something. He picked me up on his way home. He felt sorry for me.
“He didn’t even want . . . you know.” I start laughing. “We got back to his flat and I asked for the money, and he looked at me like I was mad. I told him I was old enough, but he didn’t believe me. And he waited, he did, until my sixteenth birthday. He’d moved, by then, to this old house near Holkham. An old stone cottage at the end of a lane leading nowhere, with a bit of land around it, about half a mile from the beach. There was an old railway track running along one side of the property. At night I’d lie awake—I was always buzzing then, we were smoking a lot—and I used to imagine I could hear the trains, I used to be so sure, I’d get up and go outside and look for the lights.”
Kamal shifts in his chair, he nods, slowly. He doesn’t say anything. This means I’m to go on, I’m to keep talking.
“I was actually really happy there, with Mac. I lived with him for . . . God, it was about three years, I think, in the end. I was . . . nineteen when I left. Yeah. Nineteen.”
“Why did you leave, if you were happy there?” he asks me. We’re there now, we got there quicker than I thought we would. I haven’t had time to go through it all, to build up to it. I can’t do it. It’s too soon.
“Mac left me. He broke my heart,” I say, which is the truth, but also a lie. I’m not ready to tell the whole truth yet.
Scott isn’t home when I get back, so I get my laptop out and Google him, for the first time ever. For the first time in a decade, I look for Mac. I can’t find him, though. There are hundreds of Craig McKenzies in the world, and none of them seems to be mine.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2013
MORNING
I’m walking in the woods. I’ve been out since before it got light, it’s barely dawn now, deathly quiet except for the occasional outburst of chatter from the magpies in the trees above my head. I can feel them watching me, beady-eyed, calculating. A tiding of magpies. One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told.
I’ve got a few of those.
Scott is away, on a course somewhere in Sussex. He left yesterday morning and he’s not back until tonight. I can do whatever I want.
Before he left, I told Scott I was going to the cinema with Tara after my session. I told him my phone would be off, and I spoke to her, too. I warned her that he might ring, that he might check up on me. She asked me, this time, what I was up to. I just winked and smiled, and she laughed. I think she might be lonely, that her life could do with a bit of intrigue.
In my session with Kamal, we were talking about Scott, about the thing with the laptop. It happened about a week ago. I’d been looking for Mac—I’d done several searches, I just wanted to find out where he was, what he was up to. There are pictures of almost everyone on the Internet these days, and I wanted to see his face. I couldn’t find him. I went to bed early that night. Scott stayed up watching TV, and I’d forgotten to delete my browser history. Stupid mistake—it’s usually the last thing I do before I shut down my computer, no matter what I’ve been looking at. I know Scott has ways of finding what I’ve been up to anyway, being the techie he is, but it takes a lot longer, so most of the time he doesn’t bother.
In any case, I forgot. And the next day, we got into a fight. One of the bruising ones. He wanted to know who Craig was, how long I’d been seeing him, where we met, what he did for me that Scott didn’t do. Stupidly, I told Scott that he was a friend from my past, which only made it worse. Kamal asked me if I was afraid of Scott, and I got really pissed off.
“He’s my husband,” I snapped. “Of course I’m not afraid of him.”
Kamal looked quite shocked. I actually shocked myself. I hadn’t anticipated the force of my anger, the depth of my protectiveness towards Scott. It was a surprise to me, too.
“There are many women who are frightened of their husbands, I’m afraid, Megan.” I tried to say something, but he held up his hand to silence me. “The behaviour you’re describing—reading your emails, going through your Internet browser history—you describe all this as though it is commonplace, as though it is normal. It isn’t, Megan. It isn’t normal to invade someone’s privacy to that degree. It’s what is often seen as a form of emotional abuse.”
I laughed then, because it sounded so melodramatic. “It isn’t abuse,” I told him. “Not if you don’t mind. And I don’t. I don’t mind.”
He smiled at me then, a rather sad smile. “Don’t you think you should?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Perhaps I should, but the fact is, I don’t. He’s jealous, he’s possessive. That’s the way he is. It doesn’t stop me loving him, and some battles aren’t worth fighting. I’m careful—usually. I cover my tracks, so it isn’t usually an issue.”
He gave a little shake of the head, almost imperceptible.
“I didn’t think you were here to judge me,” I said.
When the session ended, I asked him if he wanted to have a drink with me. He said no, he couldn’t, it wouldn’t be appropriate. So I followed him home. He lives in a flat just down the road from the practice. I knocked on his door, and when he opened it, I asked, “Is this appropriate?” I slipped my hand around the back of his neck, stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the mouth.
“Megan,” he said, voice like velvet. “Don’t. I can’t do this. Don’t.”
It was exquisite, that push and pull, desire and restraint. I didn’t want to let the feeling go, I wanted so badly to be able to hold on to it.
I got up in the early hours of the morning, head spinning, full of stories. I couldn’t just lie there, awake, alone, my mind ticking over all those opportunities that I could take or leave, so I got up and got dressed and started walking. Found myself here. I’ve been walking around and playing things back in my head—he said, she said, temptation, release; if only I could settle on something, choose to stick, not twist. What if the thing I’m looking for can never be found? What if it just isn’t possible?
The air is cold in my lungs, the tips of my fingers are turning blue. Part of me just wants to lie down here, among the leaves, let the cold take me. I can’t. It’s time to go.
It’s almost nine by the time I get back to Blenheim Road, and as I turn the corner I see her, coming towards me, pushing the buggy in front of her. The child, for once, is silent. She looks at me and nods and gives me one of those weak smiles, which I don’t return. Usually, I would pretend to be nice, but this morning I feel real, like myself. I feel high, almost like I’m tripping, and I couldn’t fake nice if I tried.
AFTERNOON
I fell asleep in the afternoon. I woke feverish, panicky. Guilty. I do feel guilty. Just not guilty enough.
I thought about him leaving in the middle of the night, telling me, once again, that this was the last time, the very last time, we can’t do this again. He was getting dressed, pulling on his jeans. I was lying on the bed and I laughed, because that’s what he said last time, and the time before, and the time before that. He shot me a look. I don’t know how to describe it, it wasn’t anger, exactly, not contempt—it was a warning.
I feel uneasy. I walk around the house; I can’t settle, I feel as though someone else has been here while I was sleeping. There’s nothing out of place, but the house feels different, as though things have been touched, subtly shifted out of place, and as I walk around I feel as though there’s someone else here, always just out of my line of sight. I check the French doors to the garden three times, but they’re locked. I can’t wait for Scott to get home. I need him.
RACHEL
• • •
TUESDAY, JULY 16, 2013
MORNING
I’m on the 8:04, but I’m not going into London. I’m going to Witney instead. I’m hoping that being there will jog my memory, that I’ll get to the station and I’ll see everything clearly, I’ll know. I don’t hold out much hope, but there is nothing else I can do. I can’t call Tom. I’m too ashamed, and in any case, he’s made it clear: he wants nothing more to do with me.
Megan is still missing; she’s been gone more than sixty hours now, and the story is becoming national news. It was on the BBC website and Daily Mail this morning; there were a few snippets mentioning it on other sites, too.
I printed out both the BBC and Daily Mail stories; I have them with me. From them I have gleaned the following:
Megan and Scott argued on Saturday evening. A neighbour reported hearing raised voices. Scott admitted that they’d argued and said that he believed his wife had gone to spend the night with a friend, Tara Epstein, who lives in Corly.
Megan never got to Tara’s house. Tara says the last time she saw Megan was on Friday afternoon at their Pilates class. (I knew Megan would do Pilates.) According to Ms. Epstein, “She seemed fine, normal. She was in a good mood, she was talking about doing something special for her thirtieth birthday next month.”
Megan was seen by one witness walking towards Witney train station at around seven fifteen on Saturday evening.
Megan has no family in the area. Both her parents are deceased.
Megan is unemployed. She used to run a small art gallery in Witney, but it closed down in April last year. (I knew Megan would be arty.)
Scott is a self-employed IT consultant. (I can’t bloody believe Scott is an IT consultant.)
Megan and Scott have been married for three years; they have been living in the house on Blenheim Road since January 2012.
According to the Daily Mail, their house is worth four hundred thousand pounds.
Reading this, I know that things look bad for Scott. Not just because of the argument, either; it’s just the way things are: when something bad happens to a woman, the police look at the husband or the boyfriend first. However, in this case, the police don’t have all the facts. They’re only looking at the husband, presumably because they don’t know about the boyfriend.
It could be that I am the only person who knows that the boyfriend exists.
I scrabble around in my bag for a scrap of paper. On the back of a card slip for two bottles of wine, I write down a list of most likely possible explanations for the disappearance of Megan Hipwell:
She has run off with her boyfriend, who from here on in, I will refer to as B.
B has harmed her.
Scott has harmed her.
She has simply left her husband and gone to live elsewhere.
Someone other than B or Scott has harmed her.
I think the first possibility is most likely, and four is a strong contender, too, because Megan is an independent, wilful woman, I’m sure of it. And if she were having an affair, she might need to get away to clear her head, mightn’t she? Five does not seem especially likely, since murder by a stranger isn’t all that common.
The bump on my head is throbbing, and I can’t stop thinking about the argument I saw, or imagined, or dreamed about, on Saturday night. As we pass Megan and Scott’s house, I look up. I can hear the blood pulsing in my head. I feel excited. I feel afraid. The windows of number fifteen, reflecting morning sunshine, look like sightless eyes.
EVENING
I’m just settling into my seat when my phone rings. It’s Cathy. I let it go to voice mail.
She leaves a message: “Hi, Rachel, just phoning to make sure you’re OK.” She’s worried about me, because of the thing with the taxi. “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry, you know, about the other day, what I said about moving out. I shouldn’t have. I overreacted. You can stay as long as you want to.” There’s a long pause, and then she says, “Give me a ring, OK? And come straight home, Rach, don’t go to the pub.”
I don’t intend to. I wanted a drink at lunchtime; I was desperate for one after what happened in Witney this morning. I didn’t have one, though, because I had to keep a clear head. It’s been a long time since I’ve had anything worth keeping a clear head for.
It was so strange, this morning, my trip to Witney. I felt as though I hadn’t been there in ages, although of course it’s only been a few days. It may as well