Page 38 of The Tapes

THIRTY

The front door opens when I’m still half-a-dozen paces away. Henry’s in shorts that show a chunky set of thighs, plus a long-sleeve T-shirt. There’s more heft across his shoulders and upper arms than the last time I saw him.

‘I always knew I had the power to open front doors with my mind,’ I say.

He smiles kindly and holds it wider. He’s bare-footed and his legs aren’t as hairy as I remember, which has me wondering if he shaves them now. I’d never ask, of course.

‘Will Tiffany mind?’ I ask, waiting on the step, even though he’s welcoming me in.

‘She’s at CrossFit and it’s girls’ night, so they hang around after. She wouldn’t mind anyway.’

I don’t let on that I find it mildly annoying that Henry’s current wife would seemingly have no problems with him inviting his old one into their home.

Couldn’t she at least have the decency to be jealous, like everyone else?

What is it with these people who are secure in their own bodies and relationships?

Henry plods through the house, his great big swimmer’s feet slapping on the bare floors as he takes me through to the deck at the back of the house.

The sun is setting, but an orangey glow is in the perfect spot to bathe the table and chairs in evening warmth.

Henry doesn’t sit, so neither do I. Instead, we stand a couple of paces apart, the chairs between us.

‘How’s Libby?’ I ask.

‘She’s great. She’s in bed at the moment. She started walking around three weeks ago, so we’ve had to pick up everything from the floor. There are child gates all over.’ He laughs and it’s impossible not to remember those days.

‘How are you?’ he asks.

A shrug. ‘Y’know…’

‘How was the funeral?’

‘As good as could be expected.’ I wait, then: ‘Faith’s doing great on her course and really looking forward to the trip…’

He smiles as I realise he knows. Faith would’ve texted him and they probably talk anyway. She and her father have a proper grown-up relationship.

‘Do you want a drink?’ he asks. There’s a second and then he almost jumps. ‘Tea! I mean tea, or water, or Coke, or whatever. I didn’t mean?—’

‘I can’t drink any more tea today but I’ll have a water.’

He eyes me for a moment, wondering whether I really did take offence – but then he heads into the house, leaving me on his annoyingly beautiful deck.

There’s a covered hot tub off to the side, next to a barbecue grill.

A row of towels and swimming costumes are hanging from a line that follows the fence.

I sit on the impossibly comfortable bamboo sofa, with its plush cushions, wishing just one thing about the setup wasn’t perfect.

Even the bloody sun sets in the ideal spot.

When Henry returns, he has a jug of water, ice sloshing around, plus a pair of glasses. He places everything on the table, then sits on the second sofa which I will guarantee is equally as comfortable as the one on which I’m sitting.

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ he asks.

‘I’m fine.’

He squints towards me, lips close, unconvinced. ‘It’s just it’s the day of your dad’s funeral and you’re texting your ex-husband at eight o’clock, asking if we can have a chat…?’

‘Well, when you put it that way…’

He doesn’t laugh, waiting for a response I’m not sure I can give. Perhaps I have a proper reason to be here but maybe I’m a sicko who needs reminding of what I threw away. The hot tub could’ve been mine, the washing line with the drying swimming costumes, the deck with the perfect bloody sun.

I tell Henry everything. That I found a cassette among Dad’s things, with a recording of Mum saying that she wasn’t missing and had instead been killed. That she claimed to know the identity of the Earring Killer – but the recording quality is poor and perhaps she never named the person anyway.

Henry watches me for a moment and presses back in his sofa.

I told Nicola’s father and he asked if I recorded it myself.

I wanted to tell Liam but he watched me with such a careful stare that I know he was wondering if I’d been drinking again.

I talked to my brother and he said the women in our family are trouble and that he wants no part of it.

I just want someone to trust me.

‘Do you believe her?’ Henry asks.

A shrug and, from nowhere, I have to gulp away a lump in my throat. ‘I don’t know. She said she robbed a bank on the same tape.’

That gets a crinkle of the brow. ‘Why’d she say that?’ he asks.

‘You know why.’

There’s the slightest hint of a nod – because my mother loved Henry, and he knew about her fluid relationship with the truth.

She would tell him rambling stories about an exciting youth involving seductions and adventures at a university she never attended.

He’d listen and nod, tell her how fabulous it all sounded.

They both knew the game but he was polite enough not to say anything.

‘I listened to a few of the tapes,’ I tell him. ‘She calls herself a kleptomaniac and says she stole a book about it. She knew she had impulse control issues.’

‘And she says she didn’t disappear? She thought she was going to be killed?’

‘Right.’

A pause. ‘So… do you believe her?’

A longer silence now. The same question as before. ‘I think I do.’

Henry considers this and then has a mouthful of the water. He swills it around before swallowing, as he always did. Some things never change.

There is another life in which I wasn’t a bad drunk who loved drinking. Where I wasn’t handed an ultimatum between alcohol and my marriage. Or one in which I was – but picked him. Henry thought he was helping and I thought I was right. Neither of us were happy, not then anyway.

‘Do you believe she knows who the Earring Killer is?’

I consider that, too. It’s not quite the same answer. ‘I don’t think she was making it up. She could’ve been wrong but I think she believed she knew who it was.’

Henry drums his fingers on the side of the chair. Tap-tap-tap-tap in rapid succession. He’s done this for as long as I’ve known him.

‘If she says she was going to be killed, does that mean she thought the Earring Killer would get her?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

More drumming of the fingers. Despite everything between us, the ultimatums (his) and the broken promises (mine), our break-up was as amicable as could be.

Henry could have challenged me for custody of Faith, and perhaps he’d have won.

He didn’t because he trusted that our daughter was better placed with me.

He never had to do that for me, yet he did.

‘Have you told the police?’ he asks.

‘Told them what, though? Mum recorded a tape thirteen years ago? In one place she says she robbed a bank, when I know she didn’t – but in another she says she has been killed.

Oh, and though she doesn’t say it outright, maybe it was the Earring Killer who got her?

’ It all comes out in one breathless release, and then: ‘Plus, you know about me and the police…’

He nods, because, of course, he does. Before he can reply, there’s a crackle from a baby monitor I hadn’t noticed. It’s on a step beneath the main part of the table and Henry stretches to pick it up, tapping something on the front to silence it.

‘I’ve got to nip upstairs,’ he says.

As Henry hurries inside, I shift a fraction back into the dwindling sun. Ahead of the deck, a tidy square of lawn stretches towards a row of solid-wood vegetable boxes at the bottom of the garden. This will be Tiffany’s thing. My former husband is many things, but not a gardener.

I go to have a look anyway.

Mum loved Henry to the point that I sometimes thought she preferred him to me.

I was resentful at times – but, ultimately, what’s not to love?

He’s kind and funny; patient and understanding.

We didn’t break up because I had a problem; we broke up because I enjoyed having it.

He loves his kids and I know first-hand he’s a good man.

I didn’t deserve him – and, unfortunately, he realised it.

At the bottom of the garden, one of the boxes has a small triangle card with carrots, while the adjacent one is potatoes.

There are raspberry vines attached to the fence in the third, then cucumbers in the next.

I pluck the card and read it, before slipping it back into the soil, then doing a lap of the garden.

Back on the deck, I can hear Henry upstairs singing to his daughter, trying to send her back to sleep with what sounds like a lullaby version of ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ .

He always wanted Faith to be far more into Oasis than she is, and I guess this is attempt number two.

I really messed up.

When he returns downstairs, Henry brings out a tray, this time with a teapot and a pair of cups. ‘I know you didn’t want one,’ he says, ‘but I started having a mint tea every night. I’ve been sleeping better.’

The sun is almost set now, leaving a sliver of purply-orange hovering over the fence. There are spotlights at the back of the house, shining a bright white across the deck.

‘How can I help?’ he asks.

‘I don’t know. I think maybe I just wanted someone to listen.’ He smiles kindly as I mumble a follow-up ‘Sorry…’

If Mum had left Henry a tape, he’d have said by now. Perhaps I always knew that and it’s true that I simply wanted someone to listen. Someone who wouldn’t accuse me of attention seeking. But maybe that smile makes it worse, because how can he be so understanding after everything?

‘It’s seven years and one hundred and thirty-four days,’ I say.

‘I’m really proud of you. Faith is, too.’

And that’s it, of course. I bury my eyes in my sleeve and turn away, facing the hot tub and trying not to lose it. A minute passes, but maybe more. When I can eventually face him again, Henry is sipping his mint tea.

‘I think there’s another version of the tape,’ I manage. ‘I’ve been trying to think if there’s someone else Mum might’ve given one to.’

‘It wouldn’t be your dad.’

I shake my head, because of course Henry knows that.

He sips from his cup again, then there’s a telltale glance over the shoulder.

Tiffany will be home soon. She’s so understanding, and they make a fantastic couple – yet I don’t blame him for not wanting a conversation with her about why I’ve shown up on their doorstep.

‘Who was that woman she knew, at her book club?’ Henry asks.

And the moment he says it, I know. Perhaps I needed someone else to point it out.

‘Wasn’t her daughter a victim of the Earring Killer?’ he adds. ‘I think your mum and her went to school together.’

The memory swirls and then it’s there. I spent almost two hours earlier listening to Mum talk about her arguments with Viv at book club – except it isn’t only Viv at book club , it’s Viv her childhood friend . How did I forget?

Henry is on his phone, though he passes it across. ‘Isn’t this her?’

I already know what’s going to be on the screen, because I googled it the other day and somehow still didn’t put the pieces together.

There’s a book cover of The Earring Killer by Vivian Mallory. It’s because of her interview with The Guardian that I knew about the first victim working at Prince Industries.

Vivian Mallory is Mum’s old friend, Viv.

Aside from them, there was no particular crossover of families, but I do remember Mum saying that Vivian’s daughter was the victim of the Earring Killer who was being talked about on the news.

It would have been maybe a year before Mum disappeared.

I think I might have even known that Vivian was writing a book about it.

If I hadn’t been so drunk all the time, I might have actually remembered some of it. There are whole chunks of my life that aren’t there any longer. Sometimes it’s evenings, sometimes it’s weeks.

No wonder Mum talked about Viv so much on the tapes – she wasn’t simply a random woman from a book club, they were proper friends.

And Viv lost her daughter.

Henry holds up his cup. ‘Do you want another?’

I’m about to tell him I should probably go when my phone buzzes. I’d usually ignore it, except Faith’s name is on the screen and I never disregard her.

But then I see what she’s sent.

There’s a photo of Owen’s wallet, open with my dead colleague’s face staring out at me.

Why have you got this?