Her Husband’s Grave

Vicky would have laughed at that if she’d had it in her. Bad moment? What could possibly be worse than all this mess?

You know what helps with that? More alcohol.

Vicky took a gulp of the wine she’d just poured.

She’d left it as long as she could before ringing her, had been surprised really when she agreed to come – so much for being busy. In fact, hadn’t she sounded like she wanted to get away from there, for whatever reason? Didn’t matter, she reminded herself, because Robyn was here now; had been owed some time off. She was helping her. Although she hadn’t seen her most of the day, all evening. Had left Vicky alone with the TV, with the wine. Grappling with those tears again she thought she was done with, letting David Attenborough’s lecture about the lifespan of a turtle wash over her.

She started, suddenly aware of someone in the doorway – almost spilling the wine on herself. Classy. How long had she been there, Robyn, watching her? Hadn’t been around all this time and then appeared as if by magic, or like that blue guy from the X-Men movies Mia used to watch with Daddy. Wouldn’t ever watch again, because—

‘Sorry,’ said Robyn, rushing into the room and pausing again, like she’d lost signal as well, had pixilated and been forced to freeze. ‘I didn’t mean to …’

‘It’s … it’s okay,’ Vicky told her, grabbing the remote and turning the sound down. ‘Are you … is everything …’

‘May I?’ asked Robyn, nodding at one of the empty chairs. Since when had they become so polite with each other, so … ill at ease? Even that afternoon, the crying, the hugging – it hadn’t felt the most natural thing. They used to talk, share everything, be so close. When exactly had they become like this? Like strangers?

‘’Course,’ said Vicky. ‘Our home’s your home, Robyn … Robs.’ Even that shortening of her name, which used to trip off the tongue, sounded so odd. Didn’t fit with the person taking her seat, with the person Vicky knew her to be now – not that she really knew her at all, or anything much about her world. Didn’t even know if she was seeing anyone, living with anyone. If so, how did they feel about her just taking off like this to help her cousin? ‘Would you like a …’ Vicky held up the glass of pinot she’d almost ended up wearing. ‘It’s only cheap stuff, nothing fancy.’

Robyn shook her head. ‘I shouldn’t.’

‘I guess, as a doctor, you’d tell me not to either.’

‘I’m not that kind of doctor, Vicky.’ There was another pause. ‘But if I was, I’d probably say, “Fuck it, pour yourself a large one”. After what you’ve been through …’

‘Have one too,’ Vicky said. ‘Please.’ Her cousin nodded and Vicky made to get up and fetch her a glass.

‘You stay where you are, I’ll get it,’ Robyn told her. ‘Where …?’

‘Top cupboard just as you walk in,’ Vicky informed her. ‘There’s another bottle in there as well.’

Moments later, Robyn returned with the wine and a glass for herself. She opened the fresh bottle, as Vicky was in the process of polishing off the first one, and poured herself a small measure. Took an equally small sip. ‘It’s nice,’ she said.

‘Probably not what you’re used to.’

Robyn shook her head. ‘To be honest, I’m more of a vodka girl these days.’

Vicky gave a single nod, impressed. ‘I’ll have to get some in.’

‘Please, not on my account.’

‘Maybe I’ll get some for me,’ Vicky told her. ‘If … if it helps.’

‘I … I’m really not sure it will,’ Robyn informed her, sadly. Vicky reached down the side of the sofa and took out the pack of cigarettes that were there, opened it up. Robyn’s face soured. ‘Now those, they certainly won’t help.’

Vicky let out a big sigh. ‘I quit you know. Used to use those vape things for a while, chew gum. But what with everything that’s …’ She put the pack down again. ‘You’re right, though. Horrible habit – you always used to say that didn’t you.’

‘I still do. Not good for Mia, either.’

She knew Robyn was absolutely right, but something about that last statement made her angry.

‘She doesn’t know yet?’

Robyn wasn’t a mother, didn’t know what it was like to have kids. Wasn’t a wife either, as far as Vicky knew. Didn’t understand what it was like to suddenly not be one anymore, because—

‘Look,’ said Robyn, as if reading her mind; as if they weren’t really strangers after all. ‘I can only imagine what you’re going through. All I can say is that I’m very sorry this happened and I’ll do all I can to help. In whatever way.’

‘I will tell her, you know,’ Vicky blurted out. ‘It’s just … I haven’t found the right moment. I need more time to—’

‘Is there ever going to be a right moment to tell a child something like that?’ asked Robyn and Vicky bristled again.

‘Probably not,’ she replied with an edge to her voice.

Robyn nodded slowly. ‘If it helps, they’re more resilient than you think. And she definitely knows something’s happening.’ Before Vicky could answer that, her cousin continued: ‘I used to know with Mum at that age, her … problems. Kids pick up on things. It affects them. Hiding stuff is the worst thing you can possibly do.’

‘I know,’ snapped Vicky. Then, more softly, ‘I know. Sorry. You’re only trying to … And I’m sorry about your mum, I never said that to you. I know it was rough.’

Robyn took a much larger sip of her wine this time. ‘All … It’s water under the bridge.’

Vicky doubted it was. ‘How did you … I didn’t want to talk about it while Mia was still up, but did you—’

‘How did I get on with the police?’ Robyn smiled weakly. ‘They teach us well at psychology school. I …’ She shook her head. ‘You really want to talk about this tonight? Maybe it’s not the right—’

‘Is there ever going to be a right moment?’ said Vicky, throwing Robyn’s words back at her.

‘Touché. All right then. Well, I dealt with a rather charming officer called O’Brien who you’ve probably come across yourself.’

Vicky nodded. She’d been the one who asked her the questions about Simon.

‘Makes Attila the Hun look like Mickey Mouse, right?’ Vicky wouldn’t have put it quite that way, but the woman was intimidating it had to be said. Not that Robyn had let it put her off, apparently. Strong Robyn, always knew what she was doing; always so together. ‘Fortunately I’m owed a few favours and her DS, Ashley Watts, was very helpful.’

‘First-name basis already; you do work quick.’ Vicky hadn’t meant it to come out that way – the wine talking – but Robyn didn’t take anything from it. Or if she did, she didn’t show it.

‘You probably guessed I’ve been going through everything, piecing it all together.’ Her cousin drank more wine. ‘And the good news—’

‘There’s good news?’

Robyn continued, in spite of the interruption. ‘The good news is that the police haven’t been stonewalling you, Vicky. They haven’t told you anything because they don’t really know that much yet. Where the body was … where Simon was found …’ Robyn sucked a breath, let it out again. ‘It didn’t really help matters in terms of gathering evidence, and there was the storm you told me about … All they really know for sure is what you do: that he was killed by asphyxiation. He died from lack of oxygen. There were no ligature marks, but there were indentations consistent with strangulation – not a hope in hell of getting any fingerprints, regrettably – although they did also find salt water in his lungs.’

‘What … what does that mean? He was drowned and strangled?’ Those tears were threatening to come.

Robyn held up her hand flat out horizontally, then tilted it left and right to show it was unclear. ‘The water got in his lungs when he was still alive, but … Well, I’d say it was probably the strangulation that killed him.’

‘Oh Jesus,’ said Vicky, images of her husband gasping for air flitting through her mind. Clutching at the hands that were taking his life away from him. Taking him away from her. Those tears finally broke free, and Robyn came over to sit with her, putting an arm around her again.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered.

‘You … you deal with this kind of thing all the time, don’t you?’ Vicky said, between sobs.

‘Not exactly this,’ Robyn told her. ‘But I see a lot of death, yeah.’

‘How … how can someone do something like that?’

Robyn took another deep breath, something Simon had been unable to do at the end, Vicky thought bitterly. ‘In the kind of cases I deal with, it’s complicated. It usually goes back to childhood, to teenage years, that kind of thing. And they’re repeat offenders. I don’t think that’s what happened here, with Simon.’

Vicky lifted her head to look at Robyn. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I think there was a reason he was killed. I don’t know what it is yet, but …’

‘But you’re going to find out, aren’t you? I mean, that’s what you do.’

‘Working with the police usually, Vicky. I-I’m not sure how much they even want me here. O’Brien certainly doesn’t.’

‘I want you here,’ she said then. ‘Mia definitely wants you here. You’re all we’ve got. We’re family; we should stick together.’

Robyn opened her mouth, then closed it again and gave a nod.

‘And I want you to know …’ Vicky shook her head. ‘Talk to me, Robs. You asked me if I was okay, but are you?’ Not that much of a stranger, she could see it in her eyes. They never had been very good at hiding things from each other, at keeping secrets. Robyn had been the first person she’d told when she got her period, when she first slept with a guy – and vice versa. They’d talked constantly back then; shared those secrets. ‘Has something happened, you know, in your world?’

Robyn drained the last of her wine. ‘Not enough of this stuff in the world, Vicky.’

‘Did someone … Has someone hurt you?’

She looked down then, avoiding Robyn’s eyes. ‘Please. Not now, not tonight. I can’t.’

‘Okay, okay. But, I want you to know, I’m always … I know I’m a bit of a mess at the moment …’

‘With good reason,’ said Robyn.

This time she made a concerted effort to finish what she’d been trying to say. ‘But I’m always here for you, Robs. I always was.’

‘I know,’ came the reply.

‘So why …’

‘Why haven’t you ever been here before? Why did it take you so long to come?’

‘Have some more wine,’ said Robyn, shuffling forwards and reaching for the bottle to pour herself a glass as well, twice the amount as last time.

‘Yeah, thanks.’ A distraction and Vicky knew it; Robyn wasn’t the only one who understood how people ticked. ‘We used to be so close, Robs. What happened?’

Robyn shook her head.

‘I know we kinda went our different ways, but I always thought we’d stay … We were so, so close,’ Vicky repeated. ‘I’ve missed you.’

‘I’ve missed you too.’

‘So what happened?’

‘We’ve seen each other over the years,’ argued Robyn, but there was no weight to it. It sounded apologetic more than anything. ‘When Mum passed, your wedding …’

‘I hardly even got to spend time with you then, to speak to you at those. But I guess it wasn’t really the right …’ Vicky’s sentence tailed off. ‘You spent most of your time at our reception with one of Simon’s mates from back then. What was his name now …’

‘Ben,’ said Robyn and sounded even more apologetic.

‘Went off with him at the end of the night, if I remember rightly. Which is fine, that’s okay, don’t get me wrong. Glad you had a good time and everything.’

‘Wasn’t that great a time,’ Robyn assured her. ‘With him, I mean.’

‘Okay,’ Vicky said. ‘That’s not what I was trying to say. I would have liked to have chatted more, just—’

‘It’s … Look, Vicky, it’s complicated.’

‘Like your criminals,’ she ventured.

‘Not really. It’s just … It’s the same with my old home; I never really had a lot to do with Mum after I went to uni. That place where she lived, it had mostly bad memories. Golden Sands …’

‘I thought you liked it here,’ Vicky chipped in. ‘That’s what you told me. You couldn’t wait to get here, hated going back.’

‘There are lots of good memories, definitely. I was thinking about some of them on the drive over.’ Robyn looked sad again, as if she wanted to be back there. If she was being honest with herself, at that precise moment, so did Vicky.

‘We had some great times, didn’t we?’ she said then, thinking back herself. Remembering days on the beach, evening barbecues in the garden, fishing for crabs.

Robyn leaned back into the couch again, relaxing. ‘Yeah. Yeah we did.’

‘Do you remember …’ Vicky started chuckling, couldn’t help herself because the memory was so funny. ‘Do you remember, we used to wait till Dad was asleep in his deckchair and then we’d do a pincer movement with the water pistols.’

Robyn laughed too, though whether it was the wine or the shared memory was unclear – perhaps both. ‘Then we’d spring up and shoot him, wet him through.’

‘And run off in opposite directions so he didn’t know which one of us to chase after.’ She thought Robyn was going to spit out the wine she had in her mouth. ‘Mum would pretend to be mad, but really she’d be pissing herself. Covering her mouth up so Dad didn’t see it.’

‘Good times,’ Robyn said with another chuckle and Vicky agreed.

‘Then everything changed. We graduated from school, you went off to university and—’

‘You could have gone too, Vicky. You’re clever enough.’

Vicky touched her chest. ‘Me? Naw. Plus which, I’m nowhere near as confident as you were … are …’

‘I’m not that confident,’ Robyn protested. ‘Really. Just good at pretending. A bit more savvy now maybe, I’ll give you that. In my old age.’

Vicky laughed at that one. ‘You’re not old.’

‘Perhaps I just feel it,’ said her cousin, knocking back the wine she had left.

Silence for a moment or two, then Vicky broke it with, ‘I was so jealous of you, you know. Back then.’

Robyn gaped at her, brow furrowing. ‘Jealous? Of me? Why?’

‘You were going off on your adventures. Studying, having fun. Meeting people.’ Meeting guys, she meant, but didn’t say it. Robyn had always been more confident in that way as well in the end. There certainly seemed to be a different bloke every other month, according to her letters. Going by her stories when she summered with them.

‘I probably made it sound better than it was. Uni was a lot of hard work, basically.’

‘Even so … It was worth it, look at you now!’

Robyn levered herself up off the cushions and poured herself more wine. For someone who shouldn’t, she’d definitely decided to. ‘You want to know something now?’

Vicky pushed herself up on her elbow, almost spilt her drink again. Maybe this was it, maybe she was about to find out the thing that had been nagging Robyn, that had kept them apart all these years. That was still on her mind. ‘Sure,’ she told her.

‘I was jealous of you, too.’

She hadn’t been expecting that. ‘You were … Why? I just stayed where I was, too scared to go anywhere, do anything with my life.’

‘You built a life. Here, with your family, in the place you love. The place you call home.’

Vicky blinked once, twice. Robyn sounded genuinely envious; she’d had no idea. But at the same time, that line about family and home made her think about what she’d lost this past week, and how easily everything had fallen apart. She began to cry again. ‘I had a life. A home. Now … Oh, Robs, I’m just not sure how I’m going to cope.’

‘You’ll be all right,’ said her cousin, facing her, in a way that almost made her believe it. ‘You’re stronger than you realise. So’s Mia.’

‘But … God,’ she said, suddenly realising something. ‘I don’t even know how I’m going to pay for the funeral, let alone …’ She waved her free hand around to indicate the home Robyn had been talking about. They’d been struggling before, especially since Vicky had been let go from the newsagent’s; hence all the jobs Simon had to work. She shouldn’t even be thinking about that, but now he was gone …

‘That’s another thing I can help with,’ Robyn told her.

‘I can’t let you—’

She smiled warmly. ‘It’s not even up for discussion.’ Then Vicky looked down, because Robyn had taken her free hand in her own. ‘You said it yourself, we’re family. We’re all we’ve got, right? We need to stick together.’

Vicky smiled back. ‘And that means … You’ll find the person who did this? Who did this to my … our family?’

‘I can’t make any cast-iron promises, but I … I’ll do my best.’

‘Robs,’ said Vicky, putting down her glass and motioning for her cousin to do the same. ‘That’s good enough for me.’

They hugged then, like they had earlier on with Mia in tow. On the couch, Vicky not wanting to let go. But when they did, she found that she wasn’t crying.

That, finally, the tears had stopped.

Chapter 6

They’re crying with laughter.

Tears rolling down their faces as they share a joke, probably fuelled by the alcohol they’re drinking: blue and pink liquid in bottles, that aren’t very strong but if you drink enough of them … Music is playing, some kind of dance remix of an old number – well, a few years old anyway – and they’re swaying, half-dancing to the beat as they stand near to the bar. It’s one of those places that fancies itself as some kind of half-arsed nightclub come nine o’clock, but really all they do is turn the ordinary lights down low, switch the multi-coloured ones on and let the mirror ball on the ceiling do its thing.

One of the girls, dressed in a short satin skirt and boob tube, plastered in make-up, knocks the other one’s shoulder when she tells her something. The first, in a low-cut black dress that stops just below her waist, with tights to match, puts on a mock ‘what?’ look, then starts laughing again. They both have hair that’s back-combed and sprayed to within an inch of its life, whoofed up and home-styled because neither of them have that much money and what they do have they save for nights out like this one.

They’re looking over to a group of guys in the corner, a couple of them they recognise as being those hunks that go out with the lifeboat when seafaring vessels get into trouble. The men – boys really, not that much older than them – are all holding pints, wearing tight-fitting jeans and shirts that are open at the top, some of them almost to the stomach like that parody their mums and dads used to watch; all that’s missing are the medallions.

A guy in his mid-forties, or maybe even older, who’s had far too much to drink, takes to what they laughably call the dance floor here, which basically means they’ve moved a few of the tables and chairs to the sides of the room. He’s really giving it some – gyrating, throwing out his considerable paunch – and in danger of throwing out his back at the same time, whilst still holding his own pint, which is only half-full but slopping over the sides.

The girls, distracted by this – who in the entire place isn’t? – start to point and laugh at him instead. Hanging on to his youth for grim death, but not doing a very good job. He’s known for it. For some reason he seems to think it will attract a mate, because his eyes keep sweeping left and right, flitting from female to female – doesn’t matter what age, including them – like he’s a monkey in a jungle or something. Looks a bit like one, as well.

This time when he looks over at the two young girls and points back – perhaps thinking this is part of the mating ritual, not that they’re making fun of him – the one in the boob tube whispers something along the lines of, ‘Imagine doing it with him!’

The second, the one in the black dress, just pulls a face and shouts this time: ‘Urgh!’

Maybe he sees the face, maybe he hears what she says, but the middle-aged man suddenly spins around in search of more amenable fare – good luck! Except he spins a bit too quickly and ends up toppling over, the pint going flying and smashing on the ground. The barman is there in seconds, helping him up again and walking him to an empty booth where he can get his bearings again. The barman wags a finger at hi, though, a warning probably that he should stay off the ‘dance floor’ or perhaps that he’s not getting another drink, seeing as one of the barmaids is now having to mop and sweep up the one he dropped because of his acrobatics.

Both the girls are wetting themselves now, hands over their mouths. And it’s only as the excitement dies down again that they remember the guys over in that corner, the ones they’ve been looking at all night and who have been looking over at them. One of the girls, the one wearing the satin skirt, catches the eye of a muscular lad in a T-shirt. He smiles; she smiles back. The girl in the black dress nudges her friend, dragging her attention back – because she’s just got another round in. Cocktails this time, or this place’s version of them at any rate – like something Del Boy might drink in Only Fools and Horses because he wants to look cultured. Pink and blue drinks again, only this time they’re served in glasses with tall stems and what look like upside down triangles on top; miniature umbrellas and bits of fruit that have no right to be anywhere near an alcoholic beverage complete the look.

It’s only a matter of time before one of the guys in the corner comes over and tries his luck – with black dress or boob tube, or maybe both – then the floodgates will have broken, leaving the way clear for any of them to have a crack. More mating rituals, no less ridiculous than the older generation’s. Nobody really knows what they’re doing, boy or girl. They just pretend they do – give off an air of confidence … or at least some of them do. That’s probably why alcohol was invented in the first place, to make all this easier. To grease the wheels.

And all the time, this whole time, they’re being watched. They’re being observed, just like an animal on a wildlife programme might be.

The man watches the guys in the corner, watches the two girls, safe in the knowledge he hasn’t been spotted.

Watches, and waits to see what transpires.