You Were Gone Read online

‘You think I disseminated a lie?’

  ‘No,’ Field said, ‘that’s not what I said.’

  ‘That’s what it sounded like.’

  ‘Don’t get paranoid, Mr Raker.’

  ‘It’s not paranoia,’ I said. ‘I know what you’re thinking. I understand why. I know it’s your job to look at it from this angle. But I watched my wife die slowly over the course of two and a half years, and I didn’t imagine that, or make it up. I sat beside her in the hospital and slept next to her at night, and when she decided that she’d had enough, when she finally died, it took everything from me. It took everything.’ I turned to Field again and cleared my throat, trying to keep my emotions in check. ‘I don’t know who this woman is, or why she’s doing this – but the one thing I can tell you for certain is that it’s not Derryn.’

  It was hard to tell if any of that had made any difference, because Field simply nodded again, her eyes on the interview suite, and said, ‘I told her what you said to me on the phone earlier – you know, that she’s lying about who she is – and she says you must be confused.’

  ‘I’m not confused.’

  ‘She also mentioned that she’d been missing.’

  That stopped me.

  ‘Missing where?’

  ‘She didn’t say, but that’s one of the other reasons we have to get involved. She told us she’s your wife, she mentioned that she’s been missing for eight years, and she says she’s not going to say anything else until she’s seen you.’ Field already had a pad; now she removed a pencil. ‘She only wants to talk to you.’

  There was a moment’s silence, the lull filled with the sound of phone calls and conversations from the office. Eventually, Field said, ‘You have a daughter, right?’

  ‘Yes. Annabel.’

  ‘Derryn wasn’t her mother?’

  She eyed me. She was clearly asking if I’d ever cheated on my wife.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I never knew a thing about Annabel until her mother finally told me about her five years ago. Her mother and I, we went out for a year when we were both seventeen, before I left for university, and we split up – amicably – before I went. She was already pregnant by then, but she chose not to tell me. I married Derryn not knowing I was a father, and Derryn never met Annabel before she died.’

  Field nodded. ‘Good to know.’

  I looked towards the interview room again.

  ‘We’re not going to let you talk to her.’

  I turned to Field. ‘What?’

  ‘Even though that’s what she’s requested, we can’t do that. You can probably appreciate why. We need to fully understand her reasons for being here, and putting the two of you in the same room before we even know what those reasons are … Well, that’s not going to happen.’ Again, she was underlining what I already knew.

  I was a potential suspect.

  She gestured for me to follow her and took me into an adjacent room where a bank of monitors was lined up on a desk. From the doorway I could see the image of the woman on one of the screens, and the closer I got, the shakier I started to feel: I was swaying, my heart hammering so hard, I could hear its echoes in my ears. It wasn’t hot in the room but I was sweating all the same – across my brow, along my top lip.

  ‘Take a seat and put on the headphones,’ Field said.

  I leaned in towards the monitor, trying to get a better look at her, at her face, and as I did, everything seemed to still. I pulled a chair out, sat, and realized Field was watching me, not her. Almost on cue, the woman half-turned in the direction of the camera, her eyes on the door, and I saw her properly for the first time.

  No. No way.

  ‘Mr Raker?’

  I glanced at Field, then back to the monitor.

  ‘She …’ The words stuck in my throat.

  ‘She what?’ Field asked.

  ‘She looks just like Derryn.’

  5

  I watched through the feed, headphones on. Behind me, the door was ajar, a uniformed officer stationed just outside, but I was barely even aware of him. I was barely aware of anything. All I could focus on was the image on the monitor: Field, and the woman facing her across the desk.

  Derryn.

  I closed my eyes, denying it was her – over and over again – as Field explained to the woman that she couldn’t let her see me until they’d figured out what was going on. ‘David will be made aware of what you tell me, though,’ Field assured her, and when I opened my eyes again, the woman was frowning, as if struggling to understand – or trying to work something out.

  She looked around the interview room for a second, and then her gaze lodged on the camera. It was just above her eyeline, but it was obvious that she hadn’t realized it was there until now. The picture had been zoomed in slightly, the feed creating a crisp, clear image of her. As I looked at her, it was like we were in the same room for a moment, across the same table, breathing the same air.

  ‘Can David see me?’ she asked Field. I listened to her voice for the first time, replayed it in my head, tried to recall if it was the same voice I’d listened to every day for the sixteen years Derryn and I were together. But I wasn’t sure. It had been too long. And as I realized that, as I realized I could no longer remember my wife’s voice, I felt a crushing sense of loss: dizzy with it, shamed.

  ‘Tell him I just want him to take me home.’

  ‘Take you home where, Derryn?’

  Derryn.

  I snapped back into the moment. It’s not her. I looked at Field on the monitor. Don’t call her Derryn. That’s not her name.

  ‘It’s me, sweetheart,’ the woman said, and this time she talked directly into the camera. ‘D, it’s me.’

  D. That was what Derryn used to call me.

  No. I realized I was shaking my head. It’s not her.

  ‘It’s me,’ the woman repeated.

  I glanced at Field. She was watching the woman.

  ‘It’s me,’ she said again, more softly, more defeated.

  ‘No,’ I muttered, the word so quiet, it barely formed in my mouth. I wanted to tear through the walls and ask her who she really was, and why she was pretending to be Derryn, but my head was just static, ringing like the impact of an explosion.

  ‘David says you’re not his wife,’ Field said.

  She glanced at Field. ‘What?’

  ‘He says you’re not his wife.’

  Tears instantly welled in the woman’s eyes. ‘Why would he say that?’ she said. ‘I’ve come back to him. Please just let me explain to him what happened.’

  I was shaking my head again.

  ‘Please.’

  ‘He says you aren’t Derryn,’ Field repeated.

  ‘I am.’ She made a sound like she’d been winded. ‘I am.’

  I closed my eyes again.

  Derryn’s dead. She’s been dead for eight years.

  ‘All right,’ Field said.

  When I finally opened my eyes, the woman was leaning forward at the table, her fingers spread out in front of her, as if she were trying to reach for the door.

  It wasn’t Derryn, I knew it in my bones, but it was still hard to process the striking physical similarities between them: their eyes were so alike; the woman’s hair was the same colour and cut into the same style as Derryn’s had been; they were an almost identical size – same height, weight, build – and their faces were the same shape. But it wasn’t her. If I struggled to remember Derryn’s voice, I didn’t struggle to remember her face. I’d seen it in photographs, over and over again, for eight years. As much as I wanted to pretend that I would never forget her mannerisms, the timbre of her voice, the way she expressed herself, the truth was, time had rubbed some of those things away. The minutiae that I promised myself I’d never forget, I stopped remembering as often, and sometimes didn’t think of at all. But her face had never dimmed. I’d buried her, and I’d mourned her, and I’d felt every moment of it. I knew in every part of me that I hadn’t mourned a lie, just as clearly as I saw th
e minor differences in this woman’s face; the cracks in the fiction. Her physical similarity to Derryn was staggering – but it wasn’t exact. Not quite.

  ‘Please just tell David to come and get me.’

  I tuned back in.

  ‘Can you tell him to come and get me?’ she asked Field again.

  So if you’re not Derryn, who are you?

  ‘You know it’s me, D.’

  She was looking at the camera again.

  Why the hell are you doing this?

  Field said, ‘I asked you where you lived earlier, do you recall that?’

  ‘Yes,’ the woman replied.

  ‘You said you couldn’t remember.’

  The woman looked at Field blankly.

  ‘Do you remember now?’

  ‘I live with David,’ she said, as if it were another trick.

  ‘So what’s your address?’

  ‘My address?’

  ‘Yes. Where’s the house you share with David?’

  ‘Forty Aintree Drive.’

  She knows where I live. It wouldn’t be impossible to find my address, but it would be hard: I deliberately kept it out of the public domain.

  ‘He says you don’t live with him,’ Field said.

  ‘I do.’ She looked into the camera again. ‘Of course I do. I’m his wife.’

  I glanced at Field, who was looking at the woman.

  Stop this now. She’s ill.

  ‘You told us earlier that you were missing,’ Field said.

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘For almost eight years.’

  The woman frowned. ‘I don’t think I said that.’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘I’m sure I didn’t.’

  ‘You did. But you say you’re living with David. So how is that missing?’

  ‘It’s not,’ she responded. ‘I said we got separated, not that I was missing.’

  ‘You and David got separated?’

  ‘Yes. Perhaps that’s where the confusion comes from.’

  ‘Where did you get separated?’

  ‘At the pharmacy.’

  I saw Field’s gaze drift to the woman’s right arm. Just inside the sleeve of the jumper she was wearing, almost hidden from view, was evidence of bandaging, the gauze dotted with blobs of blood. I hadn’t noticed it until now. Field must have seen it already.

  ‘You were going to get your arm looked at?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did you cut it?’

  ‘Oh, it was a silly mistake. D was concerned and told me we needed to get it seen to, so he drove me to the pharmacy. He parked up and told me to go and show it to someone.’

  This is insane.

  ‘What pharmacy was this?’ Field asked her.

  ‘I, uh …’ She paused. ‘I’m not sure what its name is.’

  ‘Do you remember where it was?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not the street necessarily, just the general area.’

  The woman shook her head again. ‘No.’

  Field continued making notes in silence. The woman looked between her and the camera as if she didn’t understand the silence, or why Field might be having doubts.

  ‘Okay,’ Field said. ‘Let’s go back to the start.’

  The woman nodded.

  ‘Can you give me your date of birth?’

  ‘Yes,’ the woman said, ‘I was born in Guildford on the 3rd of March 1975.’ She glanced at the camera, and I knew why: all the details were correct.

  ‘When did you first move to London?’

  ‘End of August, beginning of September 1993, when I was eighteen. I moved to London to study Nursing at South Bank, and then did a postgrad at King’s College.’

  This was Derryn’s history. I remembered her graduation ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall. We were living in a flat in Holloway at the time.

  ‘And how did you end up here today?’

  ‘I came by train.’

  ‘From where?’

  ‘Woolwich Arsenal.’

  ‘South-east London?’

  The woman shrugged.

  ‘You look confused,’ Field said.

  ‘I don’t know London that well. What’s east, what’s west, all of that.’

  Field tapped her pencil against her pad. ‘You live with David but you don’t know London?’

  ‘No,’ the woman replied innocently. ‘Not really.’

  ‘But Ealing is in London.’

  ‘Ealing?’

  ‘Where you and David live.’

  ‘Oh,’ the woman said. ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘So why would you go to a pharmacy in Woolwich?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Because it’s on the opposite side of the city to where you say you live.’

  This time, the woman didn’t respond.

  ‘Did you know it was on the opposite side of the city?’

  ‘I, uh …’ The woman halted. I felt relief start to wash through me. Whatever the motivation for this, it was starting to fall apart.

  ‘What do you do for a living?’ Field said, changing tack.

  ‘I’m a senior nurse,’ the woman said.

  ‘So why did you need a pharmacist?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, couldn’t you have just treated that cut on your arm yourself? You presumably know how to treat wounds?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do,’ she said, but didn’t answer the question. Instead, she leaned forward at the table. ‘I’ll feel so safe once I’m back with David.’

  Silence in the room.

  Field looked between her and the camera, as if some unspoken message had passed through the wiring, through the walls, from one room to the next.

  ‘What do you mean, “safe”?’ Field asked.

  The woman didn’t move.

  ‘You said you’d feel safe once you were back with David.’

  A shrug. ‘David’s my husband.’

  ‘He’s says he’s not.’

  ‘Why would he say that?’

  ‘Because he says his wife died eight years ago.’

  But she was already shaking her head. ‘No. No, that’s not right.’ She looked to the camera. ‘Why is he doing this? You said you would always keep me safe, D.’

  ‘What do you mean, “safe”?’ Field repeated. She’d come forward on her chair. ‘Are you saying you felt unsafe before this? Who was making you feel unsafe?’

  ‘It’s just a figure of speech,’ the woman said.

  Field didn’t seem convinced. ‘Did someone try to hurt you?’

  The woman saw that Field was looking at her arm again. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It was just an accident. It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t mean it.’

  Even from here, I could sense the air in the room change.

  ‘I was just being stupid.’

  I leaned away from the monitor, repulsed, knowing where this was headed.

  ‘Did David do that to you?’ Field asked.

  ‘It wasn’t his fault,’ she said again, almost robotically. ‘He didn’t mean to.’

  ‘Did he cut you with a knife?’

  The woman looked down at the table and started shaking her head. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said, her voice quiet, and linked her fingers across her lap.

  ‘So you were going to get it looked at today?’

  ‘Yes. That was why David took me to the pharmacy.’

  ‘Why didn’t you treat it yourself?’

  ‘Because it’s hard dressing your own wounds.’

  ‘So why not go to a doctor or A&E instead of a pharmacy?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘David just said to me that a pharmacist would be the best place to start, and I trusted him. So he dropped me off outside and said he’d wait for me in the car.’

  ‘Why didn’t he go in with you?’

  ‘I don’t know. You’d have to ask him.’

  ‘And you got separated from David?’ Field pressed.

  ‘Yes.’<
br />
  ‘How?’

  ‘Just as I was about to go in, I looked back at the car and saw a traffic warden speaking to David. They were arguing. So I wandered a little closer to see what was happening and, as I did, I saw David start to pull the car out of the space, and then he drove off and left me.’ She looked at her hands, flat on the table. ‘I waited for a while, and then started to walk down the road in the direction I saw David go. But I couldn’t see him anywhere – and he never came back.’ Tears began pooling in the woman’s eyes again. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said to Field, her voice breaking up. ‘Why doesn’t David remember that?’

  Field’s head dropped, eyeing her notes. Eventually, she said, ‘Why not just go straight back to your house?’

  The woman wiped at her eyes.

  ‘I wanted to,’ she replied.

  ‘You could have got the Tube out to Ealing.’

  Except she doesn’t know where Ealing is.

  ‘I don’t ride the Underground much,’ the woman said, still dabbing her eyes with a finger. ‘I’ve only been on it a few times. I’m not confident on it. But when David drove off, I didn’t know what else to do, so I went to the nearest station and the man there helped me buy a ticket to Charing Cross.’

  ‘Why Charing Cross?’

  The woman screwed up her face again, as if pained. ‘Please,’ she said quietly, ‘I just want David to take me home. He knows that I get sick if I’m out too long.’

  ‘What do you mean, “sick”?’ Field asked her.

  But the woman had started to sob. For the first time, I felt a stir of sympathy for her. She was like a lost child. I didn’t know who she was and why she was pretending to be Derryn, but it was obvious that she was ill – and not physically.

  ‘I don’t know why this is happening to me,’ she said, tears starting to fill her eyes again. ‘David’s my husband. We’ve been married for twenty-two years.’

  We were married for fourteen years. It would have been twenty-two if Derryn had still been alive.

  ‘I started living with him at nineteen,’ the woman said, and broke into a smile. ‘Ask him about our first flat in Holloway. He’ll remember that. It was so small, but we loved it. We used to live directly behind an old cinema.’

  The cinema wasn’t there any more, so how could she know? I started to wonder if Derryn had had a sister she hadn’t told me about, some close relative – a cousin perhaps – who looked a little like her. But that would have meant that she’d deliberately lied to me for the entire time that we were together and that her family had done the same, that they were all in on some secret that they’d decided to keep back from me, and I knew that wasn’t the case. I’d got on so well with her parents, and when her brother was home I’d got on well with him too, it was just none of them was around to ask now: her parents had died within a year of each other in the late nineties, and her brother had been killed in Basra in 2004 when an IED went off under his truck. There were no nieces, no nephews, no cousins. It had just been her and me.