I so wanted to say yes. I so wanted to be led astray by him. I wanted to be distracted by him, taken away from the horror that had been unfolding all afternoon.
‘Michael,’ I said, loving even the sound of his name, ‘I wish it were that simple. My friend’s dead.’ I gulped back a sob, closed my eyes and tried not to picture how she may have been found. ‘That poor woman out on the Coney Road. It’s Clare.’
‘Oh, Rachel,’ he soothed. ‘I’m so, so sorry. I wish I could do something to be there for you. Is there any chance we could see each other even for five minutes?’
I shook my head, told him no. ‘Paul’s coming back from Belfast now. We’ve got to tell the girls yet. And the police want a statement, so I’ve got to go to the station, too. It’s all just a nightmare. I can’t even …’
‘It’s okay,’ he soothed, his deep soft voice washing over me. ‘You know I’m here for you whenever you need me. You do believe that, don’t you? You know how I feel about you, Rachel. I’ll do whatever you need me to do to help.’
‘I don’t know what’s going to happen – these next few days, I just don’t know …’
He sighed. ‘Don’t worry about the next few days. Just take it a day at a time, Rachel. An hour at a time if you need to. I’ll be here when you’re ready, whenever that may be. Even if it’s just for five minutes.’
‘I wish you were here now,’ I breathed down the phone.
‘Me, too,’ he said. ‘More than anything. I hate that I can’t comfort you.’
I heard footsteps on the stairs, recognised them as Beth’s. She was no doubt done with waiting for me to tell her what was going on.
‘I’ve got to go,’ I whispered into the phone and hung up, just as my daughter walked into the room, chewing on her lip, her eyes, clear blue like her sister’s, wide with concern.
There was no way to hide the fact I’d been crying. My face, I knew, would be puffy and red, my eyes bloodshot. The bed was crumpled from where I’d thrown myself onto it.
‘Mum, I’m scared …’ she said, walking towards me.
I gestured for her to sit down beside me and I pulled her into the biggest hug I could.
‘Oh, my darling girl, I need you to be brave, okay? But there’s been some really awful news.’
By teatime it was all over the news. This murder. How a dog walker had discovered the body of 41-year-old Clare Taylor, a civil servant, that morning.
They didn’t say on the news that she’d still been alive when the dog walker had found her. I was grateful for that. People didn’t need to know all the sordid details of everything. It was bad enough I knew them. I doubted the image would ever leave me.
Izzy sat forlornly at my feet. The house was quiet again. The grandchildren and my son-in-law had gone home. I hadn’t told him it was me who’d found the body. I didn’t want him worrying. He worried about me enough. I didn’t want any fuss. I’d rather just forget about it as much as possible, if the truth be told. It would have been different if Paddy were still alive. I’d have talked everything through with him and he’d have helped me to make sense of it in the way only he could. I’d been blessed to have been married to him. I only wished I could have had him in my life for longer.
An image flashed on the screen. A beautiful woman. Chestnut hair – the colour mine used to be before the grey took over. She was smiling at the camera, the faces of two others in the picture blurred. She looked nothing like the person who’d died in front of me. Nothing like that grey figure, covered in mud, almost translucent owing to blood loss. Her face twisted in fear.
That policeman who’d been out to see me earlier was speaking. Describing the crime as ‘particularly depraved’. Appealing for witnesses. Answering questions from the media. Or not answering them. It seems Clare Taylor was a well-liked woman. Police had no idea what the motive might be. How could there be any justification for this kind of attack? How could one human inflict this kind of suffering on another?
My muscles still ached. I’d taken a warm shower – too warm for this heat, really – to try to ease the stiffness. Still, I thought, I was alive. I could think and feel, even if I sometimes wished I couldn’t.
Clare Taylor. I think my daughter went to school with a few Clares. It was a very popular name the year she was born. Laura would have been just a little older than this woman, if she were still here. We’d have just celebrated her forty-second birthday. But both of them were gone. Before their time. Both horrifically. I wondered what this Clare’s story was. What her life was like. If she’d left behind a grieving husband, as Laura had. If there were two children left completely lost without her. I wondered if there was a mother out there who felt as if she’d let her daughter down, as if she more than anyone should have been able to save her.
I decided I’d contact that police officer, ask if there was any way I could meet this Clare’s mother. I wanted to talk to her. To assure her that her child hadn’t been alone when she died. That someone was with her, trying to keep her warm and comfort her. I knew that would mean something. I know I’d have loved to have heard that after my Laura died.
Normally quite content with my own company, or at least with the company of just Izzy, I felt unsettled. My house didn’t feel quite so safe and secure any more. Knowing that something so horrific could happen so close to me had unnerved me.
I got up and walked around the old farmhouse, closing all the windows and locking the doors. I tried to recall the days when there was always someone coming or going. The blaring of music from the children’s bedroom. Paddy coming in and out of the kitchen door, filling me in on what he’d been up to in the milking shed, or down in the back fields.
Now, there was no noise and no movement bar the smallest of breezes trying to push its way through the dusty window with little luck. The air was stifling, stagnant.
‘What do you think, Izzy?’ I asked the dog, who didn’t seem to think very much at all. ‘Am I being a selfish old woman wanting to meet her family?’
Izzy trotted off in the direction of the cool kitchen floor, not that I could blame her. I followed her. It was still too early to go to bed, even though a deep, all-embracing tiredness had engulfed me. Instead, I sat down on the armchair beside the range cooker and looked out of the window over the fields. Bathed in sunshine, the sky blue with not so much as a whisper of a cloud, it seemed almost unthinkable that something so brutal had happened so close by on such a beautiful day.
It was only then that I allowed myself to cry for poor Clare Taylor and my poor Laura, who should have been able to bring her children to see me herself but who’d never do so again.
Did I feel guilty that I texted Michael from my car just after I left the police station and asked if I could call round to his? Yes. Of course. But my need to see him had grown as the hours had passed.
Beth had been devastated; hysterical. Her cries still echoed in my ears. Molly had teetered up the stairs upon hearing the commotion and had stood, open-mouthed, her teddy hanging from her arm, tears spilling over from those beautiful blue eyes down her cheeks.
I’d told Beth