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The Life I Left Behind

St. Martin's Press

EVE

I have the dog to thank. If it wasn't for him I might still be there and none of this would have happened. That may sound strange given that the place teems with life. But it's a hurried life that doesn't veer off its chosen track: cyclists in streaks of neon, joggers chasing personal bests, harried parents tailing their offspring. Not a chance they would have spotted me twenty or so meters away, hidden in dense woodland. I was easy to miss, which was the point after all.

"It's immaterial now." This is the echo of my mum's voice from years back. She wasn't a fan of my hypothetical musings.

"You should have been here five minutes ago, I could have been kidnapped," I'd say when she rocked up to Brownies five minutes late.

"Well you weren't, were you?"

"But I could have been."

"Why do you always think the worst?" she'd ask, as if the worst could never happen.

* * *

Sunday, September 15, 2013, a shade after seven o'clock in the morning. It was a fine morning, one to snap in a picture and post on your Facebook page if you did that kind of thing, which Jim Tierney didn't. Mist rose in columns from the ground. The vast sky was tinged red. He gazed out across the park, studiously ignoring the early thrum of traffic. He liked to think that he had the world to himself in these early hours, walking through a wilderness, albeit one at the edge of the city within striking distance of a café and a cooked breakfast.

Sure, it's a bugger dragging yourself out of bed, but here's your reward, Jim boy.

By rights the dog, a red setter, should have been on a lead because it was rutting season and deer can feel threatened by dogs. I know this courtesy of a Year Six project when my class went on a field trip to Richmond Park and a park ranger told us how the large males roar and clash antlers to attract as many females as possible and we laughed at the thought of them having a shag and then laughed even more when Peter Kelly fell over and landed in a pile of deer shit. Our teacher Mr. Connolly marched us all back to school and said we were a disgrace and he would never take us anywhere ever again.

He would be surprised that I retained that fact seventeen years after the event.

So I know that from September to October dogs should either be walked outside the park or kept on a lead but I'm also thankful that Jim Tierney disregarded the rules that morning. It wasn't a blatant disregard, more of a lapse that came with the territory. At sixty-seven and having been retired for three years, the weeks and months all seemed to roll into one. As far as Jim was concerned it could still have been July. Added to that he was long-sighted and couldn't read the signs that would have alerted him to his misdemeanor.

Wellington was free to roam.

Jim was well aware that Wellington was a ridiculous name for a dog.

It wasn't even his dog. His daughter left it behind when she decamped to Seattle with the family last summer. "Keep you company," she said, as if it was adequate compensation for not seeing his grandkids once a week. "That," he has told his wife more than once, "was a bum deal." To everyone he pretended the dog was "a royal pain in the arse," but he loved these walks, the purpose they gave him, and he'd grown fond of Wellington, even if there were too many syllables in its name for a man with a heart condition to pronounce repeatedly.

"WELL-ING-TON, come back here."

He was off.

"Daft dog."

It had been hard at first when Jim first took him out. The dog was lithe, too fast for him, but over time they had found their rhythm. Wellington would run ahead and then run back to Jim, who would chuck him a stick or a ball in reward.

Not today.

He was streaking ahead, his shape shrinking in the distance.

"WELL-ING-TON!" Jim shouted again, but the exertion left him breathless. He used the stick to beat his way through the long grass.

Ahead he could just about see the dog, running in the direction of the park's huge iron gates. He needed to quicken his pace to stop him but he was aware of the familiar whistle of his chest.

Wellington had gone from sight now, disappeared through the gates that opened and closed at first light and dusk.

Wait till I get a hold of that dog.

Jim headed down the hill, grateful for the unusually light traffic outside the park. Wellington was daft enough to run into the road, he didn't doubt it.

When he was through the gate himself, he heard the familiar bark. Turning to his right, to the strip of common land, he saw him further down the muddy path, running into the bushes and then back out again. Thanks to an overnight downpour mud oozed and squelched underfoot as he slid along toward the dog. His hand was raised in readiness: give it a whack, put it back on the lead. In the event he did neither. When he reached it he simply looked and saw. Wellington's barking faded out, or at least it did for Jim, whose world stilled. He stood, hands hanging by his sides, because he had lost all power to move them. His instinct was to turn away, as if he was looking at something he had no business seeing, but his eyes remained there, transfixed. He felt the sky dip and turn, like he himself was being spun around. The context: that was what he was struggling with. He was only taking the dog for a walk and the day was too fresh and young and the sky too bright for this to happen. No, he thought managing to pull his eyes away. This has no place here.

He waited, counted to ten to allow the scene enough time to disappear. The dog started barking again.

Jim looked once more.

"Sweet Mary mother of Christ."

Minutes elapsed until he remembered there was something he needed to do. Only then did he call the police.

MELODY

Sunday lunch. She's been preparing it all morning, longer if you include the time spent choosing a recipe, ordering the ingredients, setting the table, selecting a wine that will complement the beef. Cooking, she knows, can take as much time as you have available, which is why she has come to like it. Time is not something Mel Pieterson is short of.

Yet the ticking clock is a source of irritation today. It is five minutes to one. She has prepared the food to be ready at one o'clock and there is no sign of her guests. By one fifteen the beef will be either overcooked or cold. Neither thought is pleasing to her. She knows all about timing and measuring to the exact milligram. She follows recipes to the letter and it has produced results. Three years ago the preparation of fish fingers would have tested her culinary expertise. She hasn't come all this way without learning that precision is everything.

"Smells good," Sam says, emerging through the door carrying the heat of the shower with him. His hair is still wet, the outline of his muscles visible beneath his blue T-shirt. For a beat it surfaces and she feels it as strong as ever: the reflex to pull him close, feel him tight against her. She's always pleasantly surprised in these instances that her muscles are still capable of spontaneity even if her mind is not.

She turns to the clock.

"It's not like Patrick to be late," she says. Patrick is habitually early, can't abide tardiness. This she remembers from their years flat-sharing. If she turned up half an hour after she'd said she'd be home, he'd be on the phone, inquiring as to her whereabouts, the same if they'd arranged to meet. He'd be texting after five minutes, saying "Where are you?" It was reassuring to have someone looking out for you in London, good to know you'd be missed if something ever happened. Not that it made that much difference in the end. She stops herself at this juncture, recognizes that this is a negative thought and works on isolating it before it sprouts and colonizes her mind completely. She knows the drill: close it down, think of something else. In this case the something else is the gravy, which she now gives her full attention, adding flour slowly, carefully, to ensure lumps don't form. She has an irrational fear of lumps. As a child she remembers the globules of brown matter that would appear in her potatoes when her mother had been cooking. "Just pick them off," she'd say, as if you could then go on to enjoy your meal with them congealing on the side of the plate. She stirs the gravy and, satisfied to feel it thicken to the right consistency, turns off the gas.

"Has he called to say he'll be late?" she asks Sam, who is leafing through the Sunday papers. They have the Times and the Observer delivered each week. He reads the sport, news and business sections, she reads the magazines, property and travel. A perfect division of tastes, she likes to think.

"He isn't late."

"But has he called to say he will be?"

"I haven't checked my phone."

"Can you check your phone?"

"If he's late I will," he says, turning a page in the news section.

Melody checks the calendar in case she has mixed up the time or even the date, although a mistake on her part is not a probable explanation. Her weeks are expertly planned, so too the weekends. Sam often goes kite-surfing at Camber, so the weekends he spends at home are always accounted for with lunches and dinners and lately wedding planning. There are no spare slots because if she sees a gap she will fill it. Sure enough, PATRICK LUNCH 1 P.M. is written in red capitals.

The intercom buzzes. She expels air in relief. Sam crosses the room to answer it. "What time do you call this? You're almost late," he barks into it before letting out a deep belly laugh. She smiles, rises above the sarcasm. Sam presses the button that opens the gates to the driveway and goes to meet their guests at the door.

Patrick has brought a friend with him, a woman he met at work. There has been a long run of these friends, who they no longer refer to as girlfriends because the term implies a longevity they rarely manage to achieve.

She hears their voices in the hallway, the introduction. "This is Lottie," Patrick says, followed by the sound of kisses. There's laughter too, footsteps coming toward her. "God, that smell is making me hungry," Patrick says as he enters the kitchen. "Sorry we're almost late ... the traffic was awful on the M25, bumper to bumper." He kisses her on both cheeks. "You look lovely as usual."

"Don't try to charm your way out of it," she says, digging him in the ribs. He looks tired, overworked no doubt. Probably could have done without the drive out here, she thinks, but it's not his style to be flaky. In all the years she's known him he's let her down once and that was because he had eaten a dodgy curry the night before and had to remain within two meters of a toilet, preferably his own.

"I know by now I can never charm you," he laughs, and turning to his friend he puts his arm around her. "This is Lottie. I've told her all about your cooking."

Melody raises an eyebrow. "I wish you hadn't."

"Don't worry," he says turning to Lottie, "she's moved on from her experimental phase."

"That's one way of describing it," Sam says, handing them both a glass of Prosecco.

"There is a very average takeaway down the road where you might find yourself if you're not careful," Melody says. "Lovely to meet you, Lottie." She thinks about offering her hand but stops herself, knowing that it's too formal. The kissing comes naturally to most people but Melody has a keen sense of personal space, protects it fiercely and struggles with the forced intimacy of kissing someone she's only just met. She does it all the same.

At a guess she'd say Lottie is a few years younger than herself, rake thin, wearing skinny jeans and thong sandals and a light cotton top with little birds on it. Mel glances at her own outfit, a wrap dress Sam bought her a few years back, and feels frumpy by comparison. Lottie has blond hair which she wears down and pushes back from her face in movements that make the silver bracelets on her wrist jangle together.

Melody instructs them all to sit and puts the beef on the table, roast potatoes, roasted parsnips and carrots and onions and greens, which, she notes with consternation, are only just passable, having spent too long in the steamer.

Patrick and Sam engage in surfing talk, a new board that Patrick has bought and the waves in Cornwall when he was there a few weeks ago. From there the conversation segues into football before descending into the juvenile banter of friends who support different teams.

Sometimes, on these occasions when Patrick has brought a guest and Melody feels the chat run away from her, she allows her mind to shuttle back. Honor takes the place of Patrick's friend at the table. The years that have come between them fold in on themselves so that there is no gulf to bridge. The air rings with laughter and easy, uncomplicated chat. Melody is someone else entirely. This Melody is quick-witted, thinks nothing of opening her mouth and letting words flow out, words that entertain and draw laughter from her audience. Her voice is loud, as if it wants to be heard. She is the kind of woman who reaches for the wine bottle and tops herself up without so much as a thought to the consequences. Melody watches her old self perform this feat like she would a gymnast back-flipping across a mat. She has no idea how she does it.

"Do we have any horseradish?" Sam asks.

Melody blinks, refocuses. "Uh, yes, I think we do." She pushes her chair out and goes to retrieve it from the back of the fridge. She should speak to Lottie because Patrick and Sam are not. They are talking about the usual stuff that entertains them. What should she say? She considers this for a moment before remembering that Patrick knows her from the hospital where he works as a doctor. "What is it you do?" she asks, sitting down at the table again. When did she start to sound like her mother?

"I'm a pharmacist, been there for a couple of years. To be honest, I'm slightly bored now, it's not the most exciting job. What do you do?"

It's obvious to her now that this wasn't the ideal line of questioning to initiate. Mel does lots of things, never stops. She could produce the lists she writes every morning to prove it, the training programs to keep fit, the cooking, the planning of the wedding, but she knows this is not the answer to the question Lottie is asking. She does lots of jobs but she doesn't have a job.

"Nothing," she says and watches Lottie turn to her, beef suspended on the fork a few centimeters from her mouth, waiting for some kind of qualification, an explanation at the very least. When she realizes none is forthcoming, she returns to the beef with renewed enthusiasm.

* * *

"I am stuffed," Patrick says, pushing his chair away from the table as if his belly is so full he needs extra room to accommodate it.

"There's panna cotta for pudding," she says.

"The woman has no mercy," Patrick laughs. "I think I need a breather first if you don't mind."

"The football is just about to start," Sam says, heading into the living room.

Lottie starts clearing the plates from the table. She's gathering the serving dishes. "Leave that, I'll do it," Mel insists.

Lottie ignores her, carries on. "It'll be twice as quick this way."

Why does everyone assume saving time is a good thing?

"Your house is amazing, by the way."

"Thanks. You get a bit more for your money the further out you go," although she's minded to correct herself: Sam got more for his money.

"You could fit my whole flat into your kitchen."

It is true that space is not something they lack. The building was a derelict barn before Sam bought it at auction and then enlisted an architect who advised knocking it down and getting planning permission to build a new house.

She wouldn't have been brave enough to take on a project of this scale. But Sam had never been short of confidence. He even picked up the language quickly, started talking about creating something with architectural integrity and structural authenticity. She wondered where he had learned his spiel until they watched Grand Designs together one night and heard the presenter Kevin McCloud say the same thing. "He's obviously been listening to you," she said, although from the vacant look on Sam's face she wasn't convinced he got the joke.

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Excerpted from The Life I Left Behind by Colette McBeth. Copyright © 2015 Colette McBeth. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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