The first thing you should know, dear reader, is that I am dead.
Not now, writing this, here at the farm, obviously. But if you’re reading these words, then the most likely reason is that this journal has been published posthumously. If that’s the case, it means that the events at Cairn Farm have made it into the press. Excerpts from this very document may well have graced the various rags and broadsheets, or been read aloud in breathless gushes by some excited TV reporter. I suppose parts of what I’m about to recount are likely to have been presented in more sober, respectful tones, as evidence at the inquest.
So if you’ve followed all the coverage in the media and are now reading this private account, I’m guessing you’re after the inside track on what I imagine will have been called the Wiltshire Murders. You want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God.
Readers – or, dare I say, fans of my books – will also be aware that I am romantic novelist Pippa Gates. If you were interested enough to flick through any interviews I might have done, or perhaps caught me on the radio, you’ll have gleaned that I used to be an English teacher and that I lived in a suburb of south London before moving out here, to Cairn Farm, Wiltshire. You might think, perhaps, after all your reading, that you know a little about me.
But let me tell you right here, my friend: you know almost nothing.
Still, none of that matters now. Not the version of events out there in the public domain, not my social-media feed, which I cannot access currently for reasons I will explain later; not even my new book, which I may of course never finish. Only this matters. The secret journal that I started at my desk just moments ago, this private account that will become – indeed has become, if you are reading it – public. In a world of alternative stories and fake news, this journal is the one, the only truth.
You see, as Pippa Gates, I would never be able to publish the kind of material I intend to include here, because my books are love stories, life-affirming novels designed to make people feel good, not ill or troubled for days afterwards. My books don’t contain strong swearing or violence or sinister presences in the dead of night. They are optimistic. They bring joy. Pushing Up Daisy, the one I’m working on just now, will be no exception. It would be unfair to my readers to do otherwise.
This other story, well, this one is different.
A straightforward happy ending will not, I fear, be possible. As I have said, if you’re reading this, then my sorry tale has most probably ended in my own demise. For the fans of puns among you, you might say I’ve bought the farm.
So much for endings. Beginnings are another matter. Pushing Up Daisy begins with the arrival of octogenarian Daisy Philips at the Grange retirement home, where she finds herself reunited with her teenage sweetheart, Bing. Their break-up was acrimonious, and they have not seen each other in fifty years…
My real-life tale, an altogether darker, not to mention murderous affair, begins, thinking about it now, with that stalwart of stories the world over: a knock at the door.
It was a Thursday near the end of term. June, back when I was still teaching at St Matthew’s Comprehensive and hating every moment of it. On Thursdays, I had 10J immediately after lunch, and they were nothing short of hideous on an almost-bearable day, but this was the scrawny end of a particularly thin week. Plus, I’d had a Tinder date the night before that had finished up in a late bar off Tottenham Court Road and a vague memory of some man with a shiny bottom lip whose name I can’t bring to mind right now bundling me into an Uber, having, I presume, somehow got my address out of me. In those days, my address was of no interest to anyone. In those days, I didn’t live in fear of my life. In those days, I barely cared about my life, to be honest. In fact, my life, for want of a more elegant word, sucked, and the only way out of it that I could see – and this is really embarrassing – was by writing a bestseller.
Yep. That was my plan. Up there with the lottery win, the knight in shining armour and the hidden treasure at the bottom of the garden.
To say I was hanging by a thread that fateful Thursday is an understatement. To make it worse, my great Plan A – you know, the one where I write the bestseller? – was hardly coming along nicely, as it were. In fact, it was not coming along at all. I know, I know. And you’re right. Why didn’t I just get the flip on with it? You’d think, wouldn’t you, that, considering I’d put all my hopes for escaping my tedious reality in the follow-up to my heroically failed first novel, I would have been working towards actually writing it and, oh, I don’t know, trying to make it half decent this time. But alas, no, I was not. I had reached the very eve of my third deadline extension. My new idea had to be nailed to the page and sent to my editor by the following morning or my contract would be terminated. Which was fair enough. My editor, Jackie, had been beyond patient, especially given the utter bomb that was my first book. But still I had nothing. Nada. Diddly squat.
So, yes, all that was weighing on my decidedly fuzzy mind when one of the boys in 10J lit a joint in the classroom and the final straw fell on this rather grumpy camel’s back. You might even say I got the hump (sorry).
You can, I’m sure, appreciate why, by the time I got home, I was in need of a large glass of something chilled. The dreaded day job, the all-day hangover, the shady memory of yet another date with yet another perfectly nice bloke who had made about as much of an impression on me as a hand plunged into a sack of lentils… well, thank God I had poured a drink, frankly, because at 4.45 p.m., my phone buzzed, as I had absolutely known it would whilst simultaneously denying that this would ever happen. On the screen I read the name I had known would be there in bold white letters: Jackie West; saw the familiar face of my editor smiling up at me, a picture taken during a lunch many months ago when she’d thought I could actually deliver. Yes, I had anticipated this call, and yet somehow not prepared for it. What? Don’t shake your head and frown. We’ve all done it, haven’t we? And what better place to admit to it than here in the safety of my private journal?
Anyway, I fixed a smile to my own face, squared my shoulders and pushed my thumb to the green circle.
‘Jackie,’ I said, infusing the word with a level of pleasure more suited to hearing from the organisers of the National Lottery on rollover week.
‘Hi, Pippa. How’re you getting on?’ Subtext: Please don’t make me fire you.
‘Good. Really good, actually.’ I’d wandered into the hall and now leant into the mirror, my attention taken momentarily by a sliver of shadow on my top lip. Was that a whisker? I wondered. Jesus. What fresh hell was this? I was only thirty-four.
‘Pippa?’
‘Yes, still here, sorry. You’ve just caught me at my desk.’ I meandered back into the living room, where on the coffee table my laptop gaped, open as an oyster, hoping for pearls. I drained the last of the bottle into my glass. ‘I was just finishing my outline.’
‘Good, good. We said tomorrow, didn’t we, so good – that’s good.’
Despite the stress pain in my chest, I said nothing.
‘So,’ she said. ‘Listen, when do—’
‘Tomorrow morning,’ I interrupted. ‘I’ve already written half of Chapter One. I just need to tweak it, have one last look, and then…’ I made myself stop.
‘OK, cool. Great. Well, listen, I’m off home soon anyway, so send it as late as you like tonight. Literally midnight is fine, because I’ll still have it first thing, all right?’
‘Sure,’ I said, thinking that literally midnight was at best optimistic. Three a.m. was more likely. Let’s face it, not at all was looking favourite. ‘I’ll have it to you at some point this evening, guaranteed.’
Guaranteed.
It’s always hard to know which was the first domino, so to speak, but looking back, they fell like this: bad date, bad hangover, bad day, large wine, call from editor, me blurting out ridiculous promise, me getting into borderline psychotic state with stress at the thought of my dream turning to dust, me opening the door.
And the whole surreal story followed from there.
By seven o’clock, I’d been staring at the blank screen for an hour. I’d tried to call my best mate, Marlena, but she’d been too busy with her kids and her slob of a husband, as per. I’d drunk more wine, eaten a packet of Kettle Chips (one of my five a day because potatoes) and had a long shower. I’d googled every millimetre of celebrity gossip in the hope of finding a troubled love life to mine for dramatic gold. I’d run through the entire teaching staff at St Matthew’s looking for a suitable template for a romantic lead: Science Kevin was possible if I lengthened his trousers and put him in better shoes; French Jean-Pierre had nice eyes and a good name, but I’d once seen him dance at a Christmas drinks and hadn’t been able to scrub the scorch marks of that image out of my mind; and Geography Dave was – well, no… just no. I’d rummaged through my own back catalogue: all the dates I’d had over the last two years, the Tinders, the Guardian Soulmates, the date-me dot coms; even cast my mind back to before I met Bill. But nothing.
What about the news if you’re looking for inspiration? I hear you cry. Plenty of stories in there, surely? Well, that’s the thing. I’m not really a current affairs kind of gal. Not a great fan of factual information per se. The news is always, by definition, awful, and there’s never anything I personally can do about someone else’s war, the latest mass shooting, or some food that I’ve been blithely munching for the last thirty-four years that is now apparently carcinogenic. But this is how desperate I was: I had resorted to reading the news. And reminding myself why I never do.
Too much reality, thank you very much.
I was pretty much at the end of my incredibly frayed rope, not to mention the Pinot Noir – the last dregs of the white had long since travelled down red lane – and was segueing into my second packet of Kettle Chips when, as they say, there was a knock at the door.
This wasn’t due to any dramatic staples – my doorbell had actually recently died and I had no clue how to replace the battery, but let’s suppose I’d engineered the event myself.
Reader, there was a knock at the door.
‘Who the hell is that?’ I asked no one at all, dashing into the hallway. I have no idea why I rushed in this way, because at 7 p.m. it was only ever going to be a canvassing politician, a charity worker looking for a monthly direct debit or a door-to-door salesman.
And sure enough, I opened the door to a cadaverous man with a painfully prominent Adam’s apple and greasy, slicked-back grey hair, deep grooves scoring his forehead and the empty folds of once fuller cheeks bracketing his thin lips. He looked to be in his mid fifties. An old green parka (in June) hung from his skinny shoulders, stone-washed jeans sagged around his legs and his trainers, which in a past life had been white, were frankly unspeakable. In front of him he held the obligatory tray of cleaning products. I fought to stop my face from betraying the fact that with every fibre of my being I wished I’d pretended to be out.
‘Good evening,’ he said with the strained cheer of the desperate. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you but my name is Ryan Marks. I’m just trying to get back on my feet and wondered if you’d be interested in any household cleaning products at all?’
Privacy affords a writer so much freedom, I’m discovering. Here in my office at Cairn Farm, the snow falling in soft flakes outside my window, it is only the thought that no one will ever read this that is permitting me to let it all hang out in ways I never thought myself capable of. I admit that this is not a diary as such, so in that sense I am writing for someone – for you, that is. So you could argue that it’s not private, not really. But the thing is, while, yes, I’m talking to you, in a sense, I know even as I type the words that you won’t really ‘hear’ me, so to speak – at least, not until anything I have to say can no longer embarrass, incriminate or condemn me. I am beyond judgement. I am beyond the grave. And it is from this hypothetical place that I must continue my story: Ryan, the ex-con, was standing on my doorstep, wasn’t he? With his terrible clothes and his tray of godawful tat, asking if I would like to buy something, relying on the power of my bleeding-heart liberal guilt to propel me back indoors for my purse, to solve the world’s inequalities with a wave of a ten-pound note.
After a moment, he sniffed, then looked away, his jaw a fallen L under his greyish skin. He sniffed again, looked back at me. At the bottom of his cleft chin, a scrappy afterthought of a beard hung on for dear life.
‘I can talk you through everything if you like.’ The trace of a Cockney accent, the vowels fighting for brevity, the ‘th’ battling not to become ‘f’. His eyes were small and blue and almost defiantly direct.
‘Let me get my purse.’
I closed the door with care – I’m keen for you to know that I did at least do this, even though I know it won’t stop you judging me later – and went to fetch some cash. Irritation flared in my chest, as is so often the way when you’re interrupted from a task you weren’t getting on with in the first place. How dare this person stop me from procrastinating? That was the gist. Really, I’d prefer to give these guys a tenner and tell them to keep their crap. But I do recognise that, as with many things in life, you have to buy into the pretence: he was a salesman, and I was a customer paying good money for quality wares brought here to my home. We do this every day of our lives, do we not? How are you? I’m fine *pushes fingernails through palm of hand*. Everything OK with your meal? Absolutely delicious, thank you *nudges dried-out chicken breast under limp lettuce leaf*. Happy with your haircut? Love it! *drops tip into jar, goes home and runs head under tap, cries, wonders about paper bag with eyeholes*.
Now, I don’t know if I’m remembering this rightly, and I may be trying to make more excuses for why the evening turned out as it did, but I know that when I opened the door again, Ryan Marks’s blue eyes were the first thing I saw. They were, I thought, the colour of ink dropped in water. It was a shame about the rest of him.
‘So, I’ve got a tenner,’ I said. A lie. I’d stopped off on the way home and withdrawn two hundred pounds from the cashpoint. It was the only way I could keep track of my finances, back when I really had to – card-touch payment is a disaster for someone like me; my salary would have lasted a week. But I was hardly going to advertise cash in the house to him, was I?
‘That’s perfectly all right,’ he said. ‘I’m sure I can find something for such a lovely round figure.’ He met my eye and gave a kind of half-sneer.
Was that an innuendo? And what of the East End accent battling to break through those effortful consonants? Was he trying to climb up, put distance between himself and some seamy past, something squalid and shameful he wanted to leave behind?
‘Just give me anything,’ I said.
‘If you like, I can talk you through this fine range of top-quality cleaning wares and you can decide.’ He threw his hand across the tray with a voila gesture, both words and action laced with a certain waggishness, a precarious, conspiratorial mischief.
‘Have you sold much tonight?’ I caught myself leaning on the door jamb, wishing I’d taken off my Ugg boots before answering the door, removed my old cardigan, plucked out that bloody whisker.
He parted his meagre lips to reveal a set of crooked, brownish teeth. A smoker, possibly, or a coffee addict.
‘Thing is with products of this quality,’ he said, ‘they practically sell themselves.’ His tone was soft, his accent no more than a lilt. Perhaps there had been not a climb but a fall – from elegant beginnings, from privilege. White-collar crime? Possibly. Fraud? Maybe. Tax evasion? ‘I should wait on the street and sound a horn,’ he rattled on, leaning in. ‘Wait for the crowds to come running.’
I laughed, surprised by his apparent wit.
He smoothed a hand over his lank, oily hair – three silver rings of Celtic design, one on his pinky finger, one on the middle and one on the index. I caught a whiff of patchouli, of cheap soap, but also something earthier, something lived-in, almost fungal. His nails were long and square, the tips a preternatural white.
‘Now this’ – from the tray he picked up what I could only call in that moment an item made of lime-green plastic – ‘I can’t imagine surviving without.’
‘Me neither.’ I took it from him. ‘What the hell is it?’
Another thin-lipped smile, amusement bending his scraggy eyebrows. ‘It’s an iPhone holder, which, wait for it, you hang on the door handle. Be it a kitchen-cupboard door or wardrobe or whatever, you hang this little baby up…’ He reached forward and took it deftly from my hands. Another second and he had slipped it from its cellophane sleeve and was holding it up like evidence. ‘You slide your phone in there, see.’ He mimed slotting the phone into its lurid holder. ‘Nice and easy, in it slips. When you want it, you just slip it out.’ He drew it out, pushed it back in. ‘In, out. In. Out. There you go. And you hang it up like this.’ He grinned, a little manically, and hung it from his forefinger. ‘Hands-free set, see, so you can get on with… well, whatever it is you want to get on with that requires two hands.’
I couldn’t tell if he was playing with me or not. His face was earnest, but I was fighting not to hear double entendres in everything he said.
‘I had no idea I needed one of those,’ I replied simply.
‘That’s the thing about need,’ he said. ‘You can’t identify it until you know what it is, and you don’t know what it is until you find it.’
‘I suppose you’re right.’ My fingertips hovered over my mouth, something I do in moments of self-consciousness.
He, by contrast, showed nothing of the sort. He put one horrid trainer on my front step. ‘Glad I came now, aren’t you? You need me in your life and you don’t even realise it. What’s your name, by the way?’
‘Pippa. What’s… oh, it’s Ryan, isn’t it? Sorry. You did say.’ I realised I had only glanced at his card. He could have been anyone, anyone at all. I made myself meet his eye, and he returned my gaze without flinching.
‘If you don’t mind my saying,’ I said, ‘you don’t really fit the usual profile.’
He gave a grave nod but didn’t seem offended. In fact he threw his eyes left and right playfully, then dipped towards me. ‘That’s because the others are all petty criminals, whereas I… am actually a murderer.’ His face remained deadpan for a moment before he pointed at me and broke into a gutsy, hoarse smoker’s laugh. In the dank cavern of his mouth, a gold tooth shone. ‘Only joking.’
‘I know,’ I said, laughing along. Of course I knew he was joking; what did he take me for, an idiot?
‘No, seriously.’ He straightened up, took his foot off the threshold and returned it to the front path. ‘I’m trying to get my life back together just like all the others. It’s nice when people give us the time of day, when they treat us like human beings. It makes a difference.’
‘What happened to you?’ I said. ‘Sorry, ignore that. None of my business.’
He shook his head – don’t worry – and stared momentarily at his feet. The soles of his trainers lolled away from the leather, like filthy tongues. ‘Long story. But it’s not what happened to me, it’s what I did, Pip. My fault, I take full responsibility. But I built myself up once and I’ll do it again. I’ve learnt.’ He looked up, his eyes no less blue in the falling light. ‘I’ve paid.’
He had paid. He had paid and yet here he was, still paying – through the disdainful looks and the doors closed in his face, the job opportunities no doubt gone forever. I felt my eyes prick.
‘What will you do now?’
He shrugged. ‘I think I might be the only carpenter with a degree in English literature, but there you are. Advantages of Her Majesty’s finest accommodation for you.’
I opened the door a little wider. My toes breached the brass brink of my house.
‘I—’
‘What do you do?’ he interrupted. ‘Sorry, you were going to say something.’
‘Not at all, I’m a… I’m… I’m a writer.’ Not strictly true. I was a comprehensive school teacher who wasn’t very good at keeping order in the classroom; I was a serial dater who had managed to write one crap novel that hadn’t sold. Did I stop to wonder why I’d preferred to tell him what, at best, I almost was, instead of the lesser truth? I was trying to impress him, obviously – I see that now. But why? I suppose, despite my revulsion, my quiet fear of him, I still hoped he’d find me interesting.
He rested an arm against the wall of the house. ‘What kind of writer?’
‘Novels.’ Novels plural. What a fraud, what a joke.
He shifted the angle of his head, as if to adjust to a sudden change in the light. ‘I love books. Used to read tons inside. Cormac McCarthy, Ian McEwan. I like the older stuff too – Dickens. I like Iris Murdoch, Daphne du Maurier.’
‘I love du Maurier,’ I said. ‘Rebecca particularly.’
‘Oh yes, great book. And might I have heard of your work?’
I laughed, embarrassed, as if I’d just described myself as a painter and now, hearing mention of Rembrandt and Picasso, found myself having to explain that I decorated houses for a living.
‘I’m not exactly in that league,’ I said. ‘I wrote a book called Fight for Your Love, but you won’t have… I mean, it’s probably more aimed at… although a man could read it, I suppose. It’s about a boxer who… I’ll shut up.’
I wished he’d stop smiling after everything I said.
‘Fight for Your Love.’ He gave a kind of bow. ‘I’ll make sure I buy that as soon as I save my pennies.’
I held up a finger. ‘Wait here.’ This time I didn’t close the door. Go ahead, tut. Mutter to yourself something along the lines of Oh, for goodness’ sake, who does that? I’ll answer that for you: me. I do. I did.
I ran to the living room, pulled a paperback copy from my stash and dashed back to find Ryan in my hallway, the front door closed behind him.
I had not heard the door shut. And I think that was the first time I felt the burning sensation beneath my skin: that fine layer, like an allergic reaction, a spice, a poison.
‘Oh,’ I said.
He threw up his hands. ‘I was just trying to keep out the cold. I thought if you saw the door shut you’d think I’d gone. Sorry, I shouldn’t have come in like that.’ He opened the door and stepped out again.
I followed him to the doorstep and handed him the book. It wasn’t cold out. There had been no reason for him to come in, nor to close the front door.
‘I’ll take an iPhone holder,’ I said curtly and held out the book. ‘And you can take this.’
‘An exchange?’
‘No, I’ll pay for the holder thing too.’
He coughed into his hand and lifted his gaze to meet mine. ‘Look, I’m sorry I came into your house. I’m still getting used to being out. It was inappropriate. I’m sorry.’
His eyes sank at the corners. I softened.
‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘But I still insist on paying. The book is… it’s a gift. I mean, you don’t have to have it. Gosh, that’s probably presumptuous of me. You probably don’t even want—’
‘If you wrote it, I want to read it. Will you sign it? I have a pen.’ He dug in the inside pocket of his tatty coat and pulled out a silver fountain pen. ‘I’d love you to sign it. Can you put “For Ryan”?’
‘Of course.’
The pen was like him: incongruous. Perhaps he’d stolen it. I didn’t care. He wasn’t like any man I had ever spoken to.
‘Actually,’ he added, just as I was about to inscribe his name, ‘could you put, “To my darling. We belong together. Love from Pippa”?’
‘What?’
He chuckled, gruff and low. ‘I know it sounds weird, but it’s just a joke, for the others at the hostel, you know? Please? Go on, it’ll wind them right up, with you being a famous author and all that.’
‘I… I’m hardly…’
‘Hey, listen, don’t if you don’t want to. Just thought I’d spin them a yarn when I get back, that’s all. Just sign it, that’ll do. Forget it, sorry. Not doing very well, am I?’
‘No, it’s OK. You’re OK, don’t worry.’
I felt bad for him. I wrote what he’d asked for, signed my name and returned the book. There was a fumble then over the pen; our fingers touched. I fought the urge to dash and wash my hands and instead rubbed them on my leggings as discreetly as I could. When I looked up, I saw that his eyes had darkened. They reflected the sky, I realised, and as the day had faded, they too had changed: a higher concentration of ink to water.
‘Goodbye then,’ he said, plucking the crisp ten-pound note from my fingers and handing over the plastic a. . .
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