Chapter 40 Hollis
Trying to get a second with Cait at the police station over the weekend was impossible. She was allowed a lawyer, one phone call (to her mum), and a psychologist. But friends and family – no. The closest I got was a conversation with a duty sergeant via an intercom at some awful holding facility.
We all rallied on Sunday, and found her a better solicitor as she only had a duty solicitor and everyone knows how overworked and underwhelming they are.
Anyway, the new solicitor told us that the police applied for an extension to keep her in custody.
If they don’t have sufficient evidence, she may be released under investigation, or on pre-charge bail.
Whatever happens, they have to release her or charge her today, so we’ll know one way or another soon enough.
I now make my way up the grey concrete ramp to a row of flats in one of the many three-storey blocks that make up the Meadows.
The only remnant of a meadow that I can detect from the balcony is a small, diamond-shaped flower bed devoid of all plant life in which a large Staffordshire terrier is crouched down with a concentrated look on its face, while its owner dedicates his attention to his phone.
There are seven near-identical doors along the corridor. One has been finely decorated with graffiti, another with a large hole that reveals the cheap plywood-and-foam construction. The door I stand in front of boasts a large, sticky puddle of dried urine.
I ring the bell. After a minute or so, I hear the sound of bolts and chains being drawn, and finally, the door opens.
Matthew Hollis, my undead first husband, is sitting in front of me, smiling.
‘Long time, no see,’ I say, deciding to keep it casual.
‘What?’ he says, searching my face. He doesn’t recognize me for a moment as he’s looking into the light, but as I move forward, his eyes show recognition and he stares up as pathetically as any drowned kitten swimming to the surface from an ineffectively tied sack.
‘Lola!’ he splutters, as all the memories and emotions come flooding back to him. ‘Lola! Is it really you? Bloody hell! I hardly recognized you.’
‘I’ve changed a little,’ I say. It feels strange to be called Lola again.
It carries too much of a world I rejected.
I didn’t just push Hollis off a mountain, I realize, I pushed me off a mountain, too, at least my name, my marriage and my past. I thought I’d been completely reborn, but all the time, my old life was here, waiting for me with all its dark corridors.
‘You’re so different! You look like you’ve become respectable. Where’s the dyed hair, the eyeliner, the ripped clothes?’
‘We’ve both changed. You’re in a wheelchair,’ I say. ‘And you have a beard.’
‘The beard makes me look cool,’ he says, which is a matter of opinion. ‘Legs were smashed to pieces.’
‘In the accident?’
He nods and looks at me. ‘What happened to you? You weren’t hurt?’
‘I was lucky, I guess. I’m sorry about your legs.’
‘Oh, it’s not so bad, you get used to it. And my arms are totally ripped now,’ he says, and flexes his biceps.
‘It’s good to see you, Hollis,’ I say, feeling the force of his optimism wash over me again. There were good times too. In the beginning.
‘How did you find me?’ he says. ‘I’ve been looking for you for years and you just show up on my doorstep!’
‘You had someone follow me. A man named Jason Mercer. He gave me your address.’
‘Oh, right. I’m sorry about that. I hired him to try to find you because he had access to police files. He said he’d found someone who might be you – different name, different appearance, so he wasn’t sure. I asked him to find out more, and then it all went quiet.’
‘I think he’s done a runner. He was in the papers. Not a nice man, apparently. Had a court case pending. Police are looking for him.’
‘Oh God, sorry again. I suppose he’s bound to be dodgy if he’s moonlighting as an investigator. I was just so desperate to find you.’
‘I thought you were dead, Hollis.’
‘I thought you were dead, Lola,’ he says, and his face crumples into something tearless but definitely sad.
‘What made you look for me?’ I say, curious as to what triggered his search.
He looks at me and says, ‘I had this feeling.’
‘A feeling?’
‘Yeah. In my heart. I just didn’t feel you were gone.
A year after the accident, when the weather was better, I got a team together to search the ravine where we fell.
Couldn’t find your body. It gave me hope that maybe you’d also climbed out of there.
I had this horrible picture of you wandering the earth, having lost your memory.
It broke my heart to think of you alone in the world. ’
Hollis was always one to over-romanticize our relationship.
He felt we were destined to be together, like two imperfect stars colliding.
His capacity for projecting his feelings was overwhelming.
I got wrapped up in it at the start because I had so little else in my life, but after a while, I drowned in it.
‘Please sit down,’ he says, but I remain standing, and we stare at each other.
There is so much to explain or invent. My mind is racing, but he doesn’t want explanations just yet.
He only remembers the good parts and wants the reunion scene.
He reaches out to me from his chair. I lean forward, bending at the hip.
His arms enfold and crush me as my legs jam against the footplate.
We stay like that for over a minute, as he hugs and blubbers into my neck. His upper body strength was always impressive and even now leaves me slightly breathless, but as his wet face slides against mine, any residual loin-quivering stops abruptly.
Clearly, I can’t share the joy of this momentous occasion with Hollis. I’m angry with him because his existence currently voids my marriage, but I’m more angry with myself. When you set yourself a task, you complete it. I failed, and this is the result.
We untangle from our embrace and he wheels himself up the hall, explaining how lucky he is to get this raised ground-floor apartment because there’s a ramp.
‘Stairs are the curse,’ he says, as he pushes open the door to the living room. He offers me a cup of tea. I look at the state of the kitchen. I’d rather drink bleach.
‘Yes, thank you,’ I say, deciding that I’ll just hold it.
The warmth might help as the flat smells damp.
Hollis was a man whose ambition always outstripped his ability.
He always had a new tech idea that would revolutionize something, and then it would fail and he’d start again.
It looks like he’s decided failure without ambition is easier. Same result, less effort.
Seeing him reinforces my belief that you should never return to your former lives. The past should be on the Foreign Office’s ‘do not travel’ list. It is full of unresolved conflicts and liable to flare-ups.
Hollis is adept in his wheelchair and makes two cups of tea with ease, zipping expertly from fridge to cupboard to kettle and back again. He explains with unbridled enthusiasm how he’s learning pistol shooting and wants to compete in the Paralympics.
‘I can’t believe any of this. It feels unreal!’ he says as he hands me the tea. ‘After ten years, you’re actually here. This is the best surprise ever, and it’s not even Christmas yet.’
‘I know,’ I say, holding the warm mug to my chest.
‘Tell me what happened? What the fuck! You fell, I fell . . . We both made it out. I can’t get my head around it. How did you get out of that ravine? We found your helmet, it was smashed to pieces.’
‘More importantly, how did you get out, with your legs like that?’ I say, hoping to distract him.
‘I just thank God.’ He pauses and looks at me, his eyes wet. ‘I was lying there unable to move. I was so cold and I’d accepted that I was going to die, and then I stopped thinking about me and my pains, and thought about you. Love gave me the strength to crawl back up the mountain.’
Exes are the worst, but exes who don’t realize that they’ve survived a murder attempt and still believe you’re in love are worse still. He leans towards me and takes my hand.
‘Did you climb out? Where did you go?’
‘I don’t know what happened to me,’ I say, realizing I should’ve come up with a backstory. I stare blankly.
‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’ he says, his eyes darting with interest.
I shrug and look blank. His eyes search my face.
‘Oh God, you did lose your memory, didn’t you?’ he says, ecstatically. ‘Just like I imagined.’
I nod slowly with appropriate solemnity. There is one thing worse than thinking about the past, and that is having to speak about it. I look down and compose myself, as if I’m experiencing strong emotion, but all I feel is my stomach rumbling because I’ve forgotten to eat again.
‘I don’t know who found me. I was unconscious.
A coma. Must’ve hit my head badly. Some climbers carried me down the mountain.
I woke up three months later in a hospital.
Frontal lobe damage from the fall,’ I say, and show him a scar on my head, which I had from when I was twelve.
‘I couldn’t remember anything. Not even my name. ’
‘That must’ve been terrifying,’ he says. A moment later, he lurches forward and squeezes my arm.
‘I guess it was,’ I say. ‘But you just fight on.’
‘What a journey we’ve been on, and then we find each other again.’ He leans across and gives me another wet-cheeked hug.
‘Amazing, isn’t it?’
‘Which hospital was it? I searched every hospital in France,’ he says.
‘I was taken to Italy,’ I lie.
‘So that’s why there was no record of you. I’ve racked my brains for years trying to work out what happened to you. And you call yourself Lalla now? Where did that come from?’
‘I thought it was my name. I suppose it’s similar,’ I say, and whimper a little for effect.
‘Oh, don’t cry, Lola! I can help you.’
‘No one can help, Hollis. That part of my life is gone. It’s a blank. I’ve got a new life now.’
‘But this is destiny, I can help you to remember everything. I can fill in those blanks for you. Every moment we shared.’
‘Do you think you could?’ My stomach churns but I don’t think it’s hunger this time.
‘I’ve been quite fanatical about it. I’ve pieced together everything about us. We can go through it all, day by day.’
‘Every single day?’
‘We can relive our whole marriage,’ he says as if this can ever be a desirable prospect.
I look at him, stunned, which is genuine. I make a mental note to find all such material and destroy it.
‘And what’s your life like now?’ he asks. ‘Jason Mercer said you were married.’
I nod.
‘I knew you would be. I mean, why wouldn’t you? You’re more beautiful now than ever! You’ve got kids too.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Two. Boy and girl. Nelly and Nathan.’
‘I’d love to meet your kids,’ says Hollis, smiling benignly. ‘Little versions of you. I bet they’re amazing.’
‘Yes, that’d be nice.’
‘What about us?’ he says.
‘Us? I’m married now.’
‘To me first, though, right?’
‘There’s so much to take on board, Hollis. We need to just slow down.’ I realize at this point that Option 1 (a quick and quiet divorce) might not be possible, Hollis clearly wants me back, and Option 2 (ignore it) is now impossible.
Things are feeling a little too close for comfort, so I tell him I’m overcome with emotion, and we agree to meet the following week.
Life had been simpler just four weeks earlier, and now, as well as killing a policeman and incinerating Cait’s husband, I have an additional husband who could void my own marriage in an instant.
I don’t tend to be a blamey person but I do feel that all of this is Hollis’s fault.
At home, I sit at my desk and turn to a perfectly blank new page in my Moleskine notebook.
I write the date and then the simple two words: ‘To do’.
I look out at the garden. A blackbird is jumping from spot to spot, jabbing at the lawn.
I’m momentarily distracted. The bird finds a worm and tugs it hard until the worm is out of the ground and curls itself around the blackbird’s bright orange beak in a last desperate attempt to live. I look back down at my page and write:
Pick up dry cleaning
Phone Nelly’s school for reference
Secure Stephen’s partnership
Kill Hollis