The Hit List Read online

  For Gilly, my (book) birth partner and the keeper of my secrets.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Part One: Now

  Marianne: Saturday, 11 September 2021

  Marianne

  Sam

  Marianne

  Sam

  Marianne: Sunday, 12 September 2021

  Sam

  Marianne

  Sam

  Marianne

  Sam

  Marianne

  Sam

  Marianne

  Sam

  Marianne

  Sam

  Marianne

  Sam

  Marianne: Monday, 13 September 2021

  Sam

  Marianne

  Sam

  Marianne

  Sam

  Marianne

  Sam

  Marianne

  Sam

  Marianne: Tuesday, 14 September 2021

  Sam

  Marianne

  Sam

  Marianne

  Sam

  Marianne

  Sam

  Marianne

  Sam

  Marianne

  Part Two: Before

  Samantha: Friday, 14 June 2019

  Greg: Thursday, 13 June 2019

  Friday, 14 June 2019

  Samantha: Friday, 14 June 2019

  Greg: Friday, 14 June 2019

  Samantha: Monday, 17 June 2019

  Greg: Sunday, 16 June 2019

  Tuesday, 18 June 2019

  Samantha: Monday, 17 June 2019

  Greg: Wednesday, 19 June 2019

  Samantha: Tuesday, 18 June 2019

  Wednesday, 19 June 2019

  Greg: Thursday, 20 June 2019

  Friday, 21 June 2019

  Samantha: Monday, 1 July 2019

  Greg: Monday, 22 July 2019

  Thursday, 29 August 2019

  Samantha: Friday, 2 August 2019

  Monday, 2 September 2019

  Greg: Friday, 27 September 2019

  Samantha: Monday, 21 October 2019

  Greg: Friday, 25 October 2019

  Samantha: Tuesday, 22 October 2019

  Wednesday, 30 October 2019

  Tuesday, 12 November 2019

  Greg: Friday, 22 November 2019

  Saturday, 23 November 2019

  Samantha: Christmas Day, 2019

  Greg: Christmas Day, 2019

  Samantha: Friday, 31 January 2020

  Monday, 3 February 2020

  Greg: Friday, 27 March 2020

  Samantha: Thursday, 4 June 2020

  Greg: Wednesday, 3 June 2020

  Thursday, 4 June 2020

  Samantha: Thursday, 4 June 2020

  Greg: Friday, 31 July 2020

  Samantha: Friday, 31 July 2020

  Greg: Monday, 17 August 2020

  Samantha: Friday, 31 July 2020

  Greg: Thursday, 27 August 2020

  Wednesday, 2 September 2020

  Monday, 7 September 2020

  Tuesday, 8 September 2020

  Samantha: Thursday, 27 August 2020

  Greg: Wednesday, 9 September 2020

  Samantha: Thursday, 10 September 2020

  Greg: Friday, 11 September 2020

  Part Three: Now

  Marianne: Tuesday, 14 September 2021

  Sam

  Marianne

  Sam

  Marianne

  Sam

  Marianne

  Sam

  Marianne

  Sam

  Marianne

  Noah

  Sam

  Marianne

  Sam

  Marianne

  Sam

  Marianne

  Sam

  Marianne

  Sam: Thursday, 16 September 2021

  Paula

  Sam

  Marianne: Friday, 17 September 2021

  Sam: Sunday, 24 October 2021

  Marianne: Sunday, 24 October 2021

  Acknowledgements

  Credits

  About the Author

  By the same author

  Copyright

  PART ONE:

  Now

  Marianne

  Saturday, 11 September 2021

  A shadow falls across Marianne’s shoulders. Her toes curl on the cool decking and a shiver crawls down her back. Compared to her Hackney flat, Noah’s Richmond townhouse is a mansion, but it’s this tiny, chilly garden that she loves the most. Walled on all sides and invisible to the neighbours, it’s crammed with an ornate cherry blossom tree planted by his late wife that leaves just enough room for a wooden bench.

  She tucks into its corner, lighting her cigarette and looking up at the bare branches. When Marianne first sat out here a few months ago, shaking with guilt and exhilaration after their first night together, the tree was alive with pink blossoms. This morning she had to brush the dead flowers away. Subtle waves of old petals, bunched up like little fists.

  As she drags the last lungful of smoke, she allows herself the briefest memory of her and Greg’s last weekend together. Tea, toast, the Observer. No cigarettes, no terrace, nothing new to learn about each other. And no easy chat, no peals of laughter, not like it had been. But under the silence there was still deep affection, a foundation into which they’d both poured years of love and respect.

  On the Sunday, they’d eaten a roast dinner, cooked – as always – by Greg.

  In their early years he’d cooked so joyfully and she’d eaten so gratefully. But that last time, had she even thanked him?

  She can still picture him in their flat, making pastry on Monday evenings. It was a ritual, a leftovers pie made from whatever they hadn’t finished of the Sunday roast. Then what was left of the pie, always too big for two, sliced and frozen. So many Mondays, so many pies that the image is sepia, archetypal rather than specific. But in her most abiding memories of Greg, there he is in their tiny kitchen, flour clinging to his eyebrows and beard, his wedding ring set carefully to the side while he kneads.

  She goes inside to find Noah in his kitchen, drinking a protein shake while the coffee pot sits full and steaming for her.

  ‘OK?’ he asks over his shoulder, lifting a cup down from the cupboard. She nods, then shakes her head, then pads over to hug him from behind. She feels his muscles contract as he pours her a coffee, precise little movements still new to her.

  They stay in silence until Noah swallows to break it. ‘It sounds like a cliché,’ he says carefully, ‘but the first anniversary really is the hardest.’ She leans into him more and he carries on softly. ‘It’s not that it ever gets easy, but it does get better.’

  She holds him tighter, grateful for the shorthand of the bereaved, no need to add or explain. Unsure she really could.

  According to the kitchen clock, it’s just gone eleven thirty. Almost to the minute that a call came through this time last year.

  ‘Marianne Heywood?’

  ‘Yes, who’s calling?’

  ‘I’m a sergeant with the Metropolitan Police. Do you have someone with you?’

  She thought her heart would collapse in on itself, right there on the floor of the staffroom.

  A year ago today, and already her arms have slipped around another man. Last year, she thought she’d never be ready. And yet these last months, the more time she’s spent here, the more she’s started to picture a whole new life ahead of her. Her things nestling next to Noah’s. New routines. A bedrock of in-jokes and references and memories it took years to build with Greg, is now in its glorious infancy with Noah. But today, she can’t think about that. Today belongs to Greg.

  *

  Marianne leaves in the late afternoon before Noah’s daughter, Daisy, gets home. For a
ll Marianne’s growing hopes, it’s early days for all of them and she is yet to meet his five-year-old. It’s made easier by her maternal grandparents’ desperation not to lose their only grandchild as well as their daughter. Daisy stays with them every Friday at least, while Noah and Marianne pretend they’re unencumbered lovers, feeling their way in their own time.

  ‘I wasn’t ready for anyone new until you,’ Noah said, the very first Friday that she stayed over.

  ‘Neither was I,’ Marianne replied, choosing an easy lie instead of a complex truth.

  Now, in the dimming light, Marianne sees her whisked-up reflection in the black curves of her little car. Her curly brown hair hangs wild and unbrushed. Her blue eyes shine back, new lines feathering their edges. Even her leather jacket is battered and scuffed. She licks her finger and wipes the tide marks from under her eyes, then fumbles for her car key.

  The front door re-opens and Noah jogs over on the balls of his socked feet. He has a good foot of height over her; his shoulders are probably a foot wider too. A bear of a man. He hugs her tightly and Marianne feels his heart booming through his thin T-shirt. So very alive. ‘I’m here if you need me,’ he says, releasing her and heading back inside. ‘But I won’t pester you.’

  The stereo reads 17:37. As she reverses out of Noah’s drive, Marianne tries to picture what she would have been doing at this exact time a year ago. The memory is blank, the black box recorder removed for her own good.

  A little after seven, Marianne rattles the door key in the sticky lock and shoves her way into her Hackney flat. After an empty night, it smells like the opposite of life. Not quite death, more like the blank space between the two.

  They’d bought this place as a first step on the ladder, seven years ago. The best they could get on their salaries. A teacher and a charity worker, their mortgage broker had audibly sighed. Greg’s parents offered to contribute, but Marianne’s pride shot that idea straight down.

  The building had long been converted from a faded Victorian house into an upstairs flat with a separate greasy spoon underneath. After living here for a month, everything they owned smelt like cooking oil. A few months ago, the café was closed down by health inspectors and Marianne found herself missing the distinctive smell. ‘Stockholm Syndrome,’ Greg would have joked. Since the closure, the flat has sat above an empty space, a black hole behind a metal shutter.

  A year ago today.

  She pulls open Greg’s side of the wardrobe and gingerly takes out his favourite shirt. Sliding it from the hanger, her eyes prickling. She grabs its fabric as though it is flesh and sniffs it deeply, but there is no trace of him now. Just the distant smell of whatever fabric conditioner was on special offer a year ago. It drapes over her as she slips it on, buttoning it carefully. He wasn’t tall, but she’s shrunk since then.

  She can’t quite imagine doing this with Noah’s clothes. Not yet. He’s so much bigger, but it’s not that. His world is complete and she is entering it; he is welcoming her in but it is not her world. Marianne and Greg built their world up together; they were a family of two.

  She looks in the mirror and wonders what Greg would think if he were standing behind her now. That she’s being indulgent? Disrespectful? Her body is still scented from a night with another man. Or maybe, like her, he would remember how they had been for most of their marriage, until it all started to crumble at the very end.

  ‘I love you,’ she imagines him saying.

  ‘Always,’ she replies, into the silence of the flat.

  Still wearing the shirt, Marianne struggles to push up the sash kitchen window high enough for her to lean out. The small galley looks out over a jigsaw of other people’s yards but she never sees a soul out there. She smokes fast and deep, blowing plumes across the would-be gardens and away into the scrubby trees.

  They had given up smoking together, after they got married. Planning, as newlyweds always do, for forever. Not wanting cigarettes to plant a cancerous bomb in those dreams. It had been easy for Greg, who was never a heavy smoker, but Marianne had resented how hard she’d found it. A personal affront. Even when she’d officially given up, she cracked frequently, ‘borrowing’ cigarettes from friends on rare nights out, begging a smoke from colleagues on difficult days and angrily buying a contraband pack of ten from the local shop after rare arguments with Greg. Until the last few months of his life when the arguments stopped being rare and the packs became twenty, barely hidden in the airing cupboard.

  And then, a year ago today, she’d arrived at the hospital to be bustled into a small room with a ridiculously floral sofa and no smoking signs everywhere she looked.

  ‘Can I see him?’ she asked.

  There was a pause, an intake of air. ‘I’m very sorry,’ the doctor began, holding her own hands together in a practised move.

  Marianne sat down hard on that ugly sofa, folded in on herself and barely took in a word. When she finally opened her eyes, all she could think was that she needed a cigarette.

  She smoked so much that first week that her fingers turned yellow and well-wishers held their breath when they hugged her. Her mother kept opening the windows, letting September winds blow through the flat so that scraps of paper with Greg’s final words fluttered dangerously. Marianne had eventually slammed them shut, screaming god knows what at her mum, pointing to Greg’s notepads and doodles, the little notes and receipts that had previously pissed her off as they clogged up the precious surface area of a ‘bijou’ flat.

  Every artefact of life becomes sacrosanct in death.

  *

  Forever means less to Marianne now and she has no plan for it. She stubs out the cigarette on the concrete windowsill, a satisfying polka dot to add to the rest. She pushes the butt into the overflowing plant pot she once intended to grow something in and tugs the window back down by its flaky frame.

  Marianne opens the bare fridge and then teases open the broken door to the freezer compartment. A small space, she’d never really used it herself. It was only when the cover fell off after a particularly hard slam of the fridge door that she saw inside. One piece of Greg’s pie, stuffed there a Monday long ago. Some distant afterthought.

  The pie is there still; she takes it out gingerly and holds it like a newborn. A solid piece of proof that he was here, alive once, caring enough to cook for them. Great family meals just for two. Tears fall as she switches the oven on, a musty smell filling the small room. She imagines Greg’s voice: ‘What are you doing to my kitchen, hen?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Marianne whispers, ‘but if I don’t eat this soon, I’ll have to throw it away.’ She defrosts the pie slowly in the microwave – no going back. You don’t read about this in those leaflets about grief. When is the right time to take a new lover? And when is it OK to eat the last slice of pie?

  She lifts it carefully from the plastic tub, notices with a grimace that it’s not just softened and defrosted, the edges have started to bubble. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispers again. It had always been a joke between them, how she was all thumbs in the kitchen. ‘You could burn a boiled egg,’ he used to laugh. ‘You’re the Rambo of cooking.’

  She smiles at the memory as she slides the pie on its baking tray into the oven. She hasn’t eaten a proper meal at home in a long time. Still the Rambo of cooking, she tends to buy ready meals, order takeaways or just skip meals rather than bother with proper food. But this is different. She smokes another cigarette while the food cooks and then sets herself a place at the table.

  At first, it feels wrong to swallow. As if she’s not eating the last remnants of a homemade pie but eating something of Greg himself. It feels cannibalistic. But soon the familiar flavour and the softness of his pastry, missing for the last year, takes over her senses. She weeps as she swallows the final mouthful. The last of him, gone.

  ‘I miss you so much,’ she says to the empty plate. ‘I just wish you were here every fucking day.’

  She looks at the pile of exercise books on the table and her school-issued
laptop, but she knows full well that no work will happen tonight. She’s too full, too sad.

  Instead, she will do what she did on their wedding anniversary and Greg’s birthday. What she did on those early widowed nights when the bed seemed so achingly cold and the night so terribly long. And then later when she needed to whip herself with memories, when the bed was still warm from the wrong body.

  Tonight she will spend the night drowning herself with everything Greg left behind.

  *

  For the first few weeks after the funeral, and long before she met Noah, it was just the analogue stuff she sank into. There was plenty of that. The photographs, the little notes from their early days, gifts and clothes. She leafed through Greg’s notepads full of indecipherable doodles and lists, even coating herself in a tiny spritz of his cologne here and there.

  Eventually she started to crave more and turned to the digital remains. And, god, was there a lot. She’d sat on their bed with her laptop burning her legs, starting with their early email conversations.

  Last month, when she’d read everything she could bear to on her own ageing laptop, she opened his.

  Tentatively looking through his browser history, wincing at the no-surprises porn, retreating instead to read his emails from their early days, like the announcement to his mum that he’d met a girl. ‘She’s called Marianne and she’s a teacher. I think you’ll like her.’ Wrong, as it turned out, but Marianne admired his optimism. Greg’s mum had always expected him to come home once he’d ‘got London out of his system’, but Marianne had stuck a spanner in that plan. Never mind that she would have happily considered moving above the border; Greg was always adamant he didn’t want to return to Scotland. But it was Marianne who got the blame.

  She’d rifled cautiously, more through fear than respect, and when his laptop battery ran out, breaking the spell, she was relieved. But she’s here again, as she knew she would be.

  Marianne would once have assumed this kind of thing was normal. At the bereavement group that she used to go to, plenty of the ‘left behind’ had also become archivists, talking about the love letters and mementos that they would grab first in a fire. Some even brought along the last Christmas card or the first Valentine, clutching them nervously as they spoke. But she’d recently asked Noah if he spent time looking through his wife’s old emails and files, reading her letters and diaries. They’d been lying on his bed, still clothed and holding hands. How had they even got into the position? She can’t remember now but they were basking in each other, sharing secrets and talking urgently.