Overlapping Lives Read online

  ‘You’re like a fourth Magus,’ whispered Ben, ‘bearing the most precious gift of all.’

  The Village

  The gossip, in the Buckinghamshire village where Ben lived, buzzed with the news that his wife had left. Everyone knew that she spent a great deal of time in the company of a single woman who lived alone at the other end of the village. The woman had put her house on the market and disappeared at the same time. Parochial gossip warmed up as people put two and two together and the rumour soon spread that they were living together in London.

  ‘They say they was lesbians, is wot I ’eard,’ went the chatter in the pub. ‘Poor ol’ Ben, ’ee’ll be rattling around that big old ’ouse. That’ll be on the market next.’ For a time Ben did rattle. He spent more time than usual in the house because he was between highly-paid jobs in the city. At the end of the summer he resumed his commuting habit, usually driving to London at first light and not returning until dusk. The gossip had ebbed as life went more or less back to normal but was soon inflamed again when Ben appeared with a pretty woman, younger than himself, who stayed every weekend. Catherine was soon adopted by the village as weekend company for Ben at the big house and the gossip quietened.

  Ben’s house stood in a large, walled garden on the edge of the village, down a lane which led off one corner of the village green. Three hundred yards further down the narrow lane was a bungalow, beyond which was gently rolling Buckinghamshire countryside. It had stood empty for months following the death of its owner and had taken on an air of neglect, the long garden grown wild. The owner had been an aged Buckinghamshire woman, who rarely left the village, and had been nurtured by the caring, local community as she had increasing difficulty getting about.

  At about the same time that Catherine became an accepted weekend presence in the village the gossip reached fever pitch, as two women moved into the bungalow and started the long process of renovation.

  ‘It’s nature at work, maintainin’ life’s fine balance, two lesbians out an’ two comin’ in. Wot’s more, I ’eard, they got visited by the probation bloke from Buckingham. They must be criminal lesbians.’ It was a long time since the pub regulars had so much to preoccupy them. The village loved gossip but the community possessed extraordinary resilience. Nothing could derail the stable rural patterns. All of life’s vicissitudes could be absorbed and assimilated into the village narrative.

  Morag and Julie loved their new bungalow. They were content to spend months getting it straight, redecorating and restoring the long, narrow garden. Having never lived in a small rural community they had no inkling of the celebrity status, which they instantly acquired, a few hundred yards from the garden gate. Neither had they encountered the well-meaning neighbourliness intrinsic to village life. It was a novelty to receive the daily visitations to the bungalow, by curious local people, after the urban isolation they were used to. The visitors wanted to introduce themselves and know if they could help, but also to find out about the new criminal element in the village. Regular visitations by the man from the probation service had labelled them. He had recommended reticence on the subject of their convictions. Julie and Morag wanted to be accepted and left alone by the village, so they decided to tell the truth with the intention of demystifying their presence.

  ‘Murderers! We got murderers in the village. We never ’ad none ’o them ’til now. We should ’ave a welcoming party.’ The pub regulars were agog and the gossip was rife. It was a good-natured excitement and a genuine desire to make the new additions to the village community welcome. The novelty of having murderers in their midst was considerable. There was not a trace of judgement in the gossipy atmosphere; the women would be made welcome whether they liked it or not. Catherine was of the same opinion. She had made a habit of visiting Morag and Julie every Saturday morning. The fascinating nature of their relationship and their evident love for each other, appealed to Catherine. All three knew that it was more than just neighbourliness which, in a short space of time, made them close and trusting friends. Catherine decided that the best way to integrate the women into the village community was to immerse them in it. She dragged them to the pub on Sunday evenings when she and Ben regularly spent an hour or two gathering the gossip. The villagers soon realised that, murderers or not, the conspicuously attractive women, who lived in the bungalow, were articulate and good company. Gradually, the speculation about what exactly the women were became irrelevant. They became part of the fabric of the community.

  Alan was a grey-bearded, bespectacled historian and writer. He also liked to fulfil the role of village ethnographer. The pub gossip was a rich source for his material, where he spent a significant part of his life, immersed in beer and the aetiology of village lives and events. The arrival of two women recently freed from prison in the village was a scoop. In order not to appear intrusive, Alan bided his time before attempting to make the acquaintance of the new additions to the village. Having met them in the pub, with Catherine and Ben, he went home and searched for murderers called Julie and Morag on the internet. More than a decade old, the most recent article he found had been written by a journalist interested in stories of women who had been assaulted and sought retribution or forgiveness. The headlines of the two murders on the same Sunday afternoon were still available with images of the much younger Julie and Morag. To his relief there was no information about the release of the murderers on parole a few months ago. He was certain he had a real scoop.

  On a sunny afternoon in June Alan walked out of the village to the bungalow, hoping to catch Julie and Morag alone. He found them at the far end of their long narrow garden, struggling to build a raised bed made of old railway sleepers.

  ‘A bit late to start on sowing veg for this year,’ he observed. ‘Let me lend a hand.’ He helped to fill the space inside the sleepers with the contents of bags of compost.

  ‘We’re complete amateurs,’ acknowledged Julie. ‘We’ll try spuds now and see what we get by the autumn. It’s teatime anyway.’ They sat in the garden with mugs of tea, Morag and Julie side by side on the garden bench. Alan explained his plan.

  ‘You probably know,’ said Alan, ‘you have a sort of celebrity status in the village. You’re probably the most exciting thing that’s happened here for a long time. Forgive me for sounding intrusive, but enquiry is what I do for a living: writing local and other history. I’ve also done a certain amount of life writing and published a good deal. I have to say I don’t remember the headlines when you despatched your victims, but then I suppose the tabloids are full of murders in London every week. I did a simple computer search using your names; it brought you both up very readily, although thankfully I couldn’t find anything recent.’ Julie and Morag looked dismayed.

  ‘We don’t possess a computer,’ replied Morag. ‘The last thing we need is publicity. It’s bad enough having the probation man snooping about every week.’

  ‘Exactly,’ confirmed Alan. ‘I want to see what you think about having your stories turned into a sort of anonymised biography. Even what little I know about you is bestseller stuff. Done right, and discretely, it could make you money; but more importantly, it would make an amazing story.’ Julie moved her hand sideways on the bench, feeling for Morag’s. She found it and pulled it onto her lap, linking their fingers. They looked at each other unhappily.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ve upset you. I really don’t want to intrude, but I felt I had to put the idea to you. Let’s forget about it.’ Alan spoke softly. He looked at Morag and Julie, his eyes twinkling behind his spectacles. They realised he was a kind man with a serious idea.

  ‘No,’ said Julie quietly. ‘It takes more than a hare-brained idea to upset us. I think you’ve taken us by surprise. We need to think about it.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll leave you in peace. Thank you for the tea. Might I visit again next week sometime to see what you think?’ Alan got to his feet.

  ‘Yes. Come and
have tea again in a week. I think we need time to reflect. It’s not just the story. It would have wider implications if we became public property, and we’re still on parole for years. If things went wrong we could go back to prison.’ Julie smiled and, taking Morag’s hand, they followed their guest to the garden gate.

  From the outset it had been their shared narrative which had held Morag and Julie together. They did not mind talking about what they had done, about the pointlessness of imprisoning women, survival in the system and all the things they knew about because of their interrupted lives. The idea of their history being officially recorded or fictionalised was oddly discomfiting. They went back to the raised bed and planted potatoes, which was a comforting distraction. Later, they cooked companionably with the radio in the background. Bedtime came but Julie was restless and could not sleep. Morag turned to her and enfolded her in her long, thin arms, kissed her gently and said:

  ‘What’s the matter, my love? You’re vexing about that guy with the beard.’

  ‘Yes,’ admitted Julie. ‘Part of me thinks it could be exciting, but it could also be a dreadful mistake. D’you trust him?’

  Morag hesitated. ‘I don’t know. I think I could like him, but he’ll need to show us he has some sort of integrity. Our story is precious. I don’t want us to be sensationalised. Bringing up the past could be painful for us both and it might have unforeseen consequences, even reprisals.’

  ‘Don’t even think about that. It’s too horrible. Let’s talk to Catherine at the weekend. She might know something about Alan which would help.’ They hugged more tightly to make themselves feel safe and slowly fell asleep.

  On Saturday morning Catherine breezed in, hugged both her friends and said what a relief it was to be out of London again. They put the coffee on and took Catherine down the garden to admire the raised bed, which was less than exciting as it remained a rectangle of dark compost, but Morag and Julie were pleased with their achievement and the promise of growing something edible. Returning to the bungalow, where the aroma of coffee was enticing, they explained about Alan and his idea.

  ‘I don’t know him well,’ Catherine confessed, ‘really just as an acquaintance in the pub, but I think he’s kind, like everyone around here. I know he’s written about the village and its characters. He has a clever way of anonymising people and events. That might be important. I think you need to spend time with him, as if he were going to paint a portrait of you both with no clothes on. When you feel you can trust him, tell him to draw up a contract which should say what you’re prepared to have published and what’s off-limits. But trust is the key. If that’s not possible, tell him to go away.’

  ‘Supposing we can trust him,’ said Julie pensively, ‘and we went ahead somehow, would you agree to be involved, Catherine, act as a sort of mentor for us, and maybe a censor? Just confessing to someone we hardly know feels too exposed. We’d be too vulnerable. Someone else on our side would make it safer.’

  ‘Yes. Of course,’ Catherine said brightly, ‘but you have to realise that it’s likely to take months.’

  ‘That might work,’ added Morag, ‘it would make it feel safer. But I agree; we’ve got to know if we can trust him.’ They seemed to have arrived at a decision.

  When Alan reappeared in the week Morag came straight to the point:

  ‘How do we know we can trust you?’ Alan had brought his laptop. He showed them the lists of titles he had published about local history, academic articles and the biographies of two local dignitaries.

  ‘It has to work both ways,’ Alan explained. ‘If we’re going to be able to collaborate on this I also need to be able to trust you implicitly. I have great respect for you both. Your stories, from what I’ve researched, are full of courage, your own suffering, determination and a will to survive. What little I know of you personally is fascinating because there’s obviously a love story which runs through the plot. The facts are stranger than any fiction could ever be. But it’s important to be aware that there’s a blurred boundary between fact and fiction. To write a purely factual account of events which happened decades ago wouldn’t be a success. There needs to be a fictionalised quality to the narrative to make people want to read it.’ They discussed the process which Alan would need to follow to compile the finer details of their lives, how he would structure the stories and events and anonymise people and places. He agreed that having Catherine involved as a disinterested censor would be helpful. Julie and Morag were gradually persuaded that the idea was interesting, if nothing else. They sent Alan away, pleading more time to consider. Finally, they agreed, and Alan rapidly produced a contract which bound them as fairly as possible.

  Every morning for the rest of the summer they sat in the Buckinghamshire garden, relating their lives from as early as they could remember. Much of it was painful to recollect. Alan sensitively questioned them about the morbid details of Julie’s depression, Morag’s wild youth and brutalising time at school, the experience of rape and the triumph of retributive murder. By comparison, the prison years seemed to be less turbulent than the events which had conspired to get them there. The love, which flowered in prison between Julie and Morag, became an evocative, romantic backdrop to the turmoil of past abuse and violence. Morag and Julie sat side by side as they recounted their lives. They held on to each other when the emotional disruption of recollection overcame them, which it regularly did. Alan turned out to be an empathetic listener, more than once moved to tears by the awfulness of some of the things which had befallen his narrators. Towards the end of the summer he decided he had enough material to start the manuscript. Every week he delivered piles of hard copy to the bungalow for editing and embellishment. Everything was emailed to Catherine who monitored the evolving story, checking with Morag and Julie every weekend that what was interpreted by Alan into a fictional version of events, was acceptable to them.

  Alan decided that the narrative would gain additional life if Sally were to contribute her version of the story. She had been Julie’s best friend since university; she had also known Trevor intimately and witnessed his murder. Sally readily agreed. Another witness, at least to Morag’s life, was her cousin Jack. Alan found him near Mile End in London where he was the owner of the car repair business where he had worked when Morag appeared in London. He had a wife and small kids now, but was happy to recollect the Morag years, how he heard about her rape and the harm it caused her, her subsequent arrest after the murder and her disappearance to prison.

  From the time that Morag and Julie had moved to the village they were visited by Sally and Melanie once a month. It was an habitual thing; visiting Julie and Morag had happened every week for the twelve years they had been in prison. Now they were free, the visits could be more celebratory. Matthew drove them out of London on the appointed Saturday mornings to spend the weekend in the bungalow. It was an overcrowded arrangement. Melanie and Matthew had the spare bedroom and Sally slept on the sofa. Catherine quickly got to know the regular visitors and decided that she and Ben would have a monthly barbecue in Ben’s expansive garden in the Buckinghamshire sunset, for everyone at the bungalow. They roasted large quantities of vegetables, sensitive to Julie and Morag’s vegetarian diet. Inevitably, Sally, Melanie and Matthew were included in the book plan and sworn to secrecy. The conversation often gravitated to the subject of injuries to women and how they coped. One Saturday evening as they sat in the dusk, draining the wine bottles, Catherine brought up the story of Paula, her friend and employer in London, who had been scarred following an assault by her ex-boyfriend. For Sally and Melanie the sense of déjà vu was instant.

  ‘We know Paula,’ they chorused. Their simultaneous response always evoked fits of giggles between them.

  ‘Paula and me had a lovely afternoon after the pub – Julie’s pub,’ Sally enthusiastically completed the picture. ‘Melanie met her in the church and we all got together. It was great. How’s Paula? We did
n’t keep in touch. I’m not sure why not.’

  ‘She’s in good shape now,’ said Catherine. ‘I think she knows now that her scar thing is attractive in an odd way. Accepting what she always knew, that she’s beautiful, and the scar is more a psychological flaw than a physical one, has been hard. You really helped to restore her self-confidence. I told her I fancied her after she met you. She blushed like a lantern. It won’t be long before she adopts another man, or maybe a woman, but I keep an eye on her. I won’t let her waste herself on another disrespectful bloke. Maybe I should bring her here. She has a serious story.’

  Paula was recruited to the visiting party and stayed with Catherine and Ben. The weekends, when everyone was present, were convivial and sociable. There was a narrative adhesive which brought them together, events which they had in common; and then there was the shared anticipation of Alan’s volume.

  Among the regular guests at the Saturday barbecues at Ben’s house was a man known as Doctor Roger, who was a partner in the village practice. His wife, Claire, had left him rather precipitously. They had not been able to conceive. Claire had followed her career to London and decided to seek a new life. Ben knew about the sadness which abandonment by a wife created and had deliberately drawn Roger into his weekend socialising. Under the surreptitious guidance of Catherine, Paula was introduced to Doctor Roger. Catherine used the autumn barbecues and dinner parties to create the chemistry which she knew intuitively would bring them together. By the end of the November party she had observed her quarries coalescing and plans for Christmas had been agreed. Before the evening was at an end she wrote down Paula’s email address on a piece of paper, torn from the end of a shopping list, and gave it to Paula.

  ‘Don’t let him go without it. It’ll work like magic,’ she whispered to Paula as the guests prepared to leave. Roger swallowed the bait. On Monday morning after the November dinner party, before he walked to the surgery, he emailed: