FIC: The Smell of Roses
Title: The Smell of Roses
A/N: Sequel to my Sequel to my 2011 Halloween fic. Thanks to Charlie for her fear & enthusiasm!
He watches her walk through their new house, running a hand over the old wooden banister, touching the wallpaper. She has her back to him; it makes it impossible for him to gauge her reaction.
“Do you like it?” he asks, uncharacteristically nervous. He had sent her pictures before signing the deal, but of course, it’s never the same thing, seeing something and experiencing it for yourself. He desperately wants her to be happy here, here with him. It’s a sacrifice she’s making, moving halfway across the country so that they can be together and he can take a job that will undoubtedly make his career. Already, there is a buzz about him. He’s the one to watch, one of the best and brightest, even though he himself wouldn’t put it that way. He’s just a lawyer: he learned whatever needed learning, and now he applies it. There is no mystery to it; it’s just a lot of hard work and making sure that you don’t take chances, but calculate risks instead. It’s how he approaches life in general, and it has served him well. His marriage is a case in point.
“It’s wonderful, Calvin,” she says and the serenity in her finely sculpted face tells him he did well. Ever since he met her, he’s been striving to please her. She is a wonderful woman; refined, smart, poised. A wonderful woman, and more importantly, a perfect wife.
“There are three bedrooms upstairs. I thought you could get one as a studio, and I’d take the other as a study.” She nods and begins to climb the stairs. He can tell that in her head, she has already redecorated the whole house, replacing the flower-printed wallpaper with clean beiges, whites and greys. They have the same taste - it makes living together very easy.
“Which bedroom will be ours?” she asks, and following her up the stairs into the second story of the townhouse, he points to the door at the end of narrow hallway. Ignoring the other two doors, she heads straight for the master bedroom and opens the white-painted door. She peers in, nods, and makes for the second bedroom, the one that he thinks would make a good studio. It sits facing east, and the real estate agent assured him that the light was just perfect for an artist such as his wife. He hopes the dreadfully chatty woman was right and that his wife will indeed like it.
Pushing the door open, she lingers in the frame. “Oh.” There is disapproval in her voice. “The previous owners left furniture in here.” He follows her in, his taller frame filling the doorway completely. They stand close, but do not touch. He looks over her head and spots the wrought iron bed. Frowning, he pulls his blackberry from the pocket of his blazer. “I told the real estate agent to get rid of it,” he murmurs and checks his emails. Yes, there it is, a confirmation that all furniture would be removed, dated two weeks ago.
The bed is a frilly affair, the iron curled in too many swirls, with metal roses adorning each bed post. Mina would have loved it, he suddenly thinks.
His wife turns around. “I’ll ask the moving firm whether they can take it away.” She smiles up at him, that small smile of hers, and places a hand on his lapel before squeezing past him. He hears her feet softly tapping down the stairs. Downstairs, the moving firm has begun to carry their possessions into their new home.
This new home in which thoughts of Mina have no place, he thinks, and leaves the room to join his wife downstairs.
***
It was a bit unfortunate that they didn’t have time to get all the renovating done before they actually moved in, but the firm wanted him to start a month earlier than anticipated, so here they are. But Raye is efficient, and she oversees all works with sharp eyes. Luckily, the piping, roof, and electrical wires are all in perfect condition - the previous owners had replaced everything when they moved in five years ago.
It was only the surface of things that need touching up on: the hardwood floors had to be polished, the wallpaper needed replacing, and Raye was adamant that all the crystal chandeliers had to go. Their kitchen, living-room and bedroom were the first to be finished, and now the painters are working their way up the stairs and into the rooms that will be studio and study. Knowing how much he has to work, even at home and after long days in the office, Raye insists that the study be taken care off first. She’s always very considerate, it’s one of the many things he appreciates about her.
Today, he manages to be home in time for dinner. They eat in their kitchen, a quiet meal with classical music playing in the background. In her company, and with the music and the food and the fine wine she has chosen, he can feel himself relax, the tension in his shoulders slowly ebbing away.
“I’m not sure what colour to choose for the studio,” she says conversationally. Chewing and swallowing the last bite of steak, he looks at her. Is she happy here? He thinks so. It’s difficult to tell, even after two years of marriage. A part of him is still used to another woman, one who wears her heart on her sleeve. But that is in the past, and his present and future is sitting opposite him, wondering what colour to choose for her studio space.
“What are the options?” he asks, and takes a sip of wine.
“I have some samples upstairs, would you mind taking a look?”
“Of course not,” Calvin replies and pushes his chair back.
The halogen spotlights have already been built into the walls and ceiling, and he likes that their house is now full of light. She has done well.
The studio still looks the way it did when they moved in, only minus the wrought iron bed. Raye bends down and picks some wallpaper samples up. One is a light blue, an almost bold choice for her. The other is a cream colour, set off with white stripes.
“Why not just paint it white?” he asks, and moves into the room.
She shakes her head at him. “I can’t just paint over the old wallpaper, look, there are too many tears; here, here, and here.” She shows him the cracks and tears, and he shrugs.
“In that case, the striped one.”
He walks around the room. Now that the bed is gone, it feels much bigger. She can set up her easel over there by the window, and then she just needs a few shelves to store her supplies in. A sink would have been ideal, but the builders would have had to rip two walls out to put the necessary piping in place. He knows because he asked them.
Holding the samples in her thin hands, she follows him. She puts the striped one on the wall and fastens it there with a bit of double-sided tape she kept on the window sill. Standing back, she examines it, weighing his opinion against her own.
He knows not to disturb her now, she likes to make her decisions, both big and small, in silence.
So he occupies himself by running a hand over the old wallpaper, reading the tiny flowers like braille. He wonders what colour Mina would have chosen for this room. Pink, perhaps, or purple. She’s terribly fond of all things lurid and bright. Maybe she would have even kept this wallpaper, just putting posters over the rips and tears. She would have liked the tiny red roses and the daisies just as much as she would have hated the indirect lighting and the halogen spotlights in the hallway. All the beige, white and grey in the living room would have driven her to distraction. He still remembers that day she snuck into his apartment while he was in the library. She added potted plants and posters and colourful picture frames with snapshots he didn’t even know she’d taken. He had complained that was she was doing was actually breaking and entering, but secretly, he’d loved her even more for it.
His hand stops and falls to his side. He is standing in his wife’s studio, thinking about the time his ex-girlfriend decorated his apartment for him. Shame rises up in him like an ugly, angry wave.
“You’re right, the striped one it is. I’ll call the painters first thing tomorrow morning.”
Unable to look at her, he fingers one of the tears in the wallpaper, on the wall the headboard of the bed was placed against when they moved in. “Sounds good,” he replies in a voice that betrays none of his feelings. He tugs at the old wallpaper and since it peels off easily, he proceeds. Behind him, Raye sighs. “Cal, the painters can do that.” But he is undeterred, and soon, long strands of flower-printed wallpaper tumble onto the floor. If he can get it all down, he tries to convince himself, then the thoughts of Mina will go away. He just needs to rid himself and his house of everything that could bring up memories of the woman he has banished from his life over three years ago.
Suddenly, he realises that it’s not a wall that he is ripping the wallpaper off. It’s a cupboard. He stops.
“What’s this?” Raye sounds surprised, and he steps aside to afford her a better look. It’s she who tears the last remaining strip of wallpaper off, little red roses and daisies falling to the floor, and then the second door of the cupboard comes into vision. There are no knobs to open it, someone must haven screwed them off. But they can see where they ought to be, two identical holes to give their location away.
Raye tries to open the two small doors, but without the knobs, she can’t pry them open. “I’ll get a screwdriver,” Cal offers, and goes away to fetch one. He returns quickly: even though they just moved in, both he and Raye are very organised people, so everything has its place, from the keys in the bowl by the front door to the alphabetised books in the living-room and the toolbox under the kitchen sink.
She takes the screwdriver from his hand and slides it between the doors. Angling right, she applies pressure, and with a soft click, the right half of the double doors pops open. The left one she can now open with her hand.
It’s a small cupboard, not very deep, and only three shelves high. On the top shelf, a dust-covered compact mirror lies waiting to be found.
Raye picks it up and flips it open. The glass is cracked. Their eyes meet in the broken glass as he looks over her shoulder. Suddenly, she frowns, snaps it shut and turns to him, her beautiful face unreadable. “Can you throw this away, please?”
From her outstretched hand, he accepts the mirror and does as she asked.
***
Two weeks later, the whole house is ready . If they had any friends in the city, now would have been the time to invite them to a housewarming party. But their friends live far away and Cal sees so much of his new colleagues that he is not too keen to have them in his house, too.
Raye spends most of her time upstairs in the studio, painting all day long, and sometimes even into the night. Her style has changed - where it used to be geometrical forms, clean cut and simple, made striking through slightly different shades of colour applied with meticulous care, she now paints dark landscapes. Cal is secretly happy that Raye never hangs her own paintings in their home, but sells them in small galleries instead.
The latest painting, the one she is putting her initials on right now as he stands behind her, depicts a spindly tree in a snowy winter landscape, after night has fallen. It’s all black and grey and dirty brown, and the longer he looks at it, the less he likes it. The tree gleams on the canvas, looking more alive than an inanimate, painted object has any right to. Of course, it’s because the acrylic paint is not yet dry, Cal thinks, and wonders whether he will like the painting any better once the colour has settled.
“What was you ex-girlfriend’s name again?” Raye asks, apropos of nothing. Cal frowns.
“Mina. Why?” They don’t talk about her, never. Raye knows that when they met, there was someone else, someone he left for her, but that’s it. That’s all she needs to know, and Cal wants to keep it that way.
Putting the small brush away, Raye steps back to examine her work. He can tell by the way her shoulders are set that she’s not happy with it. She reaches for the canvas with her right hand, and wedding band and engagement right, sitting on the same finger, glint in the halogen light.
“Raye, why are you asking about her?” Cal asks, going very, very still.
“Because she’s dead,” Raye answers, and turns to him, violet eyes burning. “And also,” she adds, “she’s here.”
***
He has no idea what’s going on with his wife, no idea at all. He cannot even begin to comprehend it. Raye insists that Mina is haunting them, walking around in their house. Maybe it’s the stress from the move. Maybe she misses her friends. Maybe she has noticed that he is thinking about Mina sometimes. Maybe it’s all of it, and maybe it’s nothing, he really doesn’t know.
All he knows is that at night, she sleeps as far away from him as possible. Another person could fit into the space she leaves between them, and it’s frustrating him.
During the day, she continues to paint. It’s always the tree now, the tree in snow and night. Three canvases with the same motif. He barely looks at them. His eyes are on his wife instead. Raye is sitting on the window sill in her studio, clutching a mug of steaming tea. Outside, the sun shines brightly. It’s a lovely winter day; if only she’d spare a moment to see it. But she won’t: Raye hasn’t left the house since the day she asked about Mina.
“Why is she here?” Raye asks again, and Cal sighs. They’ve been over this. He walks over to Raye and takes the mug out of her hands. He places it on the floor, and in an unusual display of affection, pulls her into his arms. “Please, you need to stop,” he whispers against her hair.
“But she won’t go away,” Rei whispers back and Cal looks around in the studio, sunlit and innocent, with its new striped wallpaper.
There is no one here but them.
***
He is fast asleep one second, and then in the next, shoots up in bed, heart racing. Raye is nowhere to be seen: he is alone. But it doesn’t feel like he’s alone. For just a second, the smell of roses fills his nose, but it’s gone before he has fully wrapped his mind around it. Roses. Mina wore them in her hair the day they met. Reaching for the lamp on the bedside table and flicking it on, he looks around the room. No flowers in sight, not even a potted plant. Nothing.
The lamp’s warm light reaches into the room, banishing dreams and shadows alike. No roses, no Mina, nothing to worry about. The smell must have been a dream.
He groans, and sinks back into the pillows. He needs to sleep - work is only five hours away. For a moment, he contemplates getting up to look for his wife, but he can hear the softest scratching from the next door down. She’s in her studio, painting. The scratching is her mixing colours, a sound he’s become familiar with over the years. She’ll be standing under the lamp, palette in one hand and palette knife in the other. But if he walks over now, then without a doubt, Raye will continue to talk about Mina and her alleged death and that is something he can’t deal with right now.
Cal runs a hand over his face. He is so tired of this. So tired.
***
The next morning comes and he finds his wife asleep on the studio floor, surrounded by the three paintings she finished over the last few weeks. Careful not to wake her, he picks the paintings up and props them against the cupboard.
It’s always the tree. But now that he’s looking at them, he can see that the paintings are not exactly alike. The one she painted first shows the tree during night, one gleaming shape in the darkness. The next one reveals that what he thought was a black sky in the background is actually a forest, and the tree is in the middle of it. When he looks at the third one, he realises that Raye is not only painting through the night in the sense that she doesn’t come to bed, but also in the sense that the night on the tree landscape is drawing to a close. The third painting is more grey than black, and he is almost able to count the trees. Their shapes are becoming more distinct. It almost seems as if they are reaching out of the canvas, but that’s silly.
“This one is finished too,” Raye mutters behind him, making Cal jump. He whips around just as Raye scrapes herself off the floor. There are dark circles under her eyes. He offers her a hand and pulls her up. That’s when he notices that she’s not wearing her wedding band.
The fourth painting sits on the easel. The night is over, morning has arrived. She picks the painting up and places it next to the others. Cal swallows. On the canvas, among the trees, he can see footsteps in the snow.
Footsteps, and a single red rose.
***
Safely in his office, between his eight and nine o’clock meeting, he pulls open a desk drawer and takes a small black book out. He keeps all important phone numbers in this book, especially the ones he deleted off his mobile phone years ago. You never know when you need to call an old colleague, a former client, or, as is the case now, an ex-girlfriend.
Picking up the receiver, he dials her number, but an computer-generated voice tells him it’s no longer in use. So she changed her mobile phone number. Many people do that. He himself hasn’t, of course. He has had the same number for the past twelve years. It’s for this reason that he is so sure that nothing has happened to Mina. If she had died, as Raye insists, then Mina’s mother would have known how to reach him. There is not a shadow of doubt that she would have notified him: they’d always gotten along well, and he doesn’t believe that Mina would have told her mother about how he had left her for another woman.
Cal puts the black book in the drawer again and pushes it shut. He can’t go home to Raye tonight unless he can give her proof that Mina is alive. So he rings up directory assistance, and is connected to the next free operator.
“Directory Assistance, how can I help you?”
“I need a phone number. Mina Penelope Green. London,” he says. He heard from mutual friends that she moved to London after finishing her degree. Hackney, he believes. She works in an advertising agency near Leicester Square - he doesn’t quite remember who told him. Not that it matters.
“I have a Mina Penelope Allen, born Green, in Kensington.”
She got married. Of course. She got married. Why wouldn’t she? He jots down the number and hangs up without a thank you. Mina Allen. He doesn’t know anyone named Allen, she must have met him only after he himself had already left the picture. Mina Allen. No longer Mina Green. And suddenly, he can understand Raye. Yes, Mina is dead. Only not in the way his wife thinks.
Mina Green is dead.
But he is sure that Mina Allen is perfectly okay. He just doesn’t want to speak to her.
***
He comes home to a dark house. Setting his briefcase on the kitchen counter, he looks around. No dinner. Two dirty mugs in the sink, a brown apple core next to an empty packet of cornflakes.
Shaking his head, he plucks the phone from the wall and calls a pizza place whose leaflet was among the post he collected from their letterbox. Two pizzas, a salad, garlic butter, and some lasagna. If the apple and cornflakes are all his wife ate over the course of the whole day, she might be hungry.
But when he walks upstairs, he can’t find Raye. She’s not in her studio, not in bed, not taking a bath. She’s not in his study and not in the small attic under the roof. She isn’t in the cellar either. There is no note to tell him she’s gone out, and no message on the machine, no text or email on his blackberry.
By the time the food arrives, he has taken up residence in the living-room, watching a sports channel. There’s a big Premier League game tonight, so he might as well watch that while waiting for his wife to come home. He doesn’t feel like eating in the kitchen with soft music in the background when he’s the only person in the house. It would feel weird. It would feel sad.
It’s only after the game is over and he’s reviewed the contract for his 11 o’clock meeting tomorrow that he truly begins to worry. It’s not like Raye to be flighty and to disappear; she is a reliable woman, which is one of the reasons why he chose to marry her and not --- he stops himself. He won’t go there again, not tonight.
He gets up, leaving the television on. Still, no email or message on the machine. Maybe he just missed the note she left for him. Maybe she is meeting gallery owners, or is out for a long, long walk. Perhaps she went to the opera.
Still, now that he is really allowing himself to think about her unexplained absence, he grows nervous. Methodically, he searches all of the downstairs rooms for a note while ringing her mobile phone over and over again. He leaves her two messages, both tense, and then, with a sigh, gives up. There is nothing to find here, nothing except the two mugs and the apple core, the only proof that she was down here-
----
The realisation is sudden. Why two mugs? Why not one? Raye reuses her mug all day, she wouldn’t have used a second one. He steps back to the sink and looks down. One mug has a few remnants of green tea in it, just a sip. The other is completely empty, but there is a thin line near the top of the mug where the tea has stained the china, a perfect circle.
Who was Raye’s visitor?
Reaching into the sink, he picks the mug up and turns it in his hand. That’s when he notices the lipstick mark. Pink. Pink lipstick on his wife’s china mug. Only that Raye doesn’t wear lipstick, ever.
He sets the mug down, carefully, as if it were a bomb and not a harmless piece of crockery. It’s silly, but he can’t shake an image from his head: Mina and her silly giggles as she smeared her pink lipstick all over his collar the day he was supposed to go in for his big interview. He never made it there, and spent the day in bed with her instead. Of course, once he realised what she was doing, could do, to his career, he had to leave her, but in that moment, he’d been happy.
Same shade of pink.
As he leaves the kitchen and makes his way up the stairs, he tries to tell himself that it’s just a coincidence and he’s not able to tell one shade of pink from another anyway. Raye might have had a neighbour over. She might have used a second cup. She might have felt like wearing lipstick. She’ll be back any time now.
When he pushes the door to her studio open, he notices two things he hasn’t when he looked for his wife earlier that evening. For one, the smell of fresh, wet paint. And then, lined up on the wall in front of the cupboard next to its four counterparts, a fifth painting.
Again, it’s the white tree in the snowy landscape. But it’s full daylight now, and as he kneels down, he can see a lot of details that were hidden by the blacks and blues of the night in the other paintings. The trees are birch trees, white and looming and bare. And there’s not one, but two sets of footprints leading away from the tree at the front and towards the depth of the forest.
The rose is gone.
***
He sits down at the dining room table, phone in hand. He knows all about how the police won’t do anything for 48 hours, so he has decided to just sit and wait. Any minute now, his wife will come back, that he is sure of. He just needs to sit here and wait, and then he won’t need to call the police because Raye will be back.
***
She isn’t.
***
The second the 48 hours are over, he dials the number of the local police station. Calmly, he explains that his wife, Raye Wilkes, five foot six, slender, black hair, 27 years old, last seen Tuesday morning, wearing a beige cashmere jumper and black pants, has disappeared.
They ask whether he has notified her family. He explains that there is only him. They enquire whether she might have gone to see some friends, whether they had problems in their marriage.
No, everything was fine, Cal keeps on saying, but his thoughts always go back to Mina.
He doesn’t mention her.
***
A week goes by, but nothing happens. Raye remains gone. Cal does what he does best: he works. His mobile phone is always switched on, his secretary knows that he is available for any and all personal calls, but he goes in to work at 7.30 and leaves nine hours later. Like clockwork. But the predictability of his own actions no longer soothe him, for he is missing his wife, his shadow, his truly better half.
***
He can’t even say when it starts. All he knows is that some time down the line, he finds himself sleepless and standing in his wife’s studio, staring at those damn trees. It is completely ridiculous, but he feels that this is where he can find Raye.
On the canvas.
That second set of footprints... but this is folly. The police suspect foul play, have begun a country-wide search, and are in the process of talking to everyone Raye has ever met. Of course, Cal thinks, and feels foolish, the person they ought to be talking to is the one she didn’t.
Raye had never met Mina.
He met Raye, left Mina, a clear linear succession, a chronology. But everything comes back to Mina, just as it always had. He doesn’t understand why, but from the moment they moved into the house (that’s not quite right, it was a little later, he corrects himself, not sure why this is important), the memory of Mina became so much more present than it had been the years before, and Raye had picked up on it and had begun to paint the landscape.
The landscape of wintry birch trees, tall and spindly and white and gleaming, with the one rose lying next to the trees in the second to last picture.
A shiver runs down his spine and for a second, it feels as if someone is watching him. He turns around, ever so slowly, but of course, the doorframe is empty, the lights are still on and everything is at is should be.
Except for the absence of Raye, of course.
***
Fourteen days after his wife’s disappearance, he comes home to find a strange man sitting on the frontsteps of his house. He’s a few years younger than himself, and dressed in a wrinkled suit under a thick jacket. There’s a paper coffee mug beside him, and array of cigarette butts cascading down the stairs. Despite the coldness, the man wears neither gloves nor hat.
Cal frowns. “Can I help you?”
The man gets up, shaking some ash off his suit. It leaves grey smudges on the black fabric. “You Calvin Wilkes?” the man asks, cigarette dangling from his lips.
“I am.”
“Care to explain why your wife and ex-girlfriend both went missing within a month of each other?”
And that’s when Cal has to sit down.
***
The man’s name is James Falkner. He is a private investigator hired by the parents of one Noel Allen. Noel Allen who was married to and is divorced from Mina Allen, born Green. Mina, who - just like Raye - has simply disappeared one day.
Calvin invites him in and makes Falkner some coffee while pouring himself a large glass of whiskey. Mina is gone. Mina has disappeared. Mina, who Raye had insisted was dead, and also, present under this very roof.
“So I traced Noel Allen to this tiny village, isolated as fuck, but rather nice landscape. Only found him because I tracked a phone call he made to his late wife-”
“She’s not dead,” Cal interjects angrily. She can’t be. Doesn’t make any sense.
Falkner shrugs. “You don’t know that, now do you? Or has she been here?” He waits for a moment, leaning forward in his chair, all ears, but Cal doesn’t say anything else. Falkner shrugs and continues. “Listen, mate, the way I see it is this: either Mina Allen, Noel Allen and your wife all decided to go on a little road trip together, or something happened to them. What’s more likely, you think?”
Cal looks up, and very much wants to punch the man on his couch.
“So I ask myself: what is the common ground here? What do the three of them have in common? That’s you. So - and I’m going out on a limb here - I say that Noel Allen lies buried in the forest behind that beloved village of his, and now the question is just who put him there. Could be you, could have been his wife. Only person it certainly wasn’t is your wife, who has also conveniently disappeared. Did she find out? Did you have to get rid of her?”
“Are you insinuating I killed my wife?” Cal puts the tumbler down and slowly gets to his feet.
“You or Mina Allen. And the same person murdered Noel Allen.”
“Get out of my house,” Cal says, his voice all ice. Falkner smiles.
“Touched a nerve there, didn’t I?”
“Out,” Cal repeats, and the element of a threat is not lost on the private eye.
James Falkner gets up, but not before draining his coffee mug after giving it a contemplative. He’s at the door when he turns around once more. “Out of interest: whose lipstick mark is that on the mug?”
***
There are lipstick marks on every single mug in the house. They are pink, and perfect.
***
He puts all of them in the dishwasher, and lets it run twice. They come out clean, and he puts them back into the cupboard, convinced that like his wife, he is going crazy.
When he drags himself into the kitchen the next morning, all of the mugs are neatly lined up on the workspace. There is a fresh lipstick mark on every single one.
***
He calls the police. He also calls James Falkner. Together, they search the whole house while Cal sits on the steps outside.
This time, it’s him who adorns the steps with cigarette butts.
***
At some point, Falkner joins him. He looks as tired as Cal feels. Groaning, the private eye sits down, and to anyone walking by, they must seem like old friends. The truth of course is a different one.
“You know, it doesn’t make me suspect you any less. You wouldn’t be the first murderer who involved the police,” James says and offers Cal a cigarette before lighting one for himself.
Cal shakes his head and takes a deep drag. “Think what you will. Just find them.” Just find them, so that this stops, he silently adds and flicks some ash on the steps.
Falkner scratches his head. “Got an artistic streak?”
Cal looks at Falkner with incomprehension. The private eye squints at him, the sunshine hitting his face just so.“The pictures upstairs: did you paint them?”
“No. My wife did.”
“Thought so.”
They sit in silence for a moment, before Falkner flicks his cigarette onto the pavement. “Why exactly did your wife paint the forest behind Noel Allen’s last known place of residence?”
***
Cal spends the whole night staring at the paintings, trying to make sense of it. Uncharacteristically, he fails.
It’s the smell that’s distracting him. The smell of roses. No shower can get rid of it, no open window can banish it. It clings to him, coats him. As the temperature in the house continues to sink, and goosebumps begin to rise on his skin, Cal knows that this cannot be prolonged.
The next morning, he leaves the house at 7.15 and hails a cab that takes him to the airport.
***
James Falkner sits next to him on the plane.
***
Cal rents the car, Falkner drives it. He’s been to the village before, but he didn’t find any trace of Noel Allen then. Honestly, Cal doesn’t think he will now, but Falkner gets paid more the longer and harder he looks, and he just needs to go to the place his wife painted. Just once.
To make sure that Raye - MinaMinaMina his subconscience interjects - isn’t there.
***
The closer they come, the more snow falls.
By the time they reach the cliffside village, they can barely make out the distance marker posts and Cal wonders whether they will wind up racing over the cliffs and into the ocean.
And then he wonders whether that wouldn’t be better anyway.
***
Calvin Wilkes never met Noel Allen. He’s not too keen to, either. But now he’s standing in the man’s living-room in that small house at the edge of the forest while a snow storm rages outside. He is sure that James Falkner did not have a key, but opened the door anyway.
Whoever Noel Allen was - is, he amends - he did not seem to have put much stock into personal possessions or interior design. It’s all bare, but not in the minimalist style that he and Raye prefer, this carefully reduced but rich design. Rather, he gets the sense that Noel Allen just didn’t care.
Falkner fishes a tattered photo from behind the coffee maker. Smiling at him from the crinkled, shiny paper is Mina. She is all radiance, the way he remembered, her smile so bright and full of life.
Cal walks out of the house, slamming the door shut behind him.
The wind and snow smack him in the face, but he doesn’t turn back, just keeps walking, walking until he reaches the forest.
And then it’s like he’s stepped right into his wife’s painting, the trees beckoning towards him and suddenly, the snow smells of roses.
***The End***
A/N: Sequel to my Sequel to my 2011 Halloween fic. Thanks to Charlie for her fear & enthusiasm!
He watches her walk through their new house, running a hand over the old wooden banister, touching the wallpaper. She has her back to him; it makes it impossible for him to gauge her reaction.
“Do you like it?” he asks, uncharacteristically nervous. He had sent her pictures before signing the deal, but of course, it’s never the same thing, seeing something and experiencing it for yourself. He desperately wants her to be happy here, here with him. It’s a sacrifice she’s making, moving halfway across the country so that they can be together and he can take a job that will undoubtedly make his career. Already, there is a buzz about him. He’s the one to watch, one of the best and brightest, even though he himself wouldn’t put it that way. He’s just a lawyer: he learned whatever needed learning, and now he applies it. There is no mystery to it; it’s just a lot of hard work and making sure that you don’t take chances, but calculate risks instead. It’s how he approaches life in general, and it has served him well. His marriage is a case in point.
“It’s wonderful, Calvin,” she says and the serenity in her finely sculpted face tells him he did well. Ever since he met her, he’s been striving to please her. She is a wonderful woman; refined, smart, poised. A wonderful woman, and more importantly, a perfect wife.
“There are three bedrooms upstairs. I thought you could get one as a studio, and I’d take the other as a study.” She nods and begins to climb the stairs. He can tell that in her head, she has already redecorated the whole house, replacing the flower-printed wallpaper with clean beiges, whites and greys. They have the same taste - it makes living together very easy.
“Which bedroom will be ours?” she asks, and following her up the stairs into the second story of the townhouse, he points to the door at the end of narrow hallway. Ignoring the other two doors, she heads straight for the master bedroom and opens the white-painted door. She peers in, nods, and makes for the second bedroom, the one that he thinks would make a good studio. It sits facing east, and the real estate agent assured him that the light was just perfect for an artist such as his wife. He hopes the dreadfully chatty woman was right and that his wife will indeed like it.
Pushing the door open, she lingers in the frame. “Oh.” There is disapproval in her voice. “The previous owners left furniture in here.” He follows her in, his taller frame filling the doorway completely. They stand close, but do not touch. He looks over her head and spots the wrought iron bed. Frowning, he pulls his blackberry from the pocket of his blazer. “I told the real estate agent to get rid of it,” he murmurs and checks his emails. Yes, there it is, a confirmation that all furniture would be removed, dated two weeks ago.
The bed is a frilly affair, the iron curled in too many swirls, with metal roses adorning each bed post. Mina would have loved it, he suddenly thinks.
His wife turns around. “I’ll ask the moving firm whether they can take it away.” She smiles up at him, that small smile of hers, and places a hand on his lapel before squeezing past him. He hears her feet softly tapping down the stairs. Downstairs, the moving firm has begun to carry their possessions into their new home.
This new home in which thoughts of Mina have no place, he thinks, and leaves the room to join his wife downstairs.
***
It was a bit unfortunate that they didn’t have time to get all the renovating done before they actually moved in, but the firm wanted him to start a month earlier than anticipated, so here they are. But Raye is efficient, and she oversees all works with sharp eyes. Luckily, the piping, roof, and electrical wires are all in perfect condition - the previous owners had replaced everything when they moved in five years ago.
It was only the surface of things that need touching up on: the hardwood floors had to be polished, the wallpaper needed replacing, and Raye was adamant that all the crystal chandeliers had to go. Their kitchen, living-room and bedroom were the first to be finished, and now the painters are working their way up the stairs and into the rooms that will be studio and study. Knowing how much he has to work, even at home and after long days in the office, Raye insists that the study be taken care off first. She’s always very considerate, it’s one of the many things he appreciates about her.
Today, he manages to be home in time for dinner. They eat in their kitchen, a quiet meal with classical music playing in the background. In her company, and with the music and the food and the fine wine she has chosen, he can feel himself relax, the tension in his shoulders slowly ebbing away.
“I’m not sure what colour to choose for the studio,” she says conversationally. Chewing and swallowing the last bite of steak, he looks at her. Is she happy here? He thinks so. It’s difficult to tell, even after two years of marriage. A part of him is still used to another woman, one who wears her heart on her sleeve. But that is in the past, and his present and future is sitting opposite him, wondering what colour to choose for her studio space.
“What are the options?” he asks, and takes a sip of wine.
“I have some samples upstairs, would you mind taking a look?”
“Of course not,” Calvin replies and pushes his chair back.
The halogen spotlights have already been built into the walls and ceiling, and he likes that their house is now full of light. She has done well.
The studio still looks the way it did when they moved in, only minus the wrought iron bed. Raye bends down and picks some wallpaper samples up. One is a light blue, an almost bold choice for her. The other is a cream colour, set off with white stripes.
“Why not just paint it white?” he asks, and moves into the room.
She shakes her head at him. “I can’t just paint over the old wallpaper, look, there are too many tears; here, here, and here.” She shows him the cracks and tears, and he shrugs.
“In that case, the striped one.”
He walks around the room. Now that the bed is gone, it feels much bigger. She can set up her easel over there by the window, and then she just needs a few shelves to store her supplies in. A sink would have been ideal, but the builders would have had to rip two walls out to put the necessary piping in place. He knows because he asked them.
Holding the samples in her thin hands, she follows him. She puts the striped one on the wall and fastens it there with a bit of double-sided tape she kept on the window sill. Standing back, she examines it, weighing his opinion against her own.
He knows not to disturb her now, she likes to make her decisions, both big and small, in silence.
So he occupies himself by running a hand over the old wallpaper, reading the tiny flowers like braille. He wonders what colour Mina would have chosen for this room. Pink, perhaps, or purple. She’s terribly fond of all things lurid and bright. Maybe she would have even kept this wallpaper, just putting posters over the rips and tears. She would have liked the tiny red roses and the daisies just as much as she would have hated the indirect lighting and the halogen spotlights in the hallway. All the beige, white and grey in the living room would have driven her to distraction. He still remembers that day she snuck into his apartment while he was in the library. She added potted plants and posters and colourful picture frames with snapshots he didn’t even know she’d taken. He had complained that was she was doing was actually breaking and entering, but secretly, he’d loved her even more for it.
His hand stops and falls to his side. He is standing in his wife’s studio, thinking about the time his ex-girlfriend decorated his apartment for him. Shame rises up in him like an ugly, angry wave.
“You’re right, the striped one it is. I’ll call the painters first thing tomorrow morning.”
Unable to look at her, he fingers one of the tears in the wallpaper, on the wall the headboard of the bed was placed against when they moved in. “Sounds good,” he replies in a voice that betrays none of his feelings. He tugs at the old wallpaper and since it peels off easily, he proceeds. Behind him, Raye sighs. “Cal, the painters can do that.” But he is undeterred, and soon, long strands of flower-printed wallpaper tumble onto the floor. If he can get it all down, he tries to convince himself, then the thoughts of Mina will go away. He just needs to rid himself and his house of everything that could bring up memories of the woman he has banished from his life over three years ago.
Suddenly, he realises that it’s not a wall that he is ripping the wallpaper off. It’s a cupboard. He stops.
“What’s this?” Raye sounds surprised, and he steps aside to afford her a better look. It’s she who tears the last remaining strip of wallpaper off, little red roses and daisies falling to the floor, and then the second door of the cupboard comes into vision. There are no knobs to open it, someone must haven screwed them off. But they can see where they ought to be, two identical holes to give their location away.
Raye tries to open the two small doors, but without the knobs, she can’t pry them open. “I’ll get a screwdriver,” Cal offers, and goes away to fetch one. He returns quickly: even though they just moved in, both he and Raye are very organised people, so everything has its place, from the keys in the bowl by the front door to the alphabetised books in the living-room and the toolbox under the kitchen sink.
She takes the screwdriver from his hand and slides it between the doors. Angling right, she applies pressure, and with a soft click, the right half of the double doors pops open. The left one she can now open with her hand.
It’s a small cupboard, not very deep, and only three shelves high. On the top shelf, a dust-covered compact mirror lies waiting to be found.
Raye picks it up and flips it open. The glass is cracked. Their eyes meet in the broken glass as he looks over her shoulder. Suddenly, she frowns, snaps it shut and turns to him, her beautiful face unreadable. “Can you throw this away, please?”
From her outstretched hand, he accepts the mirror and does as she asked.
***
Two weeks later, the whole house is ready . If they had any friends in the city, now would have been the time to invite them to a housewarming party. But their friends live far away and Cal sees so much of his new colleagues that he is not too keen to have them in his house, too.
Raye spends most of her time upstairs in the studio, painting all day long, and sometimes even into the night. Her style has changed - where it used to be geometrical forms, clean cut and simple, made striking through slightly different shades of colour applied with meticulous care, she now paints dark landscapes. Cal is secretly happy that Raye never hangs her own paintings in their home, but sells them in small galleries instead.
The latest painting, the one she is putting her initials on right now as he stands behind her, depicts a spindly tree in a snowy winter landscape, after night has fallen. It’s all black and grey and dirty brown, and the longer he looks at it, the less he likes it. The tree gleams on the canvas, looking more alive than an inanimate, painted object has any right to. Of course, it’s because the acrylic paint is not yet dry, Cal thinks, and wonders whether he will like the painting any better once the colour has settled.
“What was you ex-girlfriend’s name again?” Raye asks, apropos of nothing. Cal frowns.
“Mina. Why?” They don’t talk about her, never. Raye knows that when they met, there was someone else, someone he left for her, but that’s it. That’s all she needs to know, and Cal wants to keep it that way.
Putting the small brush away, Raye steps back to examine her work. He can tell by the way her shoulders are set that she’s not happy with it. She reaches for the canvas with her right hand, and wedding band and engagement right, sitting on the same finger, glint in the halogen light.
“Raye, why are you asking about her?” Cal asks, going very, very still.
“Because she’s dead,” Raye answers, and turns to him, violet eyes burning. “And also,” she adds, “she’s here.”
***
He has no idea what’s going on with his wife, no idea at all. He cannot even begin to comprehend it. Raye insists that Mina is haunting them, walking around in their house. Maybe it’s the stress from the move. Maybe she misses her friends. Maybe she has noticed that he is thinking about Mina sometimes. Maybe it’s all of it, and maybe it’s nothing, he really doesn’t know.
All he knows is that at night, she sleeps as far away from him as possible. Another person could fit into the space she leaves between them, and it’s frustrating him.
During the day, she continues to paint. It’s always the tree now, the tree in snow and night. Three canvases with the same motif. He barely looks at them. His eyes are on his wife instead. Raye is sitting on the window sill in her studio, clutching a mug of steaming tea. Outside, the sun shines brightly. It’s a lovely winter day; if only she’d spare a moment to see it. But she won’t: Raye hasn’t left the house since the day she asked about Mina.
“Why is she here?” Raye asks again, and Cal sighs. They’ve been over this. He walks over to Raye and takes the mug out of her hands. He places it on the floor, and in an unusual display of affection, pulls her into his arms. “Please, you need to stop,” he whispers against her hair.
“But she won’t go away,” Rei whispers back and Cal looks around in the studio, sunlit and innocent, with its new striped wallpaper.
There is no one here but them.
***
He is fast asleep one second, and then in the next, shoots up in bed, heart racing. Raye is nowhere to be seen: he is alone. But it doesn’t feel like he’s alone. For just a second, the smell of roses fills his nose, but it’s gone before he has fully wrapped his mind around it. Roses. Mina wore them in her hair the day they met. Reaching for the lamp on the bedside table and flicking it on, he looks around the room. No flowers in sight, not even a potted plant. Nothing.
The lamp’s warm light reaches into the room, banishing dreams and shadows alike. No roses, no Mina, nothing to worry about. The smell must have been a dream.
He groans, and sinks back into the pillows. He needs to sleep - work is only five hours away. For a moment, he contemplates getting up to look for his wife, but he can hear the softest scratching from the next door down. She’s in her studio, painting. The scratching is her mixing colours, a sound he’s become familiar with over the years. She’ll be standing under the lamp, palette in one hand and palette knife in the other. But if he walks over now, then without a doubt, Raye will continue to talk about Mina and her alleged death and that is something he can’t deal with right now.
Cal runs a hand over his face. He is so tired of this. So tired.
***
The next morning comes and he finds his wife asleep on the studio floor, surrounded by the three paintings she finished over the last few weeks. Careful not to wake her, he picks the paintings up and props them against the cupboard.
It’s always the tree. But now that he’s looking at them, he can see that the paintings are not exactly alike. The one she painted first shows the tree during night, one gleaming shape in the darkness. The next one reveals that what he thought was a black sky in the background is actually a forest, and the tree is in the middle of it. When he looks at the third one, he realises that Raye is not only painting through the night in the sense that she doesn’t come to bed, but also in the sense that the night on the tree landscape is drawing to a close. The third painting is more grey than black, and he is almost able to count the trees. Their shapes are becoming more distinct. It almost seems as if they are reaching out of the canvas, but that’s silly.
“This one is finished too,” Raye mutters behind him, making Cal jump. He whips around just as Raye scrapes herself off the floor. There are dark circles under her eyes. He offers her a hand and pulls her up. That’s when he notices that she’s not wearing her wedding band.
The fourth painting sits on the easel. The night is over, morning has arrived. She picks the painting up and places it next to the others. Cal swallows. On the canvas, among the trees, he can see footsteps in the snow.
Footsteps, and a single red rose.
***
Safely in his office, between his eight and nine o’clock meeting, he pulls open a desk drawer and takes a small black book out. He keeps all important phone numbers in this book, especially the ones he deleted off his mobile phone years ago. You never know when you need to call an old colleague, a former client, or, as is the case now, an ex-girlfriend.
Picking up the receiver, he dials her number, but an computer-generated voice tells him it’s no longer in use. So she changed her mobile phone number. Many people do that. He himself hasn’t, of course. He has had the same number for the past twelve years. It’s for this reason that he is so sure that nothing has happened to Mina. If she had died, as Raye insists, then Mina’s mother would have known how to reach him. There is not a shadow of doubt that she would have notified him: they’d always gotten along well, and he doesn’t believe that Mina would have told her mother about how he had left her for another woman.
Cal puts the black book in the drawer again and pushes it shut. He can’t go home to Raye tonight unless he can give her proof that Mina is alive. So he rings up directory assistance, and is connected to the next free operator.
“Directory Assistance, how can I help you?”
“I need a phone number. Mina Penelope Green. London,” he says. He heard from mutual friends that she moved to London after finishing her degree. Hackney, he believes. She works in an advertising agency near Leicester Square - he doesn’t quite remember who told him. Not that it matters.
“I have a Mina Penelope Allen, born Green, in Kensington.”
She got married. Of course. She got married. Why wouldn’t she? He jots down the number and hangs up without a thank you. Mina Allen. He doesn’t know anyone named Allen, she must have met him only after he himself had already left the picture. Mina Allen. No longer Mina Green. And suddenly, he can understand Raye. Yes, Mina is dead. Only not in the way his wife thinks.
Mina Green is dead.
But he is sure that Mina Allen is perfectly okay. He just doesn’t want to speak to her.
***
He comes home to a dark house. Setting his briefcase on the kitchen counter, he looks around. No dinner. Two dirty mugs in the sink, a brown apple core next to an empty packet of cornflakes.
Shaking his head, he plucks the phone from the wall and calls a pizza place whose leaflet was among the post he collected from their letterbox. Two pizzas, a salad, garlic butter, and some lasagna. If the apple and cornflakes are all his wife ate over the course of the whole day, she might be hungry.
But when he walks upstairs, he can’t find Raye. She’s not in her studio, not in bed, not taking a bath. She’s not in his study and not in the small attic under the roof. She isn’t in the cellar either. There is no note to tell him she’s gone out, and no message on the machine, no text or email on his blackberry.
By the time the food arrives, he has taken up residence in the living-room, watching a sports channel. There’s a big Premier League game tonight, so he might as well watch that while waiting for his wife to come home. He doesn’t feel like eating in the kitchen with soft music in the background when he’s the only person in the house. It would feel weird. It would feel sad.
It’s only after the game is over and he’s reviewed the contract for his 11 o’clock meeting tomorrow that he truly begins to worry. It’s not like Raye to be flighty and to disappear; she is a reliable woman, which is one of the reasons why he chose to marry her and not --- he stops himself. He won’t go there again, not tonight.
He gets up, leaving the television on. Still, no email or message on the machine. Maybe he just missed the note she left for him. Maybe she is meeting gallery owners, or is out for a long, long walk. Perhaps she went to the opera.
Still, now that he is really allowing himself to think about her unexplained absence, he grows nervous. Methodically, he searches all of the downstairs rooms for a note while ringing her mobile phone over and over again. He leaves her two messages, both tense, and then, with a sigh, gives up. There is nothing to find here, nothing except the two mugs and the apple core, the only proof that she was down here-
----
The realisation is sudden. Why two mugs? Why not one? Raye reuses her mug all day, she wouldn’t have used a second one. He steps back to the sink and looks down. One mug has a few remnants of green tea in it, just a sip. The other is completely empty, but there is a thin line near the top of the mug where the tea has stained the china, a perfect circle.
Who was Raye’s visitor?
Reaching into the sink, he picks the mug up and turns it in his hand. That’s when he notices the lipstick mark. Pink. Pink lipstick on his wife’s china mug. Only that Raye doesn’t wear lipstick, ever.
He sets the mug down, carefully, as if it were a bomb and not a harmless piece of crockery. It’s silly, but he can’t shake an image from his head: Mina and her silly giggles as she smeared her pink lipstick all over his collar the day he was supposed to go in for his big interview. He never made it there, and spent the day in bed with her instead. Of course, once he realised what she was doing, could do, to his career, he had to leave her, but in that moment, he’d been happy.
Same shade of pink.
As he leaves the kitchen and makes his way up the stairs, he tries to tell himself that it’s just a coincidence and he’s not able to tell one shade of pink from another anyway. Raye might have had a neighbour over. She might have used a second cup. She might have felt like wearing lipstick. She’ll be back any time now.
When he pushes the door to her studio open, he notices two things he hasn’t when he looked for his wife earlier that evening. For one, the smell of fresh, wet paint. And then, lined up on the wall in front of the cupboard next to its four counterparts, a fifth painting.
Again, it’s the white tree in the snowy landscape. But it’s full daylight now, and as he kneels down, he can see a lot of details that were hidden by the blacks and blues of the night in the other paintings. The trees are birch trees, white and looming and bare. And there’s not one, but two sets of footprints leading away from the tree at the front and towards the depth of the forest.
The rose is gone.
***
He sits down at the dining room table, phone in hand. He knows all about how the police won’t do anything for 48 hours, so he has decided to just sit and wait. Any minute now, his wife will come back, that he is sure of. He just needs to sit here and wait, and then he won’t need to call the police because Raye will be back.
***
She isn’t.
***
The second the 48 hours are over, he dials the number of the local police station. Calmly, he explains that his wife, Raye Wilkes, five foot six, slender, black hair, 27 years old, last seen Tuesday morning, wearing a beige cashmere jumper and black pants, has disappeared.
They ask whether he has notified her family. He explains that there is only him. They enquire whether she might have gone to see some friends, whether they had problems in their marriage.
No, everything was fine, Cal keeps on saying, but his thoughts always go back to Mina.
He doesn’t mention her.
***
A week goes by, but nothing happens. Raye remains gone. Cal does what he does best: he works. His mobile phone is always switched on, his secretary knows that he is available for any and all personal calls, but he goes in to work at 7.30 and leaves nine hours later. Like clockwork. But the predictability of his own actions no longer soothe him, for he is missing his wife, his shadow, his truly better half.
***
He can’t even say when it starts. All he knows is that some time down the line, he finds himself sleepless and standing in his wife’s studio, staring at those damn trees. It is completely ridiculous, but he feels that this is where he can find Raye.
On the canvas.
That second set of footprints... but this is folly. The police suspect foul play, have begun a country-wide search, and are in the process of talking to everyone Raye has ever met. Of course, Cal thinks, and feels foolish, the person they ought to be talking to is the one she didn’t.
Raye had never met Mina.
He met Raye, left Mina, a clear linear succession, a chronology. But everything comes back to Mina, just as it always had. He doesn’t understand why, but from the moment they moved into the house (that’s not quite right, it was a little later, he corrects himself, not sure why this is important), the memory of Mina became so much more present than it had been the years before, and Raye had picked up on it and had begun to paint the landscape.
The landscape of wintry birch trees, tall and spindly and white and gleaming, with the one rose lying next to the trees in the second to last picture.
A shiver runs down his spine and for a second, it feels as if someone is watching him. He turns around, ever so slowly, but of course, the doorframe is empty, the lights are still on and everything is at is should be.
Except for the absence of Raye, of course.
***
Fourteen days after his wife’s disappearance, he comes home to find a strange man sitting on the frontsteps of his house. He’s a few years younger than himself, and dressed in a wrinkled suit under a thick jacket. There’s a paper coffee mug beside him, and array of cigarette butts cascading down the stairs. Despite the coldness, the man wears neither gloves nor hat.
Cal frowns. “Can I help you?”
The man gets up, shaking some ash off his suit. It leaves grey smudges on the black fabric. “You Calvin Wilkes?” the man asks, cigarette dangling from his lips.
“I am.”
“Care to explain why your wife and ex-girlfriend both went missing within a month of each other?”
And that’s when Cal has to sit down.
***
The man’s name is James Falkner. He is a private investigator hired by the parents of one Noel Allen. Noel Allen who was married to and is divorced from Mina Allen, born Green. Mina, who - just like Raye - has simply disappeared one day.
Calvin invites him in and makes Falkner some coffee while pouring himself a large glass of whiskey. Mina is gone. Mina has disappeared. Mina, who Raye had insisted was dead, and also, present under this very roof.
“So I traced Noel Allen to this tiny village, isolated as fuck, but rather nice landscape. Only found him because I tracked a phone call he made to his late wife-”
“She’s not dead,” Cal interjects angrily. She can’t be. Doesn’t make any sense.
Falkner shrugs. “You don’t know that, now do you? Or has she been here?” He waits for a moment, leaning forward in his chair, all ears, but Cal doesn’t say anything else. Falkner shrugs and continues. “Listen, mate, the way I see it is this: either Mina Allen, Noel Allen and your wife all decided to go on a little road trip together, or something happened to them. What’s more likely, you think?”
Cal looks up, and very much wants to punch the man on his couch.
“So I ask myself: what is the common ground here? What do the three of them have in common? That’s you. So - and I’m going out on a limb here - I say that Noel Allen lies buried in the forest behind that beloved village of his, and now the question is just who put him there. Could be you, could have been his wife. Only person it certainly wasn’t is your wife, who has also conveniently disappeared. Did she find out? Did you have to get rid of her?”
“Are you insinuating I killed my wife?” Cal puts the tumbler down and slowly gets to his feet.
“You or Mina Allen. And the same person murdered Noel Allen.”
“Get out of my house,” Cal says, his voice all ice. Falkner smiles.
“Touched a nerve there, didn’t I?”
“Out,” Cal repeats, and the element of a threat is not lost on the private eye.
James Falkner gets up, but not before draining his coffee mug after giving it a contemplative. He’s at the door when he turns around once more. “Out of interest: whose lipstick mark is that on the mug?”
***
There are lipstick marks on every single mug in the house. They are pink, and perfect.
***
He puts all of them in the dishwasher, and lets it run twice. They come out clean, and he puts them back into the cupboard, convinced that like his wife, he is going crazy.
When he drags himself into the kitchen the next morning, all of the mugs are neatly lined up on the workspace. There is a fresh lipstick mark on every single one.
***
He calls the police. He also calls James Falkner. Together, they search the whole house while Cal sits on the steps outside.
This time, it’s him who adorns the steps with cigarette butts.
***
At some point, Falkner joins him. He looks as tired as Cal feels. Groaning, the private eye sits down, and to anyone walking by, they must seem like old friends. The truth of course is a different one.
“You know, it doesn’t make me suspect you any less. You wouldn’t be the first murderer who involved the police,” James says and offers Cal a cigarette before lighting one for himself.
Cal shakes his head and takes a deep drag. “Think what you will. Just find them.” Just find them, so that this stops, he silently adds and flicks some ash on the steps.
Falkner scratches his head. “Got an artistic streak?”
Cal looks at Falkner with incomprehension. The private eye squints at him, the sunshine hitting his face just so.“The pictures upstairs: did you paint them?”
“No. My wife did.”
“Thought so.”
They sit in silence for a moment, before Falkner flicks his cigarette onto the pavement. “Why exactly did your wife paint the forest behind Noel Allen’s last known place of residence?”
***
Cal spends the whole night staring at the paintings, trying to make sense of it. Uncharacteristically, he fails.
It’s the smell that’s distracting him. The smell of roses. No shower can get rid of it, no open window can banish it. It clings to him, coats him. As the temperature in the house continues to sink, and goosebumps begin to rise on his skin, Cal knows that this cannot be prolonged.
The next morning, he leaves the house at 7.15 and hails a cab that takes him to the airport.
***
James Falkner sits next to him on the plane.
***
Cal rents the car, Falkner drives it. He’s been to the village before, but he didn’t find any trace of Noel Allen then. Honestly, Cal doesn’t think he will now, but Falkner gets paid more the longer and harder he looks, and he just needs to go to the place his wife painted. Just once.
To make sure that Raye - MinaMinaMina his subconscience interjects - isn’t there.
***
The closer they come, the more snow falls.
By the time they reach the cliffside village, they can barely make out the distance marker posts and Cal wonders whether they will wind up racing over the cliffs and into the ocean.
And then he wonders whether that wouldn’t be better anyway.
***
Calvin Wilkes never met Noel Allen. He’s not too keen to, either. But now he’s standing in the man’s living-room in that small house at the edge of the forest while a snow storm rages outside. He is sure that James Falkner did not have a key, but opened the door anyway.
Whoever Noel Allen was - is, he amends - he did not seem to have put much stock into personal possessions or interior design. It’s all bare, but not in the minimalist style that he and Raye prefer, this carefully reduced but rich design. Rather, he gets the sense that Noel Allen just didn’t care.
Falkner fishes a tattered photo from behind the coffee maker. Smiling at him from the crinkled, shiny paper is Mina. She is all radiance, the way he remembered, her smile so bright and full of life.
Cal walks out of the house, slamming the door shut behind him.
The wind and snow smack him in the face, but he doesn’t turn back, just keeps walking, walking until he reaches the forest.
And then it’s like he’s stepped right into his wife’s painting, the trees beckoning towards him and suddenly, the snow smells of roses.
***The End***