The Significant Others of Odie May

By Claire Dyer

On the night Odie May and her married lover are due to celebrate him leaving his wife, Odie goes out to buy a bottle of his favourite wine and, on her way home, is murdered by a woman in a lime green coat. But Odie’s story does not end there… 

Next, she finds herself in a waiting room with a man who introduces himself as Carl Draper and who tells her he is her Initial Contact. He is carrying a clipboard and invites her into an interview room. Over the course of her interview, Carl guides Odie back through the years, asking her about the significant others in her life in a quest to work out what she’s done wrong, who might have murdered her and why. 

As Odie comes to realise the truth about herself, the life she’s led and her death, she's given a choice: Carl can put her back to the moment before she was murdered and prevent it from happening, but this comes at a price Odie doesn't know if she can pay and, as she decides, she not only begins to understand what she has to do to become the person she should have been all along, but who is her most significant significant other.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Jul 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781800465831

Claire Dyer

Claire Dyer’s poetry collections and novels are published by Two Rivers Press, Quercus and The Dome Press. She curates Reading's Poets’ Café, teaches creative writing and runs Fresh Eyes, an editorial and critiquing service. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London and is a regular contributor on BBC Radio Berkshire.

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About the Author

Claire Dyer is a poet and novelist living in Reading, Berkshire. She holds a BA in English & History from the University of Birmingham, an MA in Victorian Literature & Culture from the University of Reading and an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London.

By the same author

Fiction

The Moment

The Perfect Affair

Falling for Gatsby

The Last Day

Poetry

Eleven Rooms

Interference Effects

Yield

Copyright © 2021 Claire Dyer

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,

or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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For Jez

Praise for ‘The Last Day’

‘A tender, beautifully written book about marriage, love, grief and fear: how all can be lost in a moment, and how hope survives.’

– Julie Cohen, author of

Richard & Judy Book Club bestseller ‘Together’

‘Turn off your phone, put a Do Not Disturb sign on the door, and curl up with this gem of a book.’

– Amanda Jennings, author of ‘The Storm’

‘Sharply observed, cleverly constructed and exquisitely written. Emotionally intelligent and intense, I am completely hooked…’

– Rosanna Ley, author of ‘The Orange Grove’

‘Claire Dyer understands humanity and presents it on the page with utmost skill.’

– Linda Hill, Linda’s Book Bag

Praise for ‘The Perfect Affair’

‘A beautifully told, absorbing romance.’

– Sunday Mirror

Praise for ‘The Moment’

‘A man, a woman, and a what-if moment that will give you goose bumps. A genuine contender for the crown of this year’s One Day.’

– Louise Candlish, author of ‘The Other Passenger’

Praise for ‘Yield’

‘… a warm embrace of a book. A chronicle of love, generosity and ethics, Yield is a restorative piece of writing – a solace.’

– Kathryn Maris

Praise for ‘Interference Effects’

‘… the other side of the ordinary.’

– Gillian Clarke

Praise for ‘Eleven Rooms’

‘There’s a clarity about Claire Dyer’s poems that makes them immediately attractive.’

– Andrew Motion

Contents

About the Author

Interview

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Interview

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Interview

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Acknowledgements

Interview

(part 1)

DI Bob Wyatt leans across the desk. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he says.

‘What I mean is that once Odie fixes her sights on you, it’s hard to get away. She’s…’

‘Yes?’ DI Wyatt runs his hand over the dome of his bald head. He’s exhausted; first it was the funeral, then after the funeral, now this, and he’s had enough of the suspect’s prevarications.

He wants to know the how and when of it, not the why and if. These things don’t interest him.

The suspect shifts in their seat and looks at their solicitor and then, fixing Bob with a stare he doesn’t quite understand, says, ‘She’s mesmeric and insistent and, to put it bluntly, she was just too needy; need oozed from every pore. It was kind of nice, to start with at least. But the trouble with Odie May is that she takes things too far. I’m not sorry for what I’ve done; I had my reasons and she had it coming.’

One

Odie: On the night in question (part 2), November 2019

I’ve never been one of those who thinks first and acts second; instead, I’ve done things – bad things, things that have had unsavoury consequences – and then spent time justifying the doing of them afterwards. So, as the knife went in and I sank to the ground, I did wonder if this was some sort of payback for me choosing to follow ‘Odie May’s Guide to Getting Her Own Way’.

And, inconveniently, whilst it only took her seconds to kill me – the plunge of the knife between the ribs – the actual dying took a while, letting me think and, as we already know, thinking deeply is not one of my strengths; what a time to get a direct line to a good old dose of self-knowledge, eh?

It was hard to know who she was, although I had my suspicions. The hood and sunglasses didn’t help. I mean who wears shades at night, only minor celebrities or F1 racing drivers on chat show couches, certainly not your average murderer, surely? And she had a scarf over her mouth which only left her nose visible. Not really helpful for picking her out of an identity parade either. Not that I would be doing that, anyway, seeing that I was dying.

One thing I did notice, however, was that she was strong for a woman: strong arms, strong hands, covered as they were with black leather gloves. I guess it was her rage, whatever the cause, that made her so.

There are, I’ve come to learn, five key things about dying. Firstly, you feel the cold really quickly. Maybe it’s the shock, or the blood loss, but almost immediately it grew chilly, and it wasn’t a surface cold, it was a deep down one: the cold of ghosts and dark attics.

Secondly, it’s a lonely business. I’d rather hoped she’d stick around and watch – it would have been nice to have the company, but no, she walked away, and I watched her go, her lime green coat like a beacon in the dusk. I could tell she was upset as her shoulders were up almost next to her ears; she looked like a walking felt tip pen as she disappeared from view, but she didn’t look back, and she didn’t falter. One sure step, then another and she was gone. I envied her this certainty in a strange way.

The third thing is that your life doesn’t flash before your eyes.

The fourth is that the life you wished you had does.

I wished for a roses-around-the-door type of life, I truly did. You may not think it to look at me and the choices I’ve made, but beneath it all, I yearned for normal, for a relationship. I wanted to be the one people turn to in times of need, someone who was supportive and positive and selfless.

Moreover, I imagined for myself a kitchen with a large pine table in it, a range, two flaxen-haired children, a Welsh dresser stacked with grown-up crockery, Portmeirion perhaps, a dog. It would be summer; late afternoon, just before supper time, and my partner (male or female, I wouldn’t mind – it’s the person and the love that matters) would be nearly home. I’d have got back from work a bit earlier and picked the children up from school (I’d like to think I worked for a charity alongside a capable colleague called Simon who wore hand-knitted cardigans and suede loafers) and my family and I would have dinner and chat about ordinary, everyday things. After we’d eaten I’d take the dog out while my partner helped with homework time and, even later, I’d sleep next to the someone I loved and the roses around the door would be luminous and blooming, even in the dark.

And finally, if you’re not ready to die you get as mad as hell that you’re doing so. And I was well and truly pissed off because everything in my life, whilst not being the perfect version I’d hoped for, had recently started to slot into place: I liked my job, my flat, and my mother and I were getting along a bit better after The Great Upset. For now, most things had aligned themselves quite nicely and, as the wine bottle lying next to me was testament to, Michael had finally made his decision, and had chosen me.

I guess these were my biggest peeves at the time, Michael and the wine; his favourite, Malbec.

Michael… he was due to arrive at the flat in half an hour and would wonder where I was.

I could see him letting himself in with his key, standing in the doorway and listening. Maybe he’d call out, ‘Odie? You here?’

The hall light would be falling on his dark hair, his mouth would be twitching getting ready to say something to me should I reply. His feet would be firmly planted on the woodblock floor, his long legs, his broad back under his leather jacket.

My God, how I loved that body.

But there’d be no answer of course. Just silence, especially if Peter the Cat was out.

‘Shit,’ I mouthed uselessly on the footpath under the bridge next to the canal. I was colder now, and even lonelier.

My thoughts started to scatter. One minute I was wondering why couldn’t she have done it, stabbed me that is, before I splashed out on the drink. Now it would only go to waste, be gathered up as evidence. It was just out of reach where I’d fallen after the stabbing. I could really have done with being able to reach it, twisting off the cap and taking a swig. Believe me. Perhaps if I move just a little, I thought…

The next, I was thinking of Peter. Peter, fur as soft as angel hair, grey the colour of a wet pebble, her long sinuous body. I was quite pleased with the word ‘sinuous’, quite an achievement when you’re mortally wounded.

Peter had found me about a year ago. Had turned up one day and hadn’t left. At first, I’d thought he was a boy, hence the name. However, on our first vet visit, where we talked castration, the vet had said she was a girl. But by then the name had stuck, and anyway, wasn’t Peter a girl’s name? Some posh people call their daughters Peter, don’t they?

I knew I was rambling by then. Comes with the territory, I guess.

I was also scared: scared of the unknown, as well as the normal FOMO. Also, whilst I knew I wasn’t anywhere near pure as the driven, this – whatever the reason for it – was a rather extreme response and absurdly unfair. Even with the extra special clarity of self-knowledge that (apparently) comes with dying, I knew I really didn’t deserve this.

Or did I? Things were very confusing at that moment.

And why here? Being stabbed in the evening on the footpath under the bridge next to the canal was such a cliché. In the tradition of the best TV crime dramas, the light was dimming; no one was about, just the distant hum of the city, the odd siren…

My last word (I think) was probably, ‘Fuck,’ and then I died.

Two

And now I’m in a beige waiting room; angry, afraid, and still cold.

Everything in the room is beige: walls, floor, chairs. Even the notices on the notice board advertising wing trimming services, cloud removal companies, confession and absolution services are printed on beige paper. The notice board itself is beige.

There are no windows. Just a beige door in one of the beige walls, discernible only by its handle and hinges.

My other main concern right now is, however, that I don’t seem to have my bag with me. I’d always hoped I’d be the type of girl who could tuck her hair behind her ears and her phone in the pocket of her jeans, who wore cowboy boots and chewed gum. Someone who didn’t need to be tethered by a handbag. Either that, or a ballerina. I didn’t mind which, but I hadn’t been either type. Instead, I’d been needy, shy, unkind at times, and mostly always welded to my handbag like it was a life raft: more insights into Odie May I could really do without right now.

So, no bag and, I realise to my horror, no phone. But then, even if I did have it with me, there’d probably be no reception here. Another government cock-up, not enough Gs to reach where I am. If you think it’s patchy in the Lake District (and parts of the Surrey Hills so I’ve been told), just imagine what it would be like here. No, my phone therefore would be ringing in my bag next to the bottle of wine on that bloody tow path where there is reception, the masts pinging out electromagnetic waves providing the police with proof of where I was, where Michael was, and where the woman who killed me was, when I died.

There’ll most likely be a couple of calls from Michael by now, then a narky voicemail, ‘Where are you, Odie? Get in touch, or…’ Then I imagine his voice fading away and the veiled threat, ‘…or I’ll be forced to go back, and you know what that’ll mean. We only have one chance at this.’

He’ll only be narky because he’s worried. It’s an important evening for both of us.

There may also be a call from Mum, but she won’t leave a message. She doesn’t trust mobiles as she thinks they’re not private and, in this instance, I guess she’d be right. After all, some SOCO will no doubt be slipping the handset into an evidence bag and, in a dim room in a police station, there’ll be someone trying to break my password and scroll through my messages, and photos. The thought horrifies me. I feel suddenly exposed, as if I’m naked. We don’t realise how much we rely on the routines and certainties of our lives until something (or someone) comes along and derails them.

I cross and uncross my legs. It’s odd that I don’t need the loo. My bladder has always been the size of an acorn, but maybe being here is a kind of cure. Every cloud and all that.

Then, digging deep into my reserves of courage, telling myself, you can do this, Odie, I look about me and spot a couple of others in the waiting room: an old bald guy dressed in a suit and tie and looking like a seated pencil; a child, a young girl, also bald, with huge eyes, the palest skin that looks as thin as the paper notices on the noticeboard, and a head far too heavy for her body. No, I think, it’s not fair she should be here. The old bloke, OK. Me? The jury’s still out, obviously. But not her. Definitely not her. Sodding cancer. She doesn’t even have anyone with her, no nurse, parent or even a soft toy.

She’s looking at me with those huge eyes and, to my great surprise, because I didn’t think I had it in me, I’m on the verge of standing and going over to sit by her, when the waiting room door opens, and a young man walks in holding a clipboard.

He studies the clipboard, clears his throat and says, ‘Odette May?’

Perhaps if I stay quiet, he’ll go. I could be anyone I want to be here, surely? I could reinvent myself as Natasha Bellafonté. I’ve always wanted to be called Natasha and have a surname with an e acute at the end. As Natasha I could be graceful, poised and beautiful with long dark tresses and ivory skin, and not the small, wiry, crew-cut-flat-chested-almost-boy I am. How Michael fell for me I still don’t know.

I was named after Mum watched a retrospective on Margot Fonteyn the year Margot died which, coincidently, was the year I was born and, not liking the name Margot (something to do with a great-aunt who’d made Mum eat banana sandwiches as a child) she decided on Odette, after Swan Lake. Since then, everyone’s called me Odie.

Sorry, I’m rambling again.

The young man repeats my name.

‘Yes?’ I look up at him but find that I can’t smile. Although I’m slightly warmer now, I pull my coat around me.

‘Odette Briony May? Born 15th February 1991? Living at 12 Lancaster Gardens, daughter of Kevin May and Susan Barker?’

Ye gods, rub it in why don’t you? Briony? I can just about stand Odette, but Briony? I hate that name. And there’s really no need to mention Kevin bloody May. I’ve been trying to ignore that name for years, and particularly don’t want to think it here and now. I feel that I’ve already gone through enough for one day.

‘Follow me,’ the man says and, for want of anything else to do, and not a small amount of curiosity but still brimming with outrage, I do. I feel like tapping the man on the shoulder and saying, ‘Hey, there’s been a mistake. I’m not supposed to be here. Can you put me back where I belong, back in my life, back with Mum and Michael and Peter the Cat?’

The man, however, doesn’t seem to invite conversation. Instead, he leads me into a beige corridor, with more beige doors leading off it. Each door has a number on it. He takes me to room number 3.

Inside the room is a rectangular table with a chair either side of it; all the walls are blank apart from one which has one of those one-way mirror window things you also see in films. My reflection is a bit distorted, but I can tell it’s me and it doesn’t look like I’ve changed much, there’s not even any blood on my coat. That’s odd, I think.

I can’t see what’s on the other side of the glass. I suppose whoever is in the next room can see in and will be carefully watching me. I hope I do OK. I wouldn’t want to let myself down, not when I’m on show like this. Even here, my bonkers sense of insecurity and pride is alive and well. Perhaps ‘alive and well’ isn’t the right phrase, but…

‘Um,’ the man says, interrupting my thought process, ‘would you like to sit down?’

It seems the only option, so I do. He sits opposite and puts the clipboard on the table between us.

I look at him. He’s what Mum would call swarthy. The way she says it makes it sound somewhat distasteful, like gypsies in kids’ novels when she was young, or foreigners.

I know, I’m sorry, my mother’s not particularly politically correct. She tries to be, but she finds it hard; she’s been through a lot, has Mum. But for now I push her to the back of my mind, where she stands stiffly next to Michael, who’s also back there for the time being. They don’t like each other, my mother and my lover, and now I won’t be able to do anything about that either.

Being here is, I’m beginning to realise, really crap and, worryingly, it seems there may not be a quick fix to get me back where I belong. It’s all looking scarily formal here.

The man in front of me interrupts my thoughts yet again by tapping the nib of his pen on the table-top.

I study him some more. As I’ve already said, he’s swarthy, with hair the colour of chestnuts falling in ringlets around chiselled cheekbones (think Aidan Turner as Poldark and then some), brown eyes which seem sunken, the skin around them bruised-looking. He appears to be exhausted.

His mouth is perfect though, and he has a dimple in the middle of his chin.

He is also cadaverously thin. Mum pops into the front of my mind again to tell me he could do with a warm meal, something nourishing like beef stew with cheesy dumplings.

I remember her slow-cooked meals, how I’d open the front door after school in the years after Dad left and be welcomed by the smell of one of her casseroles. Despite everything else, she’d done that bit right, had Mum. It’s strange I’m not hungry. By rights I should be. I haven’t eaten anything since that prawn sandwich at lunch. Seems a lifetime ago now, literally. I wouldn’t recommend dying as a slimming aid, but then again…

‘So, Odette…’ he says, cutting across my scattered musings one more time.

‘Call me Odie. Everyone does.’

‘Odie. My name’s Carl Draper. I’m your Initial Contact.’

*

We’re sitting facing one another, like chess players.

‘So,’ I say at last, not able to bear the silence any longer, ‘how long’s this going to take?’

I guess my tone was a bit brusque, but then, hey, I have just been stabbed.

‘Why?’ he asks, looking at me with those eyes, that mouth twitching (I think) half in annoyance, half in amusement, ‘you got somewhere else you’d rather be?’

Of course I have, you moron; I’m here in this strange place when I should be back at my flat, with Michael and the Malbec and the future we’d planned.

‘Well duh,’ I say. ‘I can think of other places, yeah, for sure.’

‘There’s no need to adopt that tone.’

He sounds like my old science teacher at school. Miss Parkinson had always seemed a disappointed woman: disappointed in us as pupils, and the world in general. When I stood in front of her accepting whatever punishment she felt I deserved, I’d always reply with a hint of something in my voice and then she’d say, ‘There’s no need to adopt that tone with me, my girl.’

I wonder now if I really am in some sort of revenge drama.

And then Carl looks at the wall and there’s Michael, or rather an image of Michael, projected onto it – grainy, sepia-coloured – but definitely him. He’s standing in the hallway of my flat, just as I’d imagined him, and he’s looking puzzled and he’s saying my name.

‘Odie, you here?’

The door behind me opens and Carl snaps his head to look at whoever it is who’s joining us.

‘Sorry,’ he says, but not to me. ‘I got a bit carried away, didn’t I?’

The door closes softly, and Carl glances across the table at me, and then at the mirror. The image of Michael fades. Missing him is like a knife in my chest, rather an inappropriate simile in the circumstances.

‘Ah,’ I say, the penny dropping. ‘You’re new at this, aren’t you?’

He nods.

‘Am I your first?’

He nods again.

Ye gods, I think. Only I could a) get murdered and b) get an apprentice Initial Contact, whatever that is, dealing with my admission to wherever I am.

Pushing aside the obvious unfairness of all of this, I decide to change the subject.

‘How come,’ I ask, ‘there’s no blood?’

‘Huh?’

He’s tapping his bloody pen nib again (no pun intended) and rifling through the papers on the clipboard. I notice his sleeves are too long for his arms, his wrists hidden under the slightly off-white cotton of his cuffs.

I point at my ribs. ‘I mean,’ I say, pointing to my chest, ‘I was stabbed, here. But there’s no blood, no wound. It’s not even the remotest bit sore. Why’s that?’

‘Ah, we try and tidy you up as much as we can during the transfer here, so we don’t upset our other clients. I mean,’ he adds, putting the pen down at last, and leaving the clipboard alone, ‘just think how upsetting it would be if everyone turned up looking like they did just before transfer—’

‘But,’ I interrupt him, ‘the girl, the one with no hair and the huge eyes, what about her?’

‘There are some things even we can’t change.’ He sighs, pulling at one cuff, then the other and, as he does so, I glimpse a flash of skin and spy tiny feather-like scars.

‘So, you…’ I gesture towards his hands, the journalist in me kicking in, ‘you self-harmed, eh?’

‘A long time ago. It’s not why I’m here.’

‘Why are you here?’

His eyes cloud over, his mouth twitches again, sadly this time. ‘I…’ he says.

I hear the door behind me opening again.

‘I’m the one who’s supposed to be asking the questions, not you.’

The door closes softly once more.

‘So, ask away,’ I say.

At this precise moment I’d do anything to take my mind off Michael, the silence that’s greeting him, Peter’s empty food bowl, the tidal wave of my mother’s grief when she finds out what’s happened. However thorny my relationship with Mum, however much I don’t think I deserve to be here, she certainly doesn’t deserve to lose me. Whoever it is who’s taken me from her and for whatever reason, she’s going to be the real victim here. I surprise myself by thinking this; I didn’t think I had it in me. Just goes to show, when