I wonder if it takes her back to drinking Bacardi breezers in the gardens and being fingered by half of St Hilda’s, or if she’s erased that part of history too. No doubt she has herself picking daffodils in a floaty gingham dress, singing sweetly to fledgling birds as they come to land on her shoulder.
I reach the tube, edge inside the brightly-lit entrance for warmth. ‘Look, I’m really going to have to go now. I’ll let you know about Christmas in a few days, is that OK?’
‘Well, no actually, it’s not. Would it hurt you to be a bit more organised, Cat?’
It’s the strict maternal tone, not the criticism, that ignites me. ‘Jesus! It’s just a few roasties and a bit of dry meat that no one likes anyway. And it’s not like you’re tight for space, your dining table could seat a UN summit.’
‘We’re not having it at mine. Dad wants to host for a change. I’m doing the cooking but he’s—’
‘Paying?’ I interrupt. ‘Good work, sis. Nicely done, as always.’
Little bitch. I regret it the second it leaves my mouth.
‘And what are your plans for Dad’s cheque this year?’ Sneeriness doesn’t suit Jacqui but I deserve it.
My plans are the same as always – half to the nurses who looked after Mum, half to the Sally Army. A few years ago I bought some Jimmy Choos and a Sat-Nav – a one-off litmus test to see if I could own anything without feeling squalid and corrupt.
I sold them both on Ebay, new and unused.
I don’t tell Jacqui this, though. I also don’t ask how a part-time florist and an IT support engineer can afford to send their son to one of north London’s leading pre-prep schools. Instead, I gloss over the dig and get back to logistics.
‘Look, if Dad’s hosting then I’m really not sure .?.?.’
‘Oh for heaven’s sake, Cat. Please, can’t you try to .?.?.’
‘No, no, it’s not that,’ I say quickly, not wanting to go there. ‘It’s just that with this new case, I could be called into work any time so I could do without being all the way out in Radlett.’
Jacqui laughs. ‘Dad rented Radlett out months ago, Cat.’ Did he? ‘He’s living at the pub full-time now. We’re having Christmas lunch at the pub. Nightmare, I know.’
A prick of happiness spars with a stab of angst. It’s hard to call a winner under the effects of two large glasses of wine.
Christmas at McAuley’s Old Ale House.
Home for Christmas.
*
There’s no one in when I get back to Vauxhall, which comes as a blessed relief. It’s not that I don’t like the Dawsons, I do, I just don’t have the energy for their kids this evening – their constant demands to be turned upside down, to French-plait my hair, to sing songs from The Jungle Book for the hundredth time. I could be firmer with them, I suppose, try to shake them off on the grounds of having ‘grown-up stuff’ to do, but when you’re paying ￡500 a month for a small double room in Zone 1, with your own sink and toilet, you’re wise to make yourself indispensable.
My stomach bellows. I should probably make dinner.
The kitchen’s a homely bombsite as usual, as if the Dawsons were kidnapped part-way through a cook-off. Claire Dawson’s always cooking with her girls. Cooking and crafting and painting and swimming and a whole host of other ‘ings’ that mean that there wouldn’t be any need for a lodger if they’d only pick cheaper hobbies. Jacqui insists that Mum used to cook with me but I don’t remember, although I know we made jelly once. Lemon and lime jelly for a ‘tropical trifle’. We gave some to Dad but he fed it to the dog.
I sit by the fridge. Eat a bag of grated cheese like a packet of crisps.
‘Disordered eating,’ a counsellor called it. ‘Often the result of an aloof or aggressive relationship between a father and daughter.’
‘Aloof’ is definitely off-base. Dad rarely did anything that didn’t mark me out as being special, as being the only one who ever got under his skin. Sometimes that manifested itself in material things – toys, sweets, clothes as I got older, basically everything I ever asked for and plenty I didn’t.
Sometimes it manifested in the threats he’d make. The barely concealed aggression when I’d pulled one of my ‘stunts’ again.
The scratched Audi TT.
The vodka blow-out at a christening (age fourteen).
The fleeting engagement to a complete loser (I was seventeen, he was a thirty-eight-year-old ‘street poet’.)
All these things designed to goad Dad into hurting me so that everyone would see just how dangerous he could be.
I take the cheese, an on-the-turn kiwi and a can of cherry Coke and walk up the two flights to my bedroom, feeling an enormous sense of relief to be back in my ten-by-eight with just Alice Lapaine’s case notes for company and a Bowie documentary playing low on the TV. I turn it up occasionally when I know the song, looking for patterns of deceit in Thomas Lapaine’s statement as I sing along to ‘Starman’.
In my lowly experience, murder’s rarely a mystery. It’s hardly ever the subterranean labyrinth of red herrings and OMG! twists that you see on the TV and most of the time it’s depressingly straightforward – a knifing in a nightclub, a partner flipping their lid, a pimp marking his territory, each motive stark in its simplicity. But already, Alice Lapaine’s murder is making my head scratch. I’m still scratching at eleven p.m. when my phone rings. Parnell.
‘Sarge,’ I say with an involuntary smile.
‘Steele just called.’ He sounds pin-sharp and pumped-up, the complete opposite of earlier. ‘Big news, kiddo. This case just got a whole lot weirder.’
I sit up, galvanised by the thought of more brain-ache. ‘Come on then, don’t be a tease, what’s the story?’
‘A call’s come in. Some Irish fella, living in Mile End. Saw the picture in the Standard and reckons Alice Lapaine is his sister. Only she’s not Alice Lapaine. She’s a MISPER from the west coast of Ireland.
She looks familiar somehow .?.?.
A roar fills my head, a hellish cacophony.
‘Could it be a crank? What’s the boss think?’
‘Seems to think it’s legit. He’s coming in to give a DNA sample ASAP but he’s adamant, apparently. Same mole on her clavicle. Says she’s also got a birthmark between her shoulder blades, a bit like a bruise.’
‘And Alice Lapaine does?’
‘Maryanne Doyle does. Looks like our girl is called Maryanne Doyle.’
*
The world tips.
Everything I’ve ever known tilts to a forty-five-degree angle, taking me with it. I stutter a goodnight to Parnell then put my head between my knees, trying to breathe deeply but the shock doesn’t subside. Instead it seeps into my lungs and makes my breath even more desperate.
Maryanne Doyle. Two words, four syllables skewer every layer of my skin.
I reach under my bed for the shoebox and take out my red fluffy notepad – the place where I write the unspeakable things when my head can’t contain them.
‘Journalling,’ a counsellor called it. ‘A safe place where you give voice to your fears until you feel you can share them.’
And I write. Fast, uncensored but as methodical as I can be. This is no time for jumbled thinking.
WHAT I THOUGHT I KNEW:
In 1998, Dad was involved in the disappearance of Maryanne Doyle?
In 1998, Maryanne Doyle disappeared and Dad knew something about it??
Maryanne Doyle was never seen again – murdered???
WHAT I KNOW:
Maryanne Doyle wasn’t murdered in 1998. She was alive until yesterday.
Maryanne Doyle has been found a few hundred yards from Dad’s pub.
In 1998, Dad lied about knowing Maryanne Doyle – THIS IS FACT
So you see, some fears can never be shared. Some fears are so cataclysmic that to share them would be tantamount to suicide.
Life as I know it, obliterated.
1998
Tuesday 26th May
Scary’s dark curls, Geri’s big boobs, Baby’s blue eyes. My three favourite Spice Girls rolled into one, stood at the top of the road with her thumb out.
‘It’s called hitch-hiking,’ Dad said, starting the car. ‘There’s no buses or tubes around here, poppet, so you have to drive or hitch a lift if you want to go anywhere.’
‘Hitch-hiking,’ I repeated, swilling the word around. ‘Can we give her a lift?’
‘Ah, I don’t know,’ Dad said, like he didn’t really mean it. ‘Mum wouldn’t like it.’
‘But Mum’s not here.’