How is she so calm? It’s as if she’s having a perfectly normal conversation. I shake my head.
‘It’s when someone sends a mundane email pretending to be a trusted source, maybe a bank or a charity,’ she continues, slamming the empty glass down on the side and jumping back up. ‘The recipient opens it because it looks legitimate – it seems harmless, and then they forget about it. Except the mail contains a Remote Access Trojan – or a RAT. It downloads the moment the email is opened and, from that moment on, the sender has access to their victim’s entire online world. It’s like peeking at someone’s laptop whenever you feel like it – only from the comfort of your own living room.’ She points at me suddenly. ‘If your life depended on it, do you think you could tell me which email it was that you unwittingly opened?’
I shake my head.
She shrugs again. ‘No such thing as privacy any more, Jessica.’
‘When you say everything was you,’ my voice is starting to shake, ‘we’re talking about the mirror, the clocks, the climbing frame…’
‘The stolen keys, the magpie.’ She moves her head from side to side as she lists each item in turn, ‘calling Natalia – although I only really did that because she was so rude to me. The person on the bike who came up to me on the street I made up, but technically, that was me too.’
‘How did you know about that?’ I say quickly. ‘Someone must have told you.’
‘It was in my mother’s diary. I say diary… notebook full of devastated outpourings is more accurate. I found it among her things after she died. It runs for a month or two, starting from the day she found out about the affair. You showed up in my father’s office at work with some cock-and-bull story about needing him to investigate a stranger on a bike coming up to you outside the school gates, etc. etc.’ She rubs her face tiredly, then yawns. ‘I’ve got to say, I’m with my mother on that one, Jessica. It was a shockingly rubbish excuse to get him alone. The rest of her fulsome account of my father’s betrayal is a heart-warming read though: “He can’t look at me or Cara. We are the wrong lover and daughter”. That was nice to see, as was “Is this what madness feels like?”.’
I lower my gaze.
‘So, in answer to your question, yes, pretty much everything was me.’ Cara’s face clouds momentarily. ‘Although I don’t know what that weird knocking at the door the other day was all about. And I didn’t tell Ben, either. Honestly, I have no idea why you’re even friends with Natalia. She’s such a grade A bitch.’
‘I thought it was your father. Does he know you’re here?’
‘I don’t know, actually,’ she says, more quietly.
‘It wasn’t him that told you about Beth?’
‘No – like I said, it was all in the diary… but Mum had already called to enlighten me anyway the day before she died.’
‘Oh my God, Cara, I’m so sorry.’
‘Are you? What for?’ She starts to swing her legs, idly kicking the cupboards.
‘You must be feeling very angry and very hurt right now.’
She watches me. ‘Go on.’
Her complete lack of emotion is unnerving. I falter slightly and try to think. ‘I don’t know if you are aware of this, but my mother died when I was a similar age to you. It was a huge shock. She killed herself actually, after a long battle with depression.’
‘How did she die?’
I am taken aback by her outright question. ‘I’m not going to tell you. That can remain private, at least.’
She gives a brief flicker of a smile. ‘Did you know, most people think women don’t go for the messy suicide options, when in fact someone who really wants to kill themselves will use whatever is to hand and is most effective?’
‘I did know that, yes.’
‘A gun is what you really want. You’re looking at an 85 per cent success rate there.’
I don’t say anything for a moment. ‘My point is, Cara, I don’t think I registered my loss for some time. I was in shock. Possibly as you are now.’
‘My mother really didn’t like you very much.’ She’s not moving at all now, just watching me.
‘No. She didn’t. I don’t blame her, and I don’t blame you for being angry with me, for what I did to her. What happened hurt her very deeply.’
‘Yes, it did,’ Cara agrees. ‘But that’s also because she let it.’ She continues to regard me unflinchingly. ‘It actually made a lot of sense, what I read, and everything she told me about you and Beth. My mother has always been completely unable to let go of the past. Most of my life has been spent with her looking backwards to some golden age in Chichester that, as far as I could work out, never really existed. Either that or she was just drunk.’
‘She wasn’t always like that.’
Cara ignores me and continues: ‘Don’t get me wrong, when I got the phone call that Mum had died, of course I felt sad. But it was also a relief. I can’t sit here and tell you I hadn’t secretly wished she’d just get on and die sooner than this – at various points – rather than slowly drink herself to death. So, I’m sorry to disappoint; I don’t think you and I really can share a “sad mum” history that we then bond over, where I’ll realise that you’re nice after all, we’ll hug, I’ll be just like your dead daughter, only I’m not, you’ll be the Mum I never had, blah blah blah…’
‘I would never try and do that. Your mother loved you very much.’
‘Based on what evidence?’
‘The lengths she went to, to keep your family together.’
‘My mother wasted her life,’ she says. ‘It was frustrating to have to sit by and watch it happen, but also very frustrating to have to be around someone like that. They tell you the same stuff over and over and over again because they’ve fried every synapse in their head. They have no room in their life for anyone. They are inherently selfish. Sometimes that goes on for years. You’re going to think I’m lying, but I’m not even angry with her any more, and I’m not interested in avenging her. That’s not what this is about.’ She jumps down again, and this time takes a step towards me. I think suddenly of the children’s game ‘What’s the Time, Mr Wolf?’ Someone creeping inevitably ever closer.
‘Then you’re angry with me?’ I say slowly, ‘because I’m the reason this all happened? That’s what you think? I am so very sorry, Cara. I didn’t know your father was married when I met him.’
Cara rolls her eyes. ‘In some ways you’re no better than my mother, you know. James is really cute – and yet all you see is Beth and what happened to her. You’re obsessed by it.’
I clench my teeth defensively – and my head throbs blindingly again. Don’t react – it’s what she wants. Think about James. Think about getting home to him. ‘You’re right. James needs me. Could you let me go? We don’t need to tell anyone about this.’
She sighs and takes another step. ‘Oh, come on, Jessica. You know that’s not going to happen.’
‘Tell me then, what do you want from me?’ I’m starting to panic.
She puts her hands on her hips. ‘I just said. This isn’t about you.’
‘What do you mean? You’ve spent all week trying to hurt me!’
‘No, I’ve been sending messages.’ She walks determinedly right up to me and I shrink back into the chair, but she moves instead to the table and my laptop.
She twists the screen to face me, looks critically and then tweaks the angle again.
‘What are you doing?’ I feel suddenly very frightened indeed. ‘Why do I need to be sitting in front of my computer like this?’
She ignores that too. ‘Do you remember when we drove past my house, just after Christmas? I was in the back with James. You slowed right down. Were you looking for him, or just being nosy?’
‘Him? Your father, you mean?’ I ask, confused.
‘You don’t actually still love him, do you?’