I leaned forward and looked very deliberately into both their faces. I could almost feel the energy in the room becoming more focused. It was quite thrilling in a way.
‘I will make this very easy for you,’ I said carefully. ‘I should be charged with abducting that child. But I am also guilty of the murder of my husband, Terence David Morgan, in 1999. He was very sick and I drowned him in the bath. It wasn’t one of those situations where he’d begged me to do it. I don’t imagine he wanted to die at all. There,’ my cheeks feel flushed and I am exhilarated by my own speech, ‘is that clear enough for you?’
***
It had been a sticky, unpleasant week. The sort that frays tempers. Dust motes danced in the slash of sunlight coming through the bedroom curtains and the smell of sickness pervaded the house, however much I opened the windows or sprayed Airwick around the place. Terry’d had this blessed stomach thing for a few days.
Well, that was just the final straw.
The dementia had started slowly. A lost wallet here, a forgotten appointment there. Then he started to forget my name and then his own name. The doctors said he was very unlucky to get it at only 68. He was unlucky? What about me?
Terry had only ever let me down. He wasn’t a father. He wasn’t a businessman. I needed the patience of a saint, that final year. Caring for him and having to be his memory and his chaperone and his everything.
So when I’d had to clean up his mess for the third time in two days, I decided enough was enough. He took the sleeping tablets without complaint and was docile as a lamb as I encouraged him into the bath. He even smiled like a little boy being given a treat when I placed the full glass of whisky on the side of the bath. He always liked a drink and hadn’t been allowed one for such a long time that he drank it as though it were squash. It wasn’t long before his eyelids began to slip and his face slacken into sleep.
Then all it took was the gentlest push. He struggled a tiny bit and the bubbles rising to the surface were a little distressing. But it didn’t take long and that added to the feeling that it was all meant to be, if you see what I mean.
I was hoping I might have been able to share this, the deepest of my secrets, with Melissa after that night we spent together. But now I know that she wouldn’t understand.
In a way, all of this is Terry’s fault. If we’d had a child, I may have been a grandmother by now. (Yes, a grandma Jamie!) I would have been far too busy to get mixed up in Melissa’s nonsense. Why couldn’t he have just done that one thing for me?
So I’ve been formally charged, and now I sit here in this dingy, oddly quiet, cell, I can almost sense Terry finally leaving me.
I suppose I could have told them about the other thing. But I think this is quite enough to be going on with. Terry has been the albatross hung around my neck for so long.
Jamie can stay as our little secret. And I need someone to look after Bertie, don’t I?
I’m sure Melissa will grow to love him in time.
Five months later
MELISSA
She must have muddled her times because the estate agent is still here. Melissa experiences a blast of panic and has an urge to hide behind a car or simply turn the other way. She didn’t want any part in this process.
But it’s too late. They have all seen her. She tries to smile. Bertie tugs at the lead and gets twisted around her leg and she irritably untangles him until she is free again.
The estate agent looks like a schoolboy in his work experience clothes. His cheeks, so newly free of acne, have a scrubbed, almost boiled look. His shoes are shiny and pointed. A young couple are coming out behind him. Indian, she thinks. The woman is small with a prominent pregnancy bump and quick brown eyes. She looks like she would be fun. He is tall and bespectacled, serious and suited.
‘Here’s the lady of the house right now!’ says the agent. She can never remember his name. Kev or Keith or Kelvin. Something like that.
‘You have a beautiful home,’ says the man, very formally. The woman nods, too enthusiastically, and Melissa feels tired.
‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘I was just going to …’ but she doesn’t finish the sentence. What was she going to do?
‘We actually had a question about the boiler,’ says the man now, leaning his head forward, brow furrowed. He begins explaining something she doesn’t really understand. She tries to answer the question, and he doesn’t seem satisfied but is too polite to say.
‘And the neighbours?’ says his partner before leaning in conspiratorially, still grinning. ‘Anything we should know? Any nosy parkers or party animals?’ She laughs as she says it, as though it isn’t important, but there is a sharp intelligence about her.
For a second, Melissa flounders and then manages to say, ‘We’ve never had anything like that, no. It’s a very good neighbourhood.’
Inside the house she rests her hand against the hall table and breathes deeply. She wonders what they would have done if she’d said, ‘Actually the woman next door is currently serving a life sentence for murder. But you can rely on her in a crisis and she makes decent cakes.’
She starts to laugh, deep from her belly but it feels unnatural in the quiet house, tidy as a show home. She stops and goes into the kitchen where the dog is waiting to go outside.
Opening the back door, she notices that his back legs seem to sag. An unexpected sadness washes over her.
‘Stupid animal,’ she murmurs and swallows a lump of grief back inside herself. That won’t be easy, when it comes. She’s grown quite attached to the smelly little beast. And Tilly loves him.
Melissa gets a glass and fills it from the filter before taking a long sip. She wonders if that couple will make an offer. The thought scares her a little.
They still haven’t made a final decision about whether they will buy two properties, possibly outside the M25. One for Melissa, one for Mark and Tilly. Or one for Mark, one for Tilly and Melissa. Nothing has been decided.
Tilly is studying for her A levels at a local FE college. They don’t have the money for boarding school anymore. Mark has had to take on extra shifts to try and recoup some of their losses. He turned down the offer of a new contract on BBB. He looks much older than he did a few months ago.
***
Melissa had stayed up all night when she got back from Cornwall, slumped at the kitchen table. She’d tried to get drunk but the vodka tasted bad and her stomach wouldn’t accept it.
By five the following morning she began repeatedly ringing Kerry’s number until the very groggy and bad-tempered mother answered. At first she hadn’t taken Melissa’s demand to know Kerry’s bank details seriously.
Melissa kept saying that she wanted to do this. That she should have helped Jamie when they were young and she should have helped him more recently. That she felt responsible for what had happened to him. She wanted to make it up to Kerry and to Amber. Suspiciously, the woman, Phyllis, found her daughter’s chequebook and recited the details Melissa needed.
It was then the work of a few keystrokes to transfer ￡20,000 – to Kerry. After this she looked up the charity Thomas Pinkerton worked for – an environmental group, it transpired – and made a donation of another ￡20,000. The rest of the money she donated to The Down’s Syndrome Association and the NSPCC.
Then she went upstairs and took the remaining diazepam in the bottle before lying down on the sofa and waiting to die.
They said afterwards that she hadn’t taken enough. But when Saskia called round the next morning on the way to work and heard the dog barking inside, she got Nathan to break a window and climb inside.