I can sense Ross nodding. See him now standing there. Trying to hold himself together.
‘She’s in a police cell. But that’s not all.’
What? I want to say. What else can possibly have happened that compares with this?
‘Carla wants to see you, Lily.’
There’s a strange sound.
As though someone has just sat on the floor, heaving a big sigh.
If I didn’t know her better, I’d think it was a ‘giving up’ kind of sigh.
Listen, I try to say. Maybe we can sort this out together.
But my words won’t come out.
I don’t have enough breath to speak.
What if I’m dead by the time they find me?
Will they work out what really happened?
56
Carla
No comment.
That’s what you told your clients to say when they were arrested. It was one of the few parts of criminal law that had stuck.
‘No comment,’ she repeated. It was becoming a refrain. A tune that accompanied the pulse that was beating on both sides of her head.
‘Tell me what happened,’ said a voice. It was a woman’s voice, coming from a dark-blue suit sitting opposite her at the desk. But she must not look at her. If she did, she might say something she should not.
Breathe deeply.
No comment.
Inside her head, the events of the last few hours rolled over and over again like a film repeated in quick succession.
Rupert’s visit.
Ed yelling.
A knife.
Blood.
Poppy yelling.
Ed groaning.
A face.
A man’s face.
Then running.
The sudden realization that she’d left Poppy behind.
Mamma’s voice in her head.
Telling her to get rid of the gloves.
A hand on hers.
A firm hand.
Sirens.
Handcuffs.
People staring.
The shame of the police car.
No comment.
Stairs going down.
A mattress.
Morning.
A desk.
Sharp voice on the other side.
No comment.
Relief.
Someone who might believe her side of the story.
Only then did she lift her face, staring at the woman in front of her across the desk. She had a mole in the middle of her right cheek. It stood out like a third eye.
Carla addressed herself to that. Find someone’s weak points. The bits that made them different. It was what they had done to her at school. So it was only fair that she did the same to others. It was how you won.
‘It’s my right to see a solicitor,’ Carla said firmly to the mole. ‘Here’s the number. They’ll find her.’
‘Her?’ said the voice.
‘Lily Macdonald.’
The dark-blue suit looks down at the paperwork on the desk.
‘Same surname as yours?’
Carla nodded. ‘Yes. Same surname.’ And then, as if someone else was moving her lips, she added, ‘My husband’s wife. The first one.’
57
Lily
‘Sugar? Sellotape? Sharp implements? Chewing gum?’
What happened to the crisps? Maybe chewing gum has been used as bribes here instead. Or perhaps it can be employed for other purposes. It’s been a while since I’ve visited a client in a police cell. Since leaving London, my work has revolved around parents like me. Families whose lives have been torn apart by trying to provide for children who aren’t like others. Those who don’t get what they’re entitled to from the system. Not only babies who are damaged at birth and whose hospital notes then ‘disappear’. But children like Tom whose loved ones have to fight to make sure they go to the right school and who, in the meantime, struggle for support.
Cases involving murder or theft or bankruptcy or money laundering – all of which I dealt with at the London practice – now seem a long way back in my memory.
But here I am. Showing proof of identity to the policewoman at the desk. Still not sure why I am here. Why I’m not at home with Tom (the head has given him a week off school in view of ‘the circumstances’). Why I’ve left Mum to console him (although Tom has been remarkably matter of fact, asking questions like, ‘What will happen to Dad’s brain now he is dead?’). Why I’m in a police station.
About to see my husband’s wife.
A great deal has happened since that night in London when I found Carla and my husband outside the hotel. The divorce. Ross’s news that Carla was expecting. Their daughter’s birth. Ed’s death. It sounds so unreal that I have to repeat it again.
The timescale is neat. Agonizingly so. Almost as if the whole thing had been planned with one of those clever little fertility charts. Birth. Death. Two opposites which have more in common than we realize. Both are beginnings. Both are ends. Both are miracles which we cannot fully explain.
And that is, I suddenly understand, exactly why I am here. I’m not here because of Carla’s demand. (She’d actually called Ross after I hadn’t picked up. Presumably she’d been the ‘Caller Unknown’.) No. I’m here because I want to look her in the eye. Want to ask why she did it. Want to tell her that she’s ruined three lives. That she’s a bitch. A bitch who had her eye on my husband from the minute she saw him. A child with the heart of an evil adult.
Yes, I wanted Ed to be punished, but I never meant this. Murder. I grieve for that sandy-haired man who took me by the hand at the party all those years ago. I can’t believe he is dead. Or that it took his death to show me that I still – dammit – love him, even though I don’t know why.
There was a woman at my old office who came in red-eyed one morning. ‘Her ex-husband has died,’ one of the secretaries had whispered. Back then I couldn’t understand why she was so upset. But now I do. The fact that you no longer have a right to grieve for someone you once shared your life with makes the pain even worse.
We go down a flight of stairs. Stone stairs that make my high heels ring out. When I first started making police station visits, cells were no more than a stained mattress on the ground; a window slatted across with iron bars; and – if you were lucky – a plastic cup of water.
This cell has a window without bars. A water cooler. Sitting on the bed, swinging her legs and looking for all the world like a bored model waiting her turn to go on the catwalk, is Carla. I say ‘model’, yet her hair is matted. Her usually glossy lips are pale, devoid of lipstick. She smells of sweat.
Even so, she still has a certain something. A style which rises above her squalid surroundings. A presence which suggests she has far better things to do than be here.
‘I didn’t do it.’ Her voice is low. Husky. Challenging.
‘Thank you for coming, Lily,’ I say, as if I’m reminding a sulky teenager of her manners. ‘Thank you for driving all the way up from Devon to see the woman who murdered your husband.’
She tilts her face at a certain angle, again reminding me of a difficult adolescent. ‘I’ve told you.’ Her eyes are on mine. There isn’t a blink. Her voice is calm. More confident than it was a second ago. ‘There’s been a mistake. I didn’t do it.’
I laugh out loud. She sounds for all the world like the child I first knew. The little Italian girl with the big brown eyes and innocent smile. Mamma is at work. The pencil case belongs to me.
Lies. All lies.
My anger bubbles up, spitting itself out of my mouth. ‘Surely you don’t really expect me to believe that?’
She shrugs, as if I’ve suggested she’s taken the wrong turning on a road. ‘It’s true.’
‘Then who did do it?’
Another shrug, followed by an examination of each one of her nails as she speaks. ‘How should I know? I think I saw someone – a man.’
A prickle of unease runs through me. Is this one of her stories again?
I sit forward on the edge of my chair. ‘Carla, my husband is dead. Tom is distraught because his father has been murdered.’
Then she looks up with that same cool, cat-like stare. ‘You’re wrong.’
A beat of hope springs up inside. Ed isn’t dead? Someone, somewhere, has got it all wrong?
‘He’s not your husband any more. He’s mine.’