chapter fifty-five
‘Grandma! Grandma!’
Rachel emerged slowly from a deep, dreamless sleep. It was the first time in years that she’d slept without the lights on. Jacob’s room had heavy dark drapes across the window, like a hotel, and Rachel had fallen asleep almost instantly on the sofa bed pulled out next to his toddler bed. Lauren was right: the sofa bed was surprisingly comfy. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept so deeply; it felt like a skill from her past that she’d assumed she’d lost forever, like turning a cartwheel.
‘Hello,’ she said. She could just make out the shape of Jacob’s little body standing next to her bed. His face was level with hers, his eyes shining in the darkness.
‘You here!’ He was amazed.
‘I know,’ she said. She was amazed herself. Lauren and Rob had offered for her to stay the night so many times, and she’d always refused instantly and adamantly, as if she had a religious objection to the idea.
‘Raining,’ said Jacob solemnly, and she registered the sound of heavy, settled rain.
There was no clock in the room, but it felt like it was about six o’clock: too early to start the day. She remembered with a slight sinking of the heart that she’d said she’d go to Lauren’s family’s house for Easter lunch. Perhaps she’d feign illness. She’d stayed the night after all; they would have had enough of her by lunchtime, and she would have had enough of them.
‘Do you want to hop in with me?’ she said to Jacob.
Jacob chortled, as if she was one crazy grandma, and hauled himself up into the bed. He climbed on top of her and buried his face in her neck. His little body was warm and heavy. She pressed her lips against the silken skin of his cheek.
‘I wonder if . . .’ She caught herself just in time before she said, I wonder if the Easter Bunny has been. He would have hurled himself from the bed and run through the house searching for eggs, waking up Rob and Lauren, and Rachel would have been the annoying house guest and mother-in-law who reminded the child it was Easter.
‘I wonder if we should go back to sleep,’ she said instead, thinking it highly unlikely, for both of them.
‘Nah,’ he said. Rachel felt the soft flutter of his eyelashes against her neck.
‘Do you know how much I’ll miss you when you’re in New York?’ she said in his ear. It made no sense to him, of course. He ignored the question and wriggled himself into a more comfortable position.
‘Grandma,’ he said happily.
‘Oof,’ she said as he dug his knee into her stomach.
The rain got harder and the room felt suddenly colder. She pulled the blankets tighter around their bodies and held Jacob closer, and sang into his ear, ‘It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring, went to bed and bumped his head, and couldn’t get up in the morning.’
‘Again,’ demanded Jacob.
She sang again.
Little Polly Fitzpatrick was waking up this morning with a body that would never be the same because of what Rachel had done. It would seem outrageous to John-Paul and Cecilia. They’d be shocked for months, before they finally learned, as Rachel had, that the unthinkable happened, and the world kept turning, and people still talked at length about the weather, and there were still traffic jams and electricity bills, celebrity scandals and political coups.
At some point, when Polly was home from hospital, Rachel would ask John-Paul to come to her home and describe Janie’s last moments to her. She could see exactly how it would be. His strained, frightened face when she opened her door. She would make her daughter’s murderer a cup of tea, and he would sit at her kitchen table and talk. She wouldn’t grant him absolution, but she’d make him tea. She would never forgive him, but perhaps she would never report him, or ask him to give himself up. After he left, she would sit on her couch and she would rock and keen and howl. One last time. She would never stop crying for Janie, but that would be the last time she would cry like that.
Then she would make a fresh pot of tea and she’d decide. She would make her final decision about what needed to be done, what price needed to be paid, or if in fact, it had already been paid.
‘. . . went to bed and bumped his head, and couldn’t get up in the morning.’
Jacob was asleep. She shifted his weight off her and moved him over, so his head was sharing her pillow. On Tuesday she would tell Trudy that she was retiring from St Angela’s. She couldn’t go back to school and risk seeing little Polly Fitzpatrick, or her father. It was impossible. It was time to sell the house, sell the memories, sell the pain.
Her thoughts turned to Connor Whitby. Was there a moment when his eyes met hers as he ran across the road? A moment when he recognised her murderous intent and ran for his life? Or was she imagining it? He was the boy that Janie had chosen over John-Paul Fitzpatrick. You chose the wrong boy, darling. She would have lived if she’d chosen John-Paul.
She wondered if Janie had truly loved Connor. Was Connor the son-in-law Rachel was meant to have in that fantasy parallel life she never got to live? And did Rachel therefore owe it to Janie’s memory to do something nice for Connor? Have him over for dinner? She shuddered at the thought. Absolutely not. She couldn’t turn off her feelings like a tap. She could still see the fury on Connor’s face in that video, and the way Janie had shrunk from him. She knew, intellectually at least, that it was nothing more than an ordinary teenage boy desperate for a straight answer from a teenage girl, but that didn’t mean she forgave him.
She thought of the way Connor had smiled at Janie in the video, before he lost his temper. The genuinely smitten smile. She remembered, too, the photo in Janie’s album, the one where Connor had been laughing so fondly over something Janie had said.
Perhaps one day she’d post Connor Whitby a copy of that photo, with a card. Thought you might like to have this. A subtle apology for the way she’d treated him over the years, and oh yes, a subtle apology for trying to kill him. Let’s not forget that. She grimaced in the darkness, and turned her head and pressed her lips against Jacob’s scalp for comfort.
Tomorrow I’ll go to the post office and pick up a passport application. I’ll visit them in New York. Maybe I’ll even do one of those damned Alaskan cruises. Marla and Mac can come with me. They don’t mind the cold.
Go back to sleep now, Mum, said Janie. For a moment Rachel could see her so clearly. The middle-aged woman she would have become, so sure of herself and her place in the world, bossy and loving, condescending and impatient with her dear old mum, helping her get her first ever passport.
Can’t sleep, said Rachel.
Yes, you can, said Janie.
Rachel slept.