‘Oh yes. Two peas in a pod.’
I force a smile. I do not want to be like my mother.
‘How are you?’
‘I’m fine, thank you.’
Don looks positively disappointed. ‘It must be hard, though.’
‘Christmas,’ Margaret chimes in, in case I’ve forgotten what day it is.
Despite spending the last nineteen months grieving, I am suddenly paralysed with uncertainty. Should I be crying? What do they expect from me?
‘I’m fine,’ I repeat.
‘It still doesn’t feel real,’ Don says. ‘I mean, both of them – such a shame.’
‘Terrible shame,’ Margaret echoes. They’re talking to each other now – my presence irrelevant – and I have the uncomfortable feeling of having been sought out as a catalyst for their entertainment. For the ghoulish pleasure derived from talking about those less fortunate. I scan the kitchen to see who is holding Ella, so I can manufacture a breastfeeding-related exit.
‘I thought I saw her in the park yesterday.’
I freeze.
‘Funny how your mind plays tricks on you.’ Margaret gives a little trill of laughter. She looks around – a storyteller in full flow – and her laughter stops abruptly as her eyes reach mine. She rearranges her face into something approximating sympathy. ‘I mean, when I looked properly, it was nothing like Caroline. Older, black hair – very different. Clothes she wouldn’t have been seen dead in—’ Too late, she realises her faux pas.
‘Will you excuse me?’ I say. ‘The baby …’ I don’t even bother finishing my sentence. I retrieve Ella from another neighbour’s arms and find Mark in the study with Robert, looking at the extension plans.
‘I’m going to take Ella home. She’s tired. All the excitement!’ I smile at Robert. ‘Thanks for a lovely party.’
‘I’ll come with you. Mum’ll be wanting her bed, too. We’re all done here, I think?’
The men shake hands and I wonder what they’ve been discussing, but I’m already on my way to find Joan. As always, it takes ages to leave, as we say goodbye and Merry Christmas to people we see in the street or the park most days anyway.
‘See you on Sunday!’ someone calls out as we leave.
I wait till we’re out of earshot. ‘Sunday?’
‘I invited the neighbours over for New Year’s Eve.’
‘A party?’
He sees my face. ‘No! Not a party. Just a few drinks to see in the New Year.’
‘A party.’
‘Maybe a little party. Oh, come on! We’d never get a babysitter on New Year’s Eve. This way we get to stay home, but still have fun. Win-win. Text Laura – see if she’s already made plans. Bill too, of course.’
It’s days away, I tell myself. I have more pressing things to worry about.
‘I’ve told Robert we’ll support his planning application,’ Mark says, when Ella’s in her Moses basket and Mark and I are getting ready for bed.
‘What changed your mind?’
He grins through a mouthful of toothpaste. ‘Thirty grand.’
‘Thirty grand? It’s not going to cost thirty grand to replace the lawn and stick some plants back in.’
Mark spits and swills water around the basin. ‘If that’s what it’s worth to him, I’m not going to argue.’ He wipes his mouth, leaving a white smear on the hand towel. ‘Now I don’t have to worry about the flat being empty for a while.’
‘You didn’t have to worry anyway – I told you.’
He gives me a minty kiss and heads for bed.
I stare in the mirror. My skin is still free from lines, but the bones over which it stretches are undeniably my mother’s.
Margaret thinks she saw Mum in the park yesterday. She doesn’t know it, but she probably did. It’s only a matter of time before someone really does recognise her; before someone calls the police.
I could stop all of this, right now, by telling the truth.
So why haven’t I? I’ve known for more than twenty-four hours that my parents are alive; that my father faked his death to escape debt, and my mother faked hers to get away from my father. She betrayed me. Lied to me. Why aren’t I calling the police?
My face stares back at me from the mirror, the answer written in my eyes.
Because she’s my mother, and she’s in danger.
THIRTY-SIX
‘A baby?’ I said. ‘But we took precautions!’
‘The pill’s only ninety-eight per cent reliable.’
I didn’t believe it. Said so.
‘See for yourself.’
The thin blue line was unwavering. So was I.
I didn’t want a baby.
There were options, of course, but I was made to feel like a monster for even suggesting it.
‘How could you?’
‘It’s a collection of cells.’
‘It’s a baby. Our baby.’
Our parents were delighted. They met each other over an awkward afternoon tea and discovered they got on famously. It was time we settled down – they’d been respectively worried about our ‘wild ways’, suspicious of our London lifestyles. How wonderful we’d found each other; what a miracle this baby was!
It had all been taken out of my hands.
A shotgun wedding. A new house (‘Much more family-friendly than that dreadful flat’), a new job (‘So much less cut-throat than the City’), a move to the fucking sea (‘The air’s so much cleaner!’) …
I’d never felt so trapped in my life.
Yet it was impossible not to love Anna when she arrived. She was bright and beautiful and filled with curiosity. But it was impossible, too, not to resent her. There was a whole life out there, waiting for me, and instead of running at it with both hands I was standing still with a baby in my arms. I fantasised about leaving. Told myself an absent parent was better than one who didn’t want to be there. But I didn’t leave. I did what I’d always done when life was hard.
I drank.
THIRTY-SEVEN
MURRAY
Boxing Day was always an anti-climax. When Murray had been in uniform, Boxing Day had meant one domestic after another, as hangovers were assuaged with more booze, familial tension exploding after twenty-four hours reined in for Christmas.
For someone like Sarah, who felt everything so keenly, the comedown was even worse. It was midday before she appeared downstairs, and then only to take the tea Murray made her and retreat back to bed. Murray tidied the kitchen, made himself some lunch, and wondered what to do. He didn’t want to leave Sarah alone when she was like this, but the house was beginning to close in on him.
He got out the Johnson file and spread it on the kitchen table. Tom Johnson had made several Google searches relating to suicide, Beachy Head and tide times. All had been made between midnight on 17 May and nine the following morning. Perfectly plausible for a man contemplating suicide – which was presumably what the investigating officers had decided – but in the context of the picture Murray had now built up, the searches were too careful. Too convenient. They had clearly been made by whoever had murdered the Johnsons and engineered the fake suicides.
Who would have had access to Tom’s phone? It was an impossible question, without knowing where the man had been the morning prior to his death. CID had made attempts to retrace his steps, but once the Audi had been picked up on the ANPR camera sited near Beachy Head, nothing more had been done. There had been no need.
Where had Tom been overnight? Who had he been with that morning? Murray covered three pages of his notebook with possible lines of enquiry, frustrated by the holiday period, which meant no one was at work for him to speak to.
It was early evening when Murray put a hand on the mound of tangled duvet and suggested that Sarah might feel better if she had a shower and got dressed. The air in the bedroom was stale, and the cup of tea he’d pressed into Sarah’s hand had gone untouched, a shiny film across the surface.
‘I just want to go back to Highfield.’
‘You’re seeing Mr Chaudhury on Friday.’
Sarah was crying, burying herself beneath the duvet so her words were muffled. ‘I don’t want to be here. I want to be at Highfield.’
‘Shall I bring the duvet downstairs? We can veg out on the sofa and watch black and white movies.’