I arrive in the hall so fast, and with so little control, that my socks slip from under me and I crash onto my back; the breath knocked from me with such velocity that when I pick myself up I feel as sore as if I’d fallen from the top of the stairs.
The doorbell rings again. Rita’s nowhere to be seen. Even the dog has stopped hoping I’ll answer the door, but when my mother sets her mind to something, she doesn’t rest.
A whole year.
If someone had told me six months ago—this morning, even—that I would one day tell my mother to leave me alone, I’d have thought them insane. But that is exactly what I’m going to do. The past can’t be undone; you can’t lie to someone and then bowl back into her life and expect to be forgiven. Some lies are too big for that.
A whole year of lies.
I fling open the door.
“There you are! I thought you must be upstairs. You’ll have to bring the pram up for me, dear. I don’t like doing it with the baby inside, in case it topples.” Joan looks at me curiously. “Are you all right, dear? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY
MURRAY
Sarah was mopping the kitchen floor. This was not a reflection on Murray’s own efforts the previous day, but an indication of Sarah’s rising anxiety. The change had been sudden, like the sun disappearing behind a cloud. Murray had tried to hang on to the feeling of contentment he’d had as they drove home from Johnson’s Cars, laughing about Ginger’s thwarted sale, but—like a memory of ninety-degree heat in the depths of winter—it had eluded him.
Murray wasn’t sure what the trigger had been. Sometimes there wasn’t one.
“Sit down and have a cup of tea.”
“I want to do the windows first.”
“It’s Christmas Eve.”
“So?”
Murray looked through the Radio Times for something to distract them both. It’s a Wonderful Life was probably not ideal. “The Snowman’s on in a minute.”
“There’s a surprise.” She dumped the mop in the bucket. “I bet even Aled Jones is sick of that one.”
Murray would have riffed on it, but Sarah’s brow was knitted into a deep V as she looked under the sink for window cleaner and a cloth, so he let the joke go without comment. Murray was good at reading the signs, at taking his lead from someone else and mirroring their reaction back at them. He’d done it for years with criminals, since long before nonverbal communication became something you had to be taught in a classroom. He’d done it for years at home.
It was tiring, though, and not for the first time Murray wished he and Sarah had children to smooth the ripples of her condition. He had wanted them—desperately—but Sarah had been too frightened.
“What if they take after me?”
He had deliberately misunderstood. “Then they’ll be the luckiest kids in the world.”
“What if they inherit my head? My fucked-up, bastard, shitty head?” She had started crying, and Murray had wrapped her up in his arms so she couldn’t see that his own eyes were leaking, too.
“Or my nose?” he said gently. There was a hiccup of laughter from the folds of his jumper, and then she’d pulled away.
“What if I hurt them?”
“You wouldn’t. You’ve only ever hurt yourself.”
Murray’s reassurances had fallen on deaf ears. Sarah became terrified of falling pregnant—refusing to be intimate with Murray. She spiraled into a paranoiac episode involving weeks of pointless pregnancy tests, in the unlikely event that Eastbourne had been selected as the location of the next Immaculate Conception. Eventually their GP had agreed to refer Sarah for sterilization, for the sake of her mental health.
Which meant it was just Murray and Sarah. They could have spent Christmas with Sarah’s brother and his family, but Sarah’s recent admission meant that no plans had been made. Murray wished he hadn’t already gotten the tree down from the loft, or that he’d had the foresight not to buy a predecorated one. At least that would have given them something to do.
Something other than cleaning.
Sarah kneeled on the draining board to do the kitchen window, and Murray was looking for another cloth—he may as well make himself useful—when he heard the sound of singing from outside the front door.
“We three Kings of Orient are / One in a taxi, one in a car / One on a scooter, blowing his hooter . . .” The singing stopped and was replaced by raucous laughter.
“What on earth . . .”
Sarah was curious enough to put down the Windolene and go with Murray to the front door.
“Happy Christmas!” Nish’s partner, Gill, thrust a bottle of wine at Murray.
“And welcome home!” Nish handed Sarah a gift bag with a large beribboned tag. “You don’t get anything,” she said to Murray, “’cause you’re a miserable old codger.” She grinned. “Aren’t you going to invite us in? Proper carol singers get mince pies and mulled wine.”
“Mince pies I think we can do,” Murray said, opening the door wide. Sarah was clutching the gift bag with both hands, her eyes startled.
“I was just . . .” She looked toward the kitchen, as though planning her escape.
Murray felt his heart sink. He held her gaze and wondered how to make her understand that he needed this. Friends over on Christmas Eve. Mince pies. Carols. Normality.
Sarah hesitated, then gave a tentative smile. “I was just getting everything ready for Christmas. Come on in!”
Murray found the Waitrose mince pies he’d been keeping for the next day, and glasses for the wine Nish and Gill had brought. He found a CD of King’s College carols, and then Nish found one of top ten Christmas hits. Sarah opened her present and hugged everyone for the impromptu party, and Murray thought Nish and Gill could never know what a perfect gift they’d given him.
“A little bird tells me you were in the Lion’s den this morning . . . ,” Nish said.
That hadn’t taken long.
“The Lion?” Gill was topping up everyone’s glasses. Sarah held hers out, and Murray tried not to let his face reflect his thoughts. A bit of alcohol made Sarah buoyant. Happy. A lot had the opposite effect.
“Superintendent Leo Griffiths,” Nish explained. “Fond of roaring.”
“Would the little bird who told you that have had flashing bauble earrings and tinsel in her hair?”
“No idea—she texted me. I take it your plan to single-handedly solve Eastbourne’s historic murders has been thwarted?”
Murray took a sip of his wine. “If anything, I’m even more determined to get to the bottom of what happened to the Johnsons, especially now things have escalated.”
Nish nodded. “The brick’s gone for further analysis. No fingerprints, I’m afraid—it’s a bugger of a surface, and whoever wrapped the paper around it was forensically aware enough to wear gloves. But I can tell you that the note wrapped around the brick was printed on different paper from the one used on the card. And it was produced on a different printer.”
Sarah put down her glass. “They came from different people?”
“Not necessarily, but it’s possible.”
“That makes sense.” Sarah looked at Murray. “Doesn’t it? One person prompting Anna to dig into the past; the other warning her off.”
“Maybe.” Like Nish, Murray was reluctant to commit, but he was fast coming to the same conclusion himself: they weren’t dealing with one person, but two. The anniversary card came from someone who knew the truth about what happened to Caroline Johnson and wanted Anna to ask questions. Last night’s note was a different matter. An instruction. A threat.
No police. Stop before you get hurt.
“Why send a warning, unless you’re the murderer?”
Murray couldn’t fault Sarah’s logic.
Whoever threw that brick through the wi
ndow of Anna’s house was responsible for Tom’s and Caroline’s deaths, and it looked as though they weren’t finished with the Johnsons yet. Murray needed to unravel this case before Anna—or her baby—got hurt.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
ANNA
Mark and Joan talk, but it’s as though I’m underwater. Every now and then one of them shoots me a concerned look, before offering me tea, or wine, or Why don’t you have a little sleep?
I don’t need to sleep. I need to understand what the hell is going on.
Where have my parents been for the last year? How did they fake their suicides so convincingly that no one suspected a thing? And—most important—why did they do it?
It doesn’t make sense. I’ve found no evidence of personal debts, no suggestion that my parents moved large amounts of money out of their accounts before they disappeared. When the wills were read, everything—more or less—came to me. Dad borrowed money for the business, but it was only after he died—and Billy fell apart—that the business started struggling. My parents weren’t bankrupt—they can’t have done this for financial reasons.
My head is spinning.
“We need to talk,” I say, when Joan’s out of the room.
“We do.” Mark’s face is serious. “After Christmas, once Mum’s gone home, let’s get a babysitter and go out for dinner. Have a proper talk about everything. I was thinking: the counselor doesn’t have to be someone I know, if that’s what’s bothering you—I can get a recommendation.”
“No, but—”
Joan comes back in. She’s holding a Scrabble set. “I wasn’t sure if you had this, so I brought mine. Shall we have a game now?” She looks at me with her head cocked to one side. “How are you doing, love? I know it’s hard for you.”
“I’m okay.” Lying again; passing off my peculiar mood as a symptom of grief. Another Christmas without my parents. Poor Anna. She misses them so much.
I shuffle Scrabble letters around on the little tray in front of me, unable to see the patterns in even the simplest of words. What am I going to do? Should I call the police? I think of lovely, kind Murray Mackenzie and feel a fresh wave of shame. He believed me. The only person who admitted there was something not quite right. The only person who agreed my mother could have been murdered.
And all the time it was a lie.
“Jukebox!” Joan says. “Seventy-seven.”
“Two words, surely?”
“Definitely one.”
I tune out from their good-natured argument.
At various times over the last eighteen months, grief has been overtaken by another emotion.
Anger.
“It’s completely normal to feel angry when a loved one dies,” Mark said during my first counseling session. “Particularly when we feel the person who died made an active choice to leave us.”
An active choice.
My hand—holding a letter “E” I picked from the pile in the middle of the table—starts to shake violently. I drop the letter onto the rack and push my hands into my lap, squeezing them between my knees. I have spent the last year actively “working through”—to use Mark’s vocabulary—my anger over my parents’ suicides. Turns out it was entirely justified.
Every second I hold on to this secret is making me more nauseous. More anxious. I wish Joan weren’t here. It’s only the second time I’ve ever met her; how can I throw this at her? And on Christmas Eve . . .
Mark puts down a single tile. “Ex.”
“Nine,” Joan says.
“I think you’ll find that’s a double word score . . .”
“Oops! My mistake. Eighteen.”
“Watch her, honey. She’s a terrible cheat.”
“Don’t listen to him, Anna.”
Hey, guess what, guys. My parents aren’t dead after all—they were just pretending!
It doesn’t feel real.
The thought takes hold. What if it isn’t?
For the last two days I’ve imagined my mother’s presence so strongly I even smelled her perfume; saw her in the park. What if I’ve conjured her up? What if the conversation I had on the doorstep was one of the post-bereavement hallucinations Mark was so insistent I was experiencing?
I’m going mad. Mark was right. I need to see someone.
But it seemed so real.
I don’t know what to believe anymore.
* * *
• • •
Just after eleven, we get ready for midnight mass. The hall is a muddle of coats and umbrellas and Ella’s stroller, and I think about all the people I’ll see at the church, all the people who will wish me well, and tell me they’re thinking of me, and say how hard it must be without Tom and Caroline.
And I can’t. I just can’t.
We’re standing in the doorway, half in, half out. Laura pulls up on the street—no room on the drive with Joan’s car squeezed alongside mine and Mark’s—and jumps out, wrapping a scarf around her neck. She walks toward us.
“Happy Christmas Eve!”
There are introductions—Mum, this is Laura; Laura, this is Joan—and all the time my heart is thumping fit to burst, and I stare at the floor in case what’s in my head is written across my face.
“How are you doing, lovely?” Laura squeezes my shoulder. Solidarity, not sympathy. She thinks she knows what I’m going through. How I feel. Guilt gnaws at my insides. Laura’s mother died. Mine lied.
“I’m not feeling too good, actually.”
There’s a flurry of concern.
“You do look a bit peaky.”
“Do you think it was something you ate?”
“Such a hard time—it’s understandable.”
I cut in. “I think I might stay here. If you don’t mind.”
“We’ll all stay,” Mark says. He makes light of it, even though I know he and his family have never missed a Christmas Eve service. “I never have enough breath for that ‘Gloria’ one, anyway.”
“No, you go. Ella and I will have an early night.”
“If you’re sure, dear?” Joan is practically down the driveway.
“I’m sure.”
“I’ll stay and look after her.” Laura comes up the steps, concern in her eyes.
“I’m fine.” I don’t mean to snap. I half smile in apology. “Sorry. Headache. I mean, I’d rather be on my own.”
They exchange glances. I see Mark weighing up whether it’s safe to leave me; whether I’m safe to be left. “Call if you change your mind. I’ll come back for you.”
“Feel better soon,” Laura says. A proper hug this time; her hair tickling my cheek. “Happy Christmas.”
“Have a lovely time.” I close the door and press my back against it. My pretense at illness was only half a lie. My head aches and my limbs are stiff from tension.
I unzip Ella from her padded snowsuit and lift her from the pram, then take her into the sitting room to feed her.
Ella’s eyes are just starting to drop when I hear a noise from the kitchen. Rita jumps up. I exhale slowly, trying to slow my heart, which is hammering against my chest, then take Ella off my breast and rearrange my top.
Cautiously, with one hand on Rita’s collar, I walk across the hall. From inside the kitchen I hear the scrape of a chair on tiles.
I open the door.
The faint scent of jasmine gives me the warning I need not to scream.
My mother sits at the table. Her hands are folded neatly in her lap, two fingers twisting the fabric of the same cheap woolen dress she had on earlier. She’s wearing her coat, even though the heat from the Aga makes it far too warm in here for outside clothes, and it’s jarring to see her sitting like a visitor in the kitchen that was once hers.
She’s alone. I feel a rush of anger that my father hasn’t had the courage to face me himsel
f; that he’s sent Mum ahead to soften the blow. My father. So confident in business. Full of banter with the customers. Almost cocky with the reps, who would hang on his every word, thirsty for the nuggets of wisdom they hope will one day lead to a showroom with their own name above the door. Yet he doesn’t have the balls to face his own daughter. To own what he’s done.
My mother says nothing. I wonder if she, too, has lost her nerve; then I realize she is transfixed by Ella.
I speak to break the spell. “How did you get in?”
A pause. “I kept a key to the back door.”
The penny drops. “Yesterday, in the kitchen. I smelled your perfume.”
She nods. “I lost track of time. You almost caught me.”
“I thought I was losing my mind!” The shout startles Ella, and I make myself calm down for her sake.
“I’m sorry.”
“What were you doing here?”
Mum closes her eyes. She looks tired, and so much older than before . . . before she died, my head still wants to say.
“I came to see you. I was going to tell you everything. But you weren’t alone—I panicked.”
I wonder how many times she’s used her key, slipping in and out of the house like a ghost. The thought makes me shiver. I shift Ella from one hip to the other. “Where have you been?”
“I rented a flat up north. It’s”—she grimaces—“basic.”
I think of the uneasy feeling I’ve had over the last few days. “How long have you been back?”
“I came down on Thursday.”
Thursday, 21 December. The anniversary of her . . . Not her death. She didn’t die. I repeat this fact to myself, trying to make sense of it.
“I’ve been staying at the Hope since then.” She flushes slightly.
The Hope is a church-funded hostel near the seafront. They run the food bank, collect donations of clothing and toiletries, and offer temporary accommodation to women in need, in exchange for domestic chores. She sees my face.
“It’s not that bad.”
I think of the five-star hotels my parents enjoyed and imagine my mother on her knees cleaning loos in return for a bed in a dormitory of down-on-their-luck women.