Juliet’s Victorian villa was in a suburb of Longhampton called Rosehill, a pub-and-church village that had been swallowed up as the town sprawled outwards in the prosperous years before the war when Longhampton had temporarily been the jam-and-preserve capital of the Midlands.
Her parents lived on the other side of town in an executive new-build estate that had what her dad called ‘decent-sized garages’. Getting over there meant tackling Longhampton’s complicated one-way system, something Juliet only enjoyed doing at night. At night, she could sweep around the empty lanes, letting the signs dictate her route round the ornate red-brick town hall and the park with its stiff-necked tulips that Ben had always laughed at. At rush hour, however, it was clogged with angry, impatient traffic.
Juliet was only at the first of five roundabouts, and hadn’t moved for ten minutes. The tension headache that had started as she left the security of her house intensified as the radio kept reminding her that she was going to be late, then later, and her knuckles whitened on the steering wheel.
The van was heating up, and it seemed to release traces of Ben’s familiar smell. Soap. Earth. Sweat. But there was nowhere to pull over and cry, like she could at night, so Juliet swallowed and turned up the radio, forcing herself to sing so she wouldn’t think.
It wasn’t great, but it was an improvement on the weeks when she couldn’t even open the van door, and her dad had had to run it round the block for her to keep the battery charged.
She struggled through the traffic, keeping her cool for Minton’s safety’s sake, and finally parked outside her mum’s house, behind Louise’s Citroën Picasso. Coco was sitting on the doorstep, an anxious expression on her elderly face. If she’d had a label and a little suitcase, she couldn’t have looked more tragic, thought Juliet.
‘At last!’ Diane came rushing out. She had a pinny tied over her navy slacks, a J cloth in one hand and Dettol spray in the other. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine,’ said Juliet. She opened her door, leaving Minton sticking his nose out of the gap in the passenger window.
‘We were starting to get worried.’ Diane was peering at her, checking for signs of widowly meltdown. ‘We thought you . . . Well, you’re here now. Come on in, Louise is just getting Toby settled.’
Juliet wanted to point out that Louise was only going back to work, not going into space. It was just another step in her perfect life plan. She was the one who no longer had a life plan.
‘Oh, finally,’ said Louise when she entered the kitchen.
It was spotless. Diane’s standards had ramped right up with the arrival of Toby. She’d even bought a steam cleaner to meet Louise’s exacting criteria on hygiene, and the kitchen smelled pine-fresh. Juliet noted that she was the only person wearing shoes, including her dad, who was keeping well out of it in the sitting room, studying a Guide to Wales with his beige-socked feet up on a stool and his reading glasses perched on his bald head.
‘Hello, Dad!’ she called through.
‘Bore da, Juliet cariad! Shw mae?’ he said, then added, ‘Don’t ask me anything else, it’s as far as we’ve got.’
Louise rolled her eyes and unpacked some home-frozen food from the cool bag. ‘Any excuse to get out of the house,’ she muttered.
‘Just because I’m old doesn’t mean my brain’s gone,’ said Eric. ‘Or my hearing.’
‘Bore da, Toby,’ said Juliet.
Toby gazed solemnly back at her from the table with Peter’s round brown eyes, topped with Louise’s blonde hair. Though she’d never actually said it out loud, Juliet was always reminded of penguins when she saw Toby. Fluffy, serious penguin chicks, regarding the world from under Louise’s protective feet.
‘Well done, you, for driving over here in the traffic.’ Diane appeared from the hall, closed the door behind her to keep Coco at bay and grabbed Juliet’s hands. She squeezed them, as she would a small child. ‘That’s another hurdle you’re over, eh? The roundabouts in rush hour!’
Juliet smiled wanly.
‘Now, I’ve made a list.’ Diane dug in her bag and handed her a piece of paper. ‘It’s very important that you take Coco out before eleven. She always needs to do a –’ she dropped her voice – ‘a solid toilet after breakfast but before her main walk. I usually take her out at lunchtime, once round the park, and up to the woods alternate days. Today’s a wood day. She likes to be on the lead going up, but not coming back – it makes her feel more grown-up. I haven’t fed her because going in the car makes her gassy, so here’s a bag with her kibble. Try her on half a cup before—’
Louise and Juliet both stared at their mother.
‘Mum, I do have a dog,’ said Juliet.
‘And dogs don’t need to feel grown-up,’ said Louise. ‘That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. I need to get a move on – I’m late already.’ She grabbed a purple file marked Toby: Routine from the breakfast bar. ‘There’s everything you need in here, plus all the phone numbers if there are any problems.’
As she handed the thick file to Diane, Juliet wondered if children came with operating instructions after all. It certainly looked as if Toby’s full warranty was in there.
‘There won’t be any problems,’ trilled her mother. ‘Toby’s going to have a lovely day with Granny, isn’t he?’
Toby said nothing. He just stared back at Mummy, Auntie Jools and Granny, and blinked.
Diane hadn’t been lying about one thing: Coco was a gassy traveller, breakfast or not. Juliet had only got halfway to the roundabout when the first wafts of nervous Labrador came drifting back from the depths of the van. She pressed on regardless: her one aim now was to get home, close the door and put the kettle on, so she could sink into another day of soothing, day-filling television, with Minton curled up on her knee. Coco too, if she felt like it..
Diane’s list lay accusingly on the dashboard, in the non-slip tray where Ben used to put his phone and job notes. Juliet glanced over at it while the lights by the town hall were on red; it was a timetable.
Her mother had actually written out a timetable for the dog.
Well, she can forget that, thought Juliet. I’m doing her a favour here. It’s not like Coco’s fitted with a milometer. She’s not going to know if we’ve spent the day watching Homes Under the Hammer or scaling Longhampton Ridge. Maybe Coco would prefer a day’s relaxation.
‘How about it, Coco?’ she called back. ‘Feet up? Face pack?’
Coco didn’t respond, but a fruity waft of something drifted forward. Juliet opened Minton’s window and, safe in his harness, he stuck his nose out, letting his ears flap in the breeze.
Chapter 3
Louise sucked in her stomach and inched the waistband of her work skirt down until the hem covered her knees. It was, she had to admit, a bit on the tight side.
She’d had plenty of time in the last three weeks to try on her old court suits before her first day back at work, and, if necessary, buy some new ones, but that was one item on her to-do list she’d ignored. Not just because she couldn’t face the unforgiving changing-room lights after two years of the same three pairs of stretchy Lycra yoga pants, but because she didn’t actually want new clothes.
Louise just wanted everything to be back exactly where it was when she’d gone on maternity leave. Right down to her navy Margaret Howell suits and the takeaway coffee she’d picked up from the café that was still, thankfully, run by the same people she remembered.
She paused in front of the brass plaque outside the CPS office building next to the Magistrates’ Court and ruffled her newly-cut hair, trying to get the lift the hairstylist had got into it. There was a fine line between choppy and mumsy and she wasn’t sure which side she’d fallen on.
She frowned and peered nearer; was it the brass, or had she overdone it on her blusher? Maybe I should nip back to the café and check, thought Louise, then got a firm grip on herself.
You’re being stupid, she told herself.
Up until one minute ago, she cou
ldn’t get inside the building fast enough. From the moment she had picked up the phone to her old boss, Douglas, and asked him, on the quiet, whether the flexible position they’d tried to tempt her back with last year was still on offer, Louise had been counting down the days until she was at her desk again.
Now, though, her heart was racing with nerves and she wasn’t sure her famous poker face was good enough to cover it up.
Was it all going to come back? Had things moved on? More importantly, was she still the same person she’d been when she left, clutching the office whip-round Mothercare vouchers like a trophy? Louise had spent days preparing her case notes, battling her mind back into fighting shape, shaking out the legal jargon from under the fuzzy heaps of pregnancy trivia. Her brain had never let her down. The one thing she wasn’t sure about was herself.
Bullet-proof. That was what a good CPS solicitor was. Totally bullet-proof. Predictable, with unquestionable integrity.
Can I still say that’s me, though? she asked her reflection, distorted by the engraved details of the building’s opening ceremony. With what I know now about myself?
‘Louise? Louise!’
She felt a big hand clap down on her shoulder and turned to see Douglas Shelwick beaming all over his round, red face. Same tie, same glasses, slightly less hair, but otherwise, just as she’d left him.
‘Might have known you’d beat me into the office,’ he went on, dispensing a polite kiss in the direction of her right cheek. ‘Great to see you back. You’re looking very well!’
‘It’s just bronzer,’ said Louise, then added, with a flash of her old bantering confidence, ‘and a burning desire to get back to cleaning up the mean streets of Longhampton!’
If Douglas spotted the effort in that, he didn’t show it. Instead his grin broadened, and he opened the door for her, gesturing for her to go in. ‘How’s the lad? Sleeping through?’
‘Like clockwork,’ lied Louise. Not a good start, but if she said it often enough, it might come true. ‘Has done from the beginning.’ She took a surreptitious sniff of the foyer: same public-service building smell of cleaning fluids and the coffee machine. Comfortingly familiar too.
‘Takes after his mum, then. One hundred per cent reliable.’ Douglas laughed, and Louise’s growing relaxation cramped in her chest.
‘Now, as you might have heard, we’ve had a reshuffle since you left so I can’t give you your old office back,’ he went on, leading her through to the Senior Prosecutors’ department, where several new staff were already at their desks. Louise didn’t recognise them, but they were probably trainees. Young, and keen. Not important enough for Douglas to introduce her yet, anyway.
‘The window’s quite a bit smaller, and you’ll have to share an assistant for a few months, but I’ll have a quiet word and see if maybe there might be something better coming up.’
Louise recognised the door he was opening: it was Deidre Jackson’s, the office manager. Her office still reeked of Elnett hairspray, and had a view onto the pigeon-poo-spattered air-conditioning units. Two years ago she’d have roared at Douglas until she got a view of the side street at least, but now she just wanted to get on.
‘This is fine,’ she said, putting her briefcase down on the plastic chair opposite the desk, which was bare apart from a computer and an overflowing in-tray of case files. ‘Nice and quiet. So where’ve you put Deidre?’ she joked. ‘In the stationery cupboard? I hope I haven’t bumped her out into the main office.’
Douglas’s avuncular face froze. ‘No. Didn’t you hear? Deidre’s left.’
‘Really?’
He seemed surprised at her surprise. ‘Well, I say left . . . Turned out she’d been fiddling expenses for one of the senior prosecutors. It all came out when the council audit team came in and shook us down.’
Louise was mortified. She’d assured Douglas she’d kept a close eye on the news from the office. Which she had, sort of. She’d read the local paper when she got two minutes to herself. ‘I knew there’d been rationalisations, but I must have missed . . . ?’
‘Yup, it’s a tight ship now, with the budget cuts. No room for dead wood.’ Douglas pulled on a faintly fake-looking smile. Louise guessed his long lunches had gone in the budget cuts too. ‘Anyway! Tanya’s taken over, so watch out. We have a general team round-up at nine thirty, before court, so if you want to make your way over to the meeting room, I’ll ask one of the IT guys to get your computer set up. We can do all the meet and greets then.’
‘Great,’ said Louise.
When he was gone – shouting, ‘Hey, hey, Jim! What time d’you call this?’ across the office – she took a framed photograph of Toby in his lion fancy dress out of her briefcase and put it on the desk in front of her. He looked like a sombre lamb in lion’s clothing: utterly adorable.
She hesitated, remembering how she’d mercilessly taken the mick out of colleagues who’d displayed family photos like mawkish trophies – ‘proof that they were human’, she’d laughed in the office kitchen. Was that what they’d be saying about her?
She made to move it onto the filing cabinet but stopped and put it back next to the computer, where she could see it. Toby was the reason she was there. His future happiness was the whole reason she was leaving him at home with her mum.
Briefly, Louise closed her eyes and said a small prayer to whoever was listening. Help me to be me again, she thought, so I can be the mum Toby deserves, and the wife Peter married.
There was silence, apart from the clatter of pigeons outside. Louise wasn’t surprised. After Ben’s shocking, unfair death, she didn’t really believe you got answers from anywhere other than your own subconscious any more. The trouble was, her own inner voice, usually so definite and reassuring, had gone very quiet of late.
I’ve made a start, she told herself. Here I am.
Then she took a deep breath and lifted the first case file off the pile – a long-running tale of neighbourly warfare, featuring names she remembered from the last time round – and set her well-trained legal brain into search-and-fillet mode.
By the time Louise was making her first official phone call of the day, on the other side of town, Juliet was finally picking up the phone, after it had rung four times in a row, interrupting Escape to the Country.
‘Sorry to bother you, love,’ said Diane, as if Juliet had picked up first time, ‘but I was just wondering – how was Coco’s poo?’
‘What?’ Juliet muted the couple thinking of buying a house in St Leonard’s or possibly Brighton. Or possibly Southampton.
‘Was it . . . like Play-Doh? Or more Mr Whippy?’
Juliet switched off the television reluctantly. She hadn’t really been rooting for the couple, if she was being honest; she operated a scale of deserving, based on somewhat shady criteria like how much they appreciated period fittings and whether they wore matching fleeces. These two were showing signs of ingratitude and didn’t, Juliet had decided, deserve a pantry.
‘I don’t know. I didn’t look.’
‘Well, can you? Only she’s had a bit of a funny tummy and I’m changing her food. I want to make sure it’s agreeing with her.’
Juliet looked over to the other sofa, where Coco was lying with her big brown head on a cushion. Her eyes were rolled back, and she was wearing the delirious expression of a dog who normally wasn’t allowed anywhere near a sofa.
‘She looks fine to me, Mum.’
‘Really?’ There was a wistful pause. ‘Not missing me?’
Coco huffed snoozily, her greying muzzle wrinkling in pursuit of a dream rabbit. One big paw twitched, but not enough to disturb Minton, who was using her haunch as a pillow.
‘Maybe a little,’ said Juliet.
‘She’ll be lost without her mummy, poor Coco. I was thinking . . .’ Diane went on, in a bright tone. ‘Maybe we could meet up for our walk? I’ve got a buggy here for Toby – we could have a nice stroll through the park together. Say in half an hour or so? Give you chance to put your shoes on.??
?
Juliet felt the tightening around her chest that came whenever anyone suggested doing anything she hadn’t had time to think about.
‘What about Coco? Isn’t that the point – that she and Toby have to be kept apart?’
‘Oh, she’s on her lead. We could talk about Keith,’ Diane went on.
‘Keith?’
‘Keith the builder we’re going to get in to quote for your work. Like we were talking about the other day. It’s a good time to crack on, with the summer sales starting. You dad’s having a word with Keith this afternoon. We’ll pay half if you’re—’
‘Mum! Stop it!’ Juliet’s voice came out too loud and Minton jerked awake. Coco didn’t stir, but Minton slid off the sofa and sat by her feet, waiting.
She swallowed and rubbed her own neck. ‘Sorry. I just . . . don’t know if I’m ready.’
‘Don’t make it sound like I’m forcing you,’ said Diane, hurt. ‘Didn’t your counsellor suggest starting work on the house might help with coming to terms with losing Ben?’
‘Amongst other things. It sounds very quiet back there,’ said Juliet, changing the subject. ‘Is Toby asleep?’
‘No, he’s painting. He’s just lovely and quiet for his granny, aren’t you, Toby? Juliet, this is as good a moment as any to talk about how we can help you get your life back on—’
‘Well, I was just about to take Coco out to the woods for her walk,’ blurted Juliet.
Even as the word was leaving her mouth, she knew she’d made a schoolgirl error: Coco’s ears twitched and her eyes opened. Before Juliet had time to backtrack, Coco had joined Minton at her feet, both with ‘Walk me’ written all over their eager faces.
Juliet tried to convey silently that they weren’t really going for a walk, that it was just a human figure of speech. It didn’t seem to get through.