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Louise
I read the email twice, and then close my laptop, and go into the kitchen. It’s what I expected, but it’s still hard to see it written in black and white.
Pouring myself a glass of white wine, I lean lightly against the tall kitchen window, staring down at the bustling street below. Last-minute Christmas shoppers throng the rain-slicked pavements, weighed down with carrier bags, and I can hear the sound of Slade’s ‘Merry Christmas’ drifting up from one of the shops nearby. I love being back in London, in the centre of things. It’s like I was never away.
After Andrew’s death five months ago, I couldn’t face the thought of staying in Sussex. Our house held too many memories of our life together, of everything that went so horribly wrong. Besides, without his financial support, I needed a better income than I could generate freelancing or teaching. Moving to London has enabled me to take a full-time editorial position at theDaily Sketch. I couldn’t quite face selling the house, though, not yet, so I put it on Airbnb,which is bringing in far more than I’d dreamed possible, and rented a tiny two-bedroom flat in the shabbier end of Primrose Hill. Bella didn’t want to leave her friends and her school, not with just one more year to go before uni, so she decided to live with my parents during the week, and come up to me at weekends. Not that Tolly and I see much of her; she’s too busy taking advantage of all the city has to offer a teenager. She deserves it, after everything she’s been through.
Abruptly, I put down my wineglass and go back to my computer, pulling up the email again.Re: Police Investigation 47130060126. We regret to inform you …
The words start to blur before my eyes.The reviewing lawyer at the Crown Prosecution Service … difficult decision not to progress the matter to court. Your word against hers … no third party material corroborating either party’s version of events … case will remain open …
She got away with it. Caz literally got away with murder.
Caz lied. I knew it then, and I know it now. My daughter didn’t kill her father, even in a desperate moment of madness. It’s not that I don’t believe her capable of such an act; I know better than most how thin is the line betweennormalandcrazy. In extremis, we can all be driven to do something we’d never have thought was in our nature. But I also know Bella could never lie to me, not about something like this. Not for five months; not to me. I’dknow.
Except she lied to me about where she was thatdreadful morning, I think uneasily. She wasn’t swimming in the lagoon, like she said. I saw her leaving the Beach House, just moments before I got there.
Bella wastraumatised, that’s all. She’s probably just blanked the horror from her mind. No point mentioning it to anyone. After all, Caz is the one who’s guilty.
Bella has always refused to discuss what happened that day with anyone, and on the advice of the counsellor we found to help her through her father’s brutal murder, I’ve never pressed it. I don’t know what she saw at the Beach House, but she certainly saw me, covered in her father’s blood, being taken away in a police car. Of course it scarred her, but she’s recovering. Her therapist is very skilled, very kind, and Bella is almost back to her old self again. Almost.
I take a gulp of wine. All these months later, the metallic smell of blood still lingers in my nostrils. I can still see the messianic fervour in Caz’s eyes when she concocted that ridiculous story to save her own skin, accusing Andrew of the most appalling wickedness. ‘There’s only one way to throw them off Bella’s scent,’ she said feverishly, in those last few moments before the groundsmen burst through the door. ‘We have to blame each other. They won’t be able to prove which of us did it, but they’ll be so busy trying, they won’t even look at Bella.’
In the street below, Christmas lights wink in the darkness. A young man in a Santa suit lets himself into an alley behind a department store, pulling off his long white beard and shoving it in his pocket so he can lighta cigarette. I turn away from the window. No one is ever what they seem.
The familiar doubt gnaws at me as I pour myself a second glass of wine. I wish I hadn’t agreed to let the children spend the weekend at my parents’. Even now, I still don’t know why Caz would tell such an outrageous lie about Bella, unless lying is so much second nature to her, she no longer knows how to tell the truth. Why not just blame an intruder? Why tell me it was Bella?
I put my empty wineglass in the kitchen sink, and frenetically start to wipe down countertops that are already clean. Who knows why Caz lied, I think bitterly; maybe she’s so delusional she actually believes what she said is true. Butshekilled Andrew. She murdered him as surely as she poisoned my cat. I caught her, literally red-handed, covered in his blood! There’s no doubt in my mind she did it. No doubt. And thanks to me, she got away with it. I was the one who contaminated the crime scene; my fingerprints and DNA were everywhere. How could any jury decide which of us had struck the fatal blow? If it hadn’t been for our bitter history, the police might even have concluded we were in it together.
For a fleeting second, I wonder what I would have done if Bellahadbeen guilty. My first instinct would be to protect my daughter, of course, but would covering up for her really be the best thing in the long run? I’d wreck her moral compass for life. Our actions, accidental or not, have consequences. Even if I’d believed Caz,I don’t think I could have gone along with her plan to blame each other to save Bella, though judging by the way things have played out with the CPS, the ploy would’ve worked. But it’s easy to be morally upright in theory. None of us ever truly know what we’d do until we’re put to the test.
My mother has no such qualms. ‘Of course you’d cover up for her,’ she said briskly, when I confided what Caz had told me. ‘You’re hermother.A mother would do anything to protect her child.Moralitydoesn’t come into it.’
She’s been an absolute rock, my mother. She grieves Andrew’s loss herself, I know that, but her only concern has been for Bella and Tolly. Thanks in no small part to her, the children are both doing better than I dared hope. I’m the one who can’t seem to get past Andrew’s death. I despise him for what he did with Taylor, but I wouldneverhave killed him and deprived my children of their father. No one deserves to die the way he did, drowning in his own blood.
Perhaps, if the police had been able toproveCaz did it, if I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Bella wasn’t involved—
I straighten up and throw the kitchen sponge into the sink in frustration. Every time I let myself go down this insane rabbit hole, I give Caz what she wants. She told me that ridiculous story to mess with my head, and I’m letting her.
Thank God I never have to see the woman again. She moved to New York with Kit as soon as the policereturned her passport. She’s working at a very cutting-edge ad agency, Patrick tells me. No doubt she’ll go far. The further from me, the better.
I pick up Tolly’s toys from the sitting room floor and return them to his room, the maelstrom of doubt and fear quietly dissipating as it does whenever I think of Patrick these days. He and Tolly have become firm friends in the three months since Patrick and I started seeing each other again. If he’s done the maths around Tolly’s birthday and our affair, he hasn’t said anything, but things are going so well between us, I think I may tell him the truth soon. Tolly needs a father, and Patrick needs a son, even if he doesn’t know it yet.
Bella gets on well with him, too. I thought she’d be really hostile to the idea of me dating again, especially so soon after her father’s death, but to my surprise, she was encouraging. ‘It’s been four years since you split up, Mum,’ she said, when I tentatively broached the subject. ‘It’s about time you met someone else.’
I tuck Tolly’sStar Warstrainers neatly at the bottom of his wardrobe, and try to close it, but the door jams on something. Kneeling down, I wrestle the canvas strap of a small holdall from beneath the runner. Bella borrowed it from my mother when she came up to stay the other weekend. No doubt it’s filled with dirty washing. I must remember to make sure she takes the bag back to Mum next weekend.
Opening the laundry closet in the hall, I empty the contents of the bag onto the floor. Out tumble a pairof grubby jeans, the sweatshirt Bella lost two weeks ago and which caused a hurricane of hunting, and half a dozen dirty T-shirts and odd socks. Not a single item is black. That phase has finally passed, thank God, along with her friendship with Taylor. I think she’s met someone new, though she hasn’t actually said anything; she gets a lot of texts from a girl called Alice. It seems much less intense than her relationship with Taylor, much less dangerous. I’m hoping she’ll be ready to bring her home to meet us soon.
I throw everything into the washing machine, and shake out the holdall to make sure I’ve got every last sock. A crumpled pair of denim shorts falls onto the floor; they smell damp, as if they’ve been put away wet. I check the pockets, inhaling the briny tang of salt water, and toss them into the machine. They’ve probably been sitting in the holdall since the summer. None of us have been back to the beach since Andrew’s death. That’s a demon we’ll all need to face at some point, but not just yet.
My breath suddenly catches in my throat as I fold up the empty holdall. Caught in the zip is a long, tangled wisp of pale gold chiffon. It must have lain forgotten in the bottom of my mother’s canvas holdall, along with the shorts.
I ease the delicate fabric through my fingers.My mother’s chiffon scarf.She was wearing it that fateful morning at the hotel. I remember Bella teasing her at breakfast:Are you going to wear that gold scarf all weekend, Gree?
You only get one golden wedding anniversary,Mum said, laughing.Might as well make the most of it.
Splashed across the chiffon, faded but unmistakable, is the dull rust arterial spray of my husband’s blood.
