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HS: For the benefit of the tape, Mr Edwards is taking a moment.
ME: Then this last year, she and Katie were always rowing, sniping at each other, you know? And they never used to do that. They used to make each other laugh. In hysterics, they’d be, over one of those pictures with the captions or a silly video clip Katie had found on her phone. Used to get on my nerves sometimes, but obviously it’s better than doors slamming, the shouting and the swearing and that. I’d give anything to hear them mucking about now, obviously. And then… and then the walking. And when she was at home, she was vacant, you know? I’m supposed to be her husband and I didn’t even see her. I was too… I couldn’t look at her… and now she’s… I can’t believe what she’s… She never laid a hand on the kids. She was a lovely mum. The kids adored her. She’d never hurt anyone. She was gentle. My Rachel… (Breaks down)
HS: For the benefit of the tape, I am pausing the recording.
HS: Mr Edwards. Mark. Can you tell us your whereabouts on Saturday the twenty-ninth ofJune?
ME: There’s nothing on the calendar. We don’t really go out anymore, but I think I was at the Norton Arms with Roy, just for one or two, like. I’ll have gone out after she did. You can check with him but he might not remember. I was going out a lot. I’ve been drinking too much lately, I know that, and Roy didn’t expect me to talk about anything apart from football and crap like that. I didn’t know what to say to Rach. Just looking at her broke my heart. I couldn’t fix her… I couldn’t… (Breaks down)
HS: (Pause) Mr Edwards, I know this is difficult, but can you tell us what time your wife returned home that night?
ME: I think it was about ten o’clock. Maybe a bit earlier. I was back watching the telly by then and she pushed the dog in and said she was going up. I didn’t take my eyes off the television. I heard the shower go and then she must have gone to bed, like. That was it.
HS: And how would you describe her state of mind the following day, Sunday?
ME: Like she was there but not there. I played a round of golf with Roy. Rachel did a roast chicken – she generally does a roast on Sundays – but she was spaced out, for sure. It was the next day, the Monday, that she started banging on about the knife.
15
Rachel
I’d assumed that I couldn’t remember anything about my walk home on Saturday night because there was nothing memorable about it – no, that’s not right, I hadn’t assumed anything, I hadn’t eventhoughtabout my walk home. It was only then, reading that report, that I realised I simply couldn’t remember a single thing. The houses on our estate are as familiar to me as my own corns, so there was no reason to notice anything unless it was something out of the ordinary. And there was nothing out of the ordinary. There was no one about. Two lads vaping in the Cherry Tree pub car park came to me eventually, but that was it. Hardlyhold the front page, was it?
I tried and failed to eat a bowl of cereal while I flicked through my file, mentally adding up all the knife crimes I’d collected since the previous September. I put the radio on, but they were playing a sad song so I switched it off. That poor, poor girl. Her poor parents. Her poor friend. Mindless, absolutely mindless.
Mark’s feet came clumping down the stairs. I jumped up and put the file back on the dresser shelf. My breathing was beginning to settle but I was still shaky. I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand.
‘Coffee?’ I just about trusted myself to say.
‘If you’re making.’
He knew I wasn’t, but as I’ve said, it’s the dance we do. I put the kettle on and tried to act normal, which is more difficult than you think. I felt like a puppet trying to pull my own strings, all my movements jerky, my head at the wrong angle somehow.
‘Sleep OK?’ I asked.
‘Not bad. You?’
‘Fine.’
‘You were out a long time.’
‘Went for a long walk. Needed some head space.’
Mark poured his cereal and some milk into a bowl, flicked on the iPad and brought up the BBC sports page. If he noticed that I’d been crying, he didn’t say anything. It was a pretty regular occurrence, to be honest, and we all run out of comfort eventually. I would have managed to keep calm, I think, if I hadn’t taken my sandwiches for work out of the fridge, made to put them in my bag and seen the knife.
My bag was on a hook in the cupboard under the stairs. I fetched it and plonked it on the kitchen table so I could put my sandwiches and my flask in. None the wiser, I opened the zip that goes across the top.
The air made this big sucking sound.
‘It was me,’ I say, meeting Blue Eyes’ gaze briefly. ‘Gasping.’
‘And why was that?’ She has her pen poised. She knows what’s coming next, I know she does, because I’ve told this bit to the others.
I tell her anyway. I tell her that there was a knife in my bag. It was on the top, on top of the cloth bags I keep in there for the supermarket, my purse, my glasses case, my brolly, my tissues. I took it out but almost immediately threw it back. The blade was folded into the wooden handle, but even so I recognised it straight away. It was Mark’s. He’d bought it on holiday in Spain a couple of years before.
‘Oh God.’ I backed away. My Tupperware box with my sandwich in it was still in my hand.
Mark didn’t look up from the iPad.
