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He opened it and his eyebrows raised as he realised what I’d just said was true. He tapped a few times and slipped the phone in his pocket. ‘Just to be safe,’ he said. He leant back on the counter, careful to keep his hands in front of him. ‘So, you didn’t take Jenna and Rose,’ he said.
I shrugged. ‘They came here. I said they could stay.’
‘So, when I leave, are you going to call the police?’
I took a gamble. ‘I’m afraid I already called them.’
His jaw stiffened. ‘When?’
I shrugged. ‘Ten minutes ago?’
He started tapping my phone.
‘You must know, emergency calls don’t show up in call history,’ I said. I’d learned that watching Casualty.
His cheeks went bright red. He might have been more deranged than me, but he wasn’t as good at acting. I could see he had got this way through being spoilt, more than through being damaged.
He seemed to float over to me and suddenly he was too close, pressing a cold muzzle under my jaw.
But he couldn’t kill me with the police en route – no time to hide my body.
He sniffed my cheek like I was cocaine. ‘Clever girl,’ he said, and then he stalked past and walked out, and I locked the door behind him and drew across the latch.
97
NOW
Bevan ushers us out of the annexe. She takes the steps down two at a time. The window by the front door has been smashed. We crunch over the glass. There are dents in the door, its dark green paint splintered and chipped in concentric circles. A red petrol can and a giant weed burner lie on the tiles outside. The sweet smell of spilled fuel is overwhelming.
Did we all just almost burn to death? Lydia can’t have done this, so who was it?
Lydia’s guilt drove her to torture us – send those photos, buy all that stuff, get me fired…
And then I blush, because I accept the truth: Lydia didn’t get me fired. I was fired because I stole from the till. Just a little. Well, maybe quite a lot. Over the years. I liked to go out for lunch. It’s a habit that started when I was a teenager.
There’s an ambulance in the drive and a police van pulling in. A paramedic starts asking us questions but all I can do is think over and over one line in Jenna’s journal: aren’t you meant to love your children?
But I do, Jenna. I love you so much I can’t bear to see you hurting. I promise. If you come back to me, I’ll never look away again.
98
BEFORE
The first time I considered killing my dad, I was eight. We were the stars of the Easter service at our local church. Sun streamed through stained glass, and Dad and I sang perfect harmonies.
Afterwards, middle-aged women in wrap dresses came to coo at me, getting as close as they could to him. He’d grin and laugh and pat their arms, play a note on my guitar for emphasis, and he’d have them.
Mum watched from her front pew, smiling, as if none of it mattered because he was ours.
But even though he’d come home with us, he wasn’t ours really.
We drove home, Mum behind the wheel, me in the back behind Dad. It was only five minutes, but from the moment we sat in the car, Dad was silent. Dad’s silences could be so loud they could drown out my mum, who would talk and talk, trying to break through to him.
I remember she was wearing a white dress with red dots. She was so much more beautiful than any of them. And her beauty didn’t even matter because she was better than them: kinder, smarter, funnier.
She laughed about the vicar getting tearful over the resurrection and the woman with hay fever in the back and the dreary choir before us and how weird taking communion was and went on and on. She always thought she could change his moods but she only ever made it worse.
My dad began to flick the car door, rolling his forehead on the window.
