Joe repeats it, word for word, glad to be giving it to Cathy, this problem that weighs too heavily on his shoulders.
He looks at the back of Frannie’s neck from his position in the back seat. Her ears stick out more than they used to. His stomach rolls over in fear for her. He wishes she would eat. She didn’t touch any of the cheese and crackers tonight, had only water. Unlike him. He had about sixty crackers. A kilo of cheese.
‘How big are the woods?’ Frannie says to Cathy. Their faces are distorted by the overhead light, grotesque shadows forming from their noses.
‘I need to get out,’ Joe says. Cathy’s car has no rear-passenger doors, and he bangs impatiently on the back of her seat.
‘All right, all right,’ Cathy says, getting out and holding open the door for him. They stand there, by the side of the road, in the glow of the headlights, as they did a week ago.
‘A fucking development,’ he says hoarsely to her.
‘It might not be where we – where we … put him.’
‘Of course it will,’ he says. He leans his hands on the top of the car. He’s going to be sick. It’s a panic attack. ‘Of course it will. This is – this is … fate.’
‘You need to calm down,’ Cathy says.
‘It’s better this way,’ Frannie says faintly. They’re in the complete darkness of the countryside, standing on the road on which they used to walk home from school. The same sibling dynamics at play but in a different situation, an unimaginable situation.
‘There is nothing we can do,’ Cathy says. ‘We just need to sit tight.’ She gets out her phone and types something. ‘Look,’ she says, showing them a website. ‘It can take ages from planning application to first build.’
Joe takes the phone from her and reads the article. ‘Or not much time at all,’ he says. ‘It says here it varies.’ He wants to throw the phone on the soil, suddenly. That fucking man from the market. Frannie’s fucking late-night trip for wine. How did they end up here?
‘It’s not bureaucratic,’ Joe says. ‘Not like here.’
‘It will still take time,’ Cathy says.
‘But then what?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘We need to go back over there and move it.’
Cathy scoffs. ‘I think that is the worst idea you’ve ever come up with.’
They stand in silence for a few minutes.
‘Do you dream about him?’ Frannie asks.
‘Yeah, I dream about him,’ Cathy says quietly.
‘No,’ Joe says honestly. ‘I dream about myself. Getting arrested.’
‘I dream about the moment,’ Frannie says. ‘And the way we buried him. That earth … the smell. You know all this rain?’ she says. ‘I had the doors open last night and that hot earth smell – I was sure I could smell dead bodies too.’ She says all this in a low voice, staring into the distance.
‘Our DNA will be on that body.’ Joe looks at Cathy as he says it.
‘They didn’t take our DNA.’
‘But they could recall us for testing. And if we don’t go, we’ll look –’
‘Let’s deal in realities, not hypotheticals,’ Cathy says. ‘It’s easy to stand here and imagine the worst all the time.’ She looks up at him, eyes clear and smart in the darkness, and he trusts her. He has to.
Joe sighs, staring at the ground. ‘I wish it were different,’ he says.
‘I know,’ Cathy says. ‘We buried him pretty deep. I don’t know how deep foundations go. Maybe not that deep.’
‘I wish we’d left him,’ Joe says. ‘We could have faked a suicide.’ Cathy winces.
He glances back towards their parents’ house. ‘They’re so … don’t you wish we could tell them?’
Frannie exhales quickly. ‘Definitely not,’ she says. ‘They’d fall apart.’
Joe huffs. ‘I mean … don’t you wish they wouldn’t?’
‘Oh, yeah. But they’re stuck in the past. With Rosie. That’s what Deb says.’
‘What does Deb know?’ Joe says nastily.
‘They used to be – they weren’t always this way,’ Cathy says, ignoring him. Neither he nor Cathy have many friends. It’s the demands of the job. He knows he’s jealous, but he can’t help himself. He can’t imagine telling a friend all of the inner layers of their family.
Cathy continues. ‘They were … do you remember when we went to France? On the Haven Holiday?’
Joe nods quickly. Their father had lost his glasses while drunk. They’d laughed for hours while he felt his way around the campsite like a mole, eventually uncovering them in a bush. He remembers so much about that holiday. Zipping down waterslides, riding horses. Picnics with inaccurate French produce – apricot buns they thought were normal bread, and had to eat with burgers regardless.
‘Apricot burgers,’ he says, smiling at Cathy, who smiles back. ‘Do you think they’ll ever … I don’t know. Loosen up?’ he asks. ‘Acknowledge her birthday?’
‘No,’ Cathy says sadly. ‘Some things scar you forever.’ She looks away from him. ‘They just can’t handle it. That’s why they go into hiding.’
‘I wish I could remember,’ Frannie says. ‘I don’t remember this.’ She brings her hands to her forehead. ‘This – this fun.’
‘They were fun,’ Joe says, bringing an arm around his younger sister’s shoulders, the three of them silhouetted against the sky. He wishes for just a second that Rosie was still here too, or at the very least that their parents could have dealt with losing her, somehow. Somehow differently to the way that they have. The loss of it chokes him. She would be almost thirty. He can’t begin to imagine what she’d look like. If she would have come to Verona with them.
‘Joe,’ Frannie says. There is something light in her voice. Joe suspects she is steering the conversation away from Rosie, and away from Cathy’s guilt that hangs between them, unspoken.
‘What?’ he says.
‘Do you know you’ve come out in your fucking slippers?’
Joe glances down. Jesus. He wore them the whole evening without realizing. ‘Fuck,’ he says. ‘Is this old age?’
‘Definitely,’ Frannie says. Cathy, Frannie and Joe get back in the car together and leave. ‘Don’t forget your pipe,’ Frannie says to him when they reach their road, their white cottages glowing like three lighthouses in the distance. Joe closes his eyes in pleasure. It doesn’t have to happen to them. They can still laugh, they can still have fun, they can still love each other, even in the darkness.
38.
Now
First Day of Trial R. v. Plant
‘All right, then,’ Jason says to me fourteen days later, though you wouldn’t know it. The same blank, shallow skies. The same brown spindly trees. Late March looks like December too, it turns out. Another month has zipped by, another month of estrangement from every member of my family. Until today.
We’re standing outside Birmingham Crown Court. He has a proper suit on, even though on the way over here I caught a glimpse of his pink socks as we walked.
‘Ready?’ he says. He won’t let on, but I think he is tired, his beard greyer than when we first met last year.
The door to the courthouse is dark wood, imposing, exactly like the police station in Verona. I stare at it, at the defendants and lawyers coming and going. Juries, judges.
‘You’re listed for ten,’ Jason says in the foyer. His breath smells tarry, of coffee. Lawyer’s breath, he once joked in that base way of his.
‘Will it be awful?’ I say in a low voice to him. I’ve tried to be an adult throughout this. From the police station in the middle of the night, to all the rest of it. The unfurling of what I did in Verona to now. But I can’t, not today. Not now it is upon us.
‘Yes,’ Jason says, and I like his honesty.
‘Damn,’ I say, an attempt at humour which falls flat. Jason leans a hand against the stone building. ‘You do this all the time,’ I add.
‘Not too many high-profile trials, to be fair,’ he says. He lo
oks directly at me as he flares his lighter, a little tick he has.
‘What do you want to happen?’ I say. Another click of the lighter. A little blue-and-yellow ball of flame appears, like magic.
Jason doesn’t seem taken aback by the question. He’s in only a suit, no coat. It’s well cut, the sleeves finishing precisely at his wrists.
‘Justice,’ he says eventually. ‘The prosecution do their bit. The defence do theirs. And then what happens in the middle – the judge, the jury – that’s the justice part, isn’t it? The bit in the middle.’
‘So you don’t want to win?’
‘We’re beyond winners and losers, aren’t we?’ he says, looking at me directly. He’s shaved his neck but not his beard. The result is an eerie, stuck-on look, like he’s painted on a polo-neck jumper.
‘I guess so,’ I say, still looking at him. And he’s right. Whatever the outcome, Will’s still dead, my family still obliterated. We won’t recover. We can’t.
We head into the courthouse and sit together in the foyer. I’m halfway through a vending-machine cup of tea which tastes like plastic. A steamy, clammy warmth, definitely hardly any tea in there. Jason touches my shoulder just once, and that’s when I see them.
My eyes track them as they enter Courtroom One before me. Mum, Dad. Joe. God, Joe. He’s much bigger now, his chest a barrel. Lydia isn’t with him, of course. His hair has greyed out at the temples like somebody has spray-painted them. His forehead has three distinct lines across it, great grooves of stress. I remember how hard he tried to keep everything together. Too hard, probably. We all tried so hard to stay moulded that we crushed us, our family.
Mum and Dad are older. I blink, unable to believe it’s really them. There’s a hump forming at the top of Dad’s back. I look at them dispassionately.
I am unable to stop myself acknowledging them. I’m not sure exactly what I do. A combination of raising up my chin, waving, an attempt to pin down their gaze. Only Mum looks at me, just once, a quick, sharp look, the way somebody might glance at the sun accidentally before turning away in pain. Something sad and small pops inside me. It’s all so unnecessary.
They move across the courtroom, my family, in one cohesive mass, like a ship that can’t veer off course, even if it wants to.
I turn to Jason. His mouth is turned down in understanding, and he bows his head to me, almost in a gesture of respect. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says softly. Another little touch to my shoulder, almost a punch.
‘Me too,’ I say. ‘I mean – it was bound to happen, wasn’t it?’
‘The law is not kind on families,’ he says simply, as we watch them go.
They enter and let the courtroom doors swing behind them and I think of Jason’s cigarette lighter, flaring and being put out over and over again.
‘Ready?’ he says lightly. His status as a lawyer is comforting to me. He does this every day. It isn’t frightening to him. There is nothing at stake, only money and financial targets and promotions. Not life. Not death. Not family or love or honesty or truth, not really. Not to the lawyers.
‘Ready.’
‘Ms Plant to Courtroom One,’ an announcement says over the tannoy. Jason and I head in the same door as my family, their DNA no doubt imprinted on the door handle that I have just touched. ‘Should I go now?’ I say, pointing to the centre of the courtroom. ‘To the box?’ It’s practically spotlighted. The place where thousands of defendants have had their say before me, taken oaths before me, ruined their lives before me.
‘No, sit here for now,’ he says, indicating a chair by him. ‘We wait to be called, for the charges to be read.’
‘All rise,’ a clerk in a sweeping robe says. I’m struck for a second that, if everything changed on that night in Verona, everything is about to change again now. A play in three acts. Then. Now. And the future, whatever it may bring.
The judge enters and we bow our heads to him, exposing the most vulnerable parts of our necks, and then, it begins.
39.
Then
Lydia
As Lydia slides the gearstick into reverse, going for a late-night run to Tesco for comfort food, the sound system clicks on. Expecting the radio, she reaches out her index finger to turn it off, but Joe’s voice comes over the speaker system. The display lights up with a call as Lydia stares at it, confused.
‘What is it?’ a woman’s voice says clearly. Lydia stares at the house, her mind whirring. Joe must be on the phone, which has transferred to the car’s hands-free when she turned on the engine. She sits there, waiting, frozen, hoping the call continues.
Joe must realize, because it stops. Lydia stares at the display, then gets out her phone and takes a photograph of the number. He’s calling a woman. He’s calling a woman when she’s out. Lydia feels hot, her raincoat sticking to her chest and bare arms. Maybe he’s deleted his group WhatsApps with Frannie and Cathy because he’s told them. Maybe he plans to leave her.
The anger hits her next.
She will be calling that number, she thinks, as she wrenches the car into gear. For the first time ever, she is glad she is not pregnant. That she isn’t in too deep with this man who is keeping secrets from her.
40.
Joe
It’s the next week, and it’s late. Joe is locking up the practice, as they have no overnighters tonight.
He switches off the lights in the backroom and stands there in the gloom, blinking, doing nothing except thinking. Some of the time, he’s able to cope with it. He’s okay if he’s busy. He’s worst in the morning, in the lag of the few seconds between waking up and remembering. His brain goes from nothingness, to something’s wrong to that. When he sleeps, he is the Joe of before, and when he wakes, he has to go through the painful process of becoming the Joe of today. Joe the accomplice. Joe the criminal.
He sighs, walking through the prep room, through Cathy’s meticulously neat consultation room, and out into the reception.
Frannie is sitting at the desk in the dark, playing Solitaire on the computer.
‘Fran?’ he says, surprised. ‘Where’s Paul?’
‘Mum and Dad’s,’ she says. ‘I was supposed to go out to dinner, but … I don’t know. I didn’t want to.’
‘Oh,’ he says, stopping and standing in the dimness next to the dog scales. He reaches a toe out to press them and they spring to life, illuminating the room a harsh blue that he knows will last exactly thirty seconds. ‘Who with?’
‘Deb.’
‘How come you didn’t go?’
She shrugs, angular shoulders rising up and then down again, her body a triangle. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Are you struggling?’ he says.
She looks at him, her face entirely neutral. ‘I’m worried about Cathy,’ she says.
‘Cathy? Why?’
‘She isn’t herself.’
‘But who even is Cathy?’ Joe says.
‘I know,’ she says. ‘I know. But –’
‘But what?’
‘She is suspicious of the warrant.’
‘Aren’t we all?’
‘It has your name on it,’ Frannie says. ‘I don’t know. I’m worried she doesn’t feel –’
‘Feel what?’ Joe says. The light of the scales goes off, leaving them in the gloom, the room the bottle-green of the Solitaire background.
Frannie says nothing, just looks at him in the dimness. ‘I think we should be nicer to her,’ she says in an almost whisper. ‘Keep her – on side.’
‘What? We are nice to her,’ Joe says, shocked by the manipulation underneath Frannie’s statement. They’ve never suggested anyone should keep anyone on side. As though this is a game only one person can win.
Frannie raises her shoulders again and then drops them. She has her face cupped in her hands. ‘I just – Joe. She has so much power over us.’
Joe puts his hand against the wall, trying to think. ‘What are you saying?’ He raises his voice.
‘Let’s not fight,’ she says p
lainly. ‘I’m your co-host.’
Joe ignores her. ‘I still don’t understand what you’re saying.’
‘Nothing, really. Just –’
‘So what, then? Cathy holds the cards? She could hand us in?’
‘Maybe.’
‘We could hand her in?’
Frannie stares at him, eyes round, two little surprised o’s. ‘What? No. I definitely didn’t mean that.’
‘Me neither,’ Joe says quickly.
They travel home together. Cathy’s house is in darkness. Joe wordlessly heads into Frannie’s after her. He opens her doors and sits there, on the kitchen floor, feet on the patio, just thinking, thinking about what she said. Thinking about how, when he asked whether she was okay, she said she was worried about Cathy.
She points wordlessly to his Yellow Tail merlot sitting on the worktop like a loyal friend. ‘You always remember to buy it,’ he says.
‘I do.’
She pours him a glass, not asking where Cathy is, not inviting her over. It’s the first time they’ve done it alone. They clink glasses and she sits down next to him. ‘Are you okay, though?’ he presses.
‘Don’t worry about me,’ she says.
‘I’m kind of worried if you’re not okay,’ he laughs.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Just – I mean … we buried a body,’ he says, pleased that their only neighbour is Cathy.
‘Yes … I’m aware of that, Joe.’
‘I just – I don’t know.’
‘Drink your wine, Joe,’ she says.
‘Cheers,’ he says softly.
Frannie looks sideways at him. She slides off her shoes, sips at her wine, saying nothing. They turn their eyes to the sky and sit in silence. Joe knows they are both thinking of their conversation earlier in the reception area.
After a few minutes, she clinks her glass against his. ‘To the future,’ she says.
41.
Now
First Day of Trial R. v. Plant
‘I swear by Almighty God,’ I say, ‘that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.’
That Night Page 18