Joe gets angry all the time, but Cathy never does. Joe glances at her just briefly and considers where her limit is. What she’s capable of. What the future holds for Frannie.
‘You’ve killed somebody,’ Cathy shouts. ‘Somebody you knew. And you’ve fucking roped us in. And you deleted emails off a phone – not a server.’
Something satisfying seems to release itself in Joe. He’s glad she’s finally blown her top.
‘It was the server, I was careful. They haven’t come after us yet, have they?’
‘Frannie. Fucking hell,’ Cathy says. ‘You’re a fucking idiot.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Frannie says, looking up at both of them. She shrugs so helplessly. ‘I thought – I just … it’s all for Paul. It’s misguided, but it is all for him. He wouldn’t want to be split between Italy and here – can you imagine? In a foreign country? Where he knows nobody?’ She wipes at her nose. Her finger comes away wet. ‘Believe me, anything you say to me, I’ve thought myself. And worse.’
Cathy deflates, right then and there, her temper already spent. Frannie turns to Joe. ‘I thought I would lose Paul,’ she protests. ‘Neither of you actually has a clue what that feels like.’ Her eyes flash, then she looks at Joe, her brow wrinkling. ‘Sorry,’ she adds. Anger begins rumbling in Joe’s body, a soft thrum at first, like the new bubbles in a boiling kettle. Not only is she using this against him now, but he is no longer trying for a baby because of her.
That single thought, her throwaway apology, is enough to ignite Joe’s temper, like a match that lights so easily with the merest touch against the phosphorous side of the box. ‘Is that right?’ he says. ‘So let me get this straight. I risked my fucking marriage for you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Frannie chunters, her jaw quivering. Joe advances towards her.
‘All right,’ Cathy shouts. Frannie and Joe turn to her in surprise. Frannie stands up. ‘Enough. Let’s just – Joe. Go home. Let’s regroup tomorrow.’
‘Fuck off,’ he barks. Frannie takes two steps backwards. Her back is to the wall. He’s making her do this, he’s dimly aware. He can see her ribs underneath her V-neck t-shirt. Each freckled rib, her body a xylophone. He can see the glands that sit behind her collarbone. He can’t stop himself reaching for her wrists. He can feel her pulse beneath his fingertips.
‘Joe,’ Cathy says, but he glares at her, a quick snarl, then back to Frannie. Back to fucking business.
‘You have ruined everything,’ he hisses at her. ‘You have ruined our family. You have ruined my family.’
He throws down her wrists and turns his back to her.
‘Leave,’ Cathy says.
Tears are running unchecked down Frannie’s cheeks, one after the other, like raindrops down a window. ‘Don’t say that,’ she says softly. ‘Don’t say it like it’s all over.’ She crumples in front of him. She sits on her kitchen floor and loses all dignity, clear snot running down from her nose, tears, eyeliner everywhere. She is a tangle of angular limbs.
‘Isn’t it?’ Joe says. If he doesn’t leave now, the top of his head is going to explode, a whale blow-hole right in the centre.
He’s being taken over by anger. His blood is lava. His bones fried, baked hot. He’s got to … he’s got to get out of here. He’s got to get out of his body. His mind. ‘You fucking, you fucking bitch,’ he says to Frannie. His heart feels weird. Maybe he’s having a heart attack. It’s welcome, he thinks, as he massages his chest. Dropping dead is fucking welcome at the moment, the mess they’re in. The fucking mess of it. The lies. The post-mortem. A homicide enquiry, his family at the centre of it. Lydia. He has nothing left to lose now, nothing.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ Frannie says to him, reaching up to him. ‘I’m sorry, Joe. I wanted to tell you – but I thought … I just thought it would make it all worse. And it didn’t change anything if you didn’t know.’
‘How could you?’ Joe says, his gaze meeting Frannie’s at last. ‘How the fuck could you?’
‘But it doesn’t change anything!’ she says plaintively.
‘You’re a murderer now,’ Joe says.
He turns and walks away from Frannie, slamming the door so hard behind him that all three cottages quake.
64.
Cathy
Later, as she lies in bed, finally calm, Cathy hears voices outside. She stumbles to the window and looks out. Joe and Frannie are talking over their fence, next to the outhouse. Joe is lighting a cigarette. His lighter momentarily casts his fingers in an amber light, then is extinguished again.
As Cathy watches them, standing just a few feet from the outhouse, a strange feeling overcomes her. Some sort of trepidation. It neutralizes the frustration she feels with her sister, but that doesn’t mean that she likes it. She can’t quite say what’s bothered her. Something about the scene of Joe looking at Frannie over the fence. Cathy can’t read his expression. It’s tender, but it is something else too. Maybe withheld.
Cathy is overcome with nerves about what is to come. Thinking about the power that each holds over the other, the actions they could take, the lies that they could tell. Something tells her that this is far from over. That the cracks are going to get deeper, form chasms, enough to move continents.
65.
Joe
‘It’s late,’ Frannie says to him in the dark of their gardens. Her voice is clear and high, like a bell. He didn’t realize she knew he was there. ‘Could smell your cigarettes,’ she adds, as though he vocalized that thought.
‘It is late,’ he agrees.
‘You’re mad at me.’
Joe glances up at the moon, a nightlight for just the two of them. ‘No.’
‘No?’
‘No,’ he says sadly. ‘Yes. I just wish I had known who we were burying.’
She advances towards him and reaches a hand over the fence. He can only just see the top of her head, dark hair illuminated by the moonlight, and her hand, reaching towards his. He grabs it tight. He can feel her bones.
‘What can I say except I’m sorry?’ she says. ‘I’ll say it as often as you like. Every day for the rest of my life. Every hour.’
She turns her head back towards the house momentarily, looking up at Paul’s window. He can just see her forehead and the tip of her nose, painted a soft dark yellow by the lights of her house.
‘What did you mean about your family?’
‘Lydia’s left.’
‘Oh.’ Frannie looks at him, her eyes just meeting his over the fence, like two children. ‘Oh, Joe.’
‘Hopefully we’ll work it out,’ he says woodenly, though he doesn’t mean it.
‘Would you do it again?’ he asks her after a few minutes more.
‘No,’ Frannie says immediately. ‘Absolutely not. I would give up everything to take it back. Despite who he was. Despite what he did. Because of what my crime put you guys through.’
‘Well,’ Joe says, in relief. He has arrived back at where they were: two family members who love each other, both in a situation they wish they weren’t in. ‘I’m glad about that,’ he adds huskily.
Frannie squeezes his hand, then slides away from him.
‘I’m glad you’re glad about that,’ she echoes softly. He reaches over the fence and ruffles her hair, the way he used to do when she was little, just the way he used to do to Rosie too, before they lost her. ‘But he was a twat,’ Frannie says.
Joe lets out an unexpected laugh in the night.
‘Trust me when I say he really, really was,’ Frannie says.
‘I trust you.’
Frannie moves away from him, up into the blackness of her garden, her dark hair disappearing first, leaving her pale shoulders, her pale legs, until nothing is left of her at all.
66.
Lydia
Lydia is sitting in her car, across the street from the house she shares with Joe, waiting. Deciding whether to go in. Trying to figure out how much having a baby comes into this decision. But Lydia has lines. They’re not t
he same as everybody else’s, which are learnt through experiences and good parenting, good guidance. Lydia drew hers with a therapist, with the help of her patient foster families. As a result, Lydia’s boundaries are firm, strong because they are artificial.
She assumes he is inside. It’s late. He will be sleeping. She considers what to do.
There’s a sound as another car arrives. The brakes screech. Lydia stares at it in surprise. The only traffic they usually experience is farm traffic in the early mornings. Lydia likes the rhythm of that. Noisy nature, cockerels and geese. Dairy trucks, tractors, the stench of hay that drifted by before she properly woke.
There is no reason for anybody to arrive now.
Ghosts fill Lydia’s mind as she watches. Who arrives outside houses in the middle of the night, apart from heartbroken women? Highwaymen, her brain says. Beggars. Murderers. Convicts. That’s who arrives at this hour.
She turns off the interior light in the car and watches as Joe answers the door. She holds her breath. He might surprise her. He might yet rescue this.
But Lydia watches it unfold and she thinks, Despite everything, I married somebody just like my violent fucking dad. She stares out of the car windows, and watches her line finally being crossed.
67.
Joe
Joe doesn’t quite make it up the stairs to bed before his life changes. He’s walking along his hallway when he sees the shadow outside his door.
He flings open the front door, his sister’s sad form still in his mind, and comes face to face with Evan. With no warning at all, he feels as vulnerable as a kid whose parents aren’t home.
‘All right,’ Evan says. His stance is strange. Joe scans it for a moment in shock, then realizes: he’s drunk. He’s trying to balance on his feet. Joe tenses his shoulders, making them look bigger than they are.
‘What?’ he says coolly. Inside his head, a mantra. This is my house. You are not welcome here. I call the shots. I make the rules.
‘Been thinking about this situation we find ourselves in,’ Evan slurs. He leans his right arm against the doorframe but lurches in so far that he loses his balance.
‘Piss off,’ Joe says. ‘It’s late. You’re drunk. I know what you said to my mum.’
Evan shrugs, not saying anything. ‘Your mum deserves to know who she’s in business with.’
‘More threats,’ Joe says lightly, trying to take the power back. ‘I wouldn’t be making threats in your position.’
‘What’s that, then?’ Evan says.
‘Let’s see: you’ve blackmailed us. That’s one crime. You have helped us to cover up … what we did. So you’re an accessory after the fact,’ Joe says, thankful for Lydia’s knowledge of criminal law. ‘And you are totally reliant on us for your income and your partnership capital, which is written on a meaningless piece of paper.’
‘Meaningless,’ Evan swallows. ‘I have to say, I’m surprised you’re saying this.’ He smiles at Joe, a strange smile, wolfish under the security lights, which cast long shadows under his eyes. He looks like that painting, The Scream. Joe stares, trying to appear unfazed, not frightened, but he wants to take as many steps backwards as he can, to run into the house, to phone Lydia and leave, forever. Instead, he bundles Evan out of the door. ‘We had a deal,’ Evan adds.
‘We had a deal on the black market,’ Joe says. ‘What’re you going to do – sue us for the money?’ He folds his forearms across his body. Feeling big. Feeling fat. Feeling good. The anger is productive. It feels more like vitality than fury. He begins to walk Evan down his front path, with no idea of where they will go.
‘I could call the police right now and tell them that you committed murder,’ Evan says calmly, his voice low. It’s cold for August, and his breath hangs in the air like balloons of smoke. He brings out a phone and dials slowly, looking at Joe after each digit. ‘101 to report a crime, is it? One,’ he says, keying it in. ‘Zero. Shall I call? Test you for your DNA, won’t they? Arrest your whole fucking family.’
‘Right,’ Joe says. He doesn’t let himself react.
‘Tell them to test the DNA on the body, and then test yours.’
Joe is trying to keep his head. Trying not to overflow. Trying to think straight too. Put one foot in front of the other. ‘And if you did that, and we all went to prison, what would you get? How much money?’ he says.
Evan stops still, at the edge of the field, and looks at him.
Joe narrows his eyes, appraising Evan’s back. ‘You don’t have an answer,’ he says.
‘I do.’
‘Go on, then. What?’
Without any further hesitation, Evan presses the green call button on his phone. As they stand in silence while the phone connects the call, he says, ‘Fifty-one per cent of the business.’
Joe reaches out and snatches the phone from his hand, pressing the red button to hang up. ‘Now you’re talking,’ Evan laughs. ‘Now some action.’ He meets Joe’s eyes in the darkness of the countryside. ‘What I will do,’ he says, ‘is call the police now, and you’ll be taken away. And when you are, I will produce the signed partnership deed and inherit the business, all of the Plants’ stakes having been voided for illegality.’
Joe stares at him. Evan’s parents are lawyers. He forgot. And Evan’s right. He knows he’s right, he remembers the solicitor going through the options for how the partnership would dissolve.
But it isn’t only that sentence that does it or how boxed into a corner Joe feels. It is Evan’s expression, a beat after he’s spoken. Triumphant. Full of testosterone. Somebody who has finally got one over on his boss.
Joe isn’t having it.
For a second, right as he decides what to do, Joe thinks he sees Evan flinch. Just a slight shiver, the sort a child would make in their sleep. It happens right as they cross the threshold of a field, into the dark wilderness. Joe looks sideways at Evan, the moon right behind his ear, and he wonders what life will look like tomorrow.
Part VII
* * *
MURDER
68.
Joe
If he will take down Joe’s family, then Joe will take down Evan. He balls his hand into a fist, as he has a hundred times before, and connects it completely and squarely with Evan’s jaw.
The punch lands with more of a thud than a smack, Joe feeling exquisite with the release of it, the power in his arm having bowled Evan over. He stumbles once, twice, his head lolling back as Joe watches. And then he falls backwards, another thud. And then a crack. His head hits two parts of the stile as he goes down.
Joe stares down in shock. The world seems to still around them.
It is a slow and soupy night, the air close and warm, like the air in an indoor swimming pool. Clammy. The moon he and Frannie looked at earlier is now partly obscured by a bundle of pillowy clouds. The rain that’s troubled them all summer has finally gone, like the weather too knows the new phase they’re in. He thinks of Frannie’s hand gripping his over their fence.
The ground is soft underfoot, muddy tracks made by tractors and farm traffic. He’s always loved living here with Lydia, close to his family, and he’ll miss it. It was written in the invisible stars, he thinks, looking upwards. From that night in Verona. It was always going to end here.
Joe reaches down for Evan’s wrist and holds it listlessly. There’s no pulse. His head is bleeding profusely. Sweat rises from some deep, warm part of Joe, and he begins to tremble.
Alone in the field, tears bud in his throat and he finds himself wondering as he cries whether Evan has any siblings.
Joe reaches for his phone, afterwards. Finds the contacts with shaking hands. Finds Cathy. She will know what to do.
‘Help me, please help me,’ he says into the mouthpiece.
‘What?’ Cathy has panic in her voice, her usually muted tone immediately harsh, like she’s been waiting for this. ‘What?’ The second word she utters is resigned, a full, disappointed glob of a word like syrup falling off a spoon.
&n
bsp; When he’s talking to her, he hears the BBC Breaking News alert in his ear. Confused, he pulls away the phone to look. Body found near British family’s second home in search for Verona missing man, it says.
He looks down at Evan. It was pointless, this silence he bought them.
It was futile.
69.
Now
After First Day of Trial
‘As the defendant has previously been granted bail, you’re all free to go for now,’ the judge says to Joe.
I let myself out of the courtroom and watch Joe leave the dock.
I am a prosecution witness in the trial of my brother. Jason was my defence lawyer, when I was charged with perverting the course of justice for my role in the cover up. But, on the first day of trial, I took a plea bargain in exchange for giving evidence against Joe.
It seems amazing to me that I am functioning, that the news is still on, that the moon is still out, that dinner is made.
I arrive home with Paul and put him to bed, looking at that very moon. The curtains in his makeshift nursery are open, letting in a slice of pale light. Frannie’s house, next to mine, stands empty. Lydia is no longer next door, only Joe, though we are not permitted, by law, to speak.
Lydia got pregnant, last year. It’s not Joe’s, obviously. It is some guy’s from work. Lydia moved on determinedly, not looking back, and fair play, I thought.
Paul holds on to his feet, the way he did when he was tiny, and stares at me. I wonder if he misses Frannie, and if he misses her in the same way I miss her. That visceral feeling that I want her arms around my neck, her chest close to mine. I guess, looking down at him, that he does.
The trial will race back towards me tomorrow. I’ll be back there, in the box, speaking, answering questions. Paul will be at nursery, with no idea of what’s at stake.
That Night Page 30