His tone changed. ‘Ah. Yes. If it were just a case of sick leave, then we’d pay that for a month, then statutory thereafter, but I’m afraid we have a strict policy for employees who are accused of a crime. They’re immediately suspended and we reserve the right to terminate their employment.’
My mouth was so dry I couldn’t speak for a moment. ‘But what if they’re acquitted? If it’s a false accusation.’
‘There’s compensation available, I believe.’
‘But . . . we don’t know how long it will take to come to trial. He’s not even conscious.’
‘I know, Mrs Morris. But the firm can’t be associated with a crime of this nature. Our client base is somewhat . . . conservative. And we signed up to a zero-tolerance charter on sexual harassment. We have to distance ourselves.’
‘So what – what do we do for money?’ My voice was too loud, I knew. A nurse stuck her head out of a cubicle, frowning. It was undignified, but I was starting to panic. This couldn’t be happening.
‘I would hope that with our generous bonus scheme, Mike had savings. Or of course if the case were to collapse . . . I’m sorry, Mrs Morris. This is the policy and we’re perfectly within our rights. We could have fired him already. Now, I must go. I do hope he recovers soon.’
The line went dead. So there was my answer. If I wanted to keep my home for my children’s sake, I had to get Mike’s case dropped, and fast.
It felt as if my whole life was bound up in Karen’s, the way bindweed coiled around the plants in my garden, a loving choke, pulling them down. Karen and my husband. Karen and my daughter. Karen and my husband’s son. I paced back and forward by Mike’s hospital bed, unable to sit down, my pulse jumping in my veins. I found I was making a list in my head. That guy from college, what was his name? Mark Simons. Karen leading him on, in her flimsy cowgirl costume, dancing close, then running away and hiding. I remembered her leaning against my shoulder, a smell of sweet alcohol on her breath. Oh God, he’s after me now. Poor Mark, blundering about dressed like Luke Skywalker. Of course he thought she was interested. She did it all the time, flirted enough to get their interest, then dropped them. That was all she wanted, the interest, and she took it from them like she was strip-mining, gave nothing back. Had she done it to make Mike jealous?
Other things. Karen travelling down to London with a young Jake, asking for an under-25 discount and saying he was her little brother. That holiday in Crete, a different story every night for the pink-faced boys we got talking to, on her insistence. We’re nurses. We’re sisters. We’re trainee zoo keepers. I do the snakes, she does the alligators. Lies, lies. They came as easily to Karen as smiling. Karen necking the wine from the bottle, her legs bare, her skirt showing her pants. Karen flirting, touching Bill with her chipped pink toes. Leaning over the table, laughing so her shoulders shook, her cleavage wobbling. It wasn’t even that funny, whatever it was.
We think we understand love – that it’s simple, like a warm bath. That it’s inherently a good thing, positive, a sign that we are decent people. I love my kids, say angry women on TV, as if they expect a pat on the back for obeying biology. I had known these facts for a long time – that I loved Cassie, and Benji. I loved Mike. And I loved Karen, like a sister, the way I hadn’t been able to love my own family. But what we don’t understand is that love can turn on a dime. We don’t know how easy it is to feel it flip over to a dark side, cold and dead, like the moon spinning on its axis. I looked down at the list I’d made, scrawled in blue ink on the back of Mike’s hospital notes. Lies. Booze. Shagging around. There was so much I could add to that one. The married man – the other married man – she was carrying on with for two years, the one who shagged her in his office after hours, leaning on the window in the boardroom looking over Canary Wharf. God. Was that Mike? Would she do that to me, tell me stories of my own husband, just to watch me try to be OK with the cheating? I was so uncool compared to her. Yes, I believed she would do that. I believed anything of Karen, now.
I stared down at the list, noting where the pen had scored right through the paper, realising how unhinged it made me seem. Would I really do this? What was the alternative? The alternative was waiting until I saw her in court, and grabbing her by the ratty ends of her hair, and swinging her head against the glass walls of the building until I heard a crack, and the glass was smeared with red. I had to destroy Karen, one way or the other. And I didn’t kid myself. The only reason I wasn’t doing it that way was this: Benji and Cassie didn’t need both parents going to jail.
A text shook my phone in my pocket. I took it out – a message from Adam Devine. Jake had been denied bail and was being remanded in youth custody. Finally, something going my way. I thought how very far we had travelled, when my way was this.
Chapter Nineteen
‘Still no baby then?’
Jodi didn’t smile or laugh as she opened the door to me. She looked exhausted, a round ball of a person, lumbering on swollen feet. I remembered that feeling, and part of me felt guilty for imposing when she was so close to the birth. But another part needed to know what they knew. I needed to be with people who were there that night. It was Jodi who’d seen Karen stagger in at the same time I did, her hair and eyes wild and blood running down her thigh. Who’d found out at the same terrible moment I did. I had to find out what they’d seen, and hopefully, get something I could use in my plan. I was sure she’d rather not host me for dinner at such short notice, on a Wednesday night, but I’d essentially invited myself around all the same. Manners, social etiquette – just another thing that was out the window.
I hadn’t spoken to Jodi, bar a few texts, since they’d left on Sunday. Only three days ago! It felt like years, to the point I was surprised she was still pregnant, likely would be for another few weeks yet. I followed her into the house, which despite her advanced pregnancy was clean and smelled of a wood-smoke scented candle. Not a single cup or glass or book sat out of place. I noted the mosaic floor tiles, the polished wooden stairs with no backs. All beautiful, all stylish, but a death trap for a baby. I saw no signs of preparation as she led me through to the kitchen, no half-assembled cots or discarded cardboard packaging. It was hard to believe there’d be a squalling infant here soon, invading this tranquil, design-magazine home.
‘Sit down, Ali.’ It felt like an order, so I perched awkwardly on one of the stools by their breakfast bar. ‘Would you like some wine?’
Wine reminded me of that night, the sour taste in my mouth. ‘I’m fine, thanks.’
She just nodded. ‘I made cassoulet, hope that’s OK.’
‘Oh, you shouldn’t have gone to any tr—’
‘It’s no trouble. They sent me home from work anyway. So, how are you? I’m sorry I’ve not been in touch. Work’s crazy, for both of us.’
‘Not good.’ I filled her in on the past week, surprising myself at the litany of horrors. Mike on trial, then Mike fighting for his life. The blood on Cassie’s top. Jake in a youth prison. The missing money. Then, the thing that Karen had told me, about their long affair. I said it tentatively, hoping she would rush in and deny it, tell me how absurd it was, that Mike could never do that for so long. Instead, she squeezed a tea towel and didn’t meet my gaze. ‘You knew?’
‘Not for sure. At uni I sometimes wondered – they would fight so much, and flirt. But you know, we were always so drunk, all of us.’ That was kind of her, but in fact Jodi rarely got drunk. She was always in control. ‘Then recently Cal told me he suspected something. You know they go out for their stupid boys’ lunches. He saw something on Mike’s phone. From her.’
‘Oh.’ Was that proof? They were friends, it could have been nothing. I felt myself still desperately trying to believe, despite all the evidence. Stupid of me. ‘And – Jake? She’s saying he’s Mike’s.’
Again, no surprise. ‘I suppose it makes sense. There wasn’t anyone else on the scene.’
I opened my mouth, wanting to ask had she always known or suspected that Mike
was Jake’s father, and if so why she hadn’t told me, but I hadn’t the words. A noise at the door made Jodi swing her head; her jaw tightened. ‘Cal’s home.’
He came in with fanfare, slamming the door, slinging his jacket off on to a chair, kissing my cheek with a wet smack. I thought I smelled whisky on his breath. ‘Al, sweetheart, how you holding up?’ He rubbed my shoulder, and I was grateful for the contact.
‘Oh, not so good.’ I couldn’t face outlining it all for him again. Jodi had turned back to her Aga. ‘What about you guys? Exciting times, huh?’ I faked enthusiasm as best I could. ‘How do you feel about being a dad? Scary?’
‘Oh, Jod has a handle on all that.’
‘You’re a pretty big part of it too, Cal.’
‘Am I?’ He moved into the kitchen, nosing for food like a truffle pig.
‘Leave it,’ Jodi scolded.
I had the feeling this meetup was sliding away from me somehow. I took a deep breath. ‘There was a reason I wanted to talk to you guys. Karen came to see me the other night.’ Her name felt like glass in my mouth. ‘She mentioned something about Martha Rasby.’
Jodi was so slow these days. She turned in space like a gyroscope, a frown gently spreading over her face. ‘Martha? Why on earth . . . ?’
‘What did she say that for?’ Cal scooped an olive into his mouth, chewing the black flesh.
‘I don’t know. I guess because – what happened back then. When we had to talk to the police.’ I was choosing my words carefully, for myself more than anything else. I had to think about that night, the one more than twenty years ago, in very certain terms. Why I’d done it. I had to keep it clear in my head.
‘You mean like a threat?’ Cal frowned. ‘What did she even have to do with it?’
‘She . . . backed me up. About what I told them. Where Mike was that night.’ He was with her, maybe, when I’d lost him for those few hours, the ones I’d lied about. Not all the time, she’d said the other night. What did that mean?
Cal was picking at a sliver of olive in his teeth. ‘What can she say after all these years? Mikey was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. You helped him out, that’s all. I mean, Jesus, it was over twenty years ago!’
‘I bet Martha’s parents don’t see it that way,’ said Jodi, stacking plates. ‘They never found who did it, did they?’
‘No.’ But that wasn’t my fault. I’d just helped Mike avoid becoming a statistic. In the wrong place. No alibi. Last seen with her. Had I in reality helped cover up his cheating?
‘Sounds like Karen’s distraught,’ said Jodi. ‘I guess what happened, it brought back memories of all that. You remember?’
I remembered. I didn’t want to think about that pale hand, the white silk in the dirt. I turned instead to another worry. ‘Cal – did Mike ever talk to you about money?’ The two of them had stayed close since uni, meeting for lunch in town at least once a month. I’d felt jealous and cut off so many times, isolated in my country paradise. As if real life was going on somewhere without me.
Cal tore a hunk of pitta bread from the platter Jodi had set out, Parma ham draped artfully over olives, cheese, dips. She did everything so well. I thought of my abandoned, shattered party. The wine glasses filling up with rain. ‘Hmm. I don’t know. Something wrong?’
I told them about the money missing from the account, noticing the quick worried glance between them. My stomach fell. Maybe I was in worse trouble than I knew.
‘And you’ve no idea where it went?’ said Jodi, peering into her Le Creuset pot.
‘No. They’re saying the kids’ school fees haven’t been paid. I don’t know what I’m going to do.’
Another silence, in which I felt them communicating, as Mike and I had been able to do, through some kind of couple’s telepathy. The space between, the webbed bands that held us together. Maybe cut now, for ever. I could not trust a thing Mike had said.
‘What about his parents?’ Callum sat down at the table, dripping hummus from another hunk of bread. Jodi tutted, wiped it away with a whisk of a cloth.
‘Mike’s? They maxed themselves out with their house in France.’ They’d made some bad investments, taken in by pyramid schemes. Needless to say, my mother had nothing. Mum. I knew I had to call her, sometime, but I was putting it off, thinking one day at a time. Not today. I’d spare myself that.
I wondered if they thought I was angling to borrow money, and maybe I was. But I wasn’t sure they even had any. This house would have cost at least a million, and if Jodi was about to give up work . . .
‘I’ll figure it out,’ I said, taking my burden back. ‘It’s just, God, I can’t believe all of this. Have you spoken to her?’
Jodi jumped slightly, catching her hand on the hot pot as she sprinkled in herbs, and then there was a fuss of running water and taps. Callum just sat, folding bread and putting it methodically into his mouth.
Eventually Jodi said, ‘She called a few times. Ali, I didn’t know what to do. I mean – it’s such a mess.’
I knew it was. Was I asking them to choose me and Mike over Karen? Karen and Jodi had never been close. I didn’t know what I wanted to happen. It was like trying to bail out a sinking boat with just my hands.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘It’s so awful. I can’t understand it, really. I wish I knew what happened.’
Jodi flicked water from her hands, then pressed them dry on a clean tea towel. The meal was on the table now, the pot steaming, the bread warmed, only slightly mangled by Cal’s hungry hands. An exhaustion hung over the table, and I realised I shouldn’t have come. These two were about to face the battle of their lives, and they didn’t need to take on my problems too.
‘I think it’s best if we stay out of it,’ Jodi said, with an air of finality. ‘I hope you understand. We’re so sorry for what you’re going through, but we can’t talk about what happened that night. We told the police what we remembered.’
She was right. However much I wanted to pull and pick over the details of that night, it wasn’t going to change. Karen and Mike had sex on the lawn. The question was whether it had been consensual. Maybe he thought it was, my mind offered up. How sickeningly easy it was to find these excuses. What I had to do now was find a way to pay these bills, let Cassie do her exams, let Benji stay in his home. Do my best to speak for Mike, when he couldn’t speak for himself.
‘Before I forget,’ I said, seating myself, knowing that as soon as I’d eaten I would leave, and be on my own through this. ‘The pictures?’ I’d texted her about them earlier.
Jodi hesitated. ‘Ali—’
‘Please. I just need to – look at them again. In the light of what I know.’ Jodi and Callum exchanged another glance over my head, then she opened a drawer and passed me a shoebox full of photos, shiny and sharp. Us, back then. Three years of college photos, which Jodi had dutifully snapped at every important function, and got developed, and at one point pinned to the cork noticeboard in her room. Some of them still had little holes in, I could see. Maybe, in this bundle, there would be something I could show to the police to say – what? Karen was a liar? Mike was a good man? I didn’t even know.
I put it into my bag, and sat to eat the too-hot meal, even though it burned my mouth. Not long after, I left. Jodi stayed in the kitchen washing the dishes, while Callum walked me to the door, wrapping me up in a hug, and mumbling in a fug of wine how sorry he was. But I didn’t want pity, so I pulled myself away and went home.
1996
This is what I do remember.
We gathered on the lawn half an hour before the ball, to take photos of ‘the group’. Karen was at one end, still in sunglasses though the sun was dipping, a fag hanging from her mouth. She wore black silk, with a red rose in her hair, like a Mafia widow. She was angular, beautiful, pale despite the sun. I was squashed between Mike and Callum, my face pink. The curled hairstyle didn’t suit me, made my face look piggy. But I was happy, because the boys were hugging me, both of them already dishevelled and pie-
eyed. Jodi was on the other side of Callum, and Bill between Karen and her. Awkward in the group hug, holding himself away from us. Afterwards, I’d try to tell where his eyes were looking, to see if he was staring at me, but I couldn’t. Mike was looking at Karen but she glanced away, at the camera maybe.
I realised years later that Martha Rasby was in the corner of the picture, snapped forever in her white dress and flaxen braids. I wondered if the police back then had scoured our pictures for clues. I remember we were asked to hand in our negatives after the ball. Before smartphones, we only had the pictures that came out, and I was a lousy photographer, always somehow trapping or spoiling the film. Jodi took the best ones – the boys rarely bothered, and Karen was too busy living, as she put it.
I remember there was champagne on the lawn, or more likely sparkling wine, and I remember Mike looked at me and the make-up Karen had put on me and blinked. ‘You’re very dressed-up.’
I took that as a compliment, but maybe it wasn’t. The drink had emboldened me enough to play drunker, slip my hand through his arm, and he didn’t drop it, because he was well-brought-up, at least in these things. ‘Can’t believe uni’s over, can you? I can’t believe we won’t be all together after this.’
‘We’ll see each other all the time,’ he said. ‘Clapham is like a mini-Oxford. And I’m moving in with Cal.’
‘Can’t get away from me, mate.’ Callum clapped him on the shoulder.
‘I don’t know where I’ll be,’ I said pointedly. Mike didn’t answer and I felt the anger grow in me. I was their friend too. Why shouldn’t I move in with them? Why shouldn’t he ask me, when we’d been together since first year? ‘And Bill will be gone. Touring the world.’
‘Shagging those Scandi chicks,’ said Callum. ‘Well jel. They’ll all look like Rasby.’ I remembered that comment in the aftermath, but of course it was not unusual, because all the boys thought Martha the most fit in our year, the most desirable, especially as her older boyfriend, Christian, who was French, commanded all her attention. I think they’d have been scared if they’d been able to have her. ‘Not that she’s available.’
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