What was Karen doing? She lifted the curtains aside to watch. Karen seemed to be weaving across the lawn, feet bare on the grass, a bottle dangling from her hand. Jodi had seen her this way before. That night. The ball. A burst of anger flared up under Jodi’s solar plexus at the memory. Maybe someone should go out to her, put her to bed. Karen was in her forties now, her son almost grown and gone, and still this was how she acted.
Jodi caught a glimpse of the clock on the bedside table, an irritating red glow in the dark, interrupting her REM cycle. 3.12 a.m. Christ, where was Cal? Passed out, most likely. Jodi made her way on to the landing, and if someone had asked her, she couldn’t have said why. Only that a beat of panic ran down from the base of her skull to her feet. The house was quiet. Ali’s door was ajar and in the gloom she was hunched under the blankets, almost foetal. Bill was in Benji’s room, the door shut. She wondered why Ali would have put him in there, and Karen in the garage. It seemed the wrong way round for some reason. Cassie’s room door was open too and Benji was asleep on the camp bed, trusting and limp in sleep, a child still. Cassie’s bed was empty. Where was she? In her head she was counting everyone. Bill and Ali and Benji asleep. Karen on the lawn. Jake was in Mike’s office over the garage, maybe asleep by now too.
Where was Callum?
Feeling the familiar pressure on her bladder, she went first to the loo, noting the rust around the old pipes. Ali would have chosen the house for the shabby chic appeal, but likely they’d have to remodel at some point. Better to have a modern build. She finished, and washed her hands, looking at her own moon face in the mirror. Not long now. Soon this would be over and she’d have her baby, she could get to the gym and recover the body she’d been working on her whole adult life. It would all be worth it.
Back out on the landing, and still no sign of Callum. She was tempted to let him suffer it, sleep it off wherever he’d fallen, but what if the kids found him the next day? What if he’d taken his trousers off or even wet himself, as had happened a few times? She’d put him to bed more than once, washing his clothes, never mentioning it.
She went down another step, and another. Clinging to the banister because the weight of her body was all wrong now, and she was so afraid all the time, afraid of falling, afraid of hurting the baby, that it was like walking around with a bomb strapped to her. The panic hadn’t dissipated. Moving downstairs, Jodi noticed the back door, the one that gave out to the woodland path, was off its chain. Strange. She moved through into the kitchen, strewn with dirty dishes and half-drunk wine bottles, corks and foil crumbling on the worktops. It would take hours to clear this. The front door was open and something made her move out, her feet in her Uggs hot and muffled. Someone was on the swing seat – she saw the white oval of a face. It was Mike, his eyes closed and mouth open. Out cold. She tutted again to herself. They were too old to behave like this. She and Ali were the only ones who seemed to know it, the ones who thought about meals and dishes and locking up the house before they were all robbed in their beds.
There was movement on the lawn. A sensation of figures moving, as if dancing or wrestling. Her heart fluttered in her chest. She stopped at the edge of the lawn, feeling the damp seep into the edge of her boots. She would have called out, but who was it? ‘Karen?’ Her voice was low. ‘Are you OK?’
The movement stopped. There was an impression of shaking free, of someone lumbering back over, zig-zagging like a drunk. She shaded her eyes for some reason, as if this would help her see out of the light and into the dark. The person approaching wore a red jumper. Mike’s jumper. But Mike was in a polo shirt, bare arms stippled with goosebumps. Why was Callum wearing his jumper?
‘What’s going on?’
He couldn’t meet her eyes. He was horribly drunk, not the worst she’d ever seen but bad, his face piggy with it. ‘Jod. S’OK. S’OK.’
‘Was that Karen? What’s going on?’ She looked past him – Karen, or whoever it was, seemed to be lying on the ground, unmoving.
‘Nothing. Nothing, nothing. Go back to bed.’
He tried to move past her but she caught him firmly by the elbow – smelling the aftershave that wasn’t his, that must be Mike’s – and propelled him into the kitchen and through to the living room, forcing his shoes off him at the door. They were stained and clumped with grass. Something was compelling her to act, and act fast, before the thought had even crystallised in her head. The same feeling she’d had so many times – cover up for him. Don’t let anyone see. Get him away. Because if anyone knew the truth, it would all come tumbling down, the life she’d spent almost twenty-five years building and perfecting. ‘Lie down,’ she hissed, forcing him on to the sofa. ‘Just lie there, for fuck’s sake. Take this off.’ She pulled his arms out of the jumper, his head getting stuck in it. She guided him free like a child and looked around her, then quickly stuffed the jumper down the back of the sofa. Later, she could deal with that. There was a pile of rubbish behind the shed, and she remembered Ali saying the gardener would burn it on Monday. For now it just had to be hidden. There wasn’t time to think, but all the same she was very sure what had to be done. It was the same as all those years ago, the night of the college ball. Hearing that someone had been hurt – seeing Callum weaving across the lawn, a drunk dazed look on his face. Just knowing she had to hustle him, say he’d been with her, get his clothes into the college laundry room as soon as possible. Just to be careful. Just in case he’d done something that might ruin it all, the life they were about to embark on in London, both successful lawyers, with money and prestige. A holiday home. A new car every year. All the things Callum had taken for granted growing up, but which Jodi had never had. Back then she’d known she had to protect the future she was building, and tonight was the same. Her baby was due so soon. She so very nearly had everything she wanted. And so she had to tidy up, tie up loose ends, just in case. Maybe it was no surprise she’d gone into criminal law. She had that sort of mind. Testing for holes, looking for details.
That night, Callum lay down obediently on Ali’s sofa, throwing his arms over his head. She could see sleep was already taking him, he was that drunk. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘Sorry, Jod. She wanted to.’
Jodi filed those three words somewhere deep down in herself, along with all the other things she had to sit on day after day, and went to the door. She had to be quick now. She could hear footsteps from upstairs. She wanted to. ‘Go to sleep,’ she whispered urgently. In the kitchen she looked out the window – was someone moving out there? It was so dark. Was it Karen, and if so, why hadn’t she come in? Moving fast, she snapped on lights, like someone with nothing to hide. At the top of the stairs was Ali, in her white virginal nightgown. Quickly, Jodi grabbed the cafetière as an excuse for being up, dumped it into the sink, though it pained her to make such a mess. And that was when she first heard Karen scream.
Her son lost his latch, squawking, rooting blindly, and she transferred him to the other side, feeling a burst of joy. How easy this was. How clever of her body to do these things. Watching him feed, she wondered why she’d been so sure she needed Callum. Just fear, perhaps, of how she’d manage alone with a baby, how she’d pay the bills when she’d already given notice at work. Of failing at her marriage, being divorced, a single mother. Less than perfect. She needn’t have worried. What use would he have been anyway, drunk and maudlin, whining that Eric wasn’t biologically his child? She should have done this by herself years ago.
Even a few days before she went into labour, the idea of Callum confessing to Ali would have horrified her. It was the reason they hadn’t seen Ali much since the party – keeping a low profile. Except for Callum going round to Ali’s, trying to find out what the police knew. Stupid. Careless. She’d been so angry at him then. Her first instinct had always been to cover up his mistakes, tidy his mess – something you got used to when you were married to a functioning alcoholic. That’s what she’d done the night of the party, not even knowing what she was covering up at first. Then Ka
ren had accused Mike, and Jodi had simply held her breath, said nothing, waited to see how it all fell out. Knowing as only a criminal lawyer could how unlikely a conviction was anyway. But as the weeks went on and Callum’s behaviour got worse and worse – sent home from work, collapsed on the floor drunk, official warnings, threats of a sacking – she’d realised she’d been wrong. There was no future to protect except her own, and her son’s. She and Callum had no future together. She could do this better alone than with him. So when Ali had said she would go and find Callum, Jodi could have stopped her. It was a safe bet that Callum, drunk and off the rails as he was, would tell her everything. But she hadn’t. She’d let Ali go there. And now Callum would go to jail, and the house and baby were Jodi’s alone, and no one would expect her to see him ever again. Not after what he’d done.
Jodi stroked the baby’s cheek, smiling as he unlatched, a windy smile beaming back at her. Really, it had all worked out as well as she might have hoped.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A big thank you to everyone at Amazon Publishing for getting behind this book in such an enthusiastic manner – I couldn’t have asked for more support. Special thanks to Jack Butler, and to Ian Pindar for a surprisingly enjoyable edit, and to Jenni Davis for a great copy-edit.
Thanks as always to superstar agent Diana Beaumont and everyone at Marjacq, to Graham Bartlett for police advice, and to all my crime-writing pals for ongoing advice and plot fixes, as well as my university friends for not being like the ones in this book.
If you enjoyed this book, I would love to hear from you! You can find me on Facebook and Instagram, as well as on Twitter as @inkstainsclaire.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2017 Jamie Drew
Claire McGowan was born in 1981 in a small Irish village where the most exciting thing that ever happened was some cows getting loose on the road. She is the author of The Fall, and the acclaimed Paula Maguire crime series. She also writes women’s fiction under the name Eva Woods.
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