by Adele Parks
She was putting herself on the rack by looking at the photos, she knew that, but she wanted to put herself through that particular brand of pain. It was at least a pain she could control. Besides, on some drunken, disorientated, self-disgusted, subconscious level she deserved it. Her actions had been so extreme. So impulsive. It was pitiful that all she was capable of now was a pathetic longing to turn back time. Steph sat on a vicious and jagged knife edge and waited for more trouble to find her. She knew it would. There would be consequences for what she’d done last night. How could there not be?
Steph and Julian had married in the church where Steph had been christened and where they went on to have the three boys christened too. It was the prettiest, most soulful church imaginable, especially when it was floodlit at Christmas or decked with fruit and flowers for harvest festival. As the guests had arrived at their wedding that sunny Saturday afternoon fifteen years ago, they’d all gasped at the church’s beauty and simplicity. Some of Steph’s girlfriends considered moving house or even changing religion to secure such a perfect backdrop for their photos. It was a picture-postcard, small and charming Victorian church, built on the site of an ancient Saxon one. Steph always thought it was clever when someone built a church on a site that showcased God’s handiwork and St Mary’s-on-the-Hill definitely fell into that category. Coming or going to a service, the congregation could pause at the church doors and enjoy views of rolling fields and dramatic woodland; on a clear day it was possible to see right across the county. Stephanie loved that vista. When she took in the scenes below her she always felt especially vital, connected and alive. She liked to stand on the top of a hill and imagine the endless possibilities that were stretched out below, possibilities parcelled up as other people’s lives.
They’d held their reception in a warm and welcoming local hotel. They had been one of the first amongst their friends to get married and so no standard had been set as to what was expected from a wedding in terms of style or hospitality. Stephanie smiled when she remembered how impressed her aunts had been that the chairs in the reception room matched. Back then, weddings didn’t include all-night champagne or even a paid-for bar, or personalised favours or engraved bronzed leaves as nameplates, they did not have fireworks at midnight and nor did their reception culminate in bacon rolls at dawn. Steph and Julian served one glass of champagne on arrival and red and white wine until the meal was finished. There was a misspelling or two on the nameplates, but no one minded. The party finished about an hour after the happy couple had changed into their specifically bought ‘going away’ clothes, they had been waved off to the sound of tin cans chasing the shaving foam-covered car. The decoration of the car wasn’t even ironic or retro, it was for real.
It had been perfect.
Oh dear God.
Steph wore a wide dress with mutton-leg sleeves and a heavily laced bodice. It looked very dated now, of course, but at the time it had been the envy of every girl in the church. Few women could pull off pure white (either because of their skin colouring or their colourful past) but the chaste gown suited Steph who had always been quite shy with the opposite sex and had a light golden skin tone. The dress was now carefully preserved, wrapped in tissue and stored in a box in their attic. It was a shame that you couldn’t wrap up your actual marriage with the same care, thought Steph, a marriage seemed so much harder to preserve. She used to think that one day she might have a daughter who would want to wear her dress but that was never going to happen. Besides the fact that she had three sons, she couldn’t imagine any modern bride making do with hand-me-downs, not even particularly cherished hand-me-downs.
Certainly, no one would want a gown from such an ill-fated marriage. The best thing she could do with it now was take it to a charity shop.
Julian, the best man and the groom’s men had worn top hats and morning coats. Pip (her only bridesmaid) had worn emerald. It had been a pleasantly warm day. Not so hot that her make-up ran or people had to squint at the photographer but warm enough so that it was comfortable and favourable to spill out on to the patio to drink the champagne and to make the light choice of salmon and boiled potatoes appear wise, not just economical.
Stephanie’s parents had paid for the entire event, they wouldn’t hear of anything else. They’d been saving up for twenty-two years to seat one hundred and twenty guests. It was a matter of great pride to them. The thought of Steph’s parents – so well-intentioned – caused Steph’s heart to quicken. This mess would devastate them. What had she done? Something so, so terrible. Something unforgivable. What was she going to do next?
Stephanie’s aunt had made the cake, which had been four tiers high and show-stopping. Not because it was exquisite but because the icing was rock-hard and Julian and Stephanie’s combined strength hadn’t been enough to enable them to slice into it. There’d been a lot of jokes about how to hold the knife more effectively. Their friends had playfully urged that Julian ‘put the point in first’, which had caused Steph a moment of embarrassment and discomfort because the old rellies had got the joke.
Steph was thinking about plunging the knife deep into the cake when the doorbell rang. She knew at once what it was. Trouble. It couldn’t be anything other. Not at this time of the morning. Definitely, the only thing that called at this time was Trouble. At the very best, it might be Pip. She’d be hysterical that her best friend hadn’t returned her calls all of last night. She’d probably done something impulsive and irresponsible (but ultimately well-meaning) like bundling Chloe into her banger of a car and dashing over here to see if she could help in any way. A wasted journey. No one could help. She was beyond help.
When the bell rang, Harry called out from his room.
‘No, it’s not time to get up yet, go back to sleep, darling. Don’t worry,’ she tried to reassure him, she needed to protect him for as long as possible, that was her job as a mother. But then, she hadn’t behaved like a mother last night, which was why her voice was high and thin.
As she walked down the stairs she became aware of her grubbiness and worried that her breath smelt of whisky. Last night she should have bathed, put on pyjamas and fallen into bed, the familiar and simple ritual would have offered some sort of comfort, minuscule perhaps but something.
It wasn’t Pip.
There was a policeman and a policewoman. Stephanie opened the door and stared at their uniforms. Their walkie-talkies, their torches, bulky belts and heavy boots all seemed so out of place on her pretty front step.
‘Mrs Blake, wife of Julian Blake?’ asked the policewoman. Stephanie must have nodded. ‘There’s been an accident. Can we come in?’
The policewoman glanced at Steph’s cream carpet and then conscientiously wiped her feet on the mat before she crossed into Steph’s world. Her vigorous stomping made Steph think the policewoman was trying to leave as much of the distress and grime belonging to her criminal world at the doorway. Too late, thought Steph. Too late. Filth and crime have already found their way into my home.
The policewoman was probably in her early thirties but her brief yet genuine smile suggested a calm confidence well beyond her years. Steph could smell cigarette smoke on her breath. She thought, she shouldn’t smoke, this young policewoman, it’s a horrible death, and then she thought, who could blame this woman for smoking? I’d smoke too if this was my job. Steph’s thoughts were disconnected and nonsequential, it was to be expected considering the trauma and lack of sleep. She felt as though she was dragging her body through someone else’s life. It wasn’t a dreamlike state, not even nightmarish; the comfort of dreams and nightmares was that no matter how weird or upsetting, you knew you’d eventually wake up. Steph felt like she was two minutes behind reality, she couldn’t catch up. She couldn’t react quickly enough to save anything.
The policewoman wore heavy make-up, which seemed strange to Steph. Had she just started her shift? Who put make-up on at six in the morning? What type of woman stopped to apply midnight-blue eyeliner as she responded to a
999 call? A heartless, vain one? Or a woman who still had standards, someone who thought a level of formality was required at times like this? Steph didn’t know. Didn’t know anything. She let the woman lead her through to her own kitchen, where the policeman put on the kettle.
He was even younger than the woman. He was in his early twenties but he was one of those people who was happy with his youth, there was no sign of self-consciousness. He deftly moved around Steph’s kitchen opening and closing cupboards until he found mugs and tea bags. He added milk and sugar to hers, even though she’d said she preferred it black.
‘You need the sweetness,’ he asserted. What a funny arrangement of words, thought Steph. She’d have expected him to say, ‘It’s good for shock.’ Yet his words were apt. She did need sweetness. Stephanie was surprised to notice that the policeman wore a wedding ring on his finger, it didn’t sit comfortably with the arrogance on his face. Steph wondered whether he was faithful to his wife. She doubted it. Or even if he was now, he probably wouldn’t be as the years rolled by. He was strikingly handsome and knew it. His mother had probably taught him to believe he was doing the world a favour by simply existing.
These were the sort of ungracious thoughts that swirled around Steph’s sleep-deprived, slightly hung-over mind. Until Monday lunchtime such mean-spirited, ugly thoughts had always been strangers to Steph but now she embraced them. She thought she ought to make friends with her inner bitch, she figured they might be keeping each other company for quite some time.
Then, finally, the policewoman began to talk and she said what Steph knew would be said.
‘Your husband has been in an accident.’ The policewoman held Steph’s hands. She had warm hands despite coming in from outside. Her fingers felt like rice paper. Steph sat absolutely still and tried to manage these words.
‘A hit-and-run, actually,’ said the man. He didn’t hold Steph’s hand, he slurped his tea.
‘He was discovered at four a.m. this morning.’
Steph gasped. She felt her blood slow, it seemed to freeze in her veins. Four a.m.
‘When was the last time you saw your husband, Mrs Blake?’ asked the policeman with a gruffness that was habitual to him.
Steph tried to think. ‘Breakfast, yesterday.’
They’d hardly spoken a word. She’d made him toast as usual but he hadn’t eaten it. He’d said he didn’t have time because he was running late. She’d been disproportionately furious that he’d refused her breakfast, she’d felt that he was rejecting her all over again, in yet another way. A tiny pathetic way. But still, another way. Why it mattered to her so much she wasn’t sure. He was sleeping with someone else, he’d chosen someone else. He didn’t want to be her husband anymore, not properly, so did it matter if he didn’t want her wholewheat either? The toast went into the bin. She hadn’t had an appetite either.
‘Did you speak on the phone yesterday? Or text one another?’ The policeman held his pencil over his notebook. ‘Any contact at all?’ He was poised, ready to write down whatever she said.
Contact. The word made Steph shudder. ‘I sent him a text yesterday at teatime. About six.’
She’d sent out one final, frantic plea. She’d desperately hoped (although not really expected) that by sending him a text at the precise time she’d calculated he’d be greeting his mistress, he might have had a late-in-the-day flash of conscience and would suddenly turn round and travel home to her and the boys. Unsurprisingly her text, ‘We’re having shepherd’s pie for tea,’ had not done the job. She wished she could have thought of something more compelling.
‘Were you expecting your husband home last night?’
‘No. He often stays in town on a Tuesday,’ replied Steph carefully. ‘He said he might have to work late and stay in the company flat.’
She had no choice other than to continue to pretend that she thought this was the case. This was not the moment to say that she knew her husband was an adulterer and had been staying in a beautiful hotel with his bitch of a mistress. What good would come of that? As she uttered the lie, she comforted herself with the fact that until Monday, she would have thought she was telling the truth.
‘In town? You thought your husband was in London?’
‘Wasn’t he?’
‘No, Mrs Blake. He was staying at Highview Hotel, just a few miles down the road,’ said the policeman. ‘He was found in the car park. A guest was checking out early, to catch a plane, and they found him lying on the ground.’
The policewoman threw a look of censor at her colleague and then shared one of knowing sympathy with Stephanie.
26
Even now, Kirsten couldn’t stop shaking, she folded her hands across her body, warming her fingers in her armpits but still she was cold and trembling.
Last night was officially the worst night of her life. No fucking doubt about it. Off the scale. Un-fucking-believable.
Much worse than the night when Daddy discovered that she smoked pot and made her go to that dorky support group full of skanky crack heads, she wasn’t anything like any one of them, Mummy and Daddy had so overreacted. That was a very bad time. Smelly and so humiliating.
Worse than her graduation prom when, despite having spent literally hundreds of hours and hundreds of pounds finding the perfect dress, she’d turned up at the ball only to discover that Rachel Abbot was wearing the exact same one!
From the moment Kirsten had spotted the dress she’d loved it ferociously. It was a Jenny Packham. Admittedly, it was from her ready-to-wear collection but when Kirsten did get married she was going to have a Jenny Packham haute couture bridal gown. But as most of the other girls were opting for Top Shop maxis and stuff, because they were worried about their student debt, Kirsten was certain she’d create a stir – even in ready-to-wear. She wanted to give everyone something to remember her by, for ever. Something so magnificent that when she became famous (or at the very least was in the Tatler society pages) they’d say to themselves, ‘Oh yes, Kirsten Elton, she always was gorgeous, she always was going to be somebody.’ Secretly, Kirsten regretted the fact that her university didn’t have a yearbook, like they did in America, she was sure she’d be voted the most likely to succeed, or maybe the most beautiful, if they had that category. It would have been nice to see it written down.
The dress was a buttercup yellow, which worked just beautifully with her bronzed skin. It was fitted, with delicate straps and had stunning diamanté detail around the bust. But the most magnificent thing about the dress was that it split to the thigh, flashing her toned and tanned legs whenever she strode forward; it was sold with matching hot pants. In summary, it was just too, too cool. From the moment she spotted it, Kirsten knew she’d do anything to get the dress, even give a blow job to one of Daddy’s old cronies if necessary. As it happened it wasn’t necessary, Mummy had persuaded Daddy that a dress like that was an investment. What had she called it? Quite the show-stopper.
Goes without saying, there was no question that Kirsten looked best in the dress. If she and Rachel Abbot were photographed side by side and put in one of those magazines where readers were asked to text in to vote for who wore it well, Kirsten would get one hundred per cent of the votes, it was a dead cert. Rachel Abbot was a size sixteen, she had acne and knees that were so cushioned they were practically entire sofas! What made a girl who looked like that think she should wear a Jenny Packham dress? In yellow! Rachel would have been much better in a black, slack dress, ideally with long sleeves. No offence but the fact was, Rachel Abbot was a hound. That was why it was so bad! If one of the other pretty girls had been wearing the same dress, Kirsten might have been able to laugh at the situation, perhaps she and the other pretty girl could have flirted with the guys, jokingly telling them that they were twins – boys never tired of that fantasy. But Rachel was so ugly that her choosing the same dress as Kirsten was humiliating! Kirsten’s taste and style were called into question.
Obviously, Kirsten had had no alternative but to go home
because the shame was too overwhelming. It was a pity really, because Jake Mason had hinted that they might have got together later on. He’d kept saying he’d been practising his foxtrot, which was a joke, clearly, there was never any question that they’d really have to foxtrot, more likely they’d get sweaty to Lady Gaga and Pixie Lott but it did go to show that he wanted to dance with her. She’d been at home in bed, alone, by nine thirty, while all the other students had partied until five in the morning and only gone to bed after they’d cruised down the Thames to Richmond.
Such were the level of disasters and disappointments in Kirsten’s life until now. The thought made Kirsten splutter, tears poured down her face again, mingling with snot and sweat. She seemed to be leaking everywhere. Oh Jesus, oh God, oh fuck, fuck, fuck. What was going to happen now? This was such a big, fucking, serious disaster. She hated the word serious; teachers, parents, mates, even boyfriends were forever hurling it at her and whenever she’d heard them use it she’d had to disagree. It was such an overused word. Learning stuff wasn’t serious, which grade some stuck-up examiner awarded her wasn’t serious, nicking stuff from Boots wasn’t serious, not even if you were stupid enough to get caught like Holly Shaw (a ticking-off by the spinster store manger hardly amounted to a criminal record, did it?), having sex without a condom wasn’t serious, that’s why you could get the morning-after pill over the counter now. But this, this was serious.
Julian was dead.
Through the rain she’d watched him go down. He just folded like one of those old-fashioned deckchairs you still saw on beaches. Fuck, it was shocking. The yelling, his body falling on to the bonnet of the car and then slumping on to the ground. It made her sick just thinking of it. She hadn’t gone to him and checked on him. She hadn’t even reported it. How could she? Why would she? At the moment no one knew of her existence. She certainly didn’t want his wife finding out about her now. She’d just panicked and left. Left him alone.