Am I Guilty?

by Jackie Kabler

  Greg.

  I looked at the last name on my list:

  knew/suspected he was Zander’s father. Looked terrified when he realized. Didn’t want Annabelle to find out?

  But again, would anyone go as far as murdering a child to stop his wife finding out that he’d been unfaithful? It wouldn’t really help in any case, not when so many people knew, or suspected, the truth. Annabelle could easily find out, couldn’t she, whether Zander was dead or alive? Rupert could have gone to her and told her what he suspected at any time. I was surprised he hadn’t, in a way. Wrecking Greg’s marriage would be a good way to get revenge on him …

  My head was starting to throb. I put the pen down again and stared at my list. That was all I had for now. And, now that it was all there in black and white, the possible motives of three of these people seemed tenuous, at best. Isla, Flora, Greg? No. There was only one person on this list who really had a reason to kill Zander. To destroy my life. To punish me. I felt a sudden rush of nausea, and clasped my hands to my mouth, willing myself not to be sick.

  Rupert.

  If I didn’t kill Zander, if I did take him inside, and put him safely in his pram, then the only other person who could realistically have put him back in harm’s way, who had a real motive, was my husband. Rupert.

  ‘I think Rupert killed Zander,’ I whispered.

  27

  ANNABELLE

  ‘Wonderful. The velvet looks amazing, thank you.’

  I smiled at the two young men on the ladders by the tall windows, and they mumbled an acknowledgement, concentrating on getting the final folds of the deep rose-coloured fabric to fall perfectly to the deep pile, shell-pink carpet below. Draping the windows in great swags like this instead of using formal curtains had been Flora’s idea, and it had been a genius one, the perfect finishing touch.

  We were basically temporarily redecorating an entire room for this week’s biggest event – a pyjama-party-style baby shower for a mum-to-be in Malmesbury. Wife of a wealthy London stockbroker, Octavia MacdonaldBrown had given up her Mayfair art gallery job as soon as she’d fallen pregnant and had begun to nest in the couple’s country home. Now, with just weeks to go before the baby, a little girl, was born, it appeared she’d stopped going out at all.

  ‘It’s this bump, Annabelle,’ she’d said to me earlier with a pained expression on her beautiful face. ‘I just don’t have anything to dress it in.’

  The pyjama party baby shower had hence been the perfect solution. Octavia had asked me to order twenty pairs of baby pink silk pyjamas – the tops with her guests’ names embroidered across the back in fuchsia – with matching faux fur mule slippers.

  The pink theme carried through to the food – there would be rosé champagne and pink lemonade, smoked salmon canapés and beetroot hummus, rhubarb fools and raspberry cupcakes. A manicurist who’d been instructed to bring only shades like ‘Pink Bubblegum’, ‘Cotton Candy’ and ‘Misty Rose’ had been hired, and a flashing pink neon sign rigged up above the door of the dining room, pronouncing that ‘Girls Do It Better’.

  ‘No gender stereotyping here then,’ Flora had muttered sarcastically as Octavia had waved us off after our first visit, and I tended to agree with her. Neither of my girls were particularly into pink, and it wasn’t something I’d ever encouraged, not being the biggest pink fan myself. But hey, a well-paying event was a well-paying event, and money definitely seemed to be no object to Octavia, who had declared at that first meeting that none of the nineteen rooms in their stunning Victorian Gothic mansion was right for the party, and asked us if we could redecorate the little-used formal dining room for the occasion.

  ‘We can change it back afterwards. Toby won’t care. Probably won’t even notice. He prefers to eat in the kitchen most of the time anyway,’ she’d said breezily, giving us an eyewateringly large budget for a new carpet, curtains and paintwork.

  We’d rented several chaises longues upholstered in orchid chenille, due to be delivered on Friday morning for the party that evening, and the flowers for the tables – stargazer lilies, alstroemeria, gerberas and hydrangeas – were all arranged too. Now, on Wednesday morning, the paint was dry, the carpet in and the windows almost finished, meaning Flora and I could relax and concentrate on a couple of other little jobs before returning here to make sure everything ran perfectly on the day.

  Relaxing, though, was not something I was finding easy at the moment. My low-level anxiety of recent weeks had worsened, for reasons I couldn’t quite understand, but it seemed as though a strange current of unease was rippling through my home, as if something unnamed was bubbling menacingly under the surface, about to erupt.

  We’d talked to Oliver, Greg and I, about the wingless flies, and he’d totally denied any involvement, yelling that he always got the blame for everything, and that it was ‘probably that little brat, Sienna’. I’d seen the look in his eyes, though, when we first confronted him, and I knew. I knew he was lying, and maybe I would have too, at his age, in his position, but I still hated it, hated the fact that my baby son, my first born, was lying to me, was acting so oddly, seemed to have such a violent streak, seemed capable suddenly of such nasty things. It scared me, and I had no idea what to do about it.

  Then, this morning, something even more horrible had happened, and now I couldn’t banish the awful, gripping fear that Olly might be behind that too. I’d been making breakfast, pausing to sip my coffee while I gazed out of the kitchen window, eyes flitting across the garden, making a mental list of jobs to be done out there, when I noticed it, an unmoving reddish mass at the edge of the lawn. What was that? A dead fox, maybe? I’d slipped some outdoor shoes on and walked down the garden to investigate, but as I’d got nearer I’d seen that it was no fox, but something familiar, something so familiar and, in its present state, so horrific, that I’d actually screamed. Frozen to the spot, I stood and pointed as Greg and the girls came running out of the house, and then they saw it too and Millie and Sienna both burst into frightened tears.

  ‘Hamish! Poor, poor Hamish! What’s happened to him, Mummy?’ Sienna wailed, clinging to my legs, eyes wide and terrified, Millie covering her eyes with her hands, sobbing. Hamish was the big ginger tomcat owned by our nearest neighbours, the Wares, but he’d always spent a lot of time in our garden, and Sienna, in particular, adored him. We’d never had dogs or cats, Greg and I knowing the bulk of the pet care would fall to us and our working hours just too long and erratic to make it fair on the animal, so Hamish had almost been a surrogate, a stand-in pet, Sienna spending hours playing with him on the lawn on sunny afternoons, cuddling him, even on occasion dressing the tolerant cat in her dolls’ bonnets and laughing hysterically as he wandered off to climb a tree or chase a bird, looking like a feline Jane Austen taking a turn around the lawn.

  Now, we saw, Hamish was very dead, a deep slash across the soft orange and white fur of his throat, his eyes wide open, unseeing. A fox maybe? A dog? But as Greg had swept our weeping daughters back into the house, muttering to me that he would deal with the corpse and break the bad news to the Wares, and I had turned to follow them inside, a movement up above caught my eye. It was Oliver, standing at his bedroom window, staring down into the garden, his face pale, blank. He’d caught my eye, met it for a moment, then turned away, and a chill ran through me that was nothing to do with standing in a windy garden so early in the morning in just a thin sweater and jeans. Olly? Could he? But why? Why would he?

  I had said nothing to Greg this time, unable to face it, letting the theory of a dog or fox killing Hamish stand. I couldn’t confront Oliver again, couldn’t listen to him lying to me again. Something had to be done, though, if I was right, if I wasn’t being paranoid, for how could we go on like this?

  Flora had missed it all, out for her morning run when we’d found Hamish, but as we’d driven down to Malmesbury I’d asked her advice, yet again. She’d listened, raising her eyebrows when I told her about Oliver’s silent watching from his window, and then sh
rugged.

  ‘Annabelle, I just don’t know. Killing a cat? Olly can be a bit aggressive with Sienna, and the flies thing was pretty horrible, but that’s a whole new level. Are you sure it was him? Why would he? I’ve seen him stroking Hamish loads of times, talking to him. He loved that cat as much as the girls did, I’m sure he did. Maybe it really was just a fox?’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know. Oh Flora, it’s just all getting to me, you know?’

  I hit the brake as the lights changed to red up ahead, then carried on talking.

  ‘Olly just seems to have developed this aggression. He wasn’t always like that, especially with Sienna. It started fairly recently, and I can’t figure out why. It worries me, Flora. I’m scared he’s going to hurt somebody, one day. Properly hurt somebody, I mean. I just don’t know what to do … telling him off just doesn’t seem to make any difference …’

  ‘Oh, it won’t come to that, come on.’ Flora’s hand briefly covered mine on the gearstick.

  ‘It’ll pass, this phase. And Sienna irritates him, that’s all. It’s the age difference. He’s heading into his teens soon and she’s still a baby. At least he and Millie have some interests in common – some of their games, even TV shows. Sienna is so much younger, it’s tricky for him to relate to her. It’ll get easier as they get older, wait and see.’

  I gave her a sideways glance, but her words made sense, and some of my anxiety began to dribble away. She was right, of course she was.

  ‘We ended up promising to get Sienna a kitten,’ I said. ‘After we’ve said for years we didn’t have time for pets. It was the only thing that calmed her down. It has to be white, she says. So that she can call it Olaf. After the snowman, in flipping Frozen.’

  Flora snorted, and I found myself smiling too.

  ‘You’ll love it, you know, when it arrives. It’ll be good for you. It’s a known fact that stroking a pet is very calming. Good for stress relief. Trust me.’

  I took a hand off the wheel for a moment to poke her gently on the arm.

  ‘How did you get so wise, Flora Applegate? Honestly, you do make me feel better. It’s like talking to a sensible older sister sometimes. I forget that I’m more than a decade older than you.’

  There was a second or two of silence.

  ‘Until you look in the mirror, obviously,’ she said, then shrieked and ducked as I yelled ‘OI CHEEKY!’, my left arm flailing at her as I tried to keep the car steady with my right.

  We took a diversion to Cheltenham on the way home, me needing to collect a pair of shoes I’d ordered from Cavendish House, Flora wanting to pick up a few bits and pieces in Boots, both of us fancying a quick mooch around the shops.

  I parked the car in one of the spaces in front of the municipal offices on the Promenade, agreeing with Flora to meet back there in an hour, and nipped across to Cavendish House, buying some new tights too, before whiling away a good fifteen minutes browsing the shiny shelves of Space NK. As I left, clutching a tiny bag containing an equally tiny but vastly expensive pot of moisturizer, I almost walked straight into Thea Ashfield.

  ‘Annabelle! I’m so sorry, I was miles away.’

  I stared at her for moment, shocked not just at her unexpected presence but also at her dishevelled appearance, her hair greasy and pulled back from her thin face, her skin dry, lips chapped, eyes red-rimmed.

  Then I mentally shook myself and held out a hand. Being polite wouldn’t kill me, I thought, and no matter what I thought about this woman and what she’d done, she was clearly in a bad way.

  ‘Thea, how are you? I wasn’t looking where I was going either, don’t worry. How are … how are things going?’

  She took my outstretched hand and gripped it between both of hers, her black leather bag sliding down her shoulder to rest in the crook of her arm. Her hands were freezing, and reflexively I began to rub them with my own.

  ‘You’re so cold! Do you … do you fancy a coffee? I have to meet Flora, but I have about half an hour.’

  Gosh, what was I doing? It was too late now though – Thea was nodding gratefully.

  ‘We could nip up to the Costa in Waterstones? I’d love a coffee, actually,’ she said, and I nodded. It was close, and I had my excuse to leave quickly. A quick drink, and I’d be out of there.

  It was warm in Costa, and quiet, just a few tables occupied by couples or small groups of elderly women, gossiping over tea and muffins, winter coats draped over nearby empty chairs. The air was aromatic, the scent of coffee mingling with warm caramel. A couple of people looked curiously at Thea as we entered, and I wondered for a moment if this had been a good idea, being seen in public with a woman who had done what she had done, but nobody said anything, and the moment passed. I was here now.

  I sent Thea to find a table while I got our drinks, and she chose one in the far back corner, next to the steamed-up windows that looked out onto the wide roof terrace. I sat down opposite her, and we made small talk for a few minutes, chatting a little awkwardly about Millie and Nell, and about work, as if things were completely normal, as if I didn’t know that this bedraggled, broken-looking woman had left her baby to die in a hot car, and would soon be on trial for the crime. And then, quite suddenly, she put her mug down on the table and leaned across towards me, gripping my right forearm.

  ‘Annabelle. I don’t know what to do.’

  She was speaking in an urgent whisper now, her fingers digging into my flesh.

  ‘I’ve been … I’ve been remembering things. About that day, the day Zander … the day it happened. And I’m scared, Annabelle. I don’t think it happened like everyone said it did.’

  I pulled my arm from her grip and stared at her. Flora had vaguely mentioned something about this, after she’d met up with Thea on Monday, told me that Thea’s memories were coming back, that she was beginning to recall the events of the day Zander died, but she hadn’t been specific, and I hadn’t asked, too busy concentrating on dinner and trying to make the kids finish their homework.

  ‘What do you mean, it didn’t happen like everyone said? I don’t understand, Thea? I didn’t think there was any question about what happened – I mean, you … you left him in the car, didn’t you?’

  I flinched inwardly as I said the words, but she was shaking her head, eyes fixed on mine.

  ‘That’s just it. That’s what I thought happened, that’s what everyone thought, or assumed. At least, that’s what everyone said, at the time. But Annabelle, I remember now. I remember bringing Zander inside, putting him in his pram. I remember it clearly. At first I thought I was just imagining it, because I couldn’t bear to accept what I’d done. But every day, it’s becoming more and more vivid, and I know, I just know, that it’s a memory, Annabelle. A real memory, not just my imagination. I did bring him in. And that means … well … it means something dreadful, doesn’t it?’

  I shook my head, frowning, unable to grasp what she was getting at.

  ‘That would mean … well, what? You must have left him in the car, because that’s where Flora found him. Otherwise—’ I stopped, stunned, as realization dawned. No. Come on. Was that what she was suggesting, really?

  ‘Hang on … are you really saying that you think somebody put him back there, in the car, deliberately? Seriously?’

  She nodded so vigorously that a strand of hair came loose from her messy ponytail, flopping down across her face. She pushed it back roughly, tucking it behind her ear, and suddenly her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘I know, I know, it sounds insane. And I have no idea why I’m telling you this, and I’m so sorry to lay this on you. I have no right. But Annabelle, I know now that I didn’t do this. And that means somebody else did. And there were only a few other people in the house that day, and now I don’t know who to trust, or what to do …’

  A sob escaped her, and a man a few tables away turned abruptly, casting his eyes around the café, clearly trying to see where the noise had come from, before turning back to his companion again. I rummaged in my c
oat pocket, found a tissue and passed it to Thea, my mind racing.

  ‘Thea, I don’t know what to say.’

  She shook her head, dabbing at her eyes.

  ‘No, no, you don’t have to say anything. I’m so sorry. You must think I’m crazy. Please, don’t say anything to anyone, will you? I can’t prove anything anyway, so … look, you need to go; it’s getting late; you’re meeting Flora. Sorry, Annabelle. Thanks for the coffee.’

  She was standing up now, pulling her coat on, fumbling for her bag.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said again. ‘Put it down to the ramblings of a mad woman. Grief, guilt, all that stuff. But thank you, for listening. And for your kindness, you know, to Nell. I don’t know how she would have coped, without Millie and … well, without you and your family, these past months. I appreciate it more than you know. Bye, Annabelle.’

  And then she was gone, moving swiftly across the café and out of the door, a slight figure hunched inside a too-big camel coat. I sat there, staring after her, and then it hit me, like an icy cold wave, making me gasp. Oh my … GOD. Could this be happening? For months, I had thought terrible thoughts about Thea, and the dreadful, unthinkable thing she had done, and yet now, I had sat in front of her, and looked into her eyes, and there had been something … something in her expression, in the tone of her voice … something which, in a matter of seconds, had changed everything.

  I think she’s telling the truth, I thought.

  28

  THEA

  Nell was bright red in the face, tears streaking down her cheeks, huge sobs sending spasms through her slender body. I’d tried for a full five minutes now to calm her, to hold her, but she was too angry, too distraught to let me anywhere near her.