Chapter Forty-Four
Ipswich
10th August: The night of the murder
Caroline
Her hair is longer than I thought it was, that’s the first thing I notice about her. I’ve always known she was beautiful, of course, but in the flesh it is even more obvious, she is even more striking. It doesn’t surprise me, exactly, but it distracts me, and for a second or two I just gaze at her, in the way that Callum probably does, staring at the fineness of her features, much finer than mine, much finer than Jenny’s.
‘Can I come in?’ she says, and without waiting for an answer she seems to slip past me, through the open doorway and into the flat. She must have noticed my stained face, but she doesn’t say anything, and not knowing what else to do, I close the door behind us and follow her. She’s gone into the kitchen, her long limbs making the journey from the front door in just a few strides. Behind us, the bedroom hums, baby Eve sealed off from her.
‘Were you in the bath?’ she asks me, and I realise that the bathroom door is ajar; she can partially see the half-full tub, the light is on and there is a towel strewn on the floor. The bag of Eve’s things is hidden from view, on the ottoman to the right of the door.
‘Now isn’t a good time,’ I say eventually, finding my voice at last – my priority has to be Eve, making sure she is all right after what so nearly happened.
‘Why not?’ she asks me, and her tone is light, as if we are playing a game or discussing the options for dinner tonight. There is something similar to him in her gestures, the way she turns her head.
‘Why are you here?’ I say, and at that she laughs, a strange, high-pitched sound. She’s wearing loose clothing, a T-shirt and a pink skirt that floats around her knees. My own shirt is wet from where I held Eve’s body against me; I see her eyes flicker over the large damp patch.
‘I’m here because you don’t seem to be getting my messages,’ she says, smiling at me again, ‘so I thought I’d deliver one in person.’
Despite everything, I feel a further stab of horror when she says this.
‘You’re the one who’s been texting me those things?’ I say, and she nods, still smiling.
The bedroom is just metres away; the room feels like it is pulsing.
‘I have to do something,’ I say to her, ‘I can’t talk about this right now. I’m sorry – I’m sorry about Callum, about everything, but I can’t do this now.’
The smile drops off her face as quickly as it came.
Somewhere in the room, my phone beeps with a message.
‘You don’t get to choose when we talk about it,’ she hisses at me. ‘You didn’t care about me when you were with him, did you? You did exactly what you wanted; I’ve seen you.’ Abruptly, she stands up. We’re almost the same height, but I am larger than her, I feel every ounce of weight on my body as she looks at me.
‘No,’ I say, ‘that’s not what I – that’s not how it was. I never meant to hurt you.’
She laughs, head thrown back a little, teeth flashing in the light of the kitchen.
‘Come on then,’ she says, ‘let’s have a look at your little love nest. I’m curious, I have to say.’
Before I can stop her, she is darting past me, pushing open the door to the kitchen. Too late, I see one of Eve’s little pink socks on the sofa, discarded beside one of the cushions. She must know I don’t have children, but she doesn’t seem to notice it. She turns around and her gaze is fixed solely on me. I am what she wants.
Chapter Forty-Five
Ipswich
10th August: The night of the murder
Emma
She can barely look at me. I stare at her, up close, drinking her in, this woman I have obsessed over for months now, ever since I saw her with Dad one evening after school. I was with my friend Molly – we were supposed to be doing homework but her parents were away and so we’d gone into town. I saw Dad kissing Caroline, in the doorway of a pub, on the wrong side of Ipswich where we never really go. My heart had skipped a beat and I’d pushed Molly in the other direction, not wanting her to see. I kept waiting for Mum to confront him, to tell me, but she never did. She’s pathetic. She doesn’t stand up for herself, and none of this is Dad’s fault – it can’t be. It’s this woman, bewitching him. Caroline. I have seen her from afar, of course, but in person she is different, somehow. Less shiny. Less vibrant. She is pale, her skin slicked with a shine of sweat – I feel a flicker of pleasure that I might actually be scaring her.
The kitchen is emptier than I thought it would be – there are no signs of my dad. None of the paraphernalia we have at ours, the trinkets Mum keeps, the photos on the walls of us playing happy families. I don’t like those anyway – they’re all a lie.
‘Do you know who I am, Caroline?’ I ask her, keeping my voice low and soft like I have practised. I’m having to improvise everything now, just a bit, because she’s not how I was expecting – I expected her to be tough and snappy and combative. Perhaps I’m more intimidating than I thought.
She nods, wiping at her face; it looks tear-stained already. Then to my horror, she puts out a hand towards me, as if to touch me.
‘You’re Emma,’ she whispers, ‘you’re Callum’s daughter.’
I nod, never breaking eye contact with her. Her eyes are slits in her face, red and puffy from crying.
Around us, the room is very silent, silent and still. There is an emptiness; I can sense it. Devoid of life.
I take a step towards her, feeling a flicker of enjoyment as the look of panic flashes across her face.
‘Why do you think I’m here?’ I ask her, tilting my head to one side.
‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I don’t know what you want from me.’ Her gaze darts around my face and I smile at her, feel myself struggling to suppress the beginnings of a giggle.
‘So why my dad, Caroline?’ I ask her, taking a step towards her, watching with a sense of fascination as her hair falls partly across her face. She needs to pluck her eyebrows. I’m trying to work out what my dad saw in her, what he wanted from this weird empty flat and this tear-stained woman that he couldn’t get at home from me and Mum. I want her to stand still, like a waxwork in a museum, I want to be able to examine her from all sides as though she’s an exhibit.
We’re standing by the kitchen counters. There’s a lone wine glass next to the sink, a small fridge on the other side of the draining rack. No fridge magnets, no lists of things to do like there is on ours. A small life, I think, too small for her, so she had to start in on someone else’s. A splash of anger curdles in my stomach. She’s not even looking at me.
‘What’s your plan, Caroline?’ I ask her, tilting my head to one side, forcing her eyes to meet mine. She looks glazed almost, as if my words aren’t quite filtering into her consciousness.
‘Emma,’ she says finally, her voice quiet, too quiet, ‘I can’t do this right now. Now is not a good time for this conversation. I have to – I have to…’ Her eyes dart away from me, towards the door that leads out into the hallway and presumably to a bedroom. A bedroom where she’s happily been fucking my dad without any care for me at all.
‘You don’t get to decide on that,’ I say, and then she actually glances down at the watch on her wrist, an annoyingly elegant-looking brown strap with a gold face. Did he buy her that?
‘You don’t understand,’ she says, and her voice is even softer now, almost a whisper. I hate the way she’s looking at her watch, dismissing me, dismissing my family. Taking only what she wants. She doesn’t care about me, she doesn’t know how much I need my dad, how much I need him to stay with us, stay with me.
‘Don’t tell me that I don’t understand!’ I say to her, and my voice rises, almost to a shout. Her eyes flick to the door again and I can see a vein pulsating in her forehead, horrible and blue. She looks ugly now, I think, she looks ugly and scared.
‘Why didn’t you reply to my messages?’ I ask her, and she stares at me, confusion in her eyes. I fee
l a slap of satisfaction – she obviously doesn’t think I’m capable of any of this, she thinks I’m a silly little girl, everyone does. I’ve heard them talking about me – hormones, her age, a stage. But they’ve got it all wrong. I’m angry – with Mum for not doing anything about it, with Maria for not even noticing, with Dad for letting this woman trick him. I know about her, about what kind of woman she is, and I’m here to show her that I meant what I said – she shouldn’t take what isn’t hers. I don’t. Yet here she is, standing here, refusing to apologise, refusing to engage, yet happy to take my father like picking a cherry from a tree.
I don’t think so, Caroline.
Chapter Forty-Six
Ipswich
10th August: The night of the murder
Caroline
I have to get her out of here. It’s almost eight thirty and all I can think about is Eve, little Eve in the cot in the next room, alone. I worry about the water still being in her lungs, about secondary drowning – she needs me to watch over her.
But still the girl needles at me, standing in front of me as though squaring up to somebody in a fight. What does she want from me? Why won’t she leave me alone? I feel as though I am inside a nightmare, like the ones I used to have after Mum died, when the walls are closing in and the ceiling is getting nearer and nearer until it traps me, coffin-like, underneath its terrible weight. I need to be with Eve.
‘Emma, please,’ I say, trying to sound normal, to sound calm, when inside my head there is a roaring, rushing noise, like water speeding down a mountainside, an avalanche of panic that I can barely control.
‘Please leave,’ I say quietly, ‘I promise to talk to you about this but now is not the time.’
‘I won’t leave until you tell me it’s over,’ Emma says, smiling at me weirdly, her mouth twisting up at the sides.
‘It’s over,’ I say, ‘it’s over.’ I nod my head madly, thinking desperately that this will be it, this will be all she wants, for me never to see Callum again and for her to leave before Jenny comes back.
‘How do I know you mean that?’ Emma says, fixing me with those blue eyes, the bright, bright eyes that remind me now of her father’s, and I feel, in spite of the chaos in my head, a spurt of fury and frustration. This hardly matters to me, now, how can it when I came so close to losing Eve? How can it when I almost let the worst thing imaginable happen, the worst thing a person could do? Why can’t she understand that?
‘Just go will you, Emma!’ I say, lifting my head, thinking that perhaps she will respond to strength rather than weakness, but at my sign of annoyance, my insolence, her eyes widen and I see the muscles in her neck begin to strain.
‘Go?’ she says, ‘I’m not going anywhere, Caroline, and certainly not because you tell me to. You’ve no right to talk to me like that.’ She comes closer to me, so close that I can smell her perfume; something sweet and heady. I feel sick, bile rising in my mouth. I have to get to Eve.
As quickly as she came close to me, she moves away, the strange little smile still playing on her lips. Unease stirs within me – she is unpredictable, angry.
And then, ‘Why don’t we have a cup of tea?’ she says.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Ipswich
10th August: The night of the murder
Caroline
I don’t know how to get her to leave. I don’t want a cup of tea, to get involved in whatever strange power play Emma is carrying out. All I want is to be able to think, to control my thoughts and work out what to do.
The sound of the kettle boiling begins to fill the room, the hot bubbling noise surrounding us, trapping me in. Ignoring Emma’s gaze, I put both hands to my face and take deep breaths, in and out like my mother used to show me before she died. What would she think of me now? If she knew what I had almost done, what my inexperience, my stupidity, my carelessness nearly led to? She’d be ashamed. Horrified. Disgusted.
Pressing my palms into my eyes, not caring what I look like, I try to think. Suddenly, I know what I have to do. I know there is only one way out.
‘Emma,’ I say, and as the flick of the kettle switch goes off and she looks down, I reach my right hand out, grab a long, silver kitchen knife from the rack next to the sink. In my hand, the black handle is firm, solid, and my grip is steady. Calm.
She turns to face me, and I take a step forward.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Ipswich
10th August: The night of the murder
Emma
The sight of the knife startles me; I didn’t think she had it in her. The kettle, boiling hot, sits beside me, ready for our tea. I was going to chat things over with her, force her to see my side of the story. Force her to see how much she’d hurt us. Make her feel bad for what she has done. Make her feel guilty. We’re going to France tomorrow, so that even if she tried to talk to him then, she wouldn’t be able to. We’d be miles away. I worked up the nerve to come round, knowing that in less than 24 hours’ time, I’d be on a plane. I’d be safe.
But I don’t think that’s what she has in mind.
‘Put the knife down,’ I say to her, not smiling any more, because even though I came here, I did this, I didn’t think she’d react in this way. Not really. I thought I had the measure of Caroline Harvey, but it turns out that perhaps I was wrong.
‘I want you to leave,’ she says, and she moves towards me, the knife outstretched. It’s a kitchen knife with a sharp, clean edge; the silver blade sparkles under her horrible kitchen lights.
I hate myself for being scared. I hate her for using this against me.
‘What are you going to do?’ I ask her, willing my voice to come out strong and taunting rather than shaky and frightened. ‘D’you think my father is going to come near you ever again if you hurt me, Caroline?’ I force out a laugh, my eyes never leaving the knife. ‘I bet he wishes he’d never come near you in the first place. You’re messed up.’
She shrugs, the knife moving up and down, cutting through the air. The vein on her forehead is still there, snaking its way unattractively across her skin.
‘Put the knife down,’ I say again, and I make a leap forward, intending to grab it off her, but before I can do so she drops it, the weapon clattering onto the cheap plywood floor. I dive for it, grab the handle and stand up, breathing heavily, my long fingers curving around the plastic. It feels strange underneath my palm. I feel as though I’m watching myself from above, looking down on my body as I face Caroline across her kitchen.
I want to put it down, or throw it out of the window, anywhere that it’s not in her grasp, but she’s only a metre away from me and I can’t risk letting go of it in case she grabs it again. I dart my eyes to the left, checking to see if there are any more but I can’t see any. She’ll know, though. She might have a whole drawer full of them. My heart is thudding and my hands feel slippery. Somewhere in the room, a phone beeps with a message – hers or mine, I can’t be sure.
I’m pointing the knife towards her, my eyes still on her face. I want to get out of here, now, the ideas I had about confronting her feel stupid, dislocated from reality, and suddenly all I can think about is being back at home with Dad, putting my feet on his knees as we watch TV, waiting for Mum to come home from book group. I don’t want to be here in this weird little flat with a knife in my hand. But I don’t want her to hurt me, either. I don’t know what to do. I drop the knife.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Ipswich
10th August: The night of the murder
Caroline
The moment she drops it, I reach down for it, intending to grab it and put it away, make her leave and get back to the baby, but she mistakes my actions for a threat and lunges down too, obviously fearful that I’m going to hurt her.
For a moment, our hands collide, skin against skin, and I feel a flash of anger as her hair whips across my face, her blue eyes flashing just like her father’s. Her legs kick out into mine and my legs buckle underneath me, pulling me over so
that my body slams against hers, pinning her beneath me. The knife is in my hand and I twist my torso upwards, trying to get away from her, and at that second there is a cry, the cry of baby Eve, piercing and loud through the small flat.
The shock on Emma’s face is obvious and immediate. The crying continues, unmistakeably a baby, and Emma’s face changes, screws up as though pain is ricocheting through her.
‘Is that your baby – is that my father’s child?’
‘No—’
I begin to say, but it’s too late, my hand around the knife has gone slack as I listened to Eve and Emma grabs it from me, and pushes it into my stomach with a horrible howl of rage.
Chapter Fifty
Ipswich
10th August: The night of the murder
Emma
The blood is immediate and shocking. I let go of the knife at once, horrified by what I have done, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling the soft push of the blade as it slides into her abdomen, sickly and wet. The noise of the baby crying has stopped, but someone is screaming, and I realise it’s me – an earthly, unnatural sound. Caroline is making a noise, too, but it’s quiet, a low, guttural groan. I ease myself out from underneath her, knowing I have to call the ambulance, do something quickly, stop this from happening.
‘Caroline!’ I say, ‘Caroline!’ She doesn’t answer, keeps her eyes shut and clenches her hands to her stomach, her fingers around the knife. Her body is folding in on itself like one of the paper dolls I used to make with Mum when I was little. The blood is pooling onto her white blouse, and her face, already pale, is paler still, as white as the walls of this silent, empty flat.
I kneel beside her, put my hands to her face, not knowing what to do, how to stop what is already happening. I want to remove the knife, to pull it out of her body but I’m scared that if I do so the wound will deepen and I will cause even more damage. It looks so brutal, embedded in her stomach like that, and I feel the panicked tears come to my eyes. What have I done?
The Babysitter Page 23