‘Jennie, help me out here, please. Tell me what you mean.’
‘Did you think we wouldn’t see it? You can’t put up a crowd-funding page and expect word not to get around. Look, I’m going to go and make us both a cup of coffee and then you need to tell me when you were diagnosed and what’s going to happen. Then I promise that unless you want to talk about it, I won’t mention it again.’
With that Jennie leans forward and wraps both her arms around me. Then with a choked-back sob she stands up and goes through the door, back into her own office.
I rest my elbows on my knees and cup my chin in my hands. My fingers feel cold, my throat dry. This is worse – far worse – than I thought. I know I’m going to have to look, but the idea makes my stomach turn over. Feeling like an old woman, I push myself slowly up from the sofa and go back to my desk. I stare at the screen for what feels like minutes before I can bring myself to open a browser and load the most popular crowd-funding site. I search on my name, and up pops a large picture of me, taken recently and without my knowledge. There are other photos of me, with Dominic and the children. These I recognise. They have been copied from my Facebook page.
I read the text with mounting horror. It describes – in first person as if I am speaking – how I have been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and how I don’t have long to live. I tell the world that I have one final wish – to visit family in Nebraska before I die.
‘Oh, dear God,’ I whisper.
I can’t draw my gaze away from the screen. I can feel the panic rising in me. I’m horrified that someone would do this, and the fact that Nebraska is mentioned again makes my stomach turn over and I wonder if I will be sick.
I swallow hard, knowing I need to deal with this – and now. Scrolling to the bottom of the funding page, I see another photo. This time it isn’t from my Facebook page; it’s a picture of me going into the hospice in Wales, head down, deep in thought. And it is date- and time-stamped. Yesterday at 13.08 p.m.
I feel dizzy and grasp the edge of the desk, slumping in my chair. I have to take this page down. What if Dominic sees it? How can I explain it – any of it? But most of all, how can I explain my lie to him yesterday? How can I justify my visit to a hospice in north Wales?
My vision fragments as if I am looking at the world through a kaleidoscope. A sense of helplessness washes over me and I drop my head in my hands and try to control my breathing.
32
As I pace my office, waiting to hear back from the crowd-funding site about having the page removed and getting any donations refunded, I remember how I had thought our sponsorship scam was such a good idea. Now it haunts me.
Some people on the staff have already made contributions, and I know I will have to call a staff meeting for the end of the day. I’m still praying that Dominic hasn’t seen the page. I can’t think why he would, unless someone pointed him there, and that raises a question – how did the staff find out about it?
Once I have managed to calm myself a little, I call Jennie back into my office.
‘Jen, I’m so sorry that you’ve been upset by what you read online. I have no idea how or why it happened, but it’s not true. None of it. I’m going to explain to everyone later. And I’ll tell them what’s going to happen about getting their money back.’
Jennie stares at me as if she doesn’t believe a word.
‘It’s true, Jen. Honestly, I’m not ill. I feel sick right now that someone would play such a trick on me, but I’m okay.’
‘But what about that photo of you – taken yesterday, leaving that place? There was a huge sign right next to you with “hospice” on it.’
I stifle a sigh. ‘I went to see someone. It’s a long story and not relevant, but it was a wasted journey. How did you find out about the page on the funding site, though? It’s not the kind of thing that you look at unless someone asks you to, is it?’
‘No, there was an email sent to the school inbox. It said it was from a “concerned parent” although it wasn’t a name I recognised. Do you want me to check?’
I nod, and she scurries back into her office, returning with a pink Post-it in her hand.
‘It’s not helpful,’ she says with a shrug. ‘It’s a Gmail account – blackjack1981.’
I look away from Jennie. I can’t let her see the shock that even I might not be able to disguise, although why I am surprised, I don’t know. Blackjack – the cause of all our problems, and 1981 – the year of Scott’s birth.
‘What did the email say?’
‘Nothing much. Only that he or she – it wasn’t signed – had been very upset to see that you were so ill. That you were exactly what the school needed, and so on. And there was a link, so I clicked on it. And you saw where it took me. Why would I ever have doubted it? Especially as it opened by stating that you didn’t want to talk about it. I nearly didn’t say anything, but in the end I couldn’t let it go.’
‘Well, thank God for that. People could have been contributing for days before I realised.’
One thought fills me with dread. If the school has had an email, Dominic might have had one too. I need to know. There is a good chance he won’t have seen it because he rarely gets email, and with Holly at home he has probably spent the day amusing her. I have to get Jennie out of the room, so I make some excuse about having phone calls to make, and with a watery smile she leaves me to it.
Fortunately I know Dom’s password, because in our house we’re not supposed to have secrets, so I log into his account and skim through the junk. And there it is, still unread, thank goodness. I quickly bin it, then go to his deleted folder and remove it from there too. I have been promised that the funding page will be taken down this afternoon, but until then I am going to keep the browser window open and check every few minutes in case a follow-up email is sent.
For a moment I think about the sponsorship drive I devised all those years ago. I feel nothing but disgust for the younger me and I have never forgiven myself for what I did. I was so desperate to get out of trouble and keep Scott safe that I persuaded people I knew and cared about to sponsor me – but at least I did the parachute jump, terrifying though it was. I can still hear the instructor’s voice as he told me to climb out of the plane and hang on to the wing strut with both hands; I can feel the wind buffeting my cheeks as I waited for his signal to fling myself backwards and away from the plane, praying that my parachute would open.
Scott had more friends at university than I did and got a lot of sponsors, but he never did the jump, showing photos he had found on the Internet to anyone who asked for evidence. One man jumping from a plane looks much like any other.
Between that and the raffle, we got enough money – just – to cover our interest payments until after Christmas, which was a huge weight off my mind. I’d arranged a bar job in Keswick over the holiday to raise more money, and we rarely went out anywhere any more – saving every penny – although there were nights when Scott said he needed to catch up on his work, so I didn’t see him.
I thought we were fine, and Scott made love to me with a passion and urgency that left me breathless. He seemed so confident that things were going to work out, and for a few weeks it was easier to believe him, to try to forget what we had done and the laws we had broken.
I realise now, with the benefit of hindsight, that I should have known it was a mirage, and that Scott’s absences told a different story.
It was only when I got a phone call to say that he was in hospital, this time unconscious, that I admitted to myself what I had suspected all along. The realisation that I could have prevented it haunted me. I should have taken Scott’s interest payments to Jagger along with my own. I should have recognised that he was addicted to gambling – that he believed he could win back all he had lost and turn the hard-earned hundreds we had made into thousands. Instead he failed to make his payments, and Cameron’s revenge had been swift.
33
Then
I didn’t eat or sleep
for the five days that Scott was in hospital. I tried to talk to him about what had happened, but he turned his head away from me, although not before I saw the shame in his eyes. The police hadn’t been able to get anything out of him either and said they had no viable suspects.
His injuries were worse this time, his face a mass of cuts and bruises. And that was only the damage I could see. His body had suffered, as it had before, but his spirit seemed to have died too. He barely spoke to me, and I could tell he was tortured by guilt.
Scott went back to his parents in north Wales as soon as he was discharged from hospital, the doctors saying he needed bed rest. I headed to Cumbria for Christmas but felt under the weather the whole time I was there. I was worried to death. My mum was overjoyed to have me home and fussed over me constantly. She made all my favourite meals, but I struggled to eat them.
‘I’m sorry, Mum. This lasagne is delicious, but I’ve probably got used to eating a bit less while I’ve been away.’
‘You do look a bit peaky, love.’
She looked so worried that I felt guilty fretting about Scott, but the nausea wouldn’t go away and I lost weight, although I had precious little to lose.
Finally, the time came to return to Manchester, and the thought didn’t fill me with joy. I couldn’t wait to see Scott, but there was the dull weight of dread in my chest, not knowing if his beating was a precursor to more trouble. When he walked into my room that first evening, I was shocked by what I saw. The bruises on his face had faded, but the light had gone out of his eyes.
He hugged me tightly, both of us unable to speak. He smelled the same – clean, salty skin mixed with the old leather of his well-worn jacket – and I didn’t want to let him go. We had spoken on the phone over the holiday, but it hadn’t been easy. There had been so much left unsaid when we had parted and our conversations had felt stilted, so I had resorted to emailing him, telling him over and over how much I loved him. It was easier than saying the words out loud. I was scared that things between us might have changed, but feeling his arms around me, I forced myself to believe they were the same.
‘I love you, Anna. I’ve missed you so much,’ he whispered.
I squeezed him tighter, my eyes filling with tears at the sadness in his voice.
He led me towards the bed, and I thought we were going to make love, but I was wrong. We sat side by side and he grasped both my hands. He pulled me round to face him, but he didn’t meet my eyes.
‘Cameron’s been in touch. He has an idea. I don’t know what you’ll think.’
I was fairly sure that if it was an idea of Cameron’s I wouldn’t like it.
‘He says it’s the way lots of people get the money to meet their payments – it’s quite a common route for students to go down.’ He took a deep breath and rushed out the next part of what appeared to be a prepared speech. ‘It seems people will pay a lot of money for a bit of company – someone attractive to go with them to dinner, or the theatre, or to a party.’ He tried to smile. ‘It sounds perfect – going to some terrific places, eating the best food in Manchester, and getting paid for it – doesn’t it?’
I didn’t know if he meant him or me. I was afraid to ask.
‘I could do it – lay on the charm,’ he said, the enthusiasm in his voice not matching the dull expression in his eyes. ‘There are some older women out there who like to be seen with a younger man. But the biggest call apparently is for young women to spend time with businessmen who fly in from all over the world and don’t want to spend their evenings alone. I reckon you could do it a couple of times a week and easily clear five hundred a month – more if you were flexible.’ He risked looking me in the eye. ‘That’s not so bad, is it? What do you think?’
I pulled my hands back sharply. ‘You want me to be an escort?’
Scott hung his head. He didn’t like it, I could tell, but I could feel his fear.
‘You only have to be nice to the men.’
‘Have sex with them?’
He reached for my hands again. ‘No, no!’
I’m sure Cameron wanted me to do more than smile and flatter, which was probably what being ‘flexible’ meant.
Scott’s voice dropped to a murmur. ‘I wish I hadn’t mentioned it. I’m sorry.’
I wanted to cry, scream, tell him he was a bastard for even considering it. But I couldn’t. Desperation was rolling off him in waves, and I needed him on my side. I hadn’t been planning to tell him that night, but now I had to.
‘We have another problem, Scott.’ I paused and took a deep breath. ‘I’m pregnant.’
34
Tom had decided to let Becky take the wheel for their trip to Prestbury to see Mrs Edmunds. He needed the fear induced by her fast and furious driving to dislodge the hard ball of tension in his chest, so was slightly disappointed when she kept to the right side of the road on every corner and drove at a sensible speed. He closed his eyes and forced his shoulders to relax. Becky left him to his thoughts.
‘Sorry about earlier,’ he said finally.
‘That’s okay. You’re the boss – you’re allowed to lose it from time to time.’
‘Not really, but it’s just been one of those days.’
‘Lucy?’
‘Kate as much as Lucy. I don’t know what’s happened to her. We’ve always managed to be civil with each other; Lucy’s the one that matters and she needs a good relationship with both her parents. But Kate seems to want to drive a wedge between us now.’
Becky was silent, and he wondered what she was thinking.
‘How did Lucy say her mum’s been?’ she finally asked.
‘Weird, I think was the word.’
‘Could it be another man?’
‘I don’t know, and right now I don’t want to think about it because I don’t have the answer. Let’s focus on Dawn Edmunds, shall we? Because here we are.’
The gates were standing open and deserted, the press having apparently decided that there was nothing of interest here now the victim wasn’t Cameron Edmunds.
Becky’s phone pinged as they were about to get out of the car. ‘Keith’s sent some images of the woman at the casino – the one who was with Cameron.’
‘Good. Maybe Dawn will know who she is.’
‘Doubt it – in the closest shots she has her head turned away from the camera. There are couple of long shots of her face, but they’re pretty grainy.’
‘Bugger. Well, we can ask, I suppose. I hope she’s sober. I know our guys can’t stop her drinking, and I shouldn’t have suggested otherwise, but we need to get some information from her – some real information.’
They got out of the car and started towards the door, to be greeted by a young police officer in uniform. He looked at Tom warily.
‘I’m sorry about what happened, sir. I had no idea she was going out to talk to the press. I’d gone to the bathroom, and PC Tinubu was talking to the nanny.’
Tom nodded. ‘It’s done now. We’re here primarily to ensure that she and the children are safe if someone is still after her husband, and also so that we know immediately if he comes home. But bear in mind she’s strong-willed and maybe impulsive, so keep an eye on her.’
Dawn was curled up in a corner of one of the sofas, looking totally different from the woman they had met only one day before. The perfect make-up was gone; the hair was tied back in a ponytail. She looked years younger and much more vulnerable.
She didn’t wait for Tom to speak. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone out to talk to the press, but the whole thing was upsetting the kids.’
She had taken the wind out of Tom’s sails and there was little point in showing his irritation.
‘Mrs Edmunds—’
‘Dawn, please. Just Dawn.’
‘Dawn it is then. I need to ask you a question. I’m sorry if you find this upsetting, but we’ve been told that when your husband went to the casino he was sometimes accompanied by a woman, and we’re trying to find her in the hope that she�
�ll lead us to him. The CCTV shows her standing behind him as he places his bets, but we have no evidence that he either arrived or left with her.’
Dawn looked Tom in the eye. ‘You’re treading carefully as if I give a damn. I don’t. He could have been shagging her senseless for all I care.’
‘Right,’ Tom said, there being no appropriate comment he could think of. ‘Do you mind taking a look at a photo to see if you recognise her? We can’t see her face, but if it’s someone you know well, you might be able to recognise something about her.’
Tom nodded to Becky, who pulled up one of the images on her mobile and passed the phone across. Dawn looked at it for a couple of minutes, enlarging the image and moving it around.
‘I don’t, but she’s a surprise.’ She shrugged. ‘Not his type at all, I’d have said. Doesn’t look tarty enough. And she’s got red hair, which he claims to hate.’
Tom was disappointed. He had hoped there might have been something about the woman that she recognised. They had drawn a blank at the casino too, although he was certain someone knew more than they were saying. They would try again when the night staff came on duty.
‘When we met you, Dawn, you said that you had effectively been forced into marrying Cameron. What did you mean?’
She shuffled about a bit on the sofa, as if trying to find a comfy spot, and it now seemed she could no longer meet Tom’s eyes.
‘I was in my third year, studying history. I did something stupid, and Cameron found out. A mistake I’ve been paying for ever since.’
‘What did you do?’
Dawn lifted her gaze to his. ‘You’re a police officer. Why the hell would I tell you?’
‘Because anything we can find out about Cameron might be useful. He’s still missing, Dawn, and a man has been killed.’
She frowned. ‘Are you recording this? Because if I tell you, I don’t want you to use it against me.’
The Shape of Lies: New from the queen of psychological thrillers Page 15