All Your Fault: a gripping psychological thriller that will keep you guessing

by NJ Moss

  Mia had her back to me, snoring softly. For the briefest moment as I gazed across the room, illumed only by the lamp posts and the moonlight against the curtains, I saw Hope. Hope at ten years old, three older than she’d ever be. Sleeping peacefully.

  My phone buzzed as I walked down the hall toward our bedroom.

  It was an email from a company called Langdale Consulting. I’d set up a LinkedIn profile a few weeks ago in anticipation for Russ starting school. I’d felt faintly ridiculous filling in my two years of university and my patchy work experience. But I needed to at least try.

  The terse email informed me they were interested in interviewing me for the position of personal assistant to Clive Langdale, the CEO. I clicked the link. I had to check the yearly pro-rata salary twice, and then again – and one more time to be prudent – before I allowed myself to believe it. It was almost double what I’d expected to be making. Plus it was part-time, meaning I could work around the children.

  The interview was for tomorrow. Russ’s first day of school.

  Troy walked into the room, laptop under his arm. “All good?”

  I told him about the job, the interview, the opportunity. His face lit up when I mentioned the salary. “I can’t believe they’d consider me. The pay is so high for the position. They must want somebody with experience, surely. Maybe there was a mix-up.”

  “Work isn’t all about the CV.” He sat on the bed beside me. “They must see how special you are.” I rolled my eyes. “I mean it. You’re passionate. You’re hard-working. Look at how you’re raising those kids. You’re amazing, and maybe they can see that.”

  I felt my cheeks redden in the special way only Troy could achieve, even after a decade of marriage. “So you think I should go for it?”

  “What harm can it do?”

  He was right. And we needed the money. Neither of us would say it, but Troy was having problems at work. Every week it was another catastrophe. This could save us, save our family, make it so we could enjoy our lives instead of fret all the time.

  I clicked Reply.

  4

  Rolling out of bed early the next morning, I felt my anxiety doing a twisty dance through my body. Not only was I interviewing for the absolute perfect job today – not my dream job, per-se, but the job that would best support my family – it was also Russ’s first day at big school.

  I peeled the curtains back slightly, peering into the garden. I looked at Russ’s swing and his little football goal. My chest got tight as I stared at the sun-flecked flower beds, thinking about how soon it’d grow cold and grey.

  I remembered these past five years, how I’d felt fused to my son. Even after he’d started preschool, he’d only done half days. The afternoons had been ours. Our world had consisted of private beautiful adventures. There was a simple happiness in sitting in the park and watching my son stampede around, sometimes playing with his friends if the other daytime parents joined us, otherwise content to amuse himself for hours on end.

  I felt that era of my life fading, a new one beginning. The selfish part of me screamed to stop it. Stop it. Grab Russ and take him to the library, sit him down in front of his favourite monster-truck book and wander the aisles myself, or perhaps pack a picnic and abscond for the day, build estates out of wet sand.

  I wanted him to start school, of course. I wanted him to succeed. But I was losing my best friend.

  I sorted through my wardrobe, searching for the clothes I’d change into when I returned from the school run. The interview was not until the afternoon so there was no use going there directly after dropping them off. I stared at the heeled shoes, the pencil skirt, the tights, the white shirt, the snug blazer. I tried to envision myself wearing them, a working woman, a modern woman. I found it far more difficult than I thought I would.

  “Grace?” Troy yawned. “What time is it?”

  “Early.”

  “Can’t sleep?”

  “I’m a little nervous.”

  “You’ll be fine.” He was already half-asleep again. “I know you will. And don’t worry about Russ. He’s a little soldier. He’s going to do great today.”

  He rolled over and buried his head in his pillows, a habit he’d cultivated since his work problems had started. I could tell he wished he could stay sleeping, living in his dreams, pretending work didn’t exist.

  If I got this job, that might change. He might have the freedom to find something new. I tried not to let the pressure niggle. But there was no denying it. Today mattered a lot.

  5

  “Mummy, do you think I can have a bajillion new school friends?” Russ beamed from his booster seat, which he hated sitting in. Of course, he was old enough for a big-boy seat. But cars were dangerous, deadly things, and I wasn’t taking any chances. My youngest was always a ball of barely contained energy, and this morning was no different. He was tall and sturdy for his age, with his father’s curly brown hair and his grandfather’s – my father’s – pale green eyes. “Or one really, really amazing one?”

  I smiled at him in the rear-view mirror, a film of sweat coating my body. I wished I could be as optimistic as him, but I felt like a bird about to release her fledgling into the open air, which was good, necessary, but it was also terrifying. There were predators in the sky.

  What if he didn’t like it? What if he wanted to come home?

  My mind whirred and a maelstrom of uncertainty spun and spun, like the bike wheel, Hope’s bicycle wheel, had spun around and around and—

  “Mummy? The light.”

  “Oh,” I said, just in time for an impatient driver two cars down to give me the mother of all honks. “Silly Mummy.”

  “You’re not silly, Mummy.”

  “No? Then what am I?”

  “Umm.” He tapped his chin, a gesture he’d adopted after seeing Troy do it the previous month. “You’re funny. Funny Mummy.”

  I smiled and followed the flow of traffic, smelling the last moments of summer through the window. Mia had her blood-red headphones in, her pencil making quiet tsk noises as she sketched.

  “Mia, how many friends have you got?” Russ asked, tugging at the headphones.

  “Russie. Play nice.”

  Mia and I met eyes in the rear-view mirror. She gave a shrug that was somehow grown-up. She was only ten and yet sometimes I saw her as the young woman she would all too soon become, my little miracle Mia, the answer who had come midway through my university career. I’d never resented dropping out and giving birth to her instead of finishing my psychology studies. I was quite amazed by that.

  “Pardon?” she said patiently, turning to Russ.

  “I said how many friends do you got.”

  “Do you have. Um, I don’t know. A few. Who cares?”

  “I want loads. I’ve got Jack and Nathan and they’re in my class but I want loads and loads.”

  “I don’t care. There’s more to life than being popular.”

  How was she only ten, this precocious girl, so like Hope, so mature for her age? I knew she’d set the world ablaze one day and leave us all dazzled in the light. People would gawp in amazement when I told them I was Mia Hope Dixon’s mother. The famous artist? they’d gasp.

  “Mummy,” Russ went on, as we inched through Bristol Monday-morning traffic. “Are you dressing that to your intervoo?”

  “Wearing,” Mia said. “Interview.”

  “Absolutely.” I waved a hand down at my hoodie and jogging bottoms and my UGG boots. “Because then I won’t get the job and I can spend all day with you.”

  “Nah-uh,” he said, breaking my heart a little. “I’m a schoolboy.”

  He looked so smart in his uniform, the burgundy sweatshirt and the pleated black trousers, his shiny polished shoes. Did all mothers feel this way when their children started school, properly started it, the nine-to-three robbery?

  Yasmin had cracked a bottle of champagne when her oldest began Reception. “I’m free. No longer shall I be a Victorian handmaiden to an atte
ntion-hungry brat.” I’d laughed along with her.

  And of course part of me was ready to reclaim my days. But there was this ache too, as though somebody was stealing him away. “Co-dependency is not a flattering trait in a mother,” my mother had told me once after a few glasses of wine. “We are here to enable our children to function independently in the world, not to hold their hands through every tiny incident.”

  Fine. I get it. But maybe I love my son and maybe I’m sad and maybe I don’t want to drink champagne. Fuck you all.

  I’d been through this with Mia, but I’d had Russ to focus on. With him gone I had to be a proper person again. For the first time in my life I was praying for gridlocked traffic.

  There was no such luck. The traffic eased and on we drove.

  Soon I was parked up outside the school gates and Mia was taking her headphones out and folding everything into her rucksack, which had a little van Gogh pin on the strap. “You’re going to do great today, Mum.”

  Russ fidgeted, buzzing to be out and gone.

  We climbed from the car. Mia waited beside her little brother, ready to walk him in as we’d discussed. It meant a lot to her, I knew, helping him. It was good for them to be able to rely on each other, of course. It was nothing like me and Hope.

  There were embarrassed tears in my eyes as I leaned down and wrapped my arms around my son. “I love you.”

  “Love you, Mummy,” he said gleefully. “Bye-bye.”

  I watched them walk off together, Russ romping, ready. I wiped at my face and coughed back a sob, knowing it was silly. There were far, far bigger problems in the world. It was self-indulgent. Mother would grimace if she could see me now. Are you under the impression they’re off to a labour camp, dear?

  I climbed into the car and blinked and felt the hot tears sliding down my cheeks. There was a little voice inside of me – it was always there – telling me I didn’t deserve any of this. I was too rotten and broken. I ignored it, like I always did. I was very good at sequestering that voice. It was Mother. It was self-doubt and anxiety and hatred and all the bad things in life. It was an itch that, if scratched, could destroy everything Troy and I had built. It was useless and I wished it would die, this voice, this whisper.

  The only thing you deserve is a blade to the throat and a rope around your neck.

  But that wasn’t true.

  And I was allowed to cry if I felt like crying.

  6

  I was all twitching energy as I drove to the waterfront, near Queen’s Square, where Langdale Consulting was located. My clothes were clinging far too stickily to me, my tights gripping like nylon hands. I wanted to unbutton my shirt, but it would hardly make a good impression to walk into the interview with my bra hanging out. Or maybe it would? Maybe if I had a lascivious wink ready to go, a little suggestive head tilt, it might work in my favour. Do they have casting couches in the management consulting industry? I laughed inwardly. If so, Mr Langdale, I’d very much like to see it, if you please.

  After searching for twenty minutes, I found a parking space about a half-mile from the offices. I walked through Queen’s Square, the sun shining. A young couple strolled by, glued to each other in their intimacy, and for a moment I remembered walking hand-in-hand with Troy through this same park, about their age.

  We’d had the whole world ahead of us. Maybe we still did.

  I found a café nearby – I was woefully early – and ordered an apple juice, since caffeine was a no-no for me. I’d kicked the stuff when I was pregnant with Russ, and this time, unlike with Mia, it had stuck. I’d always had problems with caffeine. Heart palpitations, anxiety, excessive sweating. Now, without my body having any tolerance, an occasional coffee felt like a line of Class-A drugs.

  The buildings around here were redbrick and stylish, hipster-chic, the sort of place I could imagine Yasmin feeling right at home. I felt like a frumpy mum at a rave. I watched the café window as dyed heads and shaved heads and beanie hats bobbed by, and I tried to take deep breaths and calm myself.

  Getting this job would mean a lot to our family.

  We were not on the cusp of disaster, fine, but neither was disaster a far-off notion. All it would take was one minor tragedy, one expense we had not foreseen, and then our month-to-month existence would come toppling down.

  Asking my parents for money was out of the question. It was worse than that. It was a death of sorts. The death of the person I was meant to have become after Hope died. After that rainy blood-soaked evening, once the dust had settled – if it ever had – I understood I’d need to fulfil the role of two daughters. I’d have to achieve, excel, transcend. I would be what Hope would’ve been.

  I’d already failed once by dropping out of university. To go to them with hat in hand would be the final blow. I’d taken their favourite daughter. I should have protected her. It was my fault. All of this was unsaid. We did not discuss matters like this openly in my family. But it was there, lurking like an alligator beneath the surface, ready to snap its ugly teeth.

  Troy’s parents were just as complicated. His father was a by-the-bootstraps type, a man who believed hard work would conquer all. He’d gone from a council estate to an upmarket detached four-bedroom house through sheer force of will, working eighteen-hour days to create a successful home removals company. I knew Troy would detest going to him. His brother, Keith, was a successful photographer working in America, and this was all the ammunition George Dixon could wish for. “See,” he’d said one Christmas, proudly displaying a magazine with one of Keith’s nature photographs on the cover. “Hard work, son, hard work pays off.”

  The implication was that any financial failure, under any circumstances, was for lack of hard work. How could he think any different? He’d slept three hours a night for years while building up his business. What was Troy doing in his spare time? How was his book coming along? Was he putting in the blood, the grit, the sweat, the tears?

  I picked up my apple juice and took a small sip, checking the time. I had an hour. It seemed far too long to sit here thinking.

  7

  Clive Langdale’s office wall was dominated by a canvas of a snowy mountain, sunlight shining over the peak, with a motivational quote scrawled across the bottom. You Miss Every Shot You Don’t Take. The photo and the words seemed mismatched to me, but I was hardly about to point that out as I sat there, wringing my hands, staring at his empty office chair.

  His chair, I noticed, was twice as large as mine. It was a throne.

  I had been led to his office by a woman called Olivia Melhuish. I was almost certain I’d detected some resentment in the way she’d spoken to me, but perhaps that was my overactive mind. God knew the women in our family had some self-sabotaging instincts.

  My grandmother had slit her throat and then hanged herself. It was simple common sense. Why take the risk of surviving?

  Relax, Grace.

  Finally, the door opened and I sprung to my feet like an overeager kid. Pick me, pick me.

  I turned to find a shiny-toothed man with a receding hairline and a Rolex glinting at his wrist. His suit was steel-coloured and his stride was brisk. He looked at his desk and at the sofa area off to the side, and then nodded shortly.

  “No need for all the ceremony.” He walked over to the armchair and sat down, folding one leg over the other.

  I followed him. “Of course.”

  The word unorthodox was already bouncing around my mind. On the way in, I’d passed a games room with a pool table, as well as a small workout room. Several of the employees were tattooed and had dyed hair. I supposed I’d had some old-fashioned notions of office work from never having properly participated in it. Or perhaps my experience in temp work had been at old-school companies. This company screamed – or wanted to scream – modern.

  I sat and folded my hands, wishing my throat was not so dry. I didn’t want to ask for water. I glanced at the door.

  “No, Mrs Dixon, it’s just us.”

  “Please,
call me Grace.”

  “Then I’m Clive.” He smiled in a corporate sort of way. I wondered if he was secretly laughing at me. Paranoid. Calm down. “Okay, well, let me be blunt. I don’t give a damn about any of the human resources shit I’m supposed to ask you. I’ve got this big list of questions but where’s the fun in that? No, hell no. If you’re going to be my personal assistant, I need to do this my way.”

  “Sure,” I said, waiting.

  “So tell me why, Grace.”

  “Why?”

  “Why do you want this job?”

  What a broad question. I searched my mind. I’d read a “Ten Tips to Ace Your Interview” article online the previous night, sitting up in bed, sex-sore and contented beside Troy. At no point had they mentioned this approach.

  Because I need the money. Why do you think, Clive?

  “I want a challenge. I’ve been out of the work force for quite a few years.”

  I winced. It sounded so cut-and-paste. Plus I’d reminded him of my inexperience.

  “Why did you leave your last position?”

  I fought the urge to pick at the sofa, stab at it with my fingernails to give my hands something to do. “Scheduling issues. My son was still in preschool and they weren’t exactly flexible about my working hours.”

  I silently pleaded for him not to ask why I hadn’t enrolled him in afternoon preschool, because then I’d have to admit I’d greedily kept my son for myself. I’d let my emotions guide me. It didn’t look good, as though I was some tragic mother hen whose only sense of identity came from her children. I wasn’t that, was I? Or if I was, was that really so bad?

  “Hmm,” he said, thankfully letting my explanation pass. “But why?”

  I almost groaned. This screamed pretentious. And yet the pay was good. I needed this job. It was perfect.

  “My children.” I met his eyes. “If you want the truth, Clive – and as your PA, I will always be honest with you – I am here for my children. I want them to be able to look up to me as more than their mother. I want them to be able to look up to me as a strong capable person. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a mother. I didn’t mean that.”