Perfect Little Children

by Sophie Hannah

  “And I did nothing,” I say, my words falling like stones. “I decided you’d lost interest in me because suddenly you were rich, and I gave as good as I got—that’s how I thought of it. I saw you withdrawing from our friendship, took it personally and did the same. I’m so sorry, Flora.”

  “You’re here now.” She almost smiles.

  “I felt so guilty, too, for cutting Georgina out of the photo.”

  “When I saw that, my first thought was that maybe you and Lewis . . . but then I told myself you’d never collude with him to hurt me. Then I remembered you’d had a miscarriage, and realized how hard it must have been for you to have me turn up with a baby I’d told you nothing about, and I forgave you immediately. I hope I said so.”

  “You have now. We can’t change the past, Flora. We need to—”

  “I so nearly didn’t send you our new address postcard when we moved to Wyddial Lane,” she talks over me, staring out through the window at the pool terrace. “Lewis told me not to. Thank God I did. I’m glad you found me eventually, even if there’s nothing we can do. You tried. That means something.”

  Her mournful tone worries me. She sounds as if she’s given up.

  “I’m still trying, Flora—present tense—but you need to tell me everything. You woke up, Georgina was dead, Lewis was saying you’d rolled over, drunk, and smothered her. What happened after that?”

  “Threats. Lots and lots of threats. I wasn’t allowed to have you in my life anymore, or my parents. You and they were the people Lewis feared most. He knew that if I broke down and told anyone what a monster he was, it’d be them or you that I’d tell. You were easy to shake off. You disappeared as smoothly as if you’d helped draft Lewis’s master plan. My parents.” She flinches. “It was the second worst moment of my life, telling them our relationship was over. Lewis did the talking. He wasn’t fazed by it at all. It was just something that had to happen. The first of many things.”

  “Tell me,” I say.

  “There’s no point. It’s over.”

  “What do you mean?” The words spill out of me in a panic.

  I hear Lewis’s voice behind me. “You’ll see what she means if you turn around.”

  26

  He’s holding a gun. He points it first at Flora, then at me.

  No. Please, no. This can’t be real.

  “Hey, Beth,” he says casually, smiling the same way he did when he came out to greet me at VersaNova this morning. The suit and tie have gone. He’s wearing black tracksuit bottoms, brown boots, a black hoodie. Apart from the boots, he’s dressed like one of Ben’s friends.

  Or like someone about to commit a crime, using the weapon in his hand.

  “You didn’t think I’d have someone at the Marriott, ready to follow you wherever you went?” Lewis asks me. “I like to cover all bases. I’d have thought you might anticipate that.”

  My mind feels as if it’s falling down and down and down. I don’t want it to land, don’t want to look at where it’s heading.

  The gun can’t be real. Fake ones must be as easy to come by here as real ones.

  Don’t think like that, idiot. Believe it’s real. Act like it’s real.

  Flora hasn’t reacted to his arrival at all. She must have seen him come into the house behind me. Yet she didn’t show any shock, or even surprise. Suddenly, I understand why.

  “You knew,” I say to her. “That’s why you started sounding like you’d given up. How did you know he was here?”

  “She saw me from the window,” says Lewis, pointing to the glass part of the kitchen wall. “My wife is excellent at giving up, Beth. Yeah, you heard that right. My wife. She never married Kevin. She and I never divorced. And she might be known as Jeanette Cater when she’s hanging around Nowheresville, England, but legally her name’s still Flora Braid.” He balls his free hand into a fist, raises it and spreads his fingers wide. “Blows your mind, huh?”

  My mind has been blown since I first saw Flora on Wyddial Lane with two children who seemed not to have aged in twelve years. I can’t say any of this. All I can do is think about the gun.

  “You, Beth, are terrible at giving up,” says Lewis. “I’m never going to tell anyone the story of how and why I killed you today, and not only for all the obvious reasons. Imagine if I told my employees a story about two best friends . . .”—he moves the gun to indicate me and Flora—“. . . one of whom always gives up and the other who never does, and it turns out that it’s the determined, brave optimist who gets shot in the head, while the defeatist coward walks away without a scratch. That’s not a message that packs a great motivational punch, is it?”

  “You’re not going to kill me,” I tell him. My mouth is numb. The words sound as if they’re coming from a hundred miles away. He can’t do it. He must know that. I have children who need me to be alive.

  Lewis sounds reluctant to correct me when he says, “I am going to kill you, but I’ll say this before I do: I admire you. More than that—since I know my good opinion of you won’t count for much—I’d say it’s an objective fact that you’re an admirable person. Whereas there’s nothing admirable about Flora. If I’d married you instead of her, maybe I wouldn’t have had to . . .” He stops and shakes his head. “But I never would have. You’re not physically attractive enough.”

  “Don’t, Lewis,” Flora says quietly.

  “Don’t insult her looks or don’t kill her? Which? Aww.” He feigns sympathy. “What, tongue-tied now, are you? You were doing so well: I made threats, you were saying, after Georgina died. Lots of threats. Go on.” Keeping the gun pointed at me, Lewis walks over to a white sofa, sits down and puts his feet up on the low table in front of it. “Finish the story if you want to.”

  “What’s the point?” she mutters.

  “Beth, tell her what the point is.”

  My throat closes. I can’t breathe.

  “I’ll tell her, then,” says Lewis. “You want to know everything. Everything Flora and I know, you want to know it too. That’s what this has been about, your whole little crusade. Right?”

  “I want to help Flora and all of her children who can still be helped,” I manage to say.

  “That’s sweet. And not true. Yeah, you wouldn’t mind helping, but that’s not what this is about for you. It’s about your need to know. To make sense of what you saw, and everything that’s happened. There’s nothing wrong with that. Intellectual curiosity’s a good thing. A great thing, actually. Flora . . .” Lewis gestures with his head. “Finish telling your story. It’ll be cathartic for you to unburden yourself—all the therapy you’ve not had, all these years? Now’s your chance. And then you’ll be able to go back to your life in England with a different attitude. A better one.”

  He turns back to me. “I’m always telling her, Beth: when you can’t change a circumstance—and Flora can’t change her life circumstances, only I can do that—then all you can do is change your thoughts about the circumstance. That’s the only way you get to feel better. Flora—tell the story. No, wait. Beth, you give the order.”

  “What order?”

  “Ask her to tell you. Tell her how much you still want to get those missing pieces of information into your brain, even knowing you’ll only enjoy the benefit of satisfied curiosity for maybe five minutes before you die. Or maybe you don’t care anymore. Maybe now all you can think about is your fear of death, and that you’ll never see your family again.”

  That’s the one thing I can’t afford to think about. “Tell me,” I say to Flora. Lewis has had the gun on me for more than a few minutes now. I’m still alive. No one in this room knows for certain that I’m going to die.

  “I can’t,” Flora whispers.

  “Do it,” Lewis snaps.

  Please, Flora. Talk. Start talking and don’t stop.

  “Don’t be a selfish bitch, darling. If you clam up, it’s all over for Beth. She has no extended story time in which to work out how not to die. Right, Beth?”

  If I look
at him, I might fall apart. I fix my eyes on Flora instead.

  Silence fills the room like poisonous gas.

  Finally Lewis sighs and says, “You were telling Beth that first I killed Georgina and then I made threats. All true.”

  Flora’s face twitches.

  “Is that all I get by way of a reaction?” Lewis asks her. “She’s never heard me admit to our daughter’s murder before, Beth. This is a big moment. It’s okay, I’m not worried. She’ll never tell. I’ll shoot you in front of her and still she won’t breathe a word. I’d like to say it’s loyalty but it’s not. It’s cowardice. What did I threaten you with, Flora?”

  “You said I had to—”

  “Don’t tell me, you stupid bitch. Tell her—the one who doesn’t know.” He waves the gun at me.

  “He told me I had to go away,” says Flora. “That my drinking and my negligence had caused Georgina’s death, and I had to pay the price. The price was that I’d lose Thomas and Emily too. I wasn’t fit to be a mother, he said.”

  “I was actually pretty reasonable,” says Lewis. “I could have told everyone that I’d found Georgina lifeless and smothered in the bed with Flora, who’d passed out from too much drink. I didn’t say that. I protected my wife. I knew she wouldn’t have survived a week in prison—and yes, I believe some mothers who recklessly endanger their newborns do end up behind bars, even if they cry and say it was an accident. So I told everybody that Flora wasn’t to blame, that I came in and found Georgina in her cot. Blue, not breathing. I said nothing about the wine Flora had drunk.”

  “Flora wasn’t to blame,” I say. “You were.”

  Lewis frowns. “I know. Don’t let terror turn you stupid, Beth. I didn’t pin the blame on myself, obviously. My point is, I could have told the world that Flora killed Georgina, and I didn’t. I spared her that ordeal and that shame—possibly a criminal record too. I did all that willingly, because I didn’t want to be unnecessarily vindictive.”

  Flora makes a strangled noise.

  “But for an offense so severe, there had to be a price,” Lewis goes on. “Oh, wait—you think I’m talking about the killing of Georgina? No. Not that offense. Tell her, Flora.”

  “The offense was that I got pregnant when Lewis didn’t want another baby,” she says mechanically.

  “Deliberately, Beth. That’s not on. You won’t admit it now, but you know it’s something no decent person would do. Then she gave birth too early, to a cross-eyed creature that was certainly no part of the amazing family I wanted—the one I had until she ruined everything. Did Flora cause Georgina’s death? Yes, in a way. Without her scheming, there’d have been no Georgina. No one would have needed to die. That would have been better for all of us—you too, Beth. Flora’s lucky still to be a free woman.”

  Where should you be? HMP Peterborough.

  “Anyway, we very much were where we were, at that point.” Lewis shrugs. He stands up with a heavy sigh. “As I say, I offered Flora a solution to our predicament that I hoped would work for all of us. She was to detach herself, immediately, and disappear. I’d cover all expenses. Thomas, Emily and I would then be free of her taint, and Georgina’s, and able to get on with the rest of our lives. We agreed that after she’d gone, I’d tell the children that she’d had a breakdown and couldn’t face being part of our family anymore after what had happened to their sister. And that was that. Separate lives. That’s how it would have gone, if I hadn’t been too soft-hearted.”

  “You aren’t soft-hearted.” Flora steps forward. Her words spill out in a messy rush, barely distinct from one another. “You’re the opposite. You say you didn’t want to be vindictive, but you did. You still do. You want me to suffer as much as possible.”

  Lewis nods. His eyes flash, as if her disagreement has given him new energy. “Interesting interpretation, Mrs. Braid. I’ve not heard any of this before, Beth. Flora never talks back. I wouldn’t allow it. Today’s different, though. It’s True-Feel Reveal Day here in Delray Beach, Florida!” He chuckles. “Go on, Flora, have your say. I’m sure you’re not afraid of anything, are you?”

  “What should I be scared of?” she says. “You’re never going to kill me—you’ve got your playhouse on Wyddial Lane with all your toys in it and I’m the main one, aren’t I? Without me to torture, you’d have no interest in playing your game, and you love your game. You’re incapable of loving any human being properly, but you love the game, and the power it brings you.”

  “She calls it a game, Beth,” says Lewis in a voice designed to sound sad. “I call it giving her another chance. I think we need someone more objective than either of us to be the judge—you, for instance. Sure, you’re on Flora’s side against me, but you’ve got a good brain. Did I do her a favor or am I the sadist she thinks I am? Tell her the story, Flora. Actually, wait.”

  Using his free hand, he pulls his phone out of his pocket and sets it down on the table. “I’m going to record this. It’s good to have it all stored, for the official record. In case one day I write my story.” He grins. “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story, Beth?”

  His eyes flit up and down as he sets the phone to record. They’re never off me or the gun in his hand for long enough to give me a chance.

  “Recording,” he says, looking at Flora. “On your marks, get set, go. Let’s let Judge Beth decide.”

  “He said I had to go,” Flora says in a dull voice. “Far away from all of them. Lose my family. He would pay for my new life, but it had to be somewhere where there was no danger I’d bump into any of them by chance. First he sent me to Scotland. Until the job opportunity here came up, and he made a different plan: to put me back in the house where he . . .” She chokes on the words. Starts again. “Where it happened. And keep me there. He’d keep an eye on me, he said, to check I was coping. He didn’t care what happened to me, but he pretended to. That’s what he does: pretends or uses the truth as it suits him, so that I never know what to expect. Him keeping tabs on me was a control thing. That was how the phone calls started. The Daily Responses.”

  “Beth won’t know what those are,” says Lewis wearily, as if Flora’s a toddler who’s testing his patience to the limit.

  “She knows.”

  “And if you didn’t go to Scotland, and then back to Wyddial Lane, if you didn’t do his sick phone ritual every day, what did he say he’d do to you?” Hearing myself ask the question, I realize I’m not as scared as I was at first. I don’t know why not. Lewis still has a gun pointed at me. Maybe burning hatred flowing through you for long enough makes you braver. “Did he threaten to tell Thomas and Emily that Georgina’s death was your fault? That you’d been a bad mother and killed her?”

  Flora nods. “My parents too. It would have destroyed them. They’d have believed me over him if I’d told them everything, but I couldn’t risk it because he’d threatened something far worse than exposing me as a killer, even if he hadn’t stated the threat in words.”

  “If I didn’t say it in words, Flora, how could I have made the threat?” asks Lewis.

  “Innuendos, suggestions,” says Flora. “You know how you did it, and I knew exactly what you meant: if I didn’t keep my mouth shut and obey you, always, in every detail of what little life you’d left me, then you’d kill someone else I loved. Thomas and Emily, probably. Or my parents. Maybe all of them. There’s nothing too evil for you, and you don’t care about anyone apart from yourself.”

  “That’s not true.” Lewis looks angry. Insulted.

  I watch his face carefully, not quite believing what I’m seeing.

  “I cared about my family. You corrupted it beyond repair,” he tells Flora.

  “Even if you cared once, that changed,” she says. “Your obsession with making me suffer took over. You got addicted to it at some point. I’m not sure when. Maybe when the Florida job prospect came up and you realized you could force me to live—” Flora stops with a strangled sob. “Live in that house again—the last place I’d ever want to go ba
ck to. The house where you killed Georgina, the house you make me live in.”

  “Who are Kevin Cater and Yanina?” I ask.

  “Is that a trick question?” Lewis sneers. “They’re Kevin Cater and Yanina. Yanina Milyukov. Kevin Cater used to work with me years ago, when we all still lived in Cambridge. Yanina’s his girlfriend. I’m glad you brought them up.” There’s an edge of grim determination to his voice. “They’re the people I pay to keep things running smoothly. Flora’s not reliable these days, as you can see for yourself. She has two young children, whom she’d be incapable of looking after properly on her own. When I say ‘pay’—” He breaks off and laughs. “‘Through the nose’ is the only way to describe it. I pay Cater and Yanina a fortune, in fact. Not that I mind—they’re worth it. Most people would ask awkward questions, or want a say in what happened in the house. Not them. They do as they’re told.”

  “And they don’t know the rest. They have no idea how much they’re not told,” says Flora. “I’ve always been too frightened to say anything. They don’t know you’re a murderer. They don’t know that every time you pop back from Florida you . . . you . . . I hate you!” She screams at him, bending double as if someone’s snapped her in half. “I wish you were dead, I wish I was dead,” she sobs.

  As if nothing has happened, Lewis says to me, “I pay Thomas and Emily Cater’s school fees too. They’re not cheap. I do all of this so that Flora can have a second chance. A new family.”

  “Pretending to be Kevin Cater’s wife?” I say. “That’s her second chance? While his girlfriend pretends to be the nanny?”