‘How’s Alice going to get home?’
‘She’ll walk. It’s not far across the fields.’
‘It’s so cold.’
‘Maybe if her Uncle Richard wasn’t afraid about being seen with her…’
Gemma clicks her fingers and then gets out of the car, closely followed by Alice.
Richard watches from the driver’s seat as they walk the short distance along the lane before passing the recycling bank and stepping into the bright lights of the forecourt.
There’s being careful about where and when he might be seen with Gemma and Alice – and then there’s outright recklessness.
Gemma and Alice have disappeared into the minimart building but it’s only a few moments until Alice emerges. Richard puts the car into reverse and edges backwards until he’s out of sight from anyone inside the shop. He’s at the rear of the forecourt and there are no vehicles at the petrol pumps.
Alice is in her big red coat and she stops to look across to the far side of the road. The dewy fields lie beyond, with the hazy lights of Leavensfield glowing from the bottom of the valley. On evenings like this, when the sun sets early and frost clings to the verges, the wintry scene from the top of the hill is like a painting.
Alice tightens her jacket’s zip – but it won’t be much of a match for walking home over the fields in this weather. She’s only twelve.
Richard pulls up the handbrake and leaves the car idling as he gets out and then beckons the girl across. She glances quickly at the shop, takes one step towards the road – and then seems to change her mind as she crosses to where Richard is standing. She stands a couple of steps away from him, her arms crossed.
‘I can give you a lift home,’ he says.
‘But Mum—’
‘Don’t worry about your mum.’ Richard glances towards the shop, where, because of the angle, there’s no chance of Alice’s mother spotting him. ‘If she says anything, I’ll deal with it. She doesn’t have to know.’
Alice bobs from one foot to the other. The cold, dark walk home across Daisy Field can’t seem too appealing.
‘She’s told me not to get into a car with strangers.’
Richard forces a smile, but the icy, needly wind scratches at his face and he ends up offering something closer to a grimace. ‘Come on… I’m not a proper stranger, am I?’
Alice eyes him and he can see the conflict within her. She should say no – except nobody wants to walk home on a night like this. Besides, what mother lets a twelve-year-old walk home in the dark? Even in a place like Leavensfield?
‘It’s only down the hill,’ Richard adds, nodding towards the village in the distance. ‘Not far.’
A car passes on the way down to the village. Alice watches it go and then nods shortly, before slipping into the vehicle.
Richard moves quickly as he returns to the driver’s seat. Just a short ride, he tells himself. Just a short ride.
He wonders if there will ever be a day when he tells her who he really is. If not that, then she’s a smart girl and perhaps she’ll figure it out herself? He or Gemma – or both – should have done it a long time ago, but one lie turned into another, which turned into another. It’s the story of everything from the past twelve years.
Richard reverses onto the road but they’ve only travelled a short distance when Alice presses herself to the glass and points up towards the hill.
‘What do you think that is?’
There is rarely anybody out on the roads at this time on a Sunday evening, so Richard eases off the accelerator and allows the car to roll to a near stop as he ducks down to try to get an angle on whatever Alice has seen. It’s hard to tell from the road – but there’s some sort of speckled light from up on the hill, towards the woods.
‘I have no idea,’ Richard replies.
‘Can we go and look? It might be aliens!’
It’s not aliens but there’s something about the glee in Alice’s voice that Richard finds hard to resist. They don’t get enough moments like this, when it’s only the pair of them. There’s a track that heads away from the road, up towards the trees. It means driving into a dead end, although it shouldn’t be too much of a problem to turn around at the top. The lights on the hill are probably just teenagers with a phone, or something like that. Hard to know, really – especially in the middle of winter. Either way, it will be an extra five or ten minutes where it’s just him and Alice.
The track is unmarked and hard to spot in the dark. It follows the line of a hedge and Richard has to slow to a crawl in order to see it. He takes the turn and the car immediately starts bumping up and down across the rocky ground. Alice giggles at this and jolts around exaggeratedly as they continue up.
Richard’s going to have to tell his wife about her – and probably soon. The extra money for Gemma is unsustainable and, really, he just wants to be able to see more of his daughter without all the hoops and games. Maddy will understand. He’s never cheated on her. Never. He made a mistake twelve years ago, before they even knew one another.
Alice ducks down, pressing against her seat belt to try to look up towards the top of the hill. The light is clearer now and definitely more than a phone.
‘What do you reckon it is?’ she asks.
‘I have no idea,’ Richard replies. ‘But I guess we’ll find out in a minute or so.’
Thirty-Five
‘I didn’t need the extra hundred quid,’ Gemma says. ‘I just didn’t want to work at that stupid place any more. I shouldn’t have asked him for more. The house was enough.’ A pause and then a quieter: ‘More than enough.’
I suppose that answers the question of how Gemma can afford to live in Leavensfield. She can’t. Richard’s been paying for her house, almost certainly from his savings account.
So many questions.
‘I didn’t know you went to university,’ I say.
‘I didn’t, not really. My parents forced me into going, but it wasn’t for me. Then I got pregnant anyway.’
‘Richard…’ I say his name, even though I already know.
Gemma doesn’t respond, not directly in any case.
‘I said it was from a boy I met on a night out. Never got his name and all that. Mum said I was a slag but she wouldn’t have liked the truth either.’
‘Do the police know about Alice and Richard?’
Gemma sits silently for a moment. Her chest is still heaving and she shuffles uncomfortably. It’s no surprise: the wall and floor are equally unforgiving.
She doesn’t answer the question but, in a way, that’s more than answering it. I don’t know the whole story but I can figure out much of it. Gemma was hardly going to tell them that she’d been blackmailing my husband for anything up to a dozen years.
‘When I saw you yesterday, I thought that maybe you and Gavin…’
Gemma glances sideways to me. There’s something dismissively incredulous about her expression. ‘Gavin? He was asking about Alice and the police. I was trying to get him to leave me alone.’
There’s the sound of a door opening from the other end and then Harriet appears. Gemma instantly wraps her arms around herself and stares at the wall ahead.
‘Are you all right?’ Harriet asks as she stands over us. ‘We can get you home, or take you to the hospital? Whichever you prefer. You don’t have to be here.’
Gemma replies with a long, loud exhalation – and she doesn’t look up.
‘C’mon,’ Harriet says, reaching down. ‘Let’s get you home.’
I stand and help with Gemma’s other shoulder as Harriet and I lift her up. Instead of passing through the front of the hall, Harriet uses her hip to open the fire exit and we edge through that. Gemma is walking by herself now and Harriet mutters, ‘I’ll take it from here,’ leaving me alone and watching as they half walk, half stagger across towards the benches near the road.
Alice is Richard’s daughter.
No wonder she was getting into his car. I’m not sure whether to be relieved
, annoyed, or both. Whether to be annoyed at him for keeping it secret, or me for missing everything.
With the fire door closed, I have to head back around the hall and then through the front entrance. After that, I make my way through the crowd towards the stage once more. The music has started properly now and a handful of couples are on the dance floor. More are standing around the edges, trying the canapés.
Kylie is waiting near the door next to the cloakroom and toilets. She spins and does a double take as I appear, wondering why I’ve appeared from the other side.
‘Harriet and I helped Gemma out through the fire exit,’ I say. ‘I think Harriet’s going to take her home.’ I peer closer towards Kylie’s neck, although there don’t seem to be any marks. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I think so. It probably looked worse than it was. What about you?’
I blink at her, relieved she’s fine. Wanting to grab her and hold her. I’d not thought of myself. ‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘We just talked for a bit.’
‘It can’t be easy for her,’ Kylie says.
‘Right…’
I should tell Kylie that it’s not by blood – but that she has a sister of sorts. I would – except it’s not the time. I’ve not processed it myself yet. I’ve not decided if I should go to the police first, or check in with Gemma once she’s calmed down. Everything is so messy that there doesn’t feel like a correct choice.
Kylie glances towards the door and the hall beyond: ‘I’m going to find Zoe, if you don’t mind.’
‘I don’t mind.’
She slips into a half smile, half laugh. ‘Thanks for saving me.’
‘I’m a real superhero.’
Kylie grins, briefly rests her head on my shoulder, and then heads towards the party. The music blares momentarily as the door opens and then dims again.
I suppose Richard was correct in his messages that something would happen here tonight – but he couldn’t have known about this. He must have meant something else. I could text him now to say that I know about Alice – although I can’t see that it would do any good. It feels like a face-to-face conversation.
At something of a loss as to what comes now, I head back into the party myself. The dance floor is almost full now. It’s largely couples, but I spot Kylie and Zoe together on the far side – and there are children as well. I drift around the room, grabbing a canapé from the table, mainly so that I have something to hold. It’s some sort of pastry puff, with hummus in the middle.
It’s Sarah who catches my eye, largely because the moment she sees me, she quickly turns away towards the children. The younger ones have been grouped together at the very back of the hall and are playing board games across a series of tables. Her two, as well as Harriet’s children, are there – as are a good fifteen or sixteen others. In a digital age, it feels like a very Leavensfield thing to be happening.
Sarah’s in a bluey-white dress and is clutching a wand with a star on the end. She holds it aloft, almost as if she’s going to curse me with it as I approach. I ask her how things are going and get a brief ‘good, thanks’ as a response. She then crouches to needlessly interfere in a game of Monopoly that’s being played by four of the children.
I hover where I am, waiting until her thighs can take it no more and she has to stand.
‘How’s the chest infection?’ I ask.
‘Better, thank you.’
‘It’s just that, when I mentioned it to James the other day, he didn’t seem to know a lot about it…’
I follow Sarah’s stare across the hall towards the front doors, where her husband is currently in conversation with Harriet.
It takes her a few seconds to reply. ‘He always underplays it,’ she says. ‘You know what blokes are like. They have a sniffle and call it man flu. We have a full-on chest infection and they act like it’s nothing.’ She tries to laugh it away but her body language is all over the place and she can’t stop staring at James and Harriet.
‘He didn’t know you left the house.’
‘When?’
‘When you were at mine on Tuesday. I asked him about it and he didn’t know you’d come over.’
Another pause, briefer this time. ‘It’s not like we tell each other everything.’
‘Why did you come to mine that day?’
Sarah shrinks away from the tables by a step or two. It’s not much and probably unconscious. She looks past me towards the main hall and then returns to watching her husband and Harriet, who are still in conversation.
‘I was checking in on you after what happened at the school. Plus I had tickets for you.’
‘But we’ve never been friends. You could’ve put the tickets through the letter box.’
‘I was trying to be nice.’ She launches into a cough and I wait as she bats a hand in front of her mouth.
‘You’ve not been around much this week,’ I say. ‘You missed the planning meeting on Sunday. You’ve missed all sorts.’
She pats her chest. ‘I’ve been getting over it.’
It could be the truth except that her quivering voice and wandering eyes tell another story. I try to remember what we talked about when she came to the house. It all felt so odd at the time – so innocuous – except that she was actually waiting outside in the cold. She might have been there for quite some time before I got home. Why wait?
‘Why were you so worried about Richard?’ I ask.
‘I wasn’t… I mean, I was. Everyone was, I mean is. We’re all a part of the village, aren’t we?’
This would be acceptable – except that she hasn’t been back in the past three days to see how I’m doing, or to ask any more about Richard. It feels like there’s more to this, except I’m not sure where it all ties together.
Sarah’s had enough anyway. Two of the children are playing dominoes and, without being called, she swoops down upon them and starts to explain some rules that I’m relatively sure they already knew.
Speaking to Gemma has left me emboldened. It’s been a strange week and yet I’ve accepted much of it because I’ve felt so shell-shocked by it all.
On the other side of the hall, Harriet and James are leaving through the large doors. I hurry across and follow them out to where James is now helping Gemma into the passenger side of his 4x4. Her foot slips on the step up and she slumps against the frame of the car. James holds her up as she cackles to herself. I amble across the car park, watching instead of participating. Harriet is off to the side and, after James has bundled Gemma into his car, he approaches her.
‘Sorry about this,’ Harriet says. ‘I can’t find Gavin, else I’d get him to do this.’
James mutters something about it being no problem – although the way he dabs at a patch of saliva on his suit doesn’t make it seem as if it’s all fine. He gets into the driver’s side – and then pulls away from the car park, heading towards the village cross and, presumably, Gemma’s house on the other side. It’s not far.
Harriet stands and watches before she turns and looks me up and down.
‘Do you think I should call the police?’ she asks. ‘Do you think she’s dangerous?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What happened with you in the pub toilets?’
‘Not much.’
Harriet waits, as if expecting more of an answer. She isn’t going to get it. ‘I should’ve gone with her,’ she says. ‘Just in case.’
‘Why did you give her your boots?’
Harriet sucks in her cheeks. We’re alone on the tarmac of the car park as the muffled sound of the party music plays behind us.
‘Because she asked.’
‘That’s generous of you.’
Harriet looks to me, probably wondering if I’m being sarcastic. In truth, I don’t know myself. I’m not done yet anyway,
‘Why did you dump Alice’s clothes in the recycling bin up at the garage?’
I haven’t turned to look at her but I can see Harriet’s head crane back in the corner of my eye. A sm
all ice age passes in the silence that follows. I can sense Harriet’s mouth bobbing open.
‘How do you know about that?’
‘Does it matter?’
I face her now – and she shrinks under my gaze. She’s underestimated me but I think I might have overestimated her. She’s just a woman, after all. Same as me.
‘I had some of Xavier and Bee’s stuff that didn’t fit any more. I’d taken them to Gemma’s and asked if she wanted anything. I thought I was helping but I guess I misread the situation. She went crazy. Started throwing Alice’s old clothes at me and saying she wanted them out of the house. She was manic, saying that Alice was going to die and that it was all her fault. I ended up stuffing everything into bags. I was going to keep them but Gavin suggested the charity bin.’ She pauses and then adds: ‘Were you at the garage, or something?’
This isn’t what I expected. It sounds so… normal. So real. I believe every word she’s said.
Except that I got a text telling me to be behind Fuel’s Gold.
‘Who knew?’ I ask.
‘Who knew what?’
‘Who knew you were going to take those clothes to the recycling bin?’
Harriet blinks at me, not understanding why I want to know. ‘Just me,’ she says. ‘Well… and Gavin, I suppose.’
*
LAST SUNDAY, RICHARD
Richard grips the steering wheel tightly as the car continues to bump along the trail. The car keeps lurching across the stones towards the ditch and he doesn’t feel completely in control.
‘It’s like a roller coaster,’ Alice says.
Richard doesn’t reply – but only because he’s worried he’ll bite through his tongue as the car bounces down into one of the many holes. He eases off the accelerator and allows the car to roll to a stop before killing the headlights.
‘We can walk the last bit,’ he says.
Alice unclips her seat belt and then opens the door as Richard does the same on his side. The trail continues for another couple of hundred metres until it reaches the dead end. Beyond that is a field and then the woods. On the other side of the hedge, the stream bubbles and ripples down the hill towards the village beyond.
What My Husband Did: A gripping psychological thriller with an amazing twist Page 25