by Louise Voss
‘Thank you darling. I need to look smart today.’
‘Why, Daddy?’
‘I’m going to … say goodbye to a nice man who had a hard time.’
‘Oh. Bring me back some sweeties?’
Patrick smiled at his daughter in the mirror as he straightened the stiff new tie. Thome thweeties. He could listen to Bonnie’s voice all day long. Perhaps he should record it on his phone and listen to it through headphones when Winkler was being a tit, to de-stress himself. ‘OK, if you’re a good girl for Nana.’
‘I am.’ Bonnie graciously inclined her head.
‘Excellent,’ Patrick said, ruffling her hair as he left the room.
An hour later, he slipped into a pew near the back of the handsome Victorian galleried church, still wearing the shades he was glad he had with him when running the gamut of the paparazzi outside. The poor Philips women, having to cope with that, he thought. There they were, up in the front row, the backs of their heads rigid as they stared straight ahead. Eileen and Helen were both wearing big hats, and when Eileen leaned in to say something to her daughter-in-law, the brims clashed and they both leaped back as though scalded.
Helen obviously didn’t know, Patrick surmised. She couldn’t do, surely, not if she had agreed to have Eileen sitting next to her. The thought of how much more damage Eileen – or he, for that matter – could do to poor Helen and Alice … It made Patrick’s stomach twitch with anxiety.
Frankie sat on Helen’s lap. Even from the back of the church, Patrick could see that Helen kept her arms tightly wrapped around her daughter, who was wearing a pretty floral party dress, a little fabric flower resting in her black curls. It was a little unusual for a child so small to be allowed to come to a funeral, but Patrick was pretty sure that Helen wasn’t permitting Frankie out of her sight for a second. He couldn’t say he blamed her.
A child psychologist had talked to Frankie shortly after she’d been found, to ascertain how Penny had treated her and to ensure she hadn’t suffered any sexual abuse. The poor child had revealed a few disturbing details, about being locked in the dark and something about a ‘hurt’ kitten, and blood test results showed that Penny had been giving Frankie small doses of tranquillizers to keep her docile and, at the end, unconscious. Patrick instructed the psychologist to ask Frankie about the drawings of the face at the window, but Frankie’s answers were virtually incomprehensible. Something about how there was a ghost who lived in the lamp post outside and who looked in at her.
‘My assumption,’ the psychologist said, ‘is that Frankie spotted Penny watching her from outside the house. I asked Frankie if she likes to look out of her bedroom window at night and she said that she did.’
Indeed, the same neighbour who had spotted Larry the evening of Frankie’s abduction had confirmed that he had seen Frankie looking out of her window occasionally. Patrick was surprised that Penny would risk being seen by Sean – Helen had confirmed that the woman she knew as Marion had never, in the short time she’d known her, visited their house. But maybe she hadn’t been able to stop herself from standing outside, presumably in disguise, watching the family she was obsessed with. After all, she had seen Georgia take Frankie that night.
Patrick returned his attention to the here and now. Alice sat a little way along from Helen, Eileen and Frankie, Larry’s arms wrapped tightly around her, rubbing her back as if she was really cold. She kept her face buried into the side of his shiny cheap grey suit jacket, as though unable to face the sight of her father’s lily-covered coffin in her line of vision whenever she looked up.
The church filled up around him to the accompaniment of that soft funereal organ noodling that always slightly set Patrick’s teeth on edge. There were a lot of couples there, presumably friends of the Philipses, thirty-somethings looking uncertain in shiny dresses or stiff suits. A few went to the front and spoke softly to Helen – he could see her hat dipping in acknowledgement – but most slid silently into pews. Many of the women were already weeping.
God, he hated funerals.
The one thing that consoled him was the knowledge that he hadn’t had to endure one himself, a tiny white coffin and a grief that could never have been assuaged as long as he lived. Bonnie was alive, growing and learning and developing from a baby into a little girl. Alive and well.
Patrick had to swallow the lump in his throat. The woman next to him, a skinny glamorous redhead in her forties, handed him a tissue.
‘Oh, thanks, no actually I’m fine,’ he said, coughing. ‘Something in my eye. Really.’
She rolled her eyes at him and continued to proffer the Kleenex, so he took it and stuffed it straight into his pocket, with a sheepish smile.
‘Shocking, isn’t it,’ said the woman. ‘Were you a friend of Sean’s?’
Patrick nodded vaguely, hoping that she wouldn’t press for more details of how he knew Sean. ‘Were you?’ he deflected.
‘I’m a work colleague of Helen’s – a fellow editor,’ she said. ‘Liz Wilkins. Haven’t seen much of her since she went off on maternity leave a few years ago, but of course I called her when I heard what had happened to poor Frankie. What they must have gone through! So I gather—’ she dropped her voice conspiratorially ‘—it was Sean’s ex-wife who kidnapped her, and she’s dead now too?’
It sounded so simple when you put it like that, thought Patrick, nodding again and hoping she would go away. But she carried on, mistaking his silence for collusion. ‘Thank God it wasn’t those nutters who took the other kids, though, that would’ve been worse. And thank God little Frankie is OK. I mean, look at her, the little dote. But now she has to grow up without a dad. He was such a lovely man …’
Liz’s voice cracked and tears filled her eyes. Patrick wordlessly handed the tissue back to her, thinking you don’t know the half of it. To his great relief, the noodling organ ceased and a young vicar strode in and stood in front of Sean’s coffin before Liz could continue her lamentation.
‘Welcome to you all, on this very sad occasion,’ the vicar said, spreading his arms wide to herald the start of the service.
At one point Alice got up to read a poem, that one that always got read at funerals about stopping the clocks. Four Weddings and a Funeral had a lot to answer for, thought Patrick, aching with sympathy for the girl as she stumbled through the first few lines before bursting into uncontrollable sobs and running out of the church, Larry close behind her. The congregation could hear her crying through the double doors that led to the church toilets, and it started several others off. The vicar smiled insincerely and finished reading the poem himself.
Then Helen got up to speak, shifting Frankie onto Eileen’s lap and moving to stand alongside Sean’s coffin, holding two typed sheets of A4. She looked pretty good, Patrick thought. Her hair was a straight dark shiny sheet under the brim of her hat, and her coral lipstick matched her dress and shoes – the family having eschewed the traditional black in favour of a so-called ‘life-affirming’ dress code of bright colours. Only the black bags under her eyes gave away her grief.
She hesitated, opened her mouth to read what was on the sheets, then closed it again, screwed up the sheets into a small ball and dropped the ball onto the marble floor. Everyone sat up a little taller when she finally spoke, in a voice that was strong, unwavering – and absolutely furious. She addressed her husband’s coffin directly.
‘Sean Adrian Philips’ – it had never occurred to Patrick before that the deceased’s initials spelled SAP – ‘I will never forgive you for what you’ve done to us.’ The congregation gasped. Patrick wondered if she’d have said the same if Alice hadn’t left the room. Probably not. The screwed-up ball of paper on the floor was almost definitely very different in content.
‘We’ve been through hell in the last two weeks, the worst two weeks of my entire life, and just when we got our baby back, you do this to me? You—’ Her lips formed a cat’s bum of a B for bastard, but at the last moment, she seemed to remember that she was in churc
h. ‘Coward,’ she hissed at the coffin instead. ‘There is nothing that would make me forgive you for this. Nothing.’
Gasps and sobs bounced off the rafters in the church roof. It was then that Eileen turned around, still holding Frankie, and stared straight at Patrick even though he was almost in the back row, her eyes lasering into him. Other people turned to see what she was looking at, and Patrick shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Her meaning could not have been clearer: DO NOT TELL HER.
Do not tell this grieving furious woman, tearless and devastated, that the reason her husband killed himself was because her stepdaughter was the product of incest. Because he’d married his half-sister, because he hadn’t known that the same woman had since come back and befriended Helen, because he couldn’t live with the guilt and shame of it all coming out. Or worse, perhaps because he realized he still loved his first wife, and couldn’t live without her? They would never know.
Patrick stared at the floor. Liz Wilkins poked his bicep. ‘Why is Sean’s mother looking at you like that?’
‘None of your sodding business,’ he felt like saying – or perhaps did say out loud. He wasn’t sure. Either way, she didn’t speak again, and dropped her hand as though his arm had scalded her fingers. His phone vibrated in his pocket and he sneaked it out to have a look. Someone from a blocked number had left him a message. He’d read it later.
Eileen eventually turned back around. Helen stomped back to her seat and grabbed Frankie back, holding the child so tightly that she started to struggle and cry.
Maybe if I tell her, Patrick thought, she’ll understand why he did it, and forgive him?
I have to tell her. And how can I stop it all coming out in court, at Georgia’s trial?
It was nothing to do with that. It didn’t need to come out. Georgia’s trial, when she was fit enough to stand it, would be on charges of drug dealing and attempted kidnap.
He had to tell Helen.
Sweat broke out on his forehead. They all stood up to sing a hymn – ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’ – they’d had that one at his wedding to Gill, they’d laughed about it afterwards because of the line ‘forgive our foolish ways’, as if their marriage was an act of stupidity for which they requested forgiveness.
Forgive our foolish ways. If he told Helen, then maybe she could forgive Sean’s foolish ways.
He was going to tell Helen.
Then, as the hesitant congregation broke reluctantly into the third verse, the church doors opened and Alice came back in, still in Larry’s arms. He helped her up the side aisle, past Patrick, and she glanced up at him through puffy blank eyes. The look of raw grief on her face spoke more loudly than Helen’s harsh words, and in that second Patrick finally stopped wavering and knew what he was going to do.
He pushed past the red-haired woman and left the church as fast as he could without actually running. Outside, he sat on a bench in the churchyard, his heart pounding and the sweat now running down his cheek like tears. He wiped his face, pulled out his phone, and dialled his voicemail.
It was Gill – or at least he thought it was. She never rang him, and at first he didn’t recognize her voice, it sounded so different. Light and bright and – excited?
‘Pat,’ the message said. ‘Oh Pat. You won’t believe it. They’re releasing me, next week. They assessed me and have decided I’m no longer a danger to myself or anyone else. I’m coming home. We’re going to be a family again …’ Her voice became hesitant, slower. ‘… if you still want us to be, of course. We can talk about it. But isn’t that fantastic news? I’m coming home!’
Patrick dropped the phone back in his jacket pocket, stood up and headed for his car. There were only two things he knew for certain at that moment. One, he needed to see Suzanne.
Secondly, that he would take Eileen’s secret with him to the grave, if he possibly could.
He was never, ever, going to tell anybody.
Acknowledgments
We have a few people to give special thanks to: principally Dr Paul Monks, Simon Alcock, Kate Blumgart and Nik Waites, for generous and expert research assistance (any procedural inaccuracies are our own!).
Hearty thanks to Liz Wilkins for her excellent early feedback, and to our agent Sam Copeland.
Thank you particularly to our commissioning editor at Thomas & Mercer, Emilie Marneur, for her absolute faith in and support for this novel, and to the rest of the T&M team, especially Sana Chebaro and Nadia Ramoul.
To the amazingly supportive and friendly crime writing community both on and off Twitter – so many people who have become good friends. We apologise if we’ve left anyone out, but we’d like to thank Peter James, Mel Sherratt, Ali Knight, Keith Walters, Susi Holliday, Rachel Abbott, Luca Veste, Elizabeth Haynes, Eva Dolan, Anya Lipska and everyone else who gathers outside the Old Swan in Harrogate every year.
Mark would also like to express special gratitude, and love, to Sara Edwards, not only for giving honest feedback about this novel but for making my half of this whole writing lark possible.
Finally, we would like to give a big, fat ‘like’ to our fantastically enthusiastic and helpful group of readers on Facebook.com/vossandedwards, some of whom have their names in this book, including Cathy Hudson and Daniel Hamlet, who won competitions on the page. Pete Aves provided the name of Jerome’s unfortunate staffie.
About the Authors
Photo © 2014 Mark Earthy
Louise Voss and Mark Edwards are the co-authors of Killing Cupid, Catch Your Death, All Fall Down and Forward Slash. They have also written eight solo novels between them, details of which can be found on their website www.vossandedwards.com. Dubbed ‘internet publishing sensations’ after being the first UK self-published authors to reach the #1 and #2 spots simultaneously on Amazon.co.uk back in 2011, they have had a wildly varied and interesting publishing career.
Mark lives in Wolverhampton with his wife and young family, while Louise lives in Surrey with her daughter. They love talking to readers on Twitter, @mredwards and @louisevoss1, and run a very lively Facebook page at facebook.com/vossandedwards, where they chat, run competitions and offer prizes. Many of their character names have been suggested by competition winners—most notably, a dog called Rihanna …