The Ice Cream Girls

by Dorothy Koomson

  ‘It was always easiest after a big thing like that because he was so remorseful, I genuinely believed he wouldn’t do it again,’ I say.

  ‘And he was so lovely afterwards. For days, sometimes weeks, he’d be kind and considerate and thoughtful. He’d be loving.’

  ‘He’d buy things and say he loved me.’

  ‘He’d plan our future.’

  ‘Plan for that time when we could tell the world about us and he wouldn’t care about the consequences.’

  ‘I’d always believe him.’

  ‘I would, too.’

  ‘And then it would start again . . . God, it was no wonder he went after fifteen-year-olds, we were so gullible. He was a terrible human being.’

  ‘Yeah, he was. But he didn’t deserve to die for it, Serena.’

  ‘No, he didn’t, Poppy. And even though I understand more than most why you’d want to do it, you shouldn’t have done it.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have done it? I shouldn’t have done it? Do you think I’m soft in the head or something? I know you did it, Serena. I know it was you. And I’m going to make you confess.’

  ‘Are we going to keep having the same conversation every time? Are we? Because no matter what you threaten me with, it’s not going to change anything. It’s not going to make it the truth.’

  ‘I might run your little memory-loss theory past Evan, see what he thinks. See if he believes his wife has enough gaps in her memory to commit murder and then get away with it.’ The anger is visibly rising through her body. ‘You might actually want to try that theory out on why you kept it from him. You never know, it might work.’ She is going to blow at any second. I need to leave first this time. Whoever leaves first has the power, the ability to control the situation, to say stop. And it has to be me this time. Last time her anger ambushed me and left me sitting alone at a table for two. Now it is my turn to balance the scales.

  I get to my feet and scoop up my hat and mobile phone, shove them deep in my jacket pocket. ‘I’ll see ya, Serena,’ I say. ‘Or should I call you Sez?’ Her already tense body and demeanour become rigid. But I cannot stop myself leaning down and pouring more discomfort into her ear: ‘Give my love to Evan and the kids.’

  I do not look back as I leave. I want her to know for once what it is like to be free of Marcus but to still feel completely powerless.

  serena

  That shakiness is back. I cannot get my legs to work properly and I have to stop and lean against the wall outside of the café, hold my chest and calm my breathing. I have to force air into my lungs because I am breathing too fast, too shallow. Evan once described a panic attack for me and this is it.

  She’s going to ruin my life. I have to stop her by doing it first.

  Evan would rather hear it from me than from her. Or from anyone else.

  No matter what happens tonight, once the kids are in bed, I have to tell him. I have to tell him and make him understand that I didn’t do it. I am not the smiling vixen killer of the press, and I am not a silent killer who snuck back to finish what Poppy started earlier that evening. I am not that person.

  I am Serena Gillmare and I have never killed anyone.

  serena

  I can tell by the way Evan is sitting at the kitchen table that he knows.

  Did she do it, then? Did she tell him? I came home knowing I had to tell him but she has beaten me to it. He sits slumped in his seat in the dark kitchen, tapping the pads of his fingers lightly against the tabletop in a slow, rhythmic manner as he stares at the table. He did not move when I entered the kitchen a moment ago and that was how I knew something was wrong. Even when he is furious with me, and wants to shout at me, he at least looks at me.

  The fear from the fact he cannot even look at me throws a blanket over all of my emotions except for dread and fear.

  ‘Where are the kids?’ I ask him as I stand beside him at the kitchen table. First things first, the most important things first. We cannot do this if they are likely to return at any moment.

  ‘At my mother’s,’ he says without looking up. Another tumble of my stomach, another streak of terror across my heart. ‘They’re staying the night. Maybe tomorrow or until the weekend, I’m not sure yet.’

  ‘Don’t you think you should have checked with me first before making such big decisions for our children?’ I say. I don’t care what’s happened, you don’t make those kinds of decisions without their mother being at least told.

  ‘Don’t you think you should have told me you were a murderer before making me marry you?’ he replies. He is not shouting. Shouting, I could understand. Yelling, I could defend myself against. But quiet attacks are more deadly, they are the ones that have a habit of getting nasty on so many levels that you find yourself cut in several places all at once.

  ‘Who told you?’ I ask.

  ‘Why, trying to work out which lie you’re going to have to tell me to cover up what you did? Huh, Ice Cream Girl?’ he asks.

  ‘Don’t call me that.’ It wasn’t Poppy. She would never have used that name. Despite what she acts like, how aggressive she can be, she hates that label as much as I do. It damaged her, it hurt her, she would never willingly describe herself like that. I’m relieved in many ways that it wasn’t Poppy. Despite what she is like now, despite the hard lines of her face and the haircut that makes her look scary when she scowls, I’m glad she did not to do it. Because, out of everyone in the world who could have told him, she would have made it sound a million times worse than it was.

  She would have made me sound guilty. I have a lot of hazy memories from that time, I have stuff that I have blanked out in order to be able to carry on living, but I know for sure that I did not murder him. It was Poppy, not me.

  I pull out a chair and sit down, the wooziness from earlier is starting to circle my head again and my legs feel like rubber on springs. At least I can breathe.

  ‘Why not, Ice Cream Girl, isn’t that what everyone used to call you? Or was it plain old “murderer”?’

  ‘I am not a murderer. I did not kill anyone. And don’t call me that.’

  The edge in my voice makes him turn slowly to look at me. I am gritting my teeth between my clamped-together lips. He can say what he likes, but I will not have him calling me that as though it is a fair weapon. I will not have him call me that and then try to maintain the higher ground. Every time I hear that, I am back in that room, on the floor, exhausted and all but extinguished from trying to fend off his punches and kicks. I am whispering because my throat has almost been crushed from where he tried to strangle me. I am lying on the bed, powerless to move and stop him finding a new way to hurt me. I will not have Evan, the man I have given my heart to, take me back there. I will not go there with him.

  ‘Are you seriously getting an attitude with me after what you’ve done?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes, I am, if you are going to call me that.’

  He shakes his head. ‘You are unbelievable. After the day I had . . . Imagine, Ice— Serena, what it’s like to have a patient come to see you, not because she wants to talk about her wheezy chest as she usually does, but to tell you that every time she’s visited you for the past ten years or so she’s been convinced that she’s seen your wife somewhere before, and then, after a piece in the paper the other week, she realised who your wife was. Imagine having to then look at this newspaper clipping from twenty-odd years ago about a murdering tart called Serena Gorringe. Imagine that, eh? And imagine being me, sitting there, reading about a Serena Gorringe who got away with murder and who dropped out of sight after the trial where her best friend – and lover – went to prison in her place. Imagine that, eh?’

  Oh God.

  ‘And imagine me having to tell her that I think she’s mistaken and it’s just a coincidence that my wife is called Serena and she looks a bit like the girl in the picture. And imagine getting a call from the practice manager and the other partners who suggest I take a bit of time off to spend with my family until this whole thing
blows over because that patient has been showing people in the waiting room the article and patients are starting to cancel their appointments. Imagine that, eh, Serena? Imagine.’

  I’m floating. Above my body, above the room, above everything. I am light and floaty and I do not need to deal with this. Not now, not ever. I am free and floaty and light.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I tell him.

  ‘You’re sorry?’

  ‘I should have told you. I’m sorry I didn’t. I came home wanting to tell you today, but it was too late.’

  ‘You’re sorry?’ he repeats.

  ‘I don’t know what else to say.’

  ‘How about why? Why did you kill him? Why did you lie to me for all these years? Why aren’t you in prison?’

  ‘I didn’t kill him. And I’m not in prison because a jury found me not guilty of killing him. And . . . I’m sorry. I should have told you. I wanted to tell you. But . . . Look, aren’t there things about you that you haven’t told me? Like you smoking cigarettes every now and again? You kept that from me. You kept that from almost everyone. We don’t always tell the people we should everything.’

  ‘Yes, Serena, because me having the odd fag now and then is the same as you concealing your murderous past.’

  ‘I am not a murderer. Stop saying that.’

  ‘And what about this Poppy character? Do you still see her?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘But she’s out of prison now?’

  I nod.

  ‘So you mean she hasn’t shown up trying to rekindle things?’

  ‘We were never like that. I didn’t even like her. We were never friends, let alone anything else. All that stuff in the papers was lies. All of it lies. That’s one of the reasons I couldn’t tell you – it’s all still so painful. We were young and they had this one photo of us holding ice creams looking a bit glamorous and the papers couldn’t help themselves. And there was this other picture, this one that they never published but . . . but it showed me and her kissing. He made us do it. It was nothing more than a quick peck but he took a photo and it got leaked and that’s why they thought we were . . . We weren’t, I promise you we weren’t.

  ‘But only the people who knew us really well knew it was all lies and I didn’t want to risk you reading those stories and for one second thinking they were true. I mean, look what happened when you saw one clipping. Imagine seeing the same type of thing over and over for months and months. I just had to forget about all of that to carry on with day-to-day life. I did not want to dredge it all up again by talking about it.’

  ‘So it’s not because you’re a coward.’

  How could he call me that after all these years? ‘Go to hell,’ I say to him.

  ‘You first, murderer.’

  ‘I did not murder him. Or anyone. I did nothing to him.’

  ‘This is why you’ve fallen out with your sisters, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And why you thought I’d thrown my drink in your face on purpose.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And why that policeman was so nasty about you speeding.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And why you won’t eat ice cream.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re a liar,’ he says simply.

  ‘No. No, I’m not.’

  ‘YOU’RE A LIAR!’ he roars in my face. ‘YOU’RE A LIAR!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, trying hard not to cry.

  He calms himself, then says, ‘You’re a liar and I want you out of my house – tonight.’

  ‘What do you mean, your house? This is my house too. I pay for half of it. I found it. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not leaving my kids; what sort of mother do you think I am?’

  ‘Well, I’m not living with you and I’ve done nothing wrong so why should I go? I want you gone.’

  ‘No. I’ve told you, I’m not leaving my children.’

  ‘Serena, listen to me. I want you to move out. You can stay nearby, you can come over every day and spend time with the children, feed them, put them to bed, etc. But I don’t want you under the same roof as them or me. You’re not the person I thought you were. And the person I thought you were is a great mother. You, you are a stranger and I don’t want you here.’

  ‘Why can’t you see that I’ve done nothing wrong? I don’t deserve this.’

  ‘People who have done nothing wrong don’t keep secrets like this. People who have done nothing wrong have nothing to hide.’

  ‘You don’t understand what it was like. Why I couldn’t tell you.’

  ‘You’re right, I don’t understand. And I don’t much care. I’m going to the shed for an hour – by the time I come back, I want you gone.’

  ‘Where will I go?’

  ‘Not my problem.’

  Evan pushes out his chair with much scraping of wood on tile, and stands. He is made of stone, suddenly. My soft, comforting, gorgeous husband is made of a substance I cannot get close to. He is hard and unyielding. He is someone other than the man I fell in love with.

  ‘I didn’t do anything wrong,’ I say to his retreating form.

  He shrugs as his fingers close around the back-door handle and he pulls it open.

  ‘I love you,’ I say. I want him to know that. Even if he won’t change his mind, I want him to know. And aren’t they the words that are meant to fix everything? To make everything that is wrong, better?

  ‘Again, not my problem,’ he says and closes the door softly behind him.

  part six

  serena

  I left him a note saying I would be back the next evening to give the children their dinner.

  He sent me a text saying ‘fine’. He wasn’t going to stop me seeing the kids, he was just going to remove me from being there when they needed me. Which in many ways was worse. Babysitters, nannies, au pairs – they gave children their dinner, they gave them breakfast, they took them to school. They were not there in the middle of the night for the stuff only a parent would want to do. I loved being a parent for the moments in the middle of the night: the watching over them, the talking to them after a nightmare, the hushing them back to sleep, the sharing your bed. They were the things that tired you out, left you drained and snappy, but they were the necessities, the stuff I loved. I lived for them because, apart from Evan, no one else had those moments. And now, Evan has removed that from me. He’s made me into little more than an unpaid caregiver.

  And I only have myself to blame.

  I sit outside in the car for a long time, hands gripping the steering wheel, staring at the front of my house. Our house. Eventually, Evan returns to the house, switches on the living room light and flicks shut the blinds. I’m sure he saw me, parked in the residents-only parking bay outside our house, but he pretended he didn’t.

  It’s time to go. To leave. I need some sleep. I have work in the morning even though I do not have to get up as early to the take the children to school. I wonder what he will tell them. What he will say about me not being there in the morning? Actually, they’ll probably never know, because his mother will take them to school. But afterwards, when I’m not at home, when I have to leave and return in the morning to act the role of nanny and feed them, ferry them to school, they’ll know.

  I could so easily drive to his parents’ place in Haywards Heath. Tell the children it’s OK. Say goodnight, God bless, sleep tight. But that would be all about me, what I want, how I want and need to hold them, to cling to them because they are the two best things that have happened to me. I would be scaring them to make myself feel better.

  I pick up my mobile, dial Evan’s parents’ number. His mother answers on the second ring.

  ‘It’s Serena,’ I tell her, waiting for the coolness to blast down the phone. ‘Can I speak to Verity and Conrad, please?’

  ‘Of course,’ she says, cool but not unpleasant. Evan obviously hasn’t told her everything. Maybe he’s said it’s just a row. ‘They’ve been waiting for your call.’
>
  ‘Mum?’ Verity is first. Her voice is high, strained. She’ll be anxious because her nan won’t let her use the computer for anything other than schoolwork, and she’ll have to go to bed at the same time as Conrad.

  ‘Hello, gorgeous,’ I say with a smile on my face, but tears in my heart, eyes and throat. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asks.

  ‘Nothing, sweetie. Your dad and I needed to do something tonight, it was very last minute, so your nan and granddad had to look after you. That’s all.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says disappointedly, ‘that’s what Dad said. I thought something was happening.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ I say. ‘Now, I’ve got to go, so big kiss and cuddle goodnight.’

  ‘I’m not a baby!’ she says contemptuously.

  ‘You’ll always be my baby. Even when you’re forty-five and a mother yourself, in my mind, you’ll always be my baby.’

  ‘Goodnight, Mum,’ she says, resigned to her fate since I say this to her all the time. ‘See you tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘Here,’ Verity says, handing the phone to Conrad. ‘Don’t stay on there for ever, OK? She’s busy.’

  ‘Hello gorgeous boy,’ I say to Conrad, feeling the wrench again. I want to be with him. I want to be with both of them. The world doesn’t feel the same knowing I’m not going to be with them any time soon, that we won’t be sleeping under the same roof, sheltered by the same bricks and mortar.

  ‘Mum, Mum!’ he says, urgently. ‘Nan let us have fish fingers AND sausages AND chips that weren’t made in the oven for dinner. AND we had chocolate mousse on top of chocolate cake.’ I love that Conrad will always tell me things like that. Neither set of grandparents is ever able to get away with anything because he can’t help but tell. Verity was never like that, she was – is – like me, always good at keeping secrets.