‘God, she looks so young,’ Kim said. ‘She’s a baby. It’s horrendous to think of her in that cold water.’
‘Does anyone remember their names now we’re looking at them?’ said Buck.
‘Carmen and Lynsey,’ Peach said.
I stared at the photo. The older girl had her hands held out from her sides as if to stop her top getting crumpled. Her finger- and toenails were a matching deep pink and her jeans were snug and dark. The little one was grinning ear-to-ear and standing half out of her shoes, trying to look taller. They both wore party hats and had dark smudges of eye-shadow but no other make-up.
‘I don’t suppose you recognize them, do you, Donna?’ said Buck, turning round to look at me. I don’t know if a spark in my eyes gave me away or if he saw it for himself. ‘Oh, my God,’ he said. He looked back at the picture and then at me again.
‘What?’ said Rosalie. Then she seemed to rise up out of herself until she stood, still and light, like a fawn when a twig cracks. ‘No,’ she breathed. ‘No.’
One by one, they all turned to look at me and they edged together until the six of them were standing on one side of the room and I was standing on the other.
‘When’s your birthday, Donna?’ Rosalie said at last.
‘End of May.’ Nine months after Sasha’s birthday. No one needed to say it out loud.
‘And was your mum young when she had you?’ said Peach.
‘She was fifteen when she had me.’
‘Fourteen when she conceived you,’ said Buck. ‘And not quite forty when she killed your father, eh?’
Chapter 20
‘But Jennifer and Sasha are still alive,’ said Kim. ‘We agreed. And the police said so too. They’ve gone off together.’
She had sunk into a chair, all of them ranged around her like henchmen: Rosalie behind her, swaying and blinking, with a hand clamped so hard on each of Kim’s shoulders that her knuckles were white; Peach and Buck close in at each side, slack-faced and slump-backed from the sudden exhaustion that shock can bring; Paul and Ramsay at the edges, stiff as matching gatepost griffins.
I glanced from the six of them before me to the photograph still sitting in its frame on the mantelpiece. Five left behind, strewn around the gaps left where Sasha, Jennifer, Mum and Auntie Lynsey should be. I couldn’t quite see the printout in Kim’s lap, nine children with party hats and happy faces, before anything had ever gone wrong in their little lives. I took a step forward for a better look, but Paul took a step too, coming towards me with his hand up.
‘Stop,’ he said. ‘Don’t move.’
‘What? This— It’s not me! None of this was me!’
‘Did you know?’ said Rosalie.
I thought about it hard before I answered. ‘Twice, today,’ I said at last, ‘I sort of saw that there must be someone else. And I got close enough to wondering that I … And then the names. When you said “Linda”. And something musical. But, no, I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I did—’
‘Sit down,’ said Buck. ‘Put your head between your knees.’
I tipped forward like someone had cut my strings. One of them came over and rubbed my back with a warm hand, but I kept my face buried in my lap, my eyes screwed shut, as my mind reeled.
Home From Home was finished. It was a front. All my hopes were a joke. My life was a joke. Sasha Mowbray was my father. That sneering, drawling, vicious creep who’d grabbed at me was my father. And my mum? My best friend? My mum had drugged me and killed two people.
I sat up slowly, in case the room spun. It was Kim. It was Kim’s hand on my back. I reached round and squeezed it. ‘So, you need to get the cops back, obviously,’ I said. ‘Because the rabbit, right? And the drugs, whatever they were? Even if Sasha paid my mum to do all the pranks so him and Jennifer could slip away. Even if that’s all it is, you need to phone the police. I get that. I know that. I do. I do.’
‘Slow down,’ said Buck. ‘Breathe.’
‘But before that,’ I said, ‘please would you let me talk to her?’
‘And give her time to skedaddle?’ said Paul. ‘Tip her the—’
‘No!’ I said. ‘Get her here and make her tell us what she did and how she did it. And why! For God’s sake, why?’
I saw them look at one another then. Not everyone. But Buck looked at Ramsay and Peach looked at Paul.
‘In the library?’ said Rosalie. ‘Like Poirot or something? Except,’ she went on, ‘that it makes no sense whatsoever that Sasha’s accomplice, ally, assistant, co-conspirat— Sorry. It makes no sense that it would be Carmen.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Kim. She was still rubbing my back. ‘Sasha’s dead. Jennifer too. But I agree with Donna. I want to hear what Carmen’s got to say.’
* * *
She answered after one ring.
‘Donna!’ she said. ‘God almighty, I’ve been going out of my mind.’
She was straining to speak over the background noise of the convention centre. It was as busy as ever. Exactly as busy as ever. The same sounds of women’s voices. The same blare of the tannoy.
‘Switch the soundtrack off, Mum.’
She sighed and suddenly all the hubbub was gone. All the brides and mothers silenced.
‘Where are you?’ I asked her. I was staring at myself in the bathroom mirror. I looked like a stranger. ‘Are you at the caravan? What if I’d popped over for something?’
‘You didn’t,’ she said.
‘Where were the drugs?’
‘Not “drugs”, Donna,’ she said. ‘Not junkie drugs. Nothing terrible. I bought them in the pub in Stranraer. Plus a few sleeping tablets of my own. Most of it was in the vanilla sugar. Plus a bit in the caviar in the hamper. It was sent to the house by a mysterious stranger, so that seemed like a good idea.’
‘You drugged me,’ I said.
‘No,’ said my mum. ‘You never touch crème brûlée.’
‘I ate enough of the caviar to do my head in. I cracked into the hamper for quick hors d’oeuvres.’
‘Can I ask you a question?’
‘I don’t know how to talk to you, Mum,’ I said. ‘You did all this without asking me and now you make out you need permission for a question?’
‘How did you work it out?’ she said. ‘I’m not annoyed. I’m not even surprised. I played fair all the way. Lots of clues. Everyone in the game had a fighting chance to win it.’
‘Game,’ I said. I was remembering the cold blue of Jennifer’s skin and the black swell of Sasha’s eyes. ‘We all worked it out. They all know.’
‘How?’ She sounded intrigued, anything but scared.
‘They recognized me. Rosalie got her mum to fax through the original photograph from the sixteenth birthday party.’
‘Anna,’ Mum said. ‘Your grandma.’
‘My grandma died five years ago.’ I leaned my head against the bathroom mirror, fogging it with my breath until my face disappeared, suddenly remembering her. She had been a right wee nippy sweetie, my gran. Not much for cuddling. But she’d taught me to cook and she’d taught me to clean a house until it begged for mercy. She’d taught me that, no matter what my mum said, there was no shame in offering a good service for a fair price. I missed her. ‘But I didn’t really know her either, did I?’ The truth of this hit me in the heart like a physical blow. ‘My whole life she never mentioned Galloway once. Or Grandpa either.’
‘They were— Well, she was ashamed. A daughter pregnant at that age. She never came back here after they moved up to the island.’
They always say the young are self-centred. I could see it now. I had never asked my gran how long they’d been on Skye, Grandpa Rob and her. Or maybe I had sensed where not to go, where the dark places were. They say that about kids too.
‘I thought this house had just caught your eye,’ I said. ‘On RightMove.’
‘It certainly did catch my eye,’ she said. ‘Because I had an alert on it.’
‘You had everything worked out, eh?’
>
‘How about your end?’ she asked. ‘Have they worked everything out?
‘How are we supposed to know? How do we know what “everything” is?’ I took a breath and got my voice down. ‘Look, you need to come over and talk to them. You owe them that much.’
‘I owe them nothing,’ she said, after a long, silent moment. ‘And I won’t incriminate myself. They can do without answers. It won’t kill them.’
‘Won’t kill—’ I said. ‘Mum, for God’s sake.’
‘Yeah,’ she said. Then the silence stretched out even longer.
‘So are you coming?’ I said at last. She hung up without speaking, but I knew her.
I stood up straight, wiped the cloud from the mirror with my cuff and went back to the drawing room.
We didn’t speak much, waiting for her. Paul and Ramsay lit a fire. Paul walked away once it was burning but Ramsay lingered. I thought he was fidgeting with it and I thought there was no need. It was burning beautifully. Then, when he turned, I realized he hadn’t picked up the poker to move logs. He wanted a weapon in his hands. I waited for someone to tell him he was being ridiculous, but Paul caught his eye and gave a tight nod.
Paul himself went to the kitchen and came back with one of my biggest knives. He dialled 999 too and left his phone lying open.
Buck found the hot-water bottles stashed in one of the linen cupboards and filled them all. He dispensed them to Rosalie, Peach, Kim and me like medicine, with glasses of whisky. He herded us all until we were in a row on the long couch too.
‘The weaker sex, are we?’ Peach said, lifting an eyebrow. But she was cuddling the hot bottle like a teddy bear.
A car was coming up the drive, gravel popping and crunching under its slow wheels. I would know the sound of my mum’s car anywhere.
‘Not all of you,’ Buck said, looking out the window.
My heart was hammering behind my jaw when my mum appeared in the drawing-room doorway.
‘Hello, Carmen,’ said Rosalie, in a steady voice. ‘You haven’t changed much. Physically.’
My mum took her time, giving all of them a good look. She saw the knife and the poker and nodded. Then she came in and sat down.
‘So,’ she said. ‘Here we are again. Before I start, though…’ She nodded at Paul’s phone lying there inches from his hand. She’d noticed that too. ‘… the voice recorder’s not switched on there, is it?’
‘Of course not,’ said Paul, a look of distaste crossing his face.
‘Oh, no, of course not!’ my mum said. ‘How terribly uncouth that would be. And you’ve always had such lovely manners, haven’t you? So well-brought-up and so cultured. Pimm’s and caviar at a birthday party. Fresh limes and a silver ice-bucket. Such respectable children. And let’s not mention a little girl—’
‘Two little girls,’ said Peach.
‘Would you like a glass of whisky, Carmen?’ Kim said. ‘It’s been quite a weekend for you too.’
My mum shook her head. Then she took a deep breath, blew up into her hair, and nodded. Paul poured it and walked over to the fireplace. He handed it to her with his arm out straight, as if he didn’t want to get too close. The hand holding the breadknife was down by his side. My mum took a small sip and shuddered. She hates whisky.
‘Why would we be recording you, Carmen?’ Rosalie said. ‘Why would any of us want a record of any of this?’
‘The monitors,’ I said. ‘You were hooked into them, weren’t you?’
My mum lifted her glass to salute me. ‘Yes, okay. I suppose it’s my guilty conscience making me check about you recording me. Judging you by my standards. I had devices on,’ she said to the others. ‘Not in your bedrooms. Just down here. I had to know how it was going. If the balloon went up I’d have thrown in the towel. No hard feelings. No harm done.’
‘That’s very generous of you, Carmen,’ said Rosalie. ‘But we’re a lot of questions and answers away from “no hard feelings”. You understand that, don’t you?’ She was talking as if my mum was a wild animal or a slow child. And I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know why.
‘Fire away,’ my mum said. ‘What do you want to know?’
Rosalie blinked. ‘What you did, of course.’
‘Typical lawyer,’ said Ramsay. ‘I want to know how you did it.’
‘Typical engineer,’ Paul said. My mum was still looking at Rosalie.
‘What is wrong with everyone?’ I said. ‘Who cares how? We need to know why. Why, Mum?’ I sent a frantic look around for one of them to back me up but none of them – not even Kim – would meet my eye.
‘Were you in cahoots with Jen and Sasha?’ said Paul. ‘Kim thinks they’re dead.’
‘Well,’ my mum said, ‘either way, I planned an elaborate sequence of pranks as a smokescreen, didn’t I? Either Sasha and his beloved slipped away, with a big dust-storm of a double murder to help them, or I faked elopement to cover killing. It’s one or the other, wouldn’t you say?’
‘But we need to start at the beginning,’ said Ramsay. ‘How did you get us all down here?’
‘Kim found The Breakers and booked it,’ my mum said.
‘But how did you do it?’ said Kim. ‘Do you know my friend Tia? She’s the only one I spoke to about it.’
‘I know your friend Tia very well,’ Mum said. ‘And Sasha’s friend Matt. Matt talked him into the weekend, you know. Tia and Matt between them got you two down here.’
‘Oh, my God,’ I said, realization dawning, but my mum went on.
‘And Sedna, the marine biologist, persuaded Jennifer to come along.’ She smiled at Peach. ‘Your AA sponsor would have said she thought it was a great idea, Peach, if you’d been in two minds. But you were quite happy to come, weren’t you?’
‘You’re Thalassa?’ Peach said.
‘Yes, and I feel a bit bad about it,’ said Mum. ‘I mean, I’ve studied up and I try my best but I’m not an alcoholic, and I can’t help wondering if you’d have been getting better faster if your sponsor was real.’
Peach took a swig of whisky and gave a hollow laugh.
‘You’ve been very resourceful, Carmen,’ said Rosalie. ‘Which begs the question…’
‘I have been resourceful,’ my mum said. ‘I’ve been imaginative, enterprising, ingenious and inventive too. I’ve been Acionna, your online Scrabble rival.’
‘But – but that’s been years!’ Rosalie said.
‘Years and years,’ my mum agreed. ‘Of course, twenty-five years ago, when the internet was a clumsy toddler, I never dreamed what I’d be able to do.’ She turned her head a little and smiled at me. The same warm smile as ever. The smile that said there was nothing I couldn’t tell her. ‘Donna, I hope you understand. It was pure chance that you came home when you did and got involved. I would have done it on my own, in disguise. Because it was years of planning before I even knew where the plans were leading. When this house came up for sale? And I got Grandpa’s money? It was too good to be true.’
She searched out Buck next. ‘Speaking of money,’ she said, ‘Buck, I want to assure you that Samundra has donated every penny you’ve raised to Operation Smile. Even when we were scraping together the price of buying this place I never kept a bean.’
‘Samundra?’ said Buck. ‘You’re Samundra?’
‘I am,’ said Mum. ‘And I’m Li Ban from Barnsley too.’ Paul’s head jerked up.
‘I’ve been telling all of you all of this for years on end,’ said Ramsay. ‘None of you take any precautions whatsoever online. Carmen, I think I’m the only one who understands how it was done.’
‘Oh, I’m very clear about your level of understanding, Ramsay,’ Mum said. ‘I know exactly how much detail of Ezli’s research to feed you to keep you convinced without confusing you.’
Buck laughed. It was the first time any of them had laughed since Mum walked in, the longest stretch of time without a laugh this whole weekend. ‘So you got us all here,’ he said. ‘Then what?’
‘Then,’ said my mum,
‘if I was helping Jennifer and Sasha run away, it was easy. They were in on it too. They could plant things and then remove them. They could pretend to be scared. Keep the rest of you off-balance.’
‘And they could each drive their own car to the airport,’ said Ramsay. ‘No need to tow. Let’s talk about the other possibility, shall we?’
‘Well, yes,’ said my mum. ‘If it was just me working alone, it would have been much more of a challenge. But that’s the beauty of The Breakers. So many doors. Six doors in and out. That was the easiest bit – getting things in under your noses and getting them spirited away again, although it helped when you got scared and started sticking together in a pack.’
‘Voicemail,’ I said. ‘You were never there on the end of the phone when I needed you most. Because you were here, right? And couldn’t answer?’
‘See?’ my mum said. ‘Clues galore. I played fair all the – nearly all the way. If you’d caught me with the nightie, or moving the hamper, I’d have retired from the field. It was only once corpses got involved that I had to make sure you’d all sleep through it. Hypothetically.’
‘Was Jennifer supposed to leave?’ said Rosalie.
‘No! That was the biggest pain in the neck all weekend, if I’m honest. She kept having to be talked down, talked back in. She knew what she had to lose, see? Well, Sasha knew too, but that’s the thing about men and women, isn’t it? Sasha was pissed off. Oh, he got scared eventually, but Jennifer was sharp enough to be scared from the start.’
‘Eventually,’ Paul repeated. ‘What did you do to them? How did you—’
‘Jennifer was easy. When she slammed out last night she got in touch with Sedna. And Sedna told her to find a nice quiet country pub and have a drink to calm her nerves. And while she was there she met a nice friendly woman who bought her a glass of wine. She never felt a thing.’
Everyone in the room was silent. I could hear the sea and the whisper of ash falling in the fireplace.
‘But Sasha? Well, I just sent him an email and said, “Carmen here. Let’s talk.” He didn’t hesitate. Didn’t feel anything except anger. Until my hands were round his neck.’
Go to My Grave Page 24