by Lucy Dawson
I consider that. ‘OK,’ I agree. ‘You’re probably right. It might help contain Matthew’s reaction too. This is going to devastate him.’
‘Here.’ Liv folds up the laptop and puts it on the floor next to her, before holding out her hands to take Theo. ‘You have to show Matthew. He absolutely must see it. Theo will be totally happy to nap in his pram upstairs then, you think?’
I pass Theo over to her. ‘To be honest, probably not. And I’m really sorry if he kicks off.’
‘Well, we’ll give it a go anyway.’ Liv smiles at Theo. ‘Won’t we, little chap?’ She looks up at me again. ‘You’ve already put the pram in our bedroom, though, with his food bag?’
‘Yes. There are pouches, his spoons, his milk stuff – everything is in there.’
‘Great. Now don’t worry about anything here, Sal, we’ll be fine.’
‘Thank you,’ I say sincerely, as I bend to pick up the laptop before turning to my utterly focused daughter. ‘Clo? Hello, Chloe?’
She looks up with a jump as I raise my voice to get her attention. ‘Yes, Mummy?’
‘I’ve just got to pop back home to get something, so you and Theo are going to stay here with Liv and Kate.’
She looks between us warily. ‘When are you coming back?’
‘After lunch.’
‘Which is pasta,’ Liv says. ‘But you don’t have to have any if you don’t feel like it. You might just like some plain with no sauce.’
‘Yes please.’ Chloe nods, then turns back to the TV.
‘OK, go,’ instructs Liv.
‘I’ll text you the numbers for my family en route. And thank you again.’
‘No problem. Email a copy of that video to yourself, just to be sure. And, Sal?’
I stop as I reach the door, and look back at her.
‘I really am so sorry for my part in all of this.’
‘It’s forgotten.’ I smile briefly. ‘I have no memory of anything, remember?’
‘Take care.’
‘Will do.’ I wave to my children and blow them a kiss. Chloe doesn’t even look up. I should be grateful that they are so unperturbed by my leaving, but as I get into the car and strap myself in after placing the laptop in the footwell and starting the engine, I have to fight a ridiculous urge to run back into the house to hug them again, and tell them how much I love them, and promise I’ll be back before they know it.
I’ve been driving for just over half an hour when my mobile starts to ring. It’s Matthew. I pull over quickly and call him straight back.
‘Where are you?’ He doesn’t even bother with hello. ‘You’ve been gone ages. What has the doctor said?’
‘Chloe is absolutely fine,’ I say truthfully. ‘Listen, I’ve actually had a bit of a problem.’
‘Oh?’ he says instantly. ‘What sort of problem?’
‘With the car. I was just about to ring you. I’ve called in to Tesco on my way back to get some rehydration salts from the chemist for Chloe –’ God is going to strike me down for these lies – ‘but I’ve just come back out to the car and discovered we’ve got a flat tyre.’
‘OK,’ he says slowly. ‘Completely flat?’
‘Er, yes.’
‘How did that happen? Didn’t you notice it when you were driving? Can you see around the car? Is there any glass on the floor or anything? You definitely didn’t drive it while it was flat, did you, or you’ll have warped the wheel itself?’
Oh God, Matthew… ‘Look, it’s fine,’ I say, realizing I should have said it was a slow puncture. ‘I’ll call the AA when we get home, but could you borrow your mum’s car and pop around to get me and the kids? Chloe obviously isn’t very well, and Theo’s tired – we need to get back. I think you should come rather than Caroline, though, so you can take a look at the wheel and make sure it’s not been damaged.’
‘I’ll leave now.’
‘And just remember, if your mum drives, there won’t be enough room for all of us in her car once we’ve got the kids’ seats in the back, so you’ll have to come on your own, OK?’
‘I’ll be with you in five.’
I take a deep breath. ‘See you then.’
He hangs up, and I glance at the clock. If he’s leaving now, I’ll be there just before him.
I start the car up again and ease back into the traffic, selecting the inside lane. I sit at the red lights in front of the turn-off to the supermarket and drum my fingers on the steering wheel. Come on! I still need to forward Mum’s number to Liv. And Will’s.
The lights change to green and I drive into the busy car park full of mums with pre-school children, and older couples parking or returning trolleys. I choose a space a little further away from the shop front, but still plenty busy enough, just in case. Although surely she won’t come; I’ve made it practically impossible for her to.
I turn the engine off and forward Liv the phone numbers. She replies instantly.
Thanks. All OK here. Theo fast asleep and Chloe watching Tangled now. No rush. Please be careful.
At least everything is fine there.
I scan the car park – no sign of Caroline’s silver sports Mercedes yet, but he’ll be here any minute. I reach down into the footwell for the laptop and set it up on the passenger seat. I’m not going to say anything, I’m just going to let him watch the film for himself. I also take Liv’s advice and email the film to myself, just in case.
Still I wait, but he doesn’t arrive. Frowning, I look up and down the lines of cars – which is when I notice a blacked-out Audi slowly cruising past the mother and child spots. I watch it absently for a moment, before realizing it isn’t someone trying to park, as they drive past an empty space. The driver is looking for someone.
It indicates and quietly pulls into a disabled space. A tall, heavily-set man climbs out, before slowly starting to walk past the parked cars, casually peering in here and there, before coming back and saying something through the Audi window.
The back passenger doors open, and another man climbs out of one side, then Caroline out of the other. I freeze instantly – then, horrified, watch her start to turn, very slowly on the spot, hand shading the bright sun from her eyes as she begins to scan the car park for me. She stops still as she catches sight of our car – and then I see her point, and the two men look over, right at me. My heart leaps with fear. Who the hell are they?
All three of them begin to walk in my direction, and, as they get closer, I see that the men are actually wearing uniform: black trousers and dark tunic tops, with a distinctive gold oak emblem on the left breast pocket. They’re from Abbey Oaks? The private hospital Caroline works at? Oh my God. I know then exactly why they are accompanying her. Panicking, I pull on the door handle and scramble out rather than starting the car. This isn’t leading to some reckless and dangerous car chase – I hear the echo of my promise to Chloe that I’ll come back, as I look around desperately for an escape route. They are still some six car lengths away from me. Do I scream for help? Run? Won’t that make me appear even more insane? Is anyone going to help me if I start to struggle with these two men? They’re going to force me into that car!
‘No!’ I gasp audibly as Caroline walks calmly towards me… But then the silver Mercedes suddenly appears at the other end of the car park, roaring up towards us.
Matthew.
Matthew is here. Oh thank God!
The car swerves slightly as he swings erratically into a space, and then jumps out. ‘NO! Mum! Stop!’ I hear him shout, and he sprints towards her. He reaches out and grabs her arm, pulling her around to face him. I can’t hear what he says, they’re not close enough, but she takes a sudden step back from him. I can see Matthew’s chest rising and falling as he tries to catch his breath, and says something else, gesturing angrily at the two men. A moment more passes, and then, apparently at Caroline’s instruction, the men fall back and return to the Audi. They climb in and close the doors, but they don’t leave. The car just sits there, as Caroline turns and resu
mes her walk across the car park, Matthew hastening after her.
Caroline arrives right in front of me. ‘I gather you have something I need to see.’ She isn’t smiling. Considering, however, that I’m about to accuse her of a crime that has the power to ruin her and rip her from the life of her beloved only son for ever, neither does she appear particularly concerned. ‘Show me.’
I ignore that – and her – before taking a deep breath. Everything falls still, a moment of hush before the bomb explodes. Then I look at my husband and say earnestly, ‘Matthew, I’m so sorry – but there’s something you need to know.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
‘You stay back, though,’ I instruct Caroline. ‘If you take so much as a step towards me, I’ll scream, and then I will tell anyone who will listen everything, including your two employees over there.’ I hold my phone up. ‘And just so you know, I’m also now recording this conversation.’ I hit the voice memo and start it running.
‘Sal?’ Matthew looks at me, frightened. ‘Tell me what’s going on. Why are you talking like this?’
‘It’s OK, Matthew,’ Caroline says coolly. ‘Let’s just listen to what Sally wants to tell us.’
‘My laptop is on the front passenger seat, Matthew. I want you to go around and hit play on the film that’s on pause at the moment.’
He hurries away and I hear the click of the car door opening as Caroline and I stand in silence, not taking our eyes from each other. ‘You actually brought two Abbey Oaks staff with you,’ I manage. ‘You were going to try to force me there?’
She doesn’t answer me, and we’re interrupted anyway by Matthew exclaiming, ‘Oh my God!’
Caroline frowns slightly, but then draws herself up a little taller than before, and stares me down as Matthew reappears.
I glance across at him. He is ashen. ‘It’s a video of you, Mum, and you’re putting Sal in the back of a taxi. She’s completely out cold! It’s an actual film!’
‘Our next-door neighbour brought it over earlier,’ I explain. ‘He was filming the bat activity around our house. He thought it was me putting Kelly in a cab. But it isn’t, is it, Caroline?’
‘Show me,’ she repeats.
Matthew carries around the laptop and rests it carefully on the bonnet, then presses play. I watch Caroline – her face barely flickers. All she does at the end is sigh, reach to the drive, extract Ron’s card, and very precisely, she snaps it in half. Then, with a tiny, almost imperceptible push, she slides the laptop off the car, and it shatters as it hits the concrete car park floor.
I gasp and look across at Matthew, expecting him to say something, but he’s stunned, and simply stares at his mother wide-eyed.
‘How very annoying of your neighbour,’ Caroline says.
‘Smashing my laptop won’t make any difference,’ I stammer. ‘I’ve already emailed it to myself, and the only person I needed to see it has now.’ I nod at Matthew.
She shrugs. ‘Well, it made me feel a bit better, anyway.’
‘How can you be so calm?’ I stare at her in disbelief. ‘All this time,’ my voice starts to shake, ‘you’ve known exactly what happened. You’ve watched as I’ve struggled to work it all out, when you knew, you knew I hadn’t tried to kill myself! I talked to you, I trusted you!’
She says nothing, just looks at me, and then, to my astonishment, simply smiles.
‘This isn’t a joke!’ I shout suddenly, and a couple of people a few cars away look up. ‘You tried to hurt me! I know you put something in my drink that made me black out to the point that I was unable to remember anything!’
‘Mum!’ Matthew exclaims suddenly, seemingly shocked into action by what I’ve just said. He puts both hands on his head. ‘This is actually happening. This is actually fucking happening!’
‘Calm down, Matthew,’ she says instantly.
‘Calm down?’ he exclaims. ‘Did you not hear what Sal just said?’
‘You honestly think I put something in your drink?’ Caroline cuts right across him, directing her comment straight at me. ‘You’re so pedestrian, Sally. Credit me with a little more imagination. Do you know there was a man who injected his wife with HIV while she slept? Perhaps you read about it? I’m very skilled at sedation, actually. It’s years of practice.’
My heart is beating so fast I think I’m going to be sick. ‘You’re actually admitting you drugged me?’
‘Mum!’ cries Matthew, brokenly.
‘Yes, I am,’ she says quickly.
‘But why?’ I ask incredulously.
She shrugs again. ‘I just don’t like you.’
‘You just… don’t like me?’ I repeat foolishly. ‘I’m the mother of your grandchildren! You engineered everything to look like I’d attempted to kill myself – and when I refused to accept that, you let me believe Kelly was to blame. Do you not understand the damage you’ve done to so many people? I thought I was seriously ill at one point. You even just brought two men with you, presumably to help forcibly section me – and you say you did all of this because you don’t like me?’
She doesn’t respond.
‘Did you steal Kelly’s phone, so she had to come back to the house and I’d think it was her?’ I ask slowly. Then my eyes widen. ‘Oh God, did you break her shoe as well, so I’d know she’d been in the cupboard under the stairs, where the money was?’
Caroline snorts. ‘Oh please! There never was any money in the holdall! Just my clothes and belongings. Only a complete idiot would actually leave that amount of cash lying around.’
I persist, doggedly, ‘What did you do after you told me you went to bed? Drug me, then call me a taxi? Clear down my phone? My God, you must have been delighted to find that note to tuck in my pocket. Talk about a God-given gift.’
She shrugs. ‘There might have been one or two small moments of luck, but everything would have worked just as well without them; I had thought it all through. To be perfectly honest, Sally, it was your antipathy towards Kelly – and vice versa – that pretty much took care of everything. It’s so tragically easy to manipulate women of your generation because you’re all primed and ready to destroy each other at the earliest opportunity, underneath those fake smiles. All I did was exploit your natural jealousies and insecurities – don’t let’s forget, no one forced you to break into your brother’s flat. You did that all on your own. I will tell you I took the holdall out of the house inside my empty and capacious suitcase when I left on Saturday night, though. I hadn’t actually been to Barcelona, you see.’
‘You told me that Kelly was dangerously unstable.’
‘No,’ she corrects me, ‘I didn’t, actually. I said someone close to the children had the potential to be dangerously unstable. If we’re being pedantic, one could argue that everyone has that potential – it’s a totally meaningless phrase. But I told you that someone close to the children might be about to behave in a toxic manner that could do long-term damage to them, and I felt duty-bound to intervene and prevent it. You filled in the blanks incorrectly yourself. I was actually talking about you.’
‘Me?’ I am horrified, and look across at Matthew, who appears to have frozen once more.
‘I had reason to believe that you might be about to do something that would harm Chloe and Theo unnecessarily, so, as I promised, I intervened and stopped you. That’s all that this has been about.’
‘That’s complete bullshit!’ I cry angrily. ‘I would never hurt my own children. Don’t you dare try to justify what you’ve done! Everything you said was deliberately designed to mislead me!’
‘You heard what you wanted to hear,’ she insists. ‘You wanted to believe Kelly was a liar and a thief.’
‘No, I didn’t! What’s the real deal between you two?’ I say. ‘Why are you trying to hurt her as well as me?’ I gasp suddenly. ‘Oh dear God – you told the papers about Kelly’s mum, didn’t you? How could you do that? I accused my oldest friend of betraying me, when it was you! You wilfully broke Kelly’s patient confidentialit
y, and after that pious lecture you gave me?’
‘I had no idea about her mother’s suicide until you told me, so there is no conflict of interest in my contacting the press whatsoever.’
‘Of course there is! You were her counsellor!’
‘No I wasn’t. The first time I met her was at your house the night they came to tell you of their engagement.’
The ground feels as if it’s falling away from under my feet. ‘W-w-what?’ I stammer. ‘You weren’t her psychiatrist?’
‘No,’ says Caroline simply.
‘You made out as if you’d recognized her!’
‘I did – she is famous, after all.’
‘No, I mean recognized her from the past. You know that’s what you did! You told me you’d treated her, that you knew secrets about her,’ I cry. ‘Dangerous secrets. You even told me she couldn’t have children.’
‘No, I told you some anorexics have issues with fertility. That’s just a statement of fact, like the sky is blue. I said nothing explicit about Kelly in the slightest. How could I, when she was a perfect stranger to me?’
‘I can’t believe this. You don’t know her at all?’ I clutch my hands to my head in complete shock. ‘But if you’d never met her, you can’t have been doing this to get back at her…’
‘That’s right,’ she says patiently, as if speaking to an exceptionally stupid child.
‘That almost makes it worse! You simply used her? But what about the sixty-five thousand pounds you said was a small price to pay for not enraging Kelly?’
‘Well, it was a small price to pay, because she never took the money, did she?’ Caroline shrugs. ‘Kelly never had any involvement with any money at all. Did you not hear what I said a moment ago? There was no bag of money. Matthew lent sixty-five thousand to me, and then I repaid it straight back into his account. End of story. Here’s the thing, Sally – if you create enough of a sense of chaos, your adversary won’t know who the enemy is, and they certainly won’t be able to aim the gun… And I think it’s a little disingenuous of you to start raising concern for Kelly, in any case. You’ve got exactly what you wanted: Kelly is gone. You can thank me whenever you feel ready. And if you really want to know the truth, I actually don’t like you. I never thought you were the one, right from the first time Matthew brought you home.’