Jo once told me I ought to make the most of what she called my ‘extra time’ at night, use it to accomplish something: learn a language, take up painting. I pretended to think it was a great suggestion, then cried for an hour after she’d left.
Do anything. Open the front door and start screaming.
I think of the letter from Social Services on the kitchen table, and my heart leaps. In no other circumstances would it be an appealing prospect, but at this precise moment it’s my best chance of not going mad. Reading it now will upset me exactly as much as reading it in the middle of the day would, which is what I want: a source of worry and misery that isn’t night-specific.
I go to the kitchen, sit down at the table – facing away from the time display on the microwave that would like to remind me that it’s ten thirty-eight – and pull the letter out of its envelope. A postcard falls out too, lands face-down – a typical Ingrid card, from some art gallery or other: a painting of a group of nuns sitting in a garden, under the trees. I pick it up, read it first. ‘Don’t be downcast,’ it says. ‘School fees threat clearly not in girls’ best interests. All grist to our mill. M has shot herself in foot! We will win!’
I sigh. Ingrid, our social worker, has been competing with Luke for the Counterfactual Optimism Cup for several months now, unchallenged by me. I’ve given up trying to force them both to face the truth, which is that we might or might not win and there’s no way of predicting which way it will go.
I read the formal letter. It tells me what I’d already worked out from Ingrid’s card: Marianne is threatening to stop paying the girls’ school fees if Luke and I are allowed to adopt them. So what? We’ll pay the fees ourselves if we have to, somehow. I’ll forge myself a certificate and work nights as a hypnotherapist – might as well, since I’m awake anyway. I’ll charge people eight hundred and forty quid for the privilege of sharing their memories with me.
Dinah and Nonie love their school. How can that bitch Marianne threaten to deprive them of it, knowing what they’ve lost already? I guess the clue’s in her name – the ‘that bitch’ part.
If Luke were here, he would quote back to me my own words about the girls’ days at the school being numbered. He doesn’t understand that I have two categories: things I enjoy saying I hate and bitch about endlessly, and things I really hate, like Marianne, which I try not to think or talk about at all if I can help it.
Apart from the unexpected school fees detail, the letter from Social Services contains only the information Luke and I were expecting: Marianne has lodged an official objection. ‘I just don’t think it’s right – you’re not the girls’ parents,’ is the only thing she’s ever been willing to say to us on the subject. ‘They’re Sharon’s children, not yours.’ We have tried to point out that Dinah and Nonie will always be Sharon’s children whether or not Luke and I adopt them, and that not already being the parents of the children you’re hoping to adopt is actually a pre-requisite condition rather than a barrier, but all she does is look past us and shake her head mechanically and too fast, as if someone’s wound a key in her back.
I don’t think I would ever kill anyone or arrange to have someone killed – not unless Dinah’s or Nonie’s life was at stake – but I would love, love, love it if Marianne Lendrim dropped dead tomorrow. She needn’t wait that long, in fact; tonight would do just as well. I should probably feel guilty for wishing her out of existence, but I don’t. My job as Dinah and Nonie’s guardian is to deprive them of harmful things: first their only surviving grandparent, later alcohol, drugs, tattoos and piercings they’ll regret, gap years in unsafe countries.
I slip the letter and Ingrid’s card into my handbag and leave the empty torn envelope on the kitchen table for Luke to see in the morning. It’s easier to do that than to say, ‘I read the letter’, less likely to lead to a conversation we’d both find unbearable.
Having sullied my mind with thoughts of Marianne, I need to cleanse it, to be close to Dinah and Nonie and see their sleeping faces. I spend a lot of time in their rooms at night, just watching them sleep, monitoring the effect it has on my mood: an instant injection of joy. When they’re awake and we’re together, it’s more complicated. We’re usually talking, and I’m worrying that I will fail them a little more with every word that comes out of my mouth.
I tiptoe upstairs, past Luke’s bedroom – the one that also used to be mine – and his home office. As I climb the shorter flight of stairs up to the second floor, I think about the beautiful staircase Ginny asked me to imagine. Your perfect staircase has ten steps. As you descend, I want you to see yourself drifting down into calm, and into relaxation . . .
I stop at the top of the stairs outside Nonie’s room, registering the anomaly for the first time. Ten steps, Ginny said. Definitely ten. Yet she counted me out of hypnosis with a brisk one-two-three-four-five. No mention of the staircase at the end of the session. What happened to it? If a ten-step staircase is the route to the place of total calm and relaxation, then surely it’s the route out as well?
It’s a tiny detail, but that’s what’s so annoying. How hard would it have been for Ginny to complete the metaphor, to say, And now, as I count to ten, you’re going to ascend the steps of your staircase one by one, with each step taking you out of peace and tranquillity and back to the shitty real world?
If I were a hypnotherapist, I’d be good at my job and take care to get my imagery right. I am good at my job. I might only be Licensing Manager for the city council, as Jo would be the first to point out, but I’m brilliant at what I do, and if I couldn’t do it brilliantly, I would do something else. It doesn’t seem to bother most people that they spend eight hours a day five days a week engaged in an activity that they’re average to rubbish at. I find myself thinking this, or a version of it, constantly. Luke says it’s because I’m permanently knackered and cranky. In restaurants, I hiss at him, ‘All the chef needs to do is cook nice food – that’s it, that’s all that’s required of him, that’s the thing he’s chosen to devote his life to. And what does he do? Cooks stuff that tastes like shit and serves it cold!’
All Ginny had to do to keep things logical and symmetrical was walk me back up my imaginary staircase. All DC Gibbs had to do was be open with me, and I would have been open with him. Sergeant Zailer too. It seems like hours ago now, but I think I was enjoying talking to her before she made it obvious that the whole conversation, from her point of view, had been a lead-up to a trap.
What do you feel guilty about?
Why did she ask for the address of the house with the rude carving on the underside of the windowsill? To test me? Easy way to check if I’m a liar and a fantasist?
Simon Waterhouse treated me like a human being. He made a sacrifice: relinquished his right to suspect me long before he could have known I had nothing to do with Katharine Allen’s death, when we’d exchanged no more than a few words. Within seconds of meeting, we’d left our fixed roles behind and were simply two people pooling our knowledge to work something out.
Gibbs’ and Proust’s body language screamed disapproval; probably they thought Waterhouse unprofessional for trusting me when he had every reason not to, but if he’d been more circumspect and treated me less like an ally, would I feel I owed it to him, now, to tell him the whole truth? To try as hard as I can to remember where I saw that piece of paper?
I don’t think so.
How long have I been standing here, outside Nonie’s door? No more than a minute, perhaps, but it all counts; every second takes me closer to morning and the moment when I’ll be part of a family again, no longer a writhing brain in a tense body, haunting ordinary people’s nights with my wakefulness.
The girls’ floor smells of floral-scented fabric conditioner. I wash their sheets once a week without fail; when I told Jo this, she laughed and said, ‘Washing bedding once a week is normal, Amber. It’s not something to boast about.’
I lean into Nonie’s room to check on her. As always, she’s curled on her si
de like a back-to-front question mark, with her mouth slightly open and her duvet tucked neatly under her right arm. On one side of her head lies the fat encyclopedia we bought her for her birthday, and on the other, lined up against the wall, a row of cuddly toys: a bear, a unicorn, a rabbit, a panda, a stocky owl that bears more than a passing resemblance to a darts player I’ve seen on TV, though I can’t remember his name.
Nonie’s room is full of line-ups: on her desk, her shelves, a few on the carpet. It doesn’t matter what the object is as long as she can get her hands on enough of them to stand them in a row: pairs of paper glasses with 3-D lenses in them from the cinema, small bottles of bubble bath and shower gel, rings with coloured pieces of glass standing in for jewels, badges, marbles, hair bobbles, pots of lip balm. Nonie’s lips are always chapped.
Tears fill my eyes, bringing with them the usual confusion, reminding me that love can be harder on the system than hate. There must be a connection between the two – between my loving Dinah and Nonie so much and the uncontrollable rage that often wells up inside me for no apparent reason. Before Sharon died, I didn’t feel as strongly as I do now in either direction, positive or negative.
I tiptoe over to the bed and kiss Nonie on the cheek before making my way to Dinah’s room. Slightly harder to see what’s going on in here, with the light off, but my eyes soon adjust. Dinah’s duvet is in a bunch at her feet, as if she made a point of kicking seven shades out of it before falling asleep. Her mouth is wide open. It occurs to me that Dinah and Nonie are the only people in the world whose sound sleep I don’t begrudge. I’m glad they sleep well. I would willingly never shut my eyes again if I could guarantee them unbroken nights forever, full of peaceful dreams.
You’re glad they’re here. You can’t imagine life without them – not a life worth living, anyway. That must mean, in a way, that you’re glad Sharon’s dead. How can it not mean that?
Easily.
Would you bring Sharon back if you could, knowing Dinah and Nonie would go back to her?
I ask myself this question every night. My answer is always the same: yes, of course. I can’t stop checking, though. I need to prove to myself, constantly, that I am not evil, however screwed up and guilty I might be. That’s right, folks. Hang around with Amber Hewerdine at night and you’re guaranteed hours of endless fun.
Dinah doesn’t care what her room looks like, as long as she never runs out of wall-space to stick up scraps of paper with Sellotape. Nothing counts for her unless and until she’s written it down. On my way to give her a kiss, I notice a long, jagged-edged strip stuck to one of her curtains. I pull back the other one to let in more light from the street lamp outside, and realise I’m looking at a cast list. There’s a pen sticking out from beneath Dinah’s pillow that wasn’t there yesterday.
This is new – today’s work. I frown, puzzled. Is the play on or off? Luke and Mrs Truscott think it’s off; does Dinah know better? Is she relying on me to save the day? Is that why she’s stuck the cast list to her curtain, where I can’t fail to notice it?
‘HECTOR AND HIS TEN SISTERS,’ she’s written in capitals. ‘CHARACTERS AND ACTORS. Hector: Thaddeus Morrison, Hector’s mother: Miss Emerson’. I smile. Dinah didn’t want to be in Miss Emerson’s class, but it hasn’t worked out too badly for her; Mr Cornforth wouldn’t have been nearly as willing a slave.
I look at the names of the other characters: Rosie, Pinky, Strawby, Cherry, Seashell, Sunset, Candy, Berry, Flossy and Taramasalata. Hector’s pink-obsessed sisters, presumably. Their obsession has spread to their names.
As I lean down to kiss Dinah’s cheek, I freeze. What if . . .
No, there’s no reason to think that.
Yes. There is.
I’m excited, and I don’t know if I should be. Am I going to wake Luke?
I ought to make myself a cup of tea first and drink it, take the time to check that I think it’s worth interrupting his night for this, but I’m too impatient.
I run downstairs, into a room that feels thick with sleep in a way that Dinah and Nonie’s rooms didn’t. ‘Luke. Wake up.’ A whisper and an order at the same time.
No response. I shake him. He opens his eyes. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘What if they were headings? “Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel” – the first letter of every word was a capital apart from the “o” of “of”. Kind-with-a-capital-K of Cruel-with-a-capital-C. Remember when I was telling you, I said why would you write it that way unless they were titles, or names? I didn’t think of headings, but with the line spaces in between . . . What if whoever wrote it was planning to fill in those spaces with . . . something? Names of people, maybe.’ What else could it be? Actions – that’s the only other thing I can think of. I could divide my own behaviour into kind acts, cruel ones, those that fell somewhere in between.
I never would, though. Nobody would.
Luke pulls himself up, leans back against the headboard, rubs his eyes. ‘Yeah,’ he agrees, a shade too enthusiastically. I bristle. He’s said one word, and already he sounds like a man doing his best in difficult circumstances. ‘They could have been headings. But . . .’
‘I realise it’s a crap one, as eureka moments go, but it’s still something, isn’t it?’ I say defensively. ‘I should tell the police.’
‘It’s the middle of the night, Amber,’ Luke says gently. ‘I need to sleep. Mention it to the police if you want, but . . . to be honest, if you’ve thought of it, I’m sure they have too.’
‘That’s right, sorry, I forgot – all minds generate the same thoughts, don’t they? That’s why Einstein wasn’t the only person to come up with the . . . the . . .’ Oh, for God’s sake.
‘Theory of relativity?’ Luke suggests, grinning sleepily.
‘Yeah. That’s why all his friends and neighbours in Berlin came up with the very same theory at exactly the same time.’
‘Berlin?’
‘Wrong?’
‘Munich, Zurich. Einstein moved around.’
There’s no reason why I should know that. I hated all the science subjects at school, and Maths; I gave them up as soon as I could. My degree was in History of Art. Einstein’s lucky to get a mention from me at all, frankly.
‘Headings are normally underlined,’ I say. ‘The cops wouldn’t necessarily make the connection. I didn’t, until I saw Dinah’s cast list. She’s put her headings in capitals instead of underlining them.’
Luke looks unconvinced. I’m scared of the conversation ending, of being alone again. ‘I might as well tell the police,’ I say. ‘I’ll be talking to them tomorrow anyway.’ And feeling like an idiot when they tell me it couldn’t matter less whether the words I saw were three headings or not; what might matter is where I saw them – the part I can’t remember and have no theories about.
‘They want to talk to you again tomorrow?’
‘Other way round.’ I might as well rehearse my confession. ‘I lied to them. Second of November, the day Katharine Allen was killed – it was the same day I was meant to go on that DriveTech course. They asked me where I was between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.’
‘What? You didn’t tell me that.’ No more drowsy voice; Luke is wide awake. Amber 1, Sleep 0. ‘What did you say to them?’
‘I told them I was on the course. They asked if anyone could verify that I’d been there. I said no one was likely to remember my face, but I had to take my driving licence as ID and it’ll be on record somewhere that I attended.’
Luke frowns as he thinks it over. ‘Yeah,’ he says eventually. ‘And if they check it out, that’s what they’ll find. You didn’t kill Katharine Allen, you don’t know who did, so it’s a white lie. You’re not crazy enough to tell them the truth, right?’
I smile, appreciating his non-prejudicial phrasing of the question. ‘I have to. You won’t talk me out of it, so don’t bother. I know it’ll make no difference, I know I’ll have to tell Jo I’ve told the police, and she’ll be furious . . .’
‘Furious?’ Luke
looks around the room at his imaginary audience, the crowds that only he can see, all of them on his side and waving their banners to that effect. ‘Amber, wake up! You and Jo committed a crime. One of you did, anyway. I’m not sure which one.’
‘I think we both did, technically.’
‘You could go to prison!’
‘Hey – remember how good you are at not yelling at me? I’m trying to do the right thing, for once. It probably doesn’t suit me, but I’d appreciate it if you’d at least try to be full of admiration.’ Luke is right: I could end up with a criminal record, if not behind bars. Except that isn’t what’s going to happen. Simon Waterhouse will keep it to himself if I ask him to. Won’t he? How can I be sure that he’ll protect me, that he isn’t a team player?
With those particular team-mates, what intelligent person would be?
‘You said yourself: you’re the only lead they’ve got in a murder case.’ Luke struggles to sound unemotional. Like most men, deep down he believes that only illogical arguments can be put forward by anyone in the grip of a strong feeling. ‘If you stroll down to the nick and calmly admit to being a liar . . .’
‘I’ve got an alibi! Okay, it’s not the alibi I gave them . . .’
‘Why do they need to know that? You’ve got an alibi. That’s all that matters. You were somewhere else when Katharine Allen was killed.’ Luke groans. ‘I’m wasting my breath, aren’t I?’
‘No,’ I tell him. ‘It helps to hear you say all this, helps to convince me that you’re probably right.’
Luke throws up his hands. ‘Then . . . ?’
‘Telling Simon Waterhouse the truth might land me and Jo in the shit, and it won’t help the police to find Katharine Allen’s killer – true, and so what? It’s a murder investigation, Luke. The police are going to be asking a lot of people a lot of questions, and for each one they’ll want an answer that isn’t a lie. I can understand why that’s important to them. Can’t you? They want all the information, not most of it, not just the bits people don’t mind sharing with them. Who am I to decide that they need this fact but not that fact? I don’t have an overview of the case. I don’t even know where I saw those words written down. It’s their case, not mine. I’m a link in their chain, whether I like it or not. If I don’t tell them the whole truth, I’ll be prioritising my own selfish desire to stay out of trouble over their need to investigate Katharine Allen’s murder in the way that they’d ideally like to: not held back and misdirected by made-up stories.’
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