Kind of Cruel

by Sophie Hannah

  Luke certainly doesn’t feel that way.

  Yes, he does. Luke would hate to have Quentin living with us as much as I would. More. Luke has never spoken to Jo about his feelings. She’s a liar, and I want to tell her that I know it. Dropping it is the opposite of what I want to do.

  ‘I don’t think believing that no one should sacrifice their own wellbeing for the sake of someone else should automatically dis-qualify me from—’

  ‘You can’t let anything go, can you, ever?’ Jo snaps, smacking her chopping board with the packet of linguine she’s holding in her hand. ‘You can’t just . . . move on. You have to keep goading me . . .’

  I hear a moan from behind me: Kirsty with damp hair, in pyjamas and a dressing gown, and Hilary in jeans and a shirt that’s covered in wet patches. I’m pathetically pleased to see them, and have to bite back the urge to say to Hilary, ‘How much of that did you hear?’

  ‘Hi, guys,’ I say instead. ‘You okay? Nice bath, Kirsty?’ Jo once asked me if it had ever occurred to me that I never asked her younger sister any questions about herself, so now I always do. So what if she can’t answer? It’s not for your sake, it’s for hers. How would you feel if no one ever asked you how you were or what you’d been up to?

  Hilary and Kirsty often stay the night at Jo’s; the lounge has two sofa-beds which Jo bought in order to encourage this to happen, at around the same time that she turned an under-stairs cupboard and part of her and Neil’s previously decent-sized bedroom into two minuscule shower rooms in order to have enough bathrooms for all comers.

  ‘I think Kirsty and I are going to head off, love,’ Hilary tells Jo. ‘I can’t get her to settle, and . . .’

  And our own large house containing our comfortable beds is only three minutes’ drive from here?

  ‘Oh, what a shame!’ says Jo. ‘What’s up, Kirsty? Are you tired?’

  ‘We’ll see you tomorrow,’ says Hilary. ‘I think she is tired, yes. We spent a lot of last night wandering around the house, didn’t we, Kirsty?’

  Did Jo object to my views about Quentin on Hilary’s behalf, because Hilary has sacrificed most of her life for Kirsty? But that wasn’t what I meant. Hilary adores Kirsty; she doesn’t regard it as a sacrifice, doesn’t resent it. Like Jo, Hilary is a looker-after, and Kirsty is her beloved daughter and genuinely helpless. Kirsty doesn’t bang on about Harold Sargent and septic tanks. It’s totally different.

  I’m doing it again: defending myself even though no one’s listening.

  ‘Right,’ says Jo, once Hilary and Kirsty have gone. ‘I think it’s time to crack open a bottle of wine. What d’you reckon?’ She smiles at me.

  I don’t know what craziness has got into me, but I hear myself say, ‘Year Zero again, is it? I was hoping you’d stay angry for a bit longer, so that I can say something else you’re not going to like. I’ve become involved, bizarrely, in a police investigation.’ Even as I say it, my connection with violent death doesn’t strike me as the most remarkable thing: what’s more shocking is that, for the first time ever, I have openly mentioned the officially cancelled past in Jo’s presence. I wonder if she’s thinking the same thing. Is she aware of her history-erasing streak? Maybe it’s all in my mind.

  I tell her as little about Katharine Allen’s murder as I can get away with, and finish with a cheap trick: I add that of course she’ll be able to understand why I have to tell the police that she attended my DriveTech course on my behalf, pretending to be me.

  She is aghast – scared more than angry. ‘You can’t tell them! Amber, how can you . . .’ She shakes her head. ‘I did you a favour, one I should never have agreed to. The whole thing was wrong. I seem to remember making that point at the time. You should have gone on that course yourself.’

  Yes, I should have. Instead, I threw myself on the mercy of the only merciless person I know – and that was just a month ago. How recently did I stop being such a complete idiot? What if I still am one? That’s a scary thought.

  ‘Instead, you betrayed Sharon by—’

  ‘Oh, no!’ This I am not having. I’m on my feet. ‘I never betrayed Sharon. And if you thought it was wrong, you should have said “no”, simple as that.’

  ‘I wanted to help you, wrong or not! I’m not judgemental like you. I care about people. And now you’re going to turn me in to the cops? Thanks a lot!’

  Another thing wrong with Jo’s kitchen: it has no door to outside. ‘I need some air,’ I tell her. ‘I’m going for a walk round the block. I won’t be more than ten minutes. You can start your next Year Zero from when I get back.’

  I don’t bother with my coat; all I want is to get out. As I walk, I try to work out why I didn’t take Dinah and Nonie and leave for good. Why did I promise to go back? Why did I suggest yet another artificially clean slate, as if pretending nothing bad ever happened is a policy I approve of?

  ‘Amber?’ I turn and see Neil behind me, mobile phone in hand. ‘Are you okay?’

  Right back at you, Neil. How can you be okay, married to her?

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ I say.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Feel free to tell me to mind my own business, but . . . that Christmas we all went away together. Why did you, Jo and the boys disappear? What happened?’

  I did it. I asked the question and nothing horrendous happened. Yet. A bark of a laugh escapes from my mouth; it sounds odd even to me. ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘It’s just that I’ve wanted to ask for years. I was always too scared.’

  ‘Me too,’ Neil says awkwardly, looking down at his feet as he stamps them to keep warm. I can’t feel the cold; my anger is heating me from the inside. ‘Scared, I mean.’

  ‘What . . .’ I fall silent. I know what he’s going to say, and it shocks me that I haven’t thought of it as a possibility – not once, not even fleetingly. ‘You don’t know why you disappeared, do you?’

  Neil shakes his head. ‘I went to bed before Jo that night, remember? Next thing I know, she’s shaking me awake, telling me we have to get the boys and go. When I asked why, she—’ He breaks off. ‘I feel bad telling you this.’

  ‘It’s not as if you’re giving me privileged information,’ I say, trying to make him feel better. ‘We’re both as unprivileged as each other.’

  ‘We sat in the car. That’s all we did, all night. Near Blantyre Park in Spilling. I don’t know why there. That’s where Jo told me to go, to Spilling. We sat there, fed William crisps and pop to cheer him up. He and Barney were both tired. Crying. I kept asking why, what the plan was. Jo wouldn’t say anything. She wouldn’t let me drive us home to Rawndesley, wouldn’t let me phone and let you all know we were okay. She got really angry with me when I said anything, so . . . I stopped asking questions.’ Neil shrugs. ‘Stupid, really. I’m not proud of it, but . . . Jo’s Jo. The boys fell asleep eventually. I nodded off in the driver’s seat. When Jo woke me it was morning. She told me to drive up north. Manchester or Leeds, she said, a big city. We went to Manchester, spent most of Christmas Day and night in a hotel. Jo woke me again in the middle of the night and said we had to go back to Little Orchard. I never understood any of it. It was crazy.’

  Nearly as crazy as staying married to an unpredictable, unstable . . . What? What is Jo, exactly?

  ‘Have you asked her about it since?’

  Neil lets out a low whistle, wide-eyed. ‘Course not. Whatever it is, she made it clear enough that night that she didn’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘It was a beautiful house, Little Orchard,’ I say. It’s unbelievable, absolutely incredible to me that I’m saying its name out loud, to Neil of all people. ‘Have you got the owner’s details?’ And now I’m saying something insane that I haven’t thought through properly. ‘Luke and I were thinking we might—’

  ‘You can’t. It’s not available for hire any more. Jo tried to book it again, for us and some friends, but it’s been rented out long-term.’

  I wonder if whoever’s renting it has seen the words ‘Kind,
Cruel, Kind of Cruel’ written on a lined sheet of A4 paper recently.

  Pretending not to have noticed the fear on Neil’s face, I ask if I can have the owner’s details anyway.

  There are some advantages to never sleeping. If you want to do something and not be seen doing it, you have plenty of opportunity. Tonight, for the first time since my insomnia started, I was impatient for Luke to go to bed, for what I think of as ‘my’ part of the night to start.

  And now it’s quarter past midnight and I’m staring at a calendar on a computer screen, with two blankets wrapped round me (because I don’t allow myself to have the heating or a fire going at night, however cold it is – another punishment for my failure to sleep), wondering why Neil bothered to lie to me about Little Orchard when he must have known how easily I could catch him out. Did he think I’d take his word for it when he told me the house was no longer available for short-term lets, that he and Jo had binned the owner’s contact details?

  I’m not sure why I didn’t take his word for it. I didn’t expect to find anything interesting when I typed ‘Little Orchard, Cobham, Surrey’ into the Google search box, but here it is on a website called My Home For Hire, and this calendar, with its blue date squares to indicate availability and orange ones for dates already booked, seems to know nothing about a permanent or semi-permanent tenant. According to the ‘Check Availability’ page on the screen in front of me, I can book Little Orchard any time between now and a week on Friday, any time between the following Monday and 20 December. Between and after those dates it’s booked. I look at the prices: £5,950 for a week, or £1,000 a night, as long as I commit to staying a minimum of two nights. The owner can be contacted at littleorchardcobham@yahoo.co.uk.

  I enter my own email address in the box provided and type ‘Booking Enquiry’ in the subject box. I compose a message, asking if I might book Little Orchard for the weekend of 17 to 19 December, and mentioning that I was one of a party that stayed in the house in December 2003. I add a couple of lines about how much I enjoyed my first stay, how I’ve wanted to go back to Little Orchard ever since, especially with my two girls, who I know would love it.

  I read my message through. The last part embarrasses me. It strikes a false note; I’m trying too hard. I delete the gushy bits, press send and sit back in my chair, readjusting my blankets. I have no idea, at this point, whether I am willing to spend two thousand pounds we can’t afford on a return visit to Little Orchard.

  For what purpose? To look for some words on a piece of paper, words you have no good reason to believe you’ll find there? Luke will think I’m crazy. He’ll worry about me.

  Either Neil flat-out lied to me, or his intelligence is out of date. Perhaps someone rented the house for the whole of last year, and now they’re gone. Neil didn’t say when Jo had tried to book Little Orchard again for them and their friends.

  Which friends? Neil and Jo haven’t got any. They spend all their free time with family.

  He lied to me.

  Why? Why would he fear the prospect of Luke and me going back there? If he thought Jo would be averse to the idea, that would be enough of a reason, but why would he think that? Why would Jo care? Could it have something to do with the key to the locked room?

  Keeping me out of Little Orchard’s study mattered to Jo. That argument is the only time I’ve seen her physically shake. I remember thinking then that, even for Jo, this level of outrage and disgust was over the top. What if I was wrong? What if it wasn’t disgust at my lack of scruples, but fear, the same fear I saw on Neil’s face a few hours ago?

  Of what, though? Did Jo and Neil use that key before I thought of looking for it? Did they lock something in Little Orchard’s study while we were there? Was it something to do with Jo’s reason for wanting to vanish with Neil and the boys in the middle of the night?

  The computer makes a pinging noise: a new email. I open it. It’s signed Veronique Coudert. French, obviously. ‘Dear Ms Hewerdine, Thank you for your enquiry. Unfortunately, I am not offering Little Orchard to visitors for the foreseeable future as I am now living in the house myself with my family. I am sorry to be the bearer of disappointing news, and I wish you luck in finding an alternative property for your weekend in December.’

  I chew my lip. So, not a long-term rental, then; the owner has moved back in.

  Except that she can’t have, because there are bookings on the availability calendar for December.

  Why would a woman I’ve never met lie to me? Why would Neil? Unless Veronique Coudert lied to him too. Or unless the availability calendar is wrong, out of date. Which? I’m too exhausted to be able to distinguish between the ideas I ought to pay attention to and those I should discard.

  A loud noise like a slap sends a jolt through my body. It came from downstairs and sounded like a pile of post hitting the hall floor. Have we been assigned an insomniac postman?

  I make my way downstairs, still trying and failing to make sense of what’s just happened. If Little Orchard was no longer available for hire, it would surely be the easiest thing in the world to have it removed from the My Home For Hire website. Why wouldn’t Veronique Coudert take care of that, to save herself the bother of having to reply to endless emails like mine? Unless the house is still available, to everyone but me. Or everyone but me, Jo, Neil . . .

  I stop on the landing outside Luke’s room, shivering from the cold. We had to give our names in 2003. Jo had a form. She’d filled in all our names and we all had to sign. Hilary held Kirsty’s hand and together they planted a squiggle in the right box. It was some sort of official document. My name was on there, and my signature. As names go, Amber Hewerdine is a memorable one.

  Why wouldn’t Veronique Coudert want any of us to go back to her house?

  Could we have done something wrong seven years ago, something I know nothing about? If Jo and Neil did unlock the study door, did the owners find out somehow? Perhaps Jo filled in a Guest Satisfaction Feedback Form and, under ‘Other Comments’, wrote that one of her party, the utterly unprincipled Amber Hewerdine, had been in favour of sneaking a look at the forbidden room, and that she, wonderful morally upright Jo, had put her foot down.

  Yeah, right. I’m too tired to work out at what point my sensible speculations drifted over the border into the realm of pure fantasy.

  There’s a large brown padded envelope lying on the hall floor directly beneath the letterbox, bent in the middle from where it’s been rammed through. I open it, pull out a few sheets of white A4 covered in small print, and a scrap of paper with extravagant loopy handwriting all over it. ‘Dear Amber, Sorry if I pissed you off before. I did genuinely enjoy talking to you, and, believe me, I don’t feel that way about most people. I’ve been assured by someone who (infuriatingly) is hardly ever wrong that you shouldn’t be a suspect even though technically you are, so here’s some information about the Katharine Allen case that I’m not supposed to give you. It would infuriate the infuriating person if he knew I had, even though, in certain moods, he could easily decide to do it himself – it’s only me that’s not allowed to. If anything strikes you as important, please get back to me and no one else about it, and please destroy these notes once you’ve read them. Charlie Zailer.’ She’s written her phone number beneath her name.

  It’s an odd note. The infuriating person must be Simon Waterhouse. Her husband. Why tell me anything, even the tiniest detail, about their relationship? I read the note again and decide she must be drunk and/or so lonely that she’s past caring. In the months after Sharon’s death, I said all kinds of inappropriately intimate, emotional things to strangers; it makes me cringe to think of it now, the way I seized upon people I hardly knew and tried to stuff them into the gaping hole of Sharon’s absence.

  I take the printed pages upstairs and sit down in front of the computer again. A mad impulse to send Veronique Coudert another email seizes me. I decide to act on it, before common sense has a chance to exert its killjoy influence. What harm can it do? Worst case sce
nario, a French woman I’m never going to meet will decide I’m bonkers – so what?

  ‘Dear Veronique,’ I type. ‘Thanks for your reply. Do the words “Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel” mean anything to you? Or the name Katharine (Kat) Allen? Yours, Amber Hewerdine.’ My heart racing, I press ‘Send’. Then I turn my attention to Charlie’s notes.

  They’re disappointing. It’s not her fault; it’s mine, for expecting something significant to leap out at me. I read everything through twice and find no point of overlap between Katharine Allen’s life and mine. She was born in Pulham Market, where her apparently happily married parents still live. She has two sisters, one married with two children and living in Belize and the other single with a baby and living in Norwich. Katharine worked as a primary school teacher at Meadowcroft School in Spilling. She and her boyfriend, Luke, were on the point of moving in together when she was murdered. Luke has a solid alibi and was never a suspect.

  Kat Allen’s boyfriend shares a Christian name with my husband. I decide that doesn’t count as overlap.

  A new email from Veronique Coudert appears in my inbox. I click to open it. It says, ‘Dear Ms Hewerdine, Please do not respond to this message. Yours, Mme Coudert’.

  Two middle-of-the-night emails, two instant responses. Odd. She can’t possibly have been sitting at her computer waiting for me, a complete stranger, to contact her. Unless Neil warned her . . . No, that’s ridiculous.

  I chew the inside of my lip, thinking. Please do not respond to what? There’s nothing to respond to. And she’s switched from Veronique to Madame; pushing me away.

  I sniff the air, imagining I can smell something bad: more lies. It’s possible to lie incredibly subtly, I realise, by referring to the absence of a message as a message.

  She didn’t answer my questions. She could have, but she chose not to.

  Because they were intrusive and inappropriate.

  I sigh, turn my attention back to the notes in front of me. Katharine Allen was popular at work: her pupils and fellow teachers liked her a lot. She was friendly, helpful, a team player . . .