Kind of Cruel

by Sophie Hannah

  Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel. The memory of seeing those words is in me somewhere. It’s only partially buried; I can see that piece of paper, the capital Ks and Cs . . .

  ‘Are you . . . have you moved out?’ Charlie asks.

  ‘Temporarily.’

  ‘Where to?’

  My chest fills with something solid. It’s difficult to speak when there’s so much you’re trying not to say. ‘Extended family.’ It could be worse. You could be at Jo’s. ‘I need to ask you a very big favour,’ I blurt out. No point pretending it’s trivial. It’s the most important thing I’ve ever asked anyone to do for me.

  And you’re asking a stranger. Good plan.

  ‘Why me?’ Charlie Zailer asks. ‘You hardly know me.’

  I want to tell her that knowing people in the conventional sense means nothing. I know Luke, but I can’t tell him about the worst thing I’ve ever done. I knew Sharon; I couldn’t tell her either. I know Neil – we even share a fear of Jo – but I don’t know if he’s an ally or an enemy; I don’t know if Veronique Coudert lied to us both about Little Orchard, or if Neil lied to me.

  I’m pleased that Charlie asked Why me? instead of telling me how busy she is, how little she wants to get involved in my problems.

  ‘Why did you give me the Katharine Allen notes after telling me you couldn’t?’

  She grins at the mention of her misdemeanour. ‘I was pissed off with Simon. He took my notebook into work, the one you saw – waved it around in front of all his colleagues. I asked him not to, but he didn’t listen. He never does. Ah, now I see why I’ve been chosen for the very big favour. You think you’ve got leverage. Any time you like, you can tell Simon I gave you those copied files.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that.’ I’m about to ask how she can think that I would. I stop myself in time. It’s not the sort of question you can ask someone you’ve met three times.

  ‘Make sure you don’t,’ she says. ‘I want to use it myself at some point, to score a shock-point in an argument about who’s better at screwing who over. What’s the favour?’

  I’m going to need to sit down for this. I choose the chair that looks least filthy.

  ‘There’s a house in Surrey called Little Orchard, a holiday let. I stayed there once, in 2003 . . .’

  She holds up a hand. ‘I know I said take as long as you want, but if we’re starting seven years ago . . .’

  ‘The background’s not important,’ I tell her. ‘I want to book to stay there again. The house is advertised on a website called My Home For Hire. I emailed the owner last night. She said she wasn’t renting the house out any more, but she was lying. She just doesn’t want to let it to me, but . . . I need to go there again.’ I’m trying to read the expression on Charlie’s face. I’m hoping it’s not disbelief.

  ‘You want me to book it for you, under my name?’

  I nod. ‘I’ll pay. It won’t cost you anything.’

  ‘I’m not encouraging you to do this, but, in theory . . . Couldn’t you just book it using a made-up name?’

  ‘Wouldn’t work,’ I say. ‘At some point, money’s going to have to change hands. Paying cash’d look too suspicious. I’d need a real bank account in a name that isn’t mine, and . . . I don’t have one.’

  ‘So you thought of mine?’ Charlie laughs. ‘You’re unbelievable.’

  ‘All you need to do is transfer the money I’ll have given you, make the arrangements for picking up the keys, find out any alarm codes . . .’

  ‘Amber, stop. Even if I had time to drive back and forth to Surrey . . .’

  ‘You won’t have to. I’ve never met Veronique Coudert . . .’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The owner. I’ve never met her. She doesn’t know what I look like. I’ll pick up the keys, pretending to be Charlie Zailer. None of it should put you out hardly at all.’

  ‘And yet you described it as a very big favour.’

  ‘It’s . . . conceptually big,’ I say. ‘In practical terms, it’s next to nothing.’

  ‘I see. Conceptually huge because overwhelmingly bad and wrong, but I won’t have to burn off too many calories.’ She shakes her head. ‘And the owner, this Coudert person, will agree to let the house to me because . . . I haven’t been blacklisted?’

  I can’t bring myself to contradict her.

  ‘Which means you have. Why?’

  ‘I honestly have no idea,’ I tell her.

  ‘Can I be equally honest with you?’ She sticks her little finger into the opening of her 7UP can and tries to lift it off the table. It falls back down with a thud. ‘If you were asking this favour of your best friend, it’d be inappropriate, but for you to ask me, a police officer . . .’

  ‘My best friend is dead. She was murdered,’ I snap. ‘Someone set fire to her house two years ago.’

  Charlie nods. ‘Simon told me. You must know plenty of people, Amber. Why are you asking me to do this? Why not Simon? What time are you seeing him?’ She looks at her watch. I hate her for how much she knows, how much power she has when I have so little.

  ‘Why . . .’ I have to stop to clear my throat. ‘Why would I ask Simon? He’s . . . This isn’t . . .’ My inability to produce an intelligible sequence of words frightens me. Last night, for the first time since my insomnia began, I had no sleep at all.

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with Katharine Allen’s death,’ I tell Charlie.

  ‘Hasn’t it?’

  ‘No.’

  It’s true. I don’t know that Jo has done anything wrong, or that Neil has. I don’t know that there’s any connection between them and Little Orchard beyond their having stayed there once. I don’t know that they hid anything in the locked study, or know what’s hidden there. Maybe nothing is. Hidden and private are two different things.

  ‘You’re going to tell Simon about this conversation, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. He’s my husband, and we both work for the police. If you thought you’d be able to persuade me to do your very big favour and keep it from him . . .’

  ‘What about last night? The notes you gave me – you’re happy to keep that from him.’ Is she right? Have I been thinking of it as leverage? Tiredness is like a fog that has settled on my brain and obscured everything; I can no longer negotiate my way around safely. I have no idea what I’m doing, thinking or feeling.

  ‘I was happy to keep it from him,’ Charlie says. ‘Now I’m thinking I’d better come clean about that too.’ She sighs. ‘Look, Amber, I was an idiot last night, and you’re being one now. I know you haven’t killed anybody. I’m as convinced of that as Simon is, but if you want to know what I really think . . .’

  I don’t. I never said I did.

  She takes my silence as a sign that she should go on. ‘Your wanting to book this Little Orchard place again is connected. To your friend’s death, to Katharine Allen, to the fire last night. I don’t know what the connection is. I don’t think you’re sure either. If you were you’d go to Simon, if you could guarantee you wouldn’t end up looking stupid. I’m not him, but I’m connected to him. Whether you realise it or not, that’s why you asked me. That and my track record for preposterous behaviour, for which I take full responsibility.’

  She’s smiling at me. I’m in no mood to be smiled at.

  ‘Take it straight to Simon,’ she says. ‘I know it’s not what you want to hear, but it’s the best advice I can give you.’

  I don’t like taking advice. I am not good at switching off my own instincts, forcing myself to tune into someone else’s. I know how wrong I can be. A hunch tells me that Charlie Zailer’s judgement is less reliable than mine. I don’t recognise myself in too many of the statements I hear her make about me. She told me I’d have approached Simon and not her if I was sure Little Orchard was connected to Katharine Allen’s death, if I could guarantee I wouldn’t look stupid.

  Not true. Apart from Luke, Dinah and Nonie, I don’t care what people think of me. If I mention to Simon a possible connection between L
ittle Orchard and Katharine Allen’s murder, I know what his next move will be. He would have no trouble getting into the locked study; if you’re police and you’re investigating a murder, you’re allowed to break down the door.

  Whatever’s in that room, I want to see it before he does.

  Why? Because you think you’ll find out something about Jo and Neil? Because Neil is Luke’s brother, and if he might have killed someone . . .

  How can you even think it?

  Neil has done nothing. Lack of sleep is turning me insane.

  I haven’t told Simon because there is no solid reason to think there’s any link between Little Orchard and any murder, Katharine Allen’s or Sharon’s. A connection in my mind isn’t the same thing as a connection in the real world.

  He will find out anyway, as soon as he gets home tonight, probably. Let Charlie tell him; my throat is already raw and inflamed on one side from talking too much. I wonder if I’m getting ill. When I do, this is where I always feel it first: up near my tonsils.

  If he’s going to find out tonight, that gives me only this afternoon to do . . . what? I don’t know how serious I am. Not serious enough to put into words what I might do.

  I rub my neck as Simon looks over what he’s written, checking he’s got it all down. ‘Are you going to have to tell anyone about the DriveTech course?’ I ask him.

  ‘I ought to. But . . . as long as I bear it in mind as we go along, I should be able to get away with keeping it to myself. I can’t make you any promises, though. Sorry.’ He looks up at me expectantly. ‘Are you good for another half hour or so? I’ve got a few more questions.’

  I’m not sure my eyes will stay open for much longer. I need to sleep. If Simon would only leave, I know I’d be able to black out for at least an hour, curled up on this lumpy floral sofa. I am not allowing myself to hope that I might sleep better here, at Hilary’s house, than I do at home. I don’t know where the idea came from, and I’ve been trying to push it out of my mind ever since I first became aware of it lurking.

  Another detail I haven’t shared with Simon: how Luke and the girls and I ended up here. I made sure to present our new living arrangements as unmysterious and self-explanatory: we’re staying with our extended family. He hasn’t queried it because it makes sense. What makes less sense is that, in spite of Hilary’s house being easily large enough to accommodate six people, she and Kirsty have temporarily relocated to Jo and Neil’s, which, as of today, is even more problematically not-big-enough-for-the-people-in-it than it was before.

  It was the only way. I’m trying not to think about how it happened, because it terrifies me. It makes no sense; it made none while it was happening, and yet everyone present, including me, knew what was coming and greeted it as if it were an old familiar friend when it arrived. We are all so used to the madness; no one is thrown by it. As soon as we were alone, I said to Luke, ‘This is beyond irrational.’ ‘I’m not complaining,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a big house all to ourselves for as long as we need it, and it’s on the school bus route. Count yourself lucky we didn’t end up at Jo’s. Would have been a nightmare.’

  That was when it hit me: we might all be used to it, but I am the only one who thinks of it as ‘the madness’.

  It should never have felt inevitable that we would end up at Jo’s. It scares me that Luke doesn’t see this as plainly as I do. She tried to insist we move in with them; it was the first thing out of her mouth, before ‘Are you all okay?’ We could have said, ‘No, thank you.’ Instead, we ummed and ahhed and tried tentatively to suggest that having us all descend on her might not be the best thing for her. We appealed to her self-interest and nothing else.

  Because there is nothing else.

  She told us not to be ridiculous, that she’d love to have us all to stay, and started talking about special beds that pull out of fat-armed chairs, with properly sprung mattresses. I wasn’t really listening. I was trying to alter something in my brain in order to make it possible for me to say yes without wanting to die. Did I wonder how Luke felt, or was that later? I knew he wouldn’t be keen on the cramped conditions at Jo’s, or on living with his dad for the first time in twenty-five years, but was it any more than that for him? I couldn’t face asking him how he feels about Jo, and still can’t. He would want to know why I was asking, turn the question back on me.

  Hilary saved us. She said, ‘I’ve got a better idea, Jo. Why don’t Kirsty and I move in here for a few weeks? You and Kirsty would be able to spend more time together, which would do wonders for both of you, and Amber, Luke and the girls could move into our house and—’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said before she’d finished. ‘That would be so kind of you, Hilary. Are you sure you don’t mind?’ She didn’t answer straight away. I worried I’d misunderstood, but how could I have? There had been nothing ambiguous about her suggestion. That’s when I noticed that everyone was looking at Jo. Everyone: Luke, Neil, Hilary, Sabina, Quentin, Dinah and Nonie. William and Barney were upstairs asleep. Part of me was surprised Jo hadn’t woken them too; the family meeting could have been better attended, the room fuller. Quentin, Hilary and Sabina had all been summoned from their beds for no reason that I could understand. Hilary had had to wake a neighbour to look after Kirsty while she went out. Ritchie, Jo’s brother, had been invited but had pleaded illness. He had an upset stomach.

  ‘Brilliant, Mum!’ Jo grinned. ‘Perfect. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it.’

  Did Hilary sense that I was desperate not to stay at Jo’s but too afraid to say so? Was she saving me, knowingly?

  ‘Amber? Are you awake?’ Simon’s voice.

  My eyelids are as heavy as concrete. I force them open. ‘The answer to that question will always be yes. I don’t have any other answers, apart from the ones I’ve already given you.’

  ‘You’re better at answering questions than anyone I’ve ever interviewed,’ Simon says gravely. ‘That’s why I’ve got more, because you’ve told me so much. Does that make sense?’

  Yes. I’m too exhausted to try to formulate unnecessary words.

  ‘Your sister-in-law, Johannah. Jo. You say you told her before she stood in for you on the DriveTech course that she had to remember all the details to tell you later. Why was it so important to you to have those details?’

  ‘I was supposed to have been there. I knew what Jo and I were doing was . . . well, I don’t think it was wrong, actually – I don’t think it matters in the grand scheme of things if people lie about going on pointless courses that are a waste of everyone’s time – but I knew it was illegal. Officially, it was supposed to be me on that course, and it wasn’t, but at least if I knew exactly what had happened, if I could feel as if I’d been there . . .’ I shake my head impatiently, sick of my longwinded justification. ‘Self-deception is the short answer,’ I say.

  ‘And Jo, when you told her you wanted to know about the course in microscopic detail, she didn’t query it, didn’t wonder why?’

  ‘No. I think she assumed I’d need something to say, in case people asked me how it went.’

  Is he dissatisfied with my explanation? It’s hard to tell. There’s something critical about the set of his features even when he’s dispensing praise.

  ‘You described Jo as being “addicted to the moral high ground”. Why would she agree to do something illegal that she herself thinks is wrong?’

  ‘She’s equally addicted to power. If she sacrifices her . . . moral purity as a massive favour to me, I owe her one.’ I chew my lip, unhappy with my answer. It’s true, but there’s so much more to it than that. ‘She’s often vicious to me, but . . . quickly, almost like a subliminal flash of nastiness, over before I know it. And she’s never quite horrible enough, or for long enough. I never feel I can prove it. I’ve started to wonder recently if it could be deliberate.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Simon asks.

  ‘A tactic. She reels you in by doing more for you than anyone could ever expect: sacrificing more, co
oking more, saving you from all bad things. Then, when she’s got you close enough and trusting again, she aims another killer jab at your soul.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Really? He must be a masochist.

  I have official permission to say some of the things I spend my life trying not to say. ‘She should either do what she can to help me, without trying to make me feel guilty, or not help me because it’s against her principles. One or the other. I didn’t ask her to go on the DriveTech course for me. She offered. I should have said no. I’d have lost my licence for a bit. So what? Some of the oldest points on it are due to come off soon anyway. Sorry, Jo, but you don’t get to do the evil deed and still pass yourself off as the virtuous one. If it’s so terribly wrong, don’t do it unless what you really want is to be seen performing a grand gesture, so much greater a sacrifice because you doubly disapprove. You disapprove of my willingness to break the law by having you stand in for me on the course, and you disapprove of my reason for not going on it myself.’ Damn. I seem to be yelling at Simon as if he were Jo. How embarrassing. ‘Sorry,’ I mutter under my breath.

  Why do I find it easier to free-associate in a police interview than in a hypnotherapy clinic? Perhaps Simon Waterhouse can cure my insomnia.

  ‘Carry on,’ he says. I decide that he would make a good therapist. Not demanding that I design a staircase, that’s the secret of his success.

  ‘Jo got exactly what she wanted out of the situation. She got to bear the burden of my sin, like Jesus or something, and pass herself off as a saint. She wasn’t doing it for me. She made that clear. I would have deserved everything I got. Dinah and Nonie were the innocents who couldn’t be allowed to suffer . . .’ – I make quote marks in the air with my fingers – ‘. . . “any more than they already have”.’

  ‘She said that?’

  I nod, pleased that he thinks it worthy of special notice. Ever so subtly, Jo placed me in the same category as Sharon’s murderer and portrayed herself as Dinah and Nonie’s rescuer.