And then they’d both gone back in. Staring at each other across their mother’s body.
Carrie wasn’t shouting now, her voice was low and trembling, close to Bridget’s ear and Bridget could smell the fear on her. ‘Bridge, please. Talk to me.’
Without saying anything Bridget stepped to the garage door and pulled it back to where it had been, half closed. When she turned back Carrie was there on the ground, half kneeling, her face pale, upturned, pleading.
As she walked back towards Carrie, it was as if she was walking on air or water, and it came to Bridget with a revelation made up not of the here and now but from out of the past that was concentrated now in this damp dark space, a hundred clues she hadn’t seen: something had happened to Carrie, too. Not him, but someone else, some other time, some other place. Why hadn’t she seen before? She came down beside her, feeling grit under her knees.
‘What the fuck?’ said Carrie reverently, still gazing at her, head moving to follow her sister’s. She was pale, drawn, hungover: the drinking was getting to her, thought Bridget, miles away, floating.
‘Bridget?’ said Carrie. ‘Sis?’ Then she looked back at the body, leaning a little way over him, a hand coming to her mouth. ‘I know him,’ she said slowly.
And then the world crashed back in on Bridget, the stink, the feel of his wool trousers under her hand. ‘No,’ she said urgently, pulling Carrie away, trying to block her. Trying to get between her and him, lying there in his stained trousers.
Carrie shook her off, leaning over him still. ‘It’s that pervy violin teacher. Jesus, how long is it? Twenty-odd years.’
Pervy. Had she known, all along? Bridget let her go. It must be only guessing. What good would knowing it all do her? It was enough that Bridget knew: the detail of it crowded her head, it had found a chink and flooded inside. The light through the curtains he’d drawn before turning to her, smiling, the silver frames on his mantelpiece, the smell of his breath. Stubble on his chin and the gasp she had had to suppress when she was taken hold of, rough, splayed like a chicken on a butcher’s counter. Chop, chop, chop.
‘He came after me,’ was all that came out of Bridget’s mouth. ‘It was – it was an accident—’ Carrie’s eyes on her. Tell the truth. ‘I did it,’ she said, the words sitting there. ‘He came after me. I couldn’t do anything else.’
Dust motes hung in the air between them, dancing in the sparkling light under the garage door. Pale in the dark Carrie examined her and then, slowly, she nodded.
‘I helped you carry him,’ she said, chewing her lip, calculating. No questions about when, how. Why.
A sweat broke over Bridget, up her back, her neck. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You came along at the wrong time. What could I do? There’s no CCTV, no one will have seen. I’ll burn the box in case there’s any of your—’
Carrie just shook her head, impatient, palms up to block her. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘What next? What the fuck do we do next?’
We. ‘You need to keep out of this now,’ Bridget said, keeping her voice as steady as she could make it. ‘I’m not involving you. Go back home to Ella, you haven’t seen anything.’
‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ said Carrie, hissing the words, pushing herself back on her haunches in the half dark, ready for a fight. The body between them. ‘I’m not leaving you alone with this. My law-abiding fucking sister? You haven’t got a fucking clue.’
‘You can’t,’ said Bridget. But Carrie just shook her head, finished.
‘Try and fucking stop me. Look—’ and as Bridget tried again the sound of a car starting up beyond the garage door silenced them both. They held very still, waiting. It moved off, receded. ‘Get Matt?’ said Carrie, searching her face. Matt who sorted everything. Fixed the bikes, the car, the guttering. ‘Bridget. Tell Matt?’
‘No,’ said Bridget, and at last she was certain, instantly. She could unblock a toilet, plumb in a washing machine, schlep boxes of stock: she could do this. ‘Never. Not Matt. Not Finn. I mean you’ve got to promise—’ Never. ‘This happened so they wouldn’t know. About – about—’ she stopped. ‘Do you understand?’
‘No,’ said Carrie, rethinking. But still not asking for explanations. Know about what?
‘All right,’ Carrie said, her kid sister, who ran on adrenaline. ‘Let’s start from the beginning.’ And Bridget began to shake her head but it turned out she was asking a different question.
‘What were you doing? When I came in.’
Subsiding, Bridget told her quickly. About the mobile phone, about lying awake wondering what the phone might tell anyone who was looking for him. Anyone like the police.
‘Yes,’ said Carrie, serious now. ‘I get that. OK then. You want me to do it? To look?’
They did it together. It was easier, with someone else. With Carrie across from her, so matter of fact, moving and turning him, thrusting her hands in one pocket after another without even a change of expression. Looking at the swirl of hair at her cropped crown, the white tips of her small ears, Bridget remembered something she’d long since forgotten: Carrie working in a care home as a teenager one Christmas and just shrugging about the gross aspects, the arse-wiping and spoon-feeding, the visits from the funeral home. And she’d always been a bit like this. Curious, nerveless, bold.
And in the end, ten years ago, Carrie had come back in from the corridor to that hospital bedroom where Mum lay: she’d sat the other side of the bed from Bridget and had taken Mum’s limp hand from where it rested on the sheet and kissed it. Their mother had opened her eyes and smiled at her, a lopsided smile. Had Carrie meant it? Bridget hadn’t known: it only mattered, after all, that their mother thought she had.
Methodically they searched in the dark: it probably only took five, six minutes, and the only sound their breathing. His trousers were old fashioned, with buttoned pockets at the back. A small pocket she’d missed inside the jacket.
The rigor had gone off, his body was showing signs. Blood pooling black where he had been left to lie.
He had once been alive. He was someone’s son. Bridget tried out the thought: it left her cold. He’d gone. That was all that mattered.
Who had loved him? No one loved him.
There was no mobile phone.
In the kitchen the mugs still sat there on the draining board, Finn’s cereal bowl, congealing in the sun.
Their rubber gloves were in a bucket at the back door. Bridget had made Carrie wash her hands, anyway, then she had washed hers. What the hell did they know about DNA traces? Bridget was standing at the table unable to sit or settle, her mind running, round and round.
All they could do was minimise the chances. Be thorough.
Carrie was filling the kettle: Bridget saw her head lift as she eyed the bottles, ranged along the top of the cabinets: a dusty bottle of something bright green; gin, vodka. Matt drank the odd beer, he wasn’t a spirits man. Bridget drank gin and tonic when they went to the pub, but she always made herself stop at one. It seemed safer. Safe, though, was a concept whose meaning now eluded her. Maybe she should have gone Carrie’s route: run straight at what scared her. Run at it shouting and waving your arms. ‘Everything’s got a risk attached,’ said Carrie, as if she knew what Bridget was thinking. ‘What we did—’ and she paused, not looking round, looking down. Changed tack. ‘Everything’s got risk. You’ve got to just keep going.’
What we did.
‘It could have fallen out in the shop,’ said Bridget.
‘You’d have seen it,’ said Carrie, looking back over her shoulder now, and Bridget knew she was right. She slowed her thoughts down: why? What had made her think of the phone, in the middle of the night? Because of something Matt had said. The secretaries up at Rose Hill saying, of Carmichael, that his excuse for not returning calls had been, he left his phone at home.
He had been of an age not to be dependent on it. Maybe – and as she had the thought, Carrie spoke it. Slopping boiling water on top of teabags with her back to
Bridget. Turning to stand, casual against the counter and a spoon in her hand bearing an unsqueezed teabag. It dripped.
‘He was an old codger,’ Carrie said, shrugging. ‘He’d have left it at home, wouldn’t he?’
She set the mugs on the table, grey and unappetising. Carrie was many things, but domestic angel wasn’t one of them: once upon a time they’d have bickered over the dripping teabag, the scum on the tea. Bridget scolding her. Back in fairyland.
‘D’you know where he lived?’ Carrie pulled out a chair and sat across the table from her.
Shocked, Bridget shook her head, staring down at the mug, tightening her hands around it. Shocked at the thought that she would have wanted to know where Carmichael lived. It felt as though Carrie was asking her if she had a relationship with him. ‘No,’ she said, in a low voice. ‘He’d only just turned up, but I wouldn’t have – wouldn’t have wanted—’ A house somewhere, with all his stuff in it. She swerved the thought, stopped. Changed direction.
‘Look,’ said Bridget. ‘I can handle it now.’ It. The body lying in the dust, behind the van. ‘I want you to go home.’
Carrie just shook her head, merry in the sunlit kitchen. They might have been having a coffee morning, if anyone looked through the window. ‘Isn’t that how you got into this crap?’ she said cheerfully. ‘Not telling? Not involving other people?’
‘I’m not going to the police,’ said Bridget immediately.
‘No,’ said Carrie. ‘You’re not. We have to think about this.’ She was calm.
Not a word, still, about why he died. Bridget didn’t mind that: let it be just a fact. An animal dead on the veldt, one of those nature documentaries. ‘We’ve got to get rid of him,’ she said. ‘Quickly. Find somewhere—’ she searched for the place, news reports, true crime. Where? The ones you read about, the body had been found. The pale sun filled the kitchen window, lighting every corner. ‘But – maybe we should wait till dark.’
‘Yeah.’ Carrie nodded, lifted the tea to her lips, scowled. ‘We can’t go off on one, panicking, can we?’ She leaned back in the chair. ‘You were always the methodical one,’ she said. ‘You were the one who fussed around getting the detail right, doing my plaits for school, making sure the parting was completely straight.’
‘I didn’t want everything to fall apart,’ said Bridget, helpless now. ‘Back then.’ Getting Carrie ready for school seemed another life. Hanging on to the detail, let the big stuff take care of itself. But the big stuff got bigger
‘No,’ said Carrie. ‘You took care of the big stuff. That’s what you did here. Now we have to make sure you don’t get caught. What time does Matt get home?’
‘Six thirty,’ said Bridget. ‘Well, usually. Finn – well a bit earlier. If he’s not out with—’
‘I can handle Finn,’ said Carrie. ‘He’s away with the fairies at the moment, anyway, isn’t he? The important thing is to do it before Matt gets back.’ And suddenly she yawned, a yawn so wide it split her little pale face. ‘I’m knackered,’ she said, and stood up abruptly. ‘I’m going to go upstairs and sleep this off.’
On cue Bridget got up too, began to clear the mugs, opened the dishwasher, mechanically beginning to restack after Finn. Already thinking about it. Build a bonfire, plenty of leaves after all, burn the gloves, the fleece, the trainers: before or after? Keep them in a bin bag.
Get to work.
But when she turned around Carrie was still in the doorway, motionless, and her face was different. Closed.
And then suddenly Bridget knew why. And she hadn’t seen it. Too busy not eating. Too busy hiding up her own backside.
‘That’s how you know,’ said Bridget. ‘Isn’t it? It’s why you didn’t need to ask me – about him.’ The merest jerk of her head in the direction of the garage. The big door pulled down now, and locked for good measure.
Carrie’s mouth turned tough. She said nothing. ‘You believed me, straight off, you understood why I did it,’ said Bridget, intent now. ‘About him. Without asking.’
There was a silence and then a long sigh broke it. ‘Do you remember Doug?’ said her little sister, and moved at last, tipping her head to rest against the doorframe. Leaning there as casual as if they’d dreamed it all: the light slanting into the dark garage, the smell in their nostrils as they worked. They’d taped the debris of the polythene and cardboard back around him with duct tape and rolled him in the length of old carpet Matt had been saving to keep weeds down, and put him back in the van.
Doug. Did she? ‘The guy who went out with Mum? That Doug?’
Why?
Carrie nodded, the mug to her lips.
‘Fat bloke, bald head, red face?’ said Bridget.
‘Like he’d been boiled,’ said Carrie, expressionless.
And suddenly Bridget did remember. Doug came sharply into focus: his red face behind Mum’s at the hospital bedside. Bridget had been in hospital most of that year, the mental hospital, though they didn’t call it that now. Juvenile psych unit, where the anorexics and self-harmers go.
‘You remember he just disappeared?’ Bridget shook her head, ashamed. ‘I stabbed him,’ said Carrie, meditatively. ‘Just through the hand, defending myself: he came into my room after Mum had gone to work. I saw it coming, I had hidden a knife under my pillow. She’d asked him to give me a lift to school. I said I would go to the police unless he fucked off.’ And then she stood up, and yawned again. She crossed to the door, then paused. ‘Get someone to close up for you, say you have an errand,’ she said. ‘Think of somewhere to get rid of him, permanently. Somewhere he won’t be found by a dog walker.’
‘He could have killed you,’ said Bridget, thinking: my kid sister. Don’t hurt her.
‘I could have killed him,’ said Carrie. And she was on the stairs and climbing them as steadily as if she’d just said goodnight.
Chapter Thirteen
As she turned into the lane on her bike Bridget could see Laura up there grumpy on the doorstep, shapeless in pink layers against the cold. She could only have been waiting ten minutes – but Bridget was never late.
She locked the bicycle and hurried towards Laura, starting to apologise. Registering how different the girl looked when she was unhappy: everything seemed to change, even her fine golden hair sat flatter and duller. She was unmade-up too, which wasn’t like her.
‘Is everything all right?’ said Bridget, reaching past her with the key, poised to kill the alarm, peering through the glass. Last night. What if— For a mad moment she thought, she imagined him still in there, lying on the floor.
‘That man was here,’ said Laura, arms folded indignantly on top of her pink-muffled belly. Bridget paused, key still raised. The dark shop interior was empty, just the rug was slightly askew on the pale-painted floor.
‘Man?’ she said, not quite trusting herself to say more than the single word.
‘Customer, yesterday?’ Laura’s neat little mouth pursed. ‘Old bloke buying something for his wife. Or was it the day before?’ Crossly. ‘I don’t know. Anyway, he wanted to bring it back. Changed his mind.’
And conspiratorially Laura rolled her eyes: their favourite topic. The customer who changed her mind. It’s just not me, they’d chant in unison as the door closed behind her. Or her husband didn’t like it. What could you do but smile? Never mind. Bridget tried to remember the man, and couldn’t.
The key went into the lock and Bridget punched in the numbers. Remembering last night and the alarm going off: three strikes – false alarms – and you lost your police call-out. And your insurance. Least of her problems, though: the last thing Bridget wanted was a police call-out. The door opened and they were inside.
Turning on the lights, one after the other, Bridget paced out the space, trying not to actually sniff. The days when she and Laura used to moan about fussy customers seemed such a long time ago.
‘Why didn’t he wait?’ she said, leaning into the tiny kitchen, down to search the corners. No phone. She looked back at L
aura over her shoulder, the girl standing beside the sofa unwinding a long scarf disconsolately.
‘He wanted to talk to the owner,’ Laura said. The scarf, a pink mohair poncho, a coat: the layers came off and were discarded impatiently on to the sofa. Emerging from them she looked flushed.
‘But he didn’t wait for me?’
‘He didn’t seem like he was in a hurry,’ said Laura, frowning. ‘Just passing, he said.’ She scooped up the bundle of her stuff and began to walk – ungainly now if not quite a waddle, she was too dignified for that – to the stockroom. It was hard, the end of pregnancy: Bridget remembered that much. Heaving yourself around, always untidy. Laura loved to be neat and tidy.
Her due date was less than a month away. Bridget didn’t know much about her husband, the sainted Nick, only that she met him on Match.com, they got all lovey dovey straight away, he wanted babies as much as she did. A dream of a man, no commitment-phobe, liked things just so, just like Laura. Bridget followed her cautiously to the stockroom.
‘Let me,’ she said, taking the bundle off her and Laura brightened finally.
‘Why don’t you nip next door for a paper,’ said Bridget encouragingly to shift her, only belatedly thinking, she’s not going to be nipping, exactly, poor Laura. But she needn’t have worried: the stockroom was innocently tidy.
Bridget was grateful, really, for Laura going on about him for most of the rest of the morning, her sainted Nick. Her pale face softening, settling back into its blithe pink smoothness. Cooing.
He didn’t make her tea in the morning, though. ‘Oh, no,’ Laura had said, almost horrified when Bridget had ventured Matt’s morning tea as evidence of his love. ‘I do kitchen things.’
It was soothing, the babble. Where Nick would be today, the new company car, the birth plan. The sainted Nick, she’d known for all of a year, was it now? Closer to two. Did you have to mistrust everyone? Maybe you did. Bridget thought Matt had cured her of that.
But a baby always changed something, didn’t it? Bridget had been lucky. It had been like a counterweight holding her down, a washing line safely tethered, the small sandbag-weight of Finn in her arms. She felt a pang at that thought, Finn slipping in and out of the house these days, and one day he wouldn’t come back.
What We Did_A gripping, compelling psychological thriller with a nail-biting twist Page 12