Suhani, though. She had a way of getting to me. She had a way of making me feel like I wasn’t good enough for her son, no matter what I did.
I walked into the living room with my coat on, just to show her that I wasn’t staying as long as she was staying and to tell her that Sanjay wouldn’t be back that night so there was nothing for her to hang around for. Even her interactions with the children had to involve her son so he would see what a wonderful grandmother she was. She couldn’t be her without an audience, I’d realised.
My feet tripped over themselves when I entered our living room and found not only Suhani but Yvonne, too. The pair of them were sitting in my house with a full tea service on the coffee table in front of them. It was our special, fine bone-china crockery Amma and Tatta bought us as a wedding present. Amma and Tatta had their own wedding tea set and I had been fascinated by it for as long as I could remember. I would repeatedly beg Amma to get it out of its packaging and ask her about it: its images, its curves, why it was so important to them. She and Tatta had been so pleased at my expression when I unwrapped our very own tea set when they came to visit the day after we got back from honeymoon.
The only people who used that crockery were Sanjay and I, to enjoy our tea, to remind ourselves of our wedding day. We had other, perfectly nice, hugely more expensive tea sets, but Suhani, knowing its significance, had got it out to use it with a woman she had never met before. Why didn’t Suhani and Yvonne go upstairs and root through my wardrobe, get my wedding sari out of its layers of tissue paper and put it on while they were at it?
‘Ahhh, Anaya, my daughter-in-law,’ Suhani said. ‘It is so nice that you’ve finally decided to come home. We have been waiting for you. Your friend here, Mrs …?’
‘Whidmore,’ Yvonne supplied.
‘Yes, Mrs Whidmore has been such delightful company,’ she said.
‘I completely forgot you were working today,’ Yvonne said. She got to her feet and smoothed down the wrinkle-free lap of her tight black skirt suit. She was wearing a pearl necklace and pearl earrings, her hair secured back in a low bun. ‘I popped round to see if you fancied going for a coffee, but you weren’t here. Your delightful mother-in-law persuaded me to stay for tea. She is so fascinating. I was so grateful that she had that time to spend with me.’
Suhani, who was actually blushing at the compliments gushing out of Yvonne’s mouth, replied: ‘The pleasure was absolutely all mine.’
Maybe it was true, maybe Yvonne had forgotten I was at work – why would she, who didn’t work outside the home, remember my schedule? But there was something sinister about her being here, about her car not being parked outside on the drive, which can hold up to four cars. That meant … No, Yvonne is nosey, she’s a bit of a cow sometimes, she can be bitchy, but she’s not completely sly and evil, I thought.
‘Well, I must be off,’ she said.
I frowned. Why was she leaving if she’d been waiting for me?
‘Thank you ever so much for the tea, Mrs Kohli. And I hope we can catch up again soon.’ She focused on me. ‘I’ll see you in about an hour, Anaya, at the school gates.’
I nodded. And I tried to pretend I didn’t notice how much that sounded like a threat.
Once she was gone, I returned to the living room, where Suhani was clearing up the tea set.
‘How long was Yvonne here?’ I asked.
‘Oh, not long at all. Maybe an hour.’
‘And you didn’t think to maybe ring me to ask how long I was going to be?’
‘Oh, Anaya, my daughter-in-law, I did not want to disturb you. What is two hours between two women, two strangers, essentially?’
‘You said it was an hour a second ago.’
‘An hour … two hours? What is the difference?’
With Yvonne, a lot. A hell of a lot. In the first hour, she would be getting warmed up; in the second hour she would have done enough buttering-up to find out every single scrap of information she needed.
‘What did you talk about?’
‘Why, all sorts of things.’ My mother-in-law clanked my delicate, special china as she moved. ‘The weather, politics, you of course.’
‘What about me?’
‘All positive things, Anaya. Do not be so paranoid. She was asking about your family. What your family name had been before you were married. She wondered if you had been married before because you had a different surname to your mother.’
‘Pardon? She was asking about my mother?’
‘Yes. She was curious – as I was – why your mother and father are Ranatunga and you were Harshani before you married my son.’
‘You told her all that? You told her my parents’ name?’
‘Of course, we were discussing whether you had been married before my Sanjay found you and made you into the respectable woman you are today.’
That was it, then. Game over. She would find out my real name, she would find …
Bloody, bloody Yvonne.
‘You look worried, Anaya my dear. Not too tired, I hope?’
I shook my head and moved across the room. I tossed my bag onto the sofa and relieved her of my tray of my stuff. ‘No, I’m not too tired. But I do have a lot to do and Sanjay is away all night, so you’re most welcome to leave whenever you feel like it.’
‘I will, thank you. I will simply go and finish stripping and remaking all the beds. They were in a terrible state.’
I was tempted, sorely tempted, to shout at her. To let her know she’d ruined everything. Bloody, bloody, bloody Yvonne.
TUESDAY
Cece
9:45 p.m. ‘I didn’t know who else to call,’ he says. He is frantic. He sounds it, any way. And, let’s face it, he’d have to be to call me. I am a virtual stranger. Someone to nod to at martial arts and in the mornings at the school gate. If the roles were reversed, I doubt I’d be calling him. Not unless I was a special kind of desperate.
He moves into the house and I look around the place as we walk through to the kitchen. It’s as large as our house, maybe bigger because they have three rooms downstairs and a large kitchen where he leads me to, picking up dropped items along the way. This is what our house looked like when both Sol and I worked full-time. It still looks like that sometimes now, and I have to put out of my head the snarky comments I get from Sol about it. His guilt at what he said to me the night of his work’s autumn ball has subsided now. Superseded by his disdain for my lack of having morphed into a 1950s housewife, complete with pinny and dinner on the table when he gets home at whatever time he chooses to stroll in nowadays.
‘I didn’t really appreciate how much Yvonne did.’ Trevor Whidmore seems to be talking to himself more than to me. ‘She was just always there. I could work late, could dash back to the office at the drop of a hat without worrying about leaving two children on their own. I never had to clock-watch coming home like I do now. Most days now I have to work really late into the night because there’s no way I can get it all done and pick up the girls. God, I don’t know what I’m going to do if she doesn’t …’ His voice ebbs away, like a wisp of his breath. He shakes his head slightly, then firmly. He needs to dislodge the very thought that follows ‘if she doesn’t’. It’s unthinkable and he doesn’t need to do that to himself right now. ‘I literally need you to sit here and make sure they don’t come down and set the place on fire, or try to leave. I’ll be an hour, an hour and half, tops. Is that OK?’
‘Fine,’ I say. I pull out the chair he pointed to at the kitchen table. ‘I sit here, right?’ I say. ‘Just here?’ I lower myself into the seat and he stops moving around, looking for keys and who knows what else. I raise a mocking eyebrow at him. And he smiles; his face relaxes into a small grin that says he’s realised how he sounds. This is how I sound when I am in über-parent mode. I don’t mean to sound like like a drill sergeant and tyrant, but that’s how it comes out. It’s hard to not slip into that mode when you’re trying to deal with a myriad of things all at once.
‘Sor
ry,’ Trevor Whidmore says. He holds the keys to the sporty BMW parked outside in one hand and a table tennis bat in the other one. He looks at the bat, shakes his head and tosses it onto the kitchen table. ‘I’m trying to be two parents at the same time. And trying to visit Yvonne. Trying to keep the kids going. It’s hard not to start barking out orders while everything is going at a million miles an hour in your head.’
‘I know,’ I reassure him.
He shakes his head again. ‘I can’t believe I’m ringing up strangers to come sit with my kids so I can leave the house on my own for a little while.’
I wonder where his family is, her family is. If something happened to me, Sol would have a bun fight on his hands to look after the children. My parents would pretty much move in and my siblings would be setting up round the corner. How come Yvonne Whidmore has no family stepping into the breach? Have they all passed away? Is there another twist in the story of Yvonne Whidmore that I don’t know about? Popular, not that popular; hated enough to be attacked and almost killed. That is the story I have now. But is there more?
‘Don’t worry, I can get like that and I have no excuses. It’s good to have someone speak to me like that every now and again so I can remember not to speak to Sol and the children like army trainees.’ I grin at him and sit back in the chair.
‘Thank you so much, Cece. I’ll be back soon. Very soon. I won’t be long. I won’t be long.’
Then he is gone. And I am alone. Not completely alone, of course – Madison and Scarlett are upstairs. They know me from the school and that time at martial arts, so they won’t be too distressed if they come down and find me here. But hopefully Trevor won’t be gone too long. Sol’s mouth actually hung open when I told him that I was going out to take care of Trevor Whidmore’s kids while he dashed out to run a few errands.
‘You’re going out to look after someone else’s kids when I don’t have a clean shirt for tomorrow?’ he said.
‘How are the two connected?’ I asked as I grabbed my mobile from the side of the bed. I’d actually been in bed reading when I’d got Trevor’s call.
‘I don’t have any clean shirts for tomorrow, Cece, and instead of sorting that out, you’re going to someone else’s house to play babysitter.’
‘Why would I be sorting out your clean shirt problem?’ I asked.
‘What the hell else do you do all day?’ he snapped. ‘I have dirty shirts, I go to work and I come back to find them not washed. Why?’
‘I do the washing every other day – if something’s not in the hamper, they don’t get washed,’ I replied calmly.
‘But they’re right there!’ He pointed to the other side of the room. Where he drops his clothes when he undresses at night.
‘And the hamper’s right there,’ I said and pointed to where it sat, by the entrance to the walk-in wardrobe. ‘I repeat, if something’s not in the hamper, it doesn’t get washed. Even the children know that. Anything doesn’t make it to the hamper in their rooms, it doesn’t get washed. It’s quite simple really.’
‘What do you do all day, Cece?’
‘Not wash stuff that’s not in the hamper, obviously,’ I replied. ‘But you’ve still got time. You can wash and tumble and iron them before the morning. I’ve got to go.’
‘Unbelievable!’ he muttered.
I look around the Whidmore kitchen. It is in disarray, a state that’s been building over the last few weeks, by the look of it. I’m not the tidiest of people, but this would break my heart if I came back to find my house in this state. I stand up, even though I was sort of ordered not to, and gather together the dinner plates on the table. They clink together and I try to stop them making noise. I do not want to wake anyone up. I do not want to have conversations with her children and have them potentially ask me when their mother is going to wake up and why I am in their house and what it means for the rest of their lives. The rest of their lives is a very big place, another country I do not want to give them peeks of or insights into without some sort of knowledge and guidance from their dad.
On the very large, shiny, red and designer-labelled fridge, I am aware of the picture that I have seen in Hazel’s and Maxie’s houses: the friends. The perfect friends. Yvonne at the centre, Hazel on the left, Anaya on the right, Maxie standing slightly behind between Anaya and Yvonne. Their heads are leaning towards each other, their faces are showing their best smiles to the camera. They are the close friends. With their perfect friend at the centre.
I stop, my hands full of dishes, and stare at the picture. Could one of them really have done it? It doesn’t seem possible, not really. I’ve spent time with all of them and that seems so beyond the realm of possibility.
Would one of my new friends have really done that? Knowing that she had a husband and children who would be forced to remake their lives without her? Would one of those women I’ve sat and knitted with and concocted cocktails with and laughed and laughed with do something like that? No one I know would do that, would they? No, they wouldn’t. That’s all there is to it. No one would do that. With that knowledge lodged carefully in my mind, I turn towards the sink and place the dishes on top of the other dishes and pots and pans. No one I know would do that. No one.
Hazel
10 p.m. I’m shaking. Shaking. The children are asleep and Ciaran is watching television and I am sitting here in the dark kitchen, shaking. I’m scared. Really scared. I actually don’t know what I’m scared of. Being found out? Fine, they’ll arrest me. Not being found out? Fine, I won’t be arrested. Yvonne dying? I don’t know. Maybe. Whatever it is, though, I am scared. I am really, really scared.
Are we meeting for coffee tomorrow?
I press send and immediately regret it. I wasn’t fair on Anaya yesterday. That is fear. That is me being scared.
No, sorry, can’t. A x
Me either. I have a huge deadline. Maybe next week. M x
One kiss from each of them and no real excuse. They’re going to meet without me. I’m sure of it. I’m sure of it. I’m sure of it.
Cece
11:30 p.m. I stopped myself going through Yvonne Whidmore’s kitchen drawers, reading the franking marks on the letters littering the kitchen table and the sides. I have not looked at the notes hooked onto the fridge with various magnets, or pinned onto the noticeboard by the kitchen door. I have not violated the privacy of the woman in a coma and her family. It was torturous not to, of course. I wanted to work out who she is. What sort of person she is and what kind of life she lives. I wanted to complete more of the pattern that is Yvonne Whidmore, but I have stopped myself using this unfortunate opportunity to do so. Because the second I did that, it would mean I believe what Gareth said. I’d believe that one of my new friends is truly that dangerous. That someone I have become friends with is capable of murder.
Trevor Whidmore is full of gratitude when I leave over an hour later. He can’t thank me enough for tidying up, for sitting with his kids, for actually meaning it when I said I would do anything I could to help. Of course, I don’t mention as I walk away from their front door that the scent of jasmine and calla lilies from another woman’s perfume dances around him, that he has a very pronounced glow in his previously pale cheeks, and that, in his obvious haste to get dressed, he’s buttoned up his shirt wrong.
I was thinking before that whoever attacked Yvonne had to know that she had a husband and children who would have to remake their lives without her. What if that was the point? What if whoever did it, did it to create a vacancy in Trevor, Scarlett and Madison Whidmore’s lives?
11:55 p.m. Harmony is in the kitchen when I get home. She has the downlights of the wall cabinets on and she’s sitting at the table playing with her phone.
‘Harmony? What are you doing awake?’
She shrugs and sags a little. I shut the door and go to her. I gather her in my arms and when she doesn’t immediately shrug me off, my heart flutters. I’ve been so focused on the boys and that school – have I missed something vital
going on with Harmony? ‘Has something happened at school?’ I ask.
‘No,’ she says, eventually shrugging me off. I crouch down beside her, unwilling to leave her now that I know there’s something wrong. ‘School’s cool. Home is not so much.’
‘What do you mean?’ I say.
‘I mean … Things are not good with you and Dad, are they, Mum?’
I sit back on my haunches, study my daughter and say nothing.
‘You two really don’t seem to like each other at the moment, do you? Before, you were a bit too kissy-kissy for my liking, and me and the boys thought it was weird that you were all over each other, but we’d all prefer that to what it’s like now.’
‘It’s not that bad, is it?’
‘The little one said you two were probably going to get divorced like Camille’s parents. And the big one said that it’d be fine cos you’d then have another baby like Camille’s mum.’
All right, it is that bad. I didn’t realise they’d noticed. Well, not only noticed, but noticed enough for Harmony to say something. For that to have happened, they must have talked about it several times.
‘I know it seems dire at the moment, but you know, it’s only right now,’ I say. ‘Everything is so new and different, and for adults, it’s harder for them to get used to something new and find our way in all that. But it’s only temporary.’ I hope.
‘Can’t you just, you know, be, like, friends again?’ she says. ‘It’s not hard when you love someone.’
It’s not hard when you love someone – she’s right about that. It’s not easy though, either. Especially when we’re both so incredibly pissed off with each other all the time. ‘It won’t be like this for ever,’ I say to her. ‘I promise you.’
‘You really promise?’ she asks, like she is four years old.
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