My son finding out what I had done to get him was not something I wanted to leave to the whims of a fucking bitch like her. Yes, I’m out of order considering what happened to her, and yes, it’s not like she created the situation – I did that all by myself. But seriously, right then, after she’d made that not-so-cryptic comment in front of two women I trusted more than anything and who would never gossip about me, I knew that Yvonne would stop at nothing to get me back for calling her out that day in the playground. Actually, you know what? She probably had stored up somewhere a whole list of slights, a whole catalogue of times when I hadn’t included her, when I hadn’t called her first, when I hadn’t bowed down to her and her fucking greatness as queen of fucking everything Plummer Prep, and this was her way of exacting a fitting revenge.
I couldn’t have that. No way could I have that. She could hurt me all she liked, but if she did it through my son – intentionally or not – I would not be able to restrain myself. So yes, I left Hazel and Anaya at the beach hut and I went after her.
Looking back, I don’t know what I thought would happen. It’s not like she would throw her hands up in the air and declare that she wouldn’t spread rumours and gossip that would eventually get back to my son. I wasn’t thinking rationally, though. I just wanted to say my piece to her, threaten her, make it clear she couldn’t keep getting away with the way she behaved. When I got to her, she was leaning against a parking meter and she was clutching the stone as though it was her anchor, the only thing that kept her upright.
‘I want a word with you,’ I said to her.
She looked at me through bleary eyes. I think the bash to the back of her head had been harder than any of us had thought. I should have probably backed off, and I might have if she hadn’t gone, ‘Oh, piss off and steal another baby, why don’t you?’
I got right up close and I said to her: ‘If my son ever hears someone say that, I will end you.’
She smirked, swayed, tried to stand up and away from the parking meter, but couldn’t. ‘Oh please! One little call to the police and you’ll be nothing. You are nothing, actually. You. Are. Nothing.’
‘And what are you? Something?’
‘Of course,’ she said with another smirk.
I smirked back at her. And through her bleariness and sneeriness she saw my face and she stopped for a second. ‘Oh yeah, that’s you, something all right. That’s why the playground gossip has been all about your husband having someone on the side.’ Not true. I didn’t listen to playground gossip, but this would get to her so I used it. I made the whole thing up. ‘Must be so hard, Yvonne, knowing that your husband can’t keep it in his pants and the whole world knows it, too.’ I felt bad because I liked Trevor and I knew he wouldn’t cheat, but it was the only way to get at her.
Her face almost melted into a picture of horror. This was Yvonne’s nightmare. She wanted to be everyone’s go-to friend, she wanted to run the Parents’ Council and she wanted to be universally respected and liked. She would sacrifice all of that not to be gossiped about. School-gate gossip was never corrected, never totally disproved, only ever got more distorted and outlandish. The thought that people were saying anything negative about her was horrifying to her. Her true Achilles heel.
‘Who said that?’ she demanded.
‘That’s for me to know and for you to find out, don’t you think?’ I said.
‘Tell me!’ she insisted. ‘Tell me now!’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t think I will, actually. I’m going to let you live with the sick feeling of not knowing who to trust and who to relax with and who is stabbing you in the back …’
‘Tell me, Maxie,’ she said sincerely. ‘Please. I need to know, please.’
‘And I need you to keep your mouth shut about the lies you keep slinging at me, but neither of those things is going to happen, is it?’
She became Yvonne again, poised, cool and calm, straight-backed and the epitome of charm. ‘I wouldn’t do that, Maxie,’ she said. ‘I may make a few comments to you when I’m a bit upset, but I wouldn’t seriously tell anyone that. I mean, I know it’s not true, for starters.’
If I didn’t know her, I might have fallen for it. She’s very believable when she has all her Yvonne abilities working together to deceive. ‘I’m glad you know it’s not true,’ I replied. ‘Just like I know those rumours about you and your husband and his lover aren’t true.’
‘Tell me,’ she screeched suddenly and launched herself at me, rock held high as if to try to brain me. I deflected her blows, which wasn’t hard considering how ashen and shaken she looked, and she fell back against the parking meter again.
‘No. Yvonne, I don’t think I will, actually. I’m just going to leave you to work it out all by yourself.’
That was it. I walked away and left her there. Not my finest hour, not my finest decision, but I did that. I left her to her own devices, even though she was hurt and shaken and injured. I hate myself for it now, of course. If I’d managed to put aside my feelings and driven her to hospital, none of this would have happened.
As it is, that was the last I saw of Yvonne in the flesh.
By the time I got back to the beach hut the other two were gone. I don’t know where, but they’d locked up so I went home feeling dreadful. And now, I know that, like I said, if I’d taken her to hospital things would have gone completely differently.
Cece
10 a.m. I have listened to them. To what they say, how they say it. I have listened to them and now I know what Gareth needed me for. They are all telling a part of the story, they are all behaving as if they did it together. Gareth wanted me to find out what motive they might have and which one of them would be most likely to break and tell him they’d done it together if he brought them in for questioning.
Maxie is sitting on the kitchen counter; Hazel has been knitting non-stop; Anaya has drunk six cups of coffee, one after the other. I rub my fingers over my eyes and rest my elbows on the table. I am still filtering what they have told me, still running it through what I know of them.
I sit back in my chair and look at them in turn: Maxie, the mysterious one, Hazel the strongest one, Anaya the calm one. ‘All right, now do you want to tell me what you’re lying about?’
They all – all – freeze. It’s almost as if they’ve been practising for this moment when they’re found out.
‘You’re all lying. Aren’t you?’ Again, coordinated looking down in shame and guilt. ‘Tell me what you’re lying about. Tell me what happened afterwards.’
They say nothing, the three of them; they sit in my kitchen, the three silent liars.
‘Hazel?’ She shakes her head, stares down at her knitting and moves her fingers faster, the needles clicking hard together, the wool moving from one needle to another at lightning speed.
‘Anaya?’ She lowers her head even further, as though she will find a spot when her head is so low she will disappear.
‘Maxie?’ She turns her head towards the patio doors, stares out into the garden.
‘Isn’t all of this driving you crazy?’ I ask them. ‘Has any of you slept the whole night through since it happened? Have you stopped thinking about it? Tell me what happened.’
‘I …’ Hazel begins. ‘I went looking for her,’ she admits. ‘I know Maxie did, but when Anaya got in her car, I waited until she was gone and then I went looking for Yvonne. I went back in the direction where she’d gone, but I couldn’t find her or Maxie. I’d been so angry, still. I don’t know what I would have done if I had found her. I mean, I was murderous. I know I told Maxie to leave it, but every time I thought about what she’d been doing, how she was working with Walter, how she’d used our friendship over the years to find out information and was feeding it back to him … I didn’t understand why she would do that. I got so angry.’ She speaks through gritted teeth, grips the needles in her hands so tight she could crush them into splinters. ‘She was trying to get my children taken away. And the only reason I could
think of was that she wanted revenge for us not including her in everything. I mean, why else would she do that? I hated her so much that night.’ Hazel drops her knitting into her lap and slowly wipes her eyes. ‘I just wanted her to stop. I wanted all of that rage, all of that anger to be out of me and into her, where it belonged. I didn’t find her. She was gone. But I found her car. And I used my keys to scratch “bitch” onto the bonnet.’
‘Hazel!’ Anaya exclaims.
‘Oh, what? She was lucky that was all I did. I only feel bad because it was Trevor’s car and he obviously had to have it repainted.’ (This was probably one of the things Gareth wouldn’t tell me.)
‘I went looking for her too,’ Anaya admits. ‘Don’t look at me like that. I was going to go home. I drove off, but it was like Hazel said. The further away I got from the beach hut, the angrier I got. It was bubbling away inside. I mean, we’d gone out and there she was. After all she’d done, she turned up and was acting like the injured party. She was actively trying to destroy my marriage or control me and I got so angry. I drove back. I drove all along the seafront, looking for her. I couldn’t see her, so I started driving down the individual roads, hoping she was there somewhere.’ Anaya stops talking, covers her head with her arms as though she is about to have multiple blows rain down on her.
‘I saw her. I saw her with someone. The person was helping her, and I told myself that was good. She’d met someone who was helping her and it was good. But I knew it was all wrong.’ Anaya starts to rock back and forth, trying to soothe herself, protect herself from what she did. ‘I couldn’t see the person’s face: they had their hood up, they were very careful to turn their face away from the passing cars. I left her to it. I told myself that she’d be fine and left her. I didn’t drive very far away, but it was far enough for them to be gone by the time I stopped lying to myself and came back. I wished her harm, I suppose I’m saying. I was so mad at her, I didn’t stop my car and get out and offer to take her home. If I had, she wouldn’t be in a coma. I left her to get killed because I was angry at her. It looks like it was pretty much luck that she didn’t die. That makes me a terrible human being. She’s in a coma because I couldn’t put aside my anger.’
‘I actually tried to kill her,’ Maxie says. Her words hurtle out of her mouth like racehorses out of their stalls, a mixture of needing to get it out and needing to make Anaya see hers wasn’t the only heinous act that night. ‘I didn’t just talk to her. When she attacked me, I fought back, I shoved her against the parking meter, and … and … I had my hands around her throat. Her scarf was in the way so I didn’t actually touch her skin, but I suddenly had my hands around her throat and I was squeezing. I was actually squeezing. She thought I was messing about first of all, then she realised and I realised – almost at the same time – I was serious. I was going to do it. I was going to kill her. I stopped, of course. But for those seconds, I was going to do it.’ Maxie tips her head back, tears rolling down her cheeks as she stares at the ceiling. ‘That’s when I knew, I knew that I was broken. It didn’t stop the row, it didn’t stop me telling her lies about her husband, but I was scared after that. I was terrified of what I was capable of to protect my son. I can’t tell the police that. They’ll think I followed her to the school and hit her. They’ll know I was capable of that. I now know I’m capable of that.’
‘Isn’t that the point?’ Anaya says. ‘We were all capable of it that night. We were all angry enough and scared enough of what she was threatening to do to our families to do it.’
‘I wanted to do it,’ says Hazel.
‘So did I,’ says Anaya.
‘I tried to do it,’ adds Maxie.
I know why they were lying now. Because to outsiders, to Gareth and his colleagues, it wouldn’t look like three women who were angry at a friend and wished for the smallest instant for her to leave them alone. To them, they would see three women who conspired to get Yvonne Whidmore alone and to try to kill her to keep their secrets.
It sounds like they did, but they didn’t. I truly believe they didn’t. There is a barrier, and I do not think any of them breached it, not for Yvonne.
‘Are you sure you didn’t notice anything about the person you saw with Yvonne?’ I ask Anaya. ‘Anything at all? Any marks on the top you could tell the police about? Anything about the way they walked?’
She shakes her head without even thinking about it. Lie. She thinks it was one of the other two.
‘Are you sure?’
She closes her eyes and stills herself. ‘There was something familiar about them,’ she admits, ‘but I don’t know if I think that because I feel so guilty about letting her go off with someone dangerous.’ She sighs. ‘We have to go to the police, don’t we?’ she says to the others.
‘It’ll be better if we go together,’ Maxie agrees.
‘The kids are going to Walter’s on Thursday this week,’ Hazel says. ‘I’m off work. Let’s do it then. All for one and all that.’
‘Well, that’s that settled then,’ Maxie says. She slides off my kitchen counter and stretches deeply when she lands on the ground.
‘Don’t go,’ I say her. ‘Please? Can you all stay and I’ll put some music on, we can have a talk, maybe a laugh? Hazel can knit, I can pretend to knit and Anaya can show us some yoga moves. I do have spirits for you to mix cocktails, but probably not the best idea at this time of the morning. Maybe you could use juice and fruit to make some smoothie cocktails or something.’
‘I really should be going,’ Anaya says.
‘Thing of it is, I don’t want you to go,’ I say before the others agree. ‘You’re my friends. My only three friends down here. My marriage is falling apart. I thought we had a strong relationship, but he’s changed since he moved here. I don’t know if it’s cos he was here for three months on his own or if he is just sick of me now I don’t go out to earn money, but things are not good. He’s started to let the children down as well as me. I have no one here but you three. So please, can we just have a bit of time together. Seeing as we’re all here?’
‘Wow, Cece, I had no idea,’ Anaya says. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Yeah, me too. I didn’t realise,’ Hazel commiserates.
‘Yeah, you’re just as pathetic as the rest of us,’ Maxie says. The others burst out laughing.
They spend most of the day at my house, then we do the school run together, bring the children to my place and we have an impromptu party, with pizza and movies and no homework. It’s a perfect way for them to be together for what could be the last time.
WEDNESDAY
Cece
3 a.m. I’m missing something. There is something there, something that will solve this mystery, but I am missing it. I can’t tell Gareth it wasn’t Anaya, Hazel or Maxie until I can tell him who it is.
In the darkness, Sol snores beside me. I have added this to his current behaviour pattern. He only snores when he is anxious. When he had exams, when he was applying for jobs, when he got a promotion and wasn’t sure he could do the job, he would be anxious, he would snore. He has been snoring for two weeks now.
The pattern with Sol is clear, entirely predictable. The Whidmore pattern is alluding me. There are links there, connections, that I should be making, but I can’t. I close my eyes. The pattern is like a honeycomb. There are parallel connections, there are diagonal connections. A network of interconnectedness that is linear and oblique. Along each thread is Yvonne Whidmore. She is the glue in every connection, she is the person at the centre of the honeycomb. In each hexagonal-shaped bubble that surrounds Yvonne are the people in her life. Hazel, Anaya, Maxie. Trevor. Scarlett. Madison. And more, everyone at Plummer Prep. Everyone she met through her husband and through friends. There are so many. Too many. Too many.
But then, I don’t believe that. There was something personal, close, intimate about what was done to Yvonne Whidmore. Not that many people were close enough to Yvonne to hurt her like that. It does keep coming back to Anaya, Hazel and
Maxie. Trevor? Children can be wrong, neighbours can mishear – maybe he did leave the house. Hazel, Maxie and Anaya.
I hope I’m wrong. I hope I’m wrong.
Part 14
THURSDAY
Cece
11 a.m. Sol’s office is glass and chrome and ever so modern. I have driven out to the office complex on the other side of Brighton to see my husband at work. Maybe, outside of our home, we will be able to converse without out resentments taking over.
Those days where he returned to normal were bliss. They seem, though, to have been followed by a descent to another level of hell. We offer each other wan smiles in the bedroom nowadays; we talk like business associates swapping information about our children; we actively move apart when we could come together.
‘It’s so lovely to finally meet you, Mrs Solarin,’ Sol’s assistant, Miranda, says when she meets me at the lift. ‘I’ve said to your husband more than once that I think you’re actually just a disembodied voice, so it’s a pleasure to finally meet the whole of you.’
‘Nice to meet you too,’ I reply.
She leads the way down the corridor that runs alongside the open-plan areas of the floor where he works. As we walk, I scan the room for familiar faces, anyone I recognise from the autumn event. No one. Everyone is a stranger.
Miranda knocks politely on his wooden door that proudly displays his full name. I double-take: his original job title when he came here was vice president. Now it reads:
Solomon Solarin
Senior Executive Vice President
He has been promoted and didn’t tell me. Hurt crawls through my chest like a maggot chewing its way through an apple. It has reached the stage where he doesn’t even share his smallest victories with me.
‘Come,’ Sol calls out from the other side of the door. The vertical blinds which give him a view of the people in the open-plan office are closed, protecting his privacy, shutting out prying eyes, giving rumours room to take root and flourish.
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