by Jane Renshaw
Shona had gulped: ‘Thank you so much, Flora, for – for saving us. You really have saved us.’
Flora, her own tears threatening, had shaken her head. ‘Maybe I’ve been the catalyst, but everything that’s happened, it’s all been down to you.’
All Flora had done was make Shona see that she needed help. It had been Shona who had found the courage to ask for that help: from her GP, from a charity that provided support to parents in difficulty, and, most importantly of all, from her ex-husband. She’d told Edith’s father about her depression and how much she was struggling, and they had come to an agreement whereby they shared custody, Edith staying with her dad four days a week.
And Edith was blossoming in front of their eyes.
The two girls were fast friends now, and Beckie was touchingly protective of Edith. Shona had even been round a couple of times for lunch, and though the first time had been hard going, the second time she had seemed to relax more and had even made a few quite amusing remarks which suggested a lurking sense of humour.
Was it possible that Flora was making another friend?
Caroline was saying something.
‘Sorry, what?’
‘Are you getting changed some time this year, Flora?’
Caroline’s swimming costume was a stylish navy one-piece; Flora’s consisted of Lycra shorts and a long T-shirt. Not that she ever did much swimming. The only reason she ever went in the sea was to supervise Beckie.
But Beckie and Edith hadn’t got anywhere near the water yet. They’d been sidetracked by a little dog that bounced around them excitedly while the couple who obviously owned him stood some way off down the beach, looking back. Beckie was giggling and running backwards towards Flora and Caroline, the dog jumping after her and then running to Edith, who was swishing a disgusting length of old seaweed temptingly across the sand.
‘Beckie, I think his owners are wanting him to come.’
Beckie, grinning, dancing on her toes, shook her head. ‘Nope, he’s ours now. Look, he luuuves us! You luuuve us, don’t you?’ She squatted down and the dog planted his sandy paws on her lap and pushed his face towards hers.
‘Don’t let him lick your face –’
‘– or I’ll get a disease and my insides will turn to mush. It would be so worth it.’ But Beckie put her hands over the dog’s face and cupped his little head to stop him reaching her face, the surprisingly bright red tongue darting between her fingers. ‘Ooh, tickly! Oh! He’s so cute! Edith, do this! It’s amazing!’
The man, resignedly, had started walking back towards them.
‘Well what can they expect,’ Beckie pre-empted Flora’s next remark, ‘when they’ve got a dog this cute?’
Edith, giggling as the dog licked her hands, said, ‘If they didn’t want people to pay their dog any attention they should have got like a Rottweiler or something.’
Beckie laughed. ‘Or like a wolf!’
‘A lion!’
‘A bear!’
But Beckie jumped up and took off across the sand towards the man, the little dog and Edith running after her. She called, ‘Sorry, we had to play with him or our heads would have like exploded because he’s too cute! What’s his name?’
The couple were both smiling, and Beckie launched into a conversation as the dog cavorted happily.
‘God, she’s such a great kid,’ said Caroline. ‘She’s really brought Edith out of her shell.’
‘Mm, she’s redeemed herself there. Just about.’ Flora smiled. ‘She’s a handful.’
‘No, but that’s the thing – she’s got all this energy and exuberance, and that witty sense of humour of hers that comes out of left field… but then when you tell her to do something, she does it.’
‘Sometimes.’
‘And she’s happy as a pig in sh… in clover, just sitting reading a book for an hour.’
Flora smiled. ‘Again, sometimes.’ As they stood and started across the sand after the girls, Flora looked at her friend. ‘Thank you so much for agreeing to – to be her guardian and everything. It’s really taken a weight off our minds.’
Neil had come round to the whole idea, eventually. They’d been over at Caroline’s for lunch last Saturday, which had been a great success – Beckie and Caroline had made a bizarre salad with pears and cheese which Neil had pretended to sick up behind a rhododendron but which had actually been quite nice.
They had met their solicitor a couple of days later and changed their wills to appoint Caroline as Beckie’s guardian in the event of their deaths.
And it was weird, but just completing that paperwork had made Flora feel differently towards Caroline. She was more than a friend now. It was as if Caroline being officially Beckie’s guardian had made her virtually family.
Caroline waved a dismissive hand. ‘Hey. It’s all hypothetical.’
They hadn’t seen or heard of the Johnsons since the day of Beckie’s party. The Johnsons had withdrawn the assault complaint, and the charges against Neil had been dropped. She was starting to hope that Lorraine Johnson had been sincere when she’d said they would leave them alone. That Neil had been right all along about the Johnsons not representing any real threat.
Even relations with Ailish had improved, after Neil had gone round and had a man-to-man talk with Iain about everything they’d been going through. Thomas and Mia had been round to play with Beckie, and vice versa. And Beckie was becoming a lot less clingy. Two weeks ago she would never have run off to speak to two strange people on the beach, cute dog or no cute dog.
Caroline was starting to run. ‘Come on, girls, last one in’s a scabby crab!’
Ahead of her on the stairs, Beckie’s pink Gazelles skipped from step to step as she continued to harp on the theme she’d been worrying since they’d got out of Caroline’s car.
‘Caroline probably thinks the raisins in a Fruit and Nut are like one of her five a day! She’d be like “It’s practically health food.” You know that pie chart with the amounts of things you should eat? I’m going to email her that.’
‘That would be a bit cheeky, Beckie.’
‘Could save her life?’
‘I really don’t think Caroline’s got a problem. She’s a very fit and healthy person – much more so than I am.’
Beckie ran across the landing to her room. Her voice, muffled, came floating back to Flora. ‘She’s slim and everything but that doesn’t mean she’s getting a healthy diet, Mum. She never cooks apart from pizza.’
Flora pushed open her own bedroom door, wondering if she should have a shower now or get dinner started first. A pizza was looking like an attractive option.
Neil was lying on the bed.
As if from another time, Beckie’s muffled voice burbled on: ‘And I suppose toast. When we were making that salad there was like nothing to put in it, and I mean nothing.’
His face was huge and purple.
There was a chain, a big metal chain, digging into his neck and his eyes were open and red. His legs were drawn up and over to one side.
This couldn’t be what she was seeing.
Everything had to go back a second. Stop and go back.
‘Not even lettuce,’ said Beckie’s voice.
Now Flora was on the bed, wordless sounds at the back of her throat, her fingers pulling at the chain, his eyes staring through her.
Vital signs vital signs vital signs.
She clutched him and put a hand to his awful purple neck to feel for a pulse, repeating, stupidly, the whole time: ‘It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right.’ Repeating it even as she felt the coolness, the slight stiffness under her hands.
Rigor mortis.
Just the first signs of it.
Oh no no.
No no no no.
‘Alec,’ she said, and put both hands to his swollen face; willed his eyes to look back at her. ‘Alec. I’m here. I’m here now.’
Beckie’s steps on the landing. ‘Mum, can I –’
She had neve
r done anything as hard as leaving him, as taking her hands from him, as going to the door, getting the other side of it and pulling it shut. Meeting Beckie’s eyes. ‘Can you what, darling?’
The evening light was a hot, elongated rectangle stretching across the landing carpet. Beckie stood half inside it and Flora found she couldn’t quite focus on her, she couldn’t make her eyes rest on Beckie or anything else; her gaze was darting about the landing, to the window with its sunlit green vista of tree canopies, to the Greek key-patterned cornice, the Victorian table with a vase of roses on it, and a blue and white Chinese lamp, and a bowl of marble eggs.
It was as if there was something important she had to find, something that would anchor her to the old reality and stop this from happening, stop everything sliding away.
No no no Alec.
This can’t be, you can’t be in there dead with a chain round your neck you have to come back and what happened, the Johnsons came and one of them grabbed you and you couldn’t fight them, you’re just like you say a ‘weedy wee guy’, you’re not strong enough and they –
What did they do?
And you must have been thinking Ruth and Beckie and you were all alone when –
‘Can I just give her this?’ Beckie held out a colourful booklet with a photograph of broccoli, a tomato, a carrot, an aubergine, an orange and grapes on the front and the title Ten Tips for Healthy Eating in big green letters. ‘I got it from the Health Centre, remember that time I had that funny thing on my tongue but we had to wait like an hour or something before Dr Swain could see me?’
When she’d sat with Beckie in the Health Centre waiting area – and meanwhile Alec had been in a lecture theatre or a student laboratory or his own research lab, setting up an experiment or analysing data, or making coffee for himself and his fellow geeks in the grubby kitchen, or cracking some appalling, esoteric joke only another biologist would appreciate, and at the same time managing to send Flora twenty text messages reassuring her that he was a hundred per cent sure it was just an ulcer, but at the same time bugging her to let him know what was happening as it was happening.
‘Mum?’
I won’t let them hurt her I’ll never let them hurt her.
‘Yes, good idea,’ Flora said brightly. ‘Why don’t we go round to Caroline’s and give it to her now, before she starts her dinner?’
Beckie looked doubtful. ‘Like, right now this minute?’
‘And you can take an inventory of her fridge and cupboards.’
‘And I can be vicious but fair?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Okay!’
In fact it was possible to pretend, it was possible to stay bright and upbeat and respond normally to Beckie as they left the house and walked the few steps down the street to Caroline’s. It was possible right up to the point Caroline opened the door and looked at her.
‘Thanks, Beckster!’ Caroline took the booklet Beckie was brandishing. ‘Right enough my eating habits need healthied up!’
‘Can we do an intratory… an invertary of what’s in your cupboards and your fridge? Then we can see what stuff you need to get.’
‘Okay-doke, I’m up for it. You go through to the kitchen.’
As soon as Beckie was out of earshot, Flora said, ‘Alec’s dead. He’s dead.’
Caroline just stared at her.
Then: ‘What?’
‘He’s dead.’
Still staring at Flora: ‘You carry on for a minute there, okay Beckie? Me and your mum are doing boring grown-up stuff.’
‘Okay!’ came Beckie’s voice from the kitchen.
Caroline shut the sitting room door behind them. ‘Flora, what –’
‘I found him just now, he’s lying on the bed with a chain round his neck, he’s been – strangled – he’s –’
‘He’s definitely dead?’
‘Of course he’s definitely dead! Do you think I would fucking be here if he wasn’t, do you think I would have left him –’
‘Okay –’
‘I was a fucking nurse, of course I know he’s fucking dead! The Johnsons have killed him! They’ve waited till we let our guard down and then they’ve – they’ve killed Alec, Caroline! They’ve killed Alec.’
As the words were absorbed into the fabric of the room, Flora stood staring stupidly at Caroline.
‘They’ve killed Neil.’
Here was where Caroline had to laugh and say, Don’t be ridiculous, Flora. Because it was ridiculous. Because it couldn’t be true.
But instead:
‘Oh God, no. Oh Flora… And they’ve left him on your bed?’
All she could do was nod.
‘Oh Christ – to incriminate you?’
But Flora couldn’t summon the energy to care. She couldn’t do anything, she found, but sink to her knees on the carpet, sink to her hands, to all fours like an animal, and No no no no no repeated in her head, and Caroline had her by the shoulders and was speaking to her but what did it matter, what did anything matter now and –
I’d do anything to keep her safe.
It was Alec’s voice in her head and as waves of loss rushed through her they brought him, they carried him to her and she was screaming in her head at him to fight, fight, even as she knew it was over, his fight was over, Alec’s fight was over except in this one way, in this one thing, in the strength that he had always given her.
She pushed herself up, got herself to her feet, shakily, a hand on Caroline’s shoulder, and straightened. She stood straight and said, ‘Yes. Yes. To incriminate me – That’s why they – they strangled him. If they’d used a knife or a gun, the pattern… the forensics would clear me, because there’d be no blood on me, but… Using a chain to strangle him with, there’ll be nothing to clear me, and I touched it –’
‘Whoa. Let’s just call the police and ambulance, first off, and then –’
‘We can’t call the police,’ she said, quite calmly, ‘because they’d arrest me. And how would Beckie even begin to cope with that? Her mum arrested, and taken away from her, for killing her dad?’
‘God’s sakes! Of course they won’t arrest you. Their number one suspects are going to be the Johnsons, obviously –’
‘Not if they’ve set up alibis again. And they will have. They’re going to arrest me because I spent two years in a Young Offenders’ Institution – when I was twelve I killed this girl, and they’re going to go into all that and they’re going to find out I’m Rachel Clark and I was there right after Saskia was murdered.’
Caroline was gaping at her.
‘We can’t call the police because I will be their number one suspect.’
For a long moment Caroline didn’t speak. Then:
‘Okay. Okay.’ She was frowning off. ‘Right. We have to think. We have to not panic. What are we going to do?’
Flora stared at her. ‘I don’t know.’
Caroline’s eyes widened. ‘Wait a minute though! The CCTV! The CCTV will show the Johnsons getting into the house, won’t it?’
‘Yes! Yes, it’ll show the Johnsons –’
Leaving Beckie in the kitchen, where she was happily arranging the contents of Caroline’s kitchen on the table into their food groups, Flora and Caroline left the flat and ran down the street to Number 17.
With her hand on the front door, Caroline stopped. ‘What if they’re still here? Did you check the house?’
Flora shook her head. There had been no space in her brain for anything other than the huge, impossible fact:
Alec’s dead.
Caroline grimaced. ‘But I guess they’re not going to be hanging about, are they? We’re probably safe enough.’ She pushed open the door and headed through the vestibule and up the stairs. ‘Get the CCTV footage up. I’m going upstairs to – look at him, okay? To check…’
Flora just stood in the hall as the waves pounded her, the waves, the tsunami of Alec’s dead, Alec’s dead, Alec’s dead.
‘Flora? Get into the study and get up the
footage for today. Fast-forward through it and check the Johnsons are on it, right, then we’ll call the police. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. It doesn’t matter what the police find out about you. If the Johnsons are on camera breaking in to the house today, that’s them banged to rights.’
In the study she breathed him in. The pine shower gel he used and that faint outdoorsy botanist’s aroma that he must pick up from spending hours in the lab around plants and soil. On the desk were a glass of water, the glass filmy from not being washed between refills; a mug, a plate, his untidy piles of paper.
How was it possible? This morning she’d been asking him to get fruit and double cream for dessert, and now she was standing here having to look at CCTV to try to get evidence against his murderers?
How could that be?
She didn’t sit down in his swivel chair, she stood with her palms flat on the desk as the computer booted up.
When Caroline appeared she was staring at the screens, at the beautiful summer’s day flashing past her eyes, like a time-lapse sequence in a nature programme on BBC 2. Trees shivering in the breeze. Birds shooting like bullets across the endless blue of the sky. Shadows moving, on the different screens, across the sandstone of the house, across rippled panes of Victorian glass, across the expanse of the glass doors.
Was he alive then – or then? Did he look out of the window and see those birds flying past? Was that when they were putting the chain round his neck, when he was fighting to stay a part of the life he could maybe see through the bedroom window, going on, just as normal, rushing on past as his time stopped, all at once and forever? There it was in front of her, his time flying past and then at one moment – maybe then, as a cloud crossed the sun, or maybe then, as a leaf flipped up in the breeze – coming to a stop. Reaching its limit. And then that and that, all the moments afterwards happening without him, without his ever knowing about any of it, second after minute after hour after day after year.
‘Got them?’ said Caroline.
‘What?’
‘Are the Johnsons on there?’