by Jane Renshaw
She shook her head.
‘Fuck.’
The camera angled towards the street had captured a stream of humanity, vehicles, cats and dogs and birds, but from Flora and Beckie and Caroline leaving in the morning until their return, no one had approached the house, at either the front door or up the drive to the side.
As she shut down the screens, Flora was conscious, in a distant part of her brain, of Caroline looking at her.
‘I didn’t do it,’ Flora said flatly.
‘God’s sakes, I know that! It’s just weird that the cameras didn’t pick them up. They must have come in a window that wasn’t covered, I guess.’
There wasn’t any such window. Alec had made sure, in his thorough, nerdy way, that every single window was covered. But:
‘I suppose so,’ she said.
‘Let me have a look.’
While Caroline checked from screen to screen, Flora stood, numb, staring at her back, at the pink sweatshirt she was wearing.
‘Okay,’ said Caroline. ‘Every door and window is showing up on here except one – the window in the kitchen, the one over the sink. I guess because the obvious way for someone to break into that room is through the glass doors.’
‘Oh.’
‘They must have got in through that window. But we’d better look and check.’
The family room was full of warm afternoon sun. It bounced off the grey granite worktops, the never-opened jars of artisan pasta shapes and coloured pulses on the slatted shelves above, and the shiny white porcelain of the sink, pristine and gleaming.
The window above was intact.
There was no broken glass, no grubby footprints, nothing knocked over.
Caroline was frowning. ‘That’s weird. Is it still locked?’
Flora approached the sink and peered at the window catch. ‘Yes.’
‘Fuck. So how did they get in?’
‘I don’t know.’ Suddenly it was impossible to stand up any more. Flora pulled out a chair from the table and sank onto it. The table was tidier than usual, with just a couple of plates and glasses on it, and one of Beckie’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. And there was Flora’s missing phone on top of the book. Alec must have found it somewhere. Down the back of one of the sofas? On the bathroom windowsill? In a kitchen drawer? She’d never know now.
She’d never know.
‘I don’t know,’ she repeated. ‘I don’t know. Alec…’ She got to her feet. ‘I have to – Alec –’ She had to go to him.
Caroline caught her arm, so tight it hurt. ‘We don’t have time. You obviously need to call the police, but first we have to think this through. If no one’s been caught entering the house on the CCTV since you left, and the only window not covered by it is fucking locked, the police are going to look at the evidence and see no suspects except you. The Johnsons have set you up good and proper, Flora.’
‘But how did they get in, if that window’s still locked and the CCTV –’
‘No idea. But the police are going to look at the footage – it’s kept on the server on a cloud thing, yeah, at the security company, so we can’t wipe it?’
Flora nodded.
‘The police are going to take one look and come to the conclusion pretty fucking fast that no one else could have done it. No one else has been in the fucking house.’
Flora shook her head. She couldn’t think. She needed to think.
‘I’m going to jail. Beckie –’
Caroline caught her in a quick, fierce hug. ‘No you’re not!’
Flora grabbed at Caroline’s sweatshirt. ‘Beckie, you have to look after Beckie –’
Roughly, Caroline pushed her away again, holding her by the shoulders and saying into her face: ‘You’re not going to fucking jail, Flora! We’ve got time, right, to sort this before you call the cops. We need to make it look like someone got in from outside.’ She nodded to herself. ‘Yeah, a break-in… We get a hammer or something, open the window, and reach out to break it from the other side… We won’t be caught on CCTV, not if we do it from the inside, because none of the cameras are trained on this window…’
Flora nodded. ‘Okay.’
Caroline released her. ‘Right then, great –’
‘Great?’
Caroline took a long breath. ‘Sorry.’ She reached out and took Flora back into a hug. ‘Oh God, Flora, I’m so sorry… We both have to hold it together for the next few hours; then we can have a complete fucking breakdown. Right? But you have to get moving. Get a hammer or whatever and break the window while I get back to Beckie. Then call the cops. Here’s what you tell them, right? You found Neil dead and came round to mine with Beckie. Then we both came back here… We didn’t look at the CCTV. We were both in a right state, crying over each other, we were both in shock. Then we were, “Beckie, we’ve left Beckie on her own” and I ran back to her. Meanwhile you were still in shock – so it took you a wee while to call the police. Took you a wee while to notice the broken window. Right?’
‘Right.’
‘Okay. I know this is a fucking nightmare and you’re barely functioning – but you have to get a grip and do this, for Beckie’s sake if for no other reason, right? That wee lassie – she needs you. She’s going to fucking need you like never before, and what’s going to happen to her if you’re in the jail?’
Flora took in a huge gulp of air and nodded.
‘You can do this. Yes?’
‘Yes.’
But like a child she trailed Caroline to the front door, the sun through the stained-glass windows flooding the vestibule with coloured light, painting their feet in their sandals alternately green and yellow and red as they crossed the tiles to the door. When Caroline had gone, Flora just stood there shivering. It was always cold in the vestibule, even in the height of summer. She remembered wondering aloud about it to Neil when they’d first moved in.
Because she’d known it would rile him, she’d speculated that maybe the ghosts of the previous occupants of the house lingered here, about to go out or come in. She’d been holding the stepladder, because Neil couldn’t be trusted to climb it to change the light bulb without somehow contriving to collapse the steps in on themselves and catapult himself head-first through one of the stained-glass windows, like something from Laurel and Hardy.
He had looked down at her with that disbelieving-but-gullible expression that always brought out the worst in her. She’d elaborated on her theory. The vestibule probably hadn’t changed at all since the house was built. If there was anywhere ghosts would linger, it would surely be here.
It was easy to imagine a Victorian or Edwardian gentleman, she’d said, taking off his hat in here. Didn’t he feel some kind of… presence?
‘You can’t seriously believe in ghosts,’ Neil had finally spluttered, clattering down the steps to stand facing her, his chin lifted slightly. He was an inch shorter than her. ‘Ruth –’
Her grin had faded. ‘You mean Flora.’
‘I mean Flora,’ he had agreed, grimly.
And from somewhere the words had come out of her mouth: ‘Do you believe in the ghosts of Ruth and Alec Morrison?’
Sometimes she used to imagine those ghosts, the ghosts of the people they had been, still living in the cottage at Arden: Ruth and Alec Morrison sitting out in the garden on a summer’s evening, reading and talking and laughing, as Hobo swished his tail in the paddock and Beckie called down from her bedroom window that she wasn’t sleepy and could Daddy come and tell her a story?
And Neil had looked around the vestibule, and started on about how doorways had always had cultural significance; about how the Romans had worshipped Janus, the two-faced god of thresholds, one face looking back and one forward. The god of transitions, of endings and beginnings.
It had irritated her so much. Typical of him, she’d thought, to gloss over the personal and lose himself in contemplation of ancient history. But then:
‘Let’s not look back,’ he’d said. ‘Let’s think of this as a
beginning, yes? Not an end.’ And he’d pulled her to him. ‘Yes, Flora Parry?’
Oh God oh God oh God.
In the hall, the grandfather clock Alec had inherited from his actual grandfather ticked placidly on in its placid Victorian way.
She’d never met his grandparents, but he’d talked about them a lot. He and Pippa had spent happy summer holidays with them on the west coast, running wild along the shore, up in the hills… It was where Alec had developed his interest in nature. In the natural world, as he called it. She’d seen photographs of his grandparents, Granny a beaming, friendly-looking soul, Grandad a sterner prospect in shirtsleeves and waistcoat and wide 1940s suit trousers.
She shook her head.
Took a breath.
She had to do this. She had to hold it together, as Caroline had said, for just a few hours. For Beckie.
She could do this.
A hammer.
She needed to get a hammer.
When it was done, when she’d made the 999 call and the operator had told her that she must stay inside with the doors locked and that the police and paramedics would be there as soon as possible, she stood in the kitchen trying to think. She should be with Alec. But she had to think, and she couldn’t do that in the bedroom with – with –
What would Alec have said?
It’s not me up there, it’s just my body. This is more important. You have to get your story straight, Flora. You have to think.
If the police found out that she was Rachel Clark, if they found out she’d killed before – what kind of implausible coincidence was it going to look like?
She felt as if all the Russian-doll layers of her life were being pulled apart to reveal the little hard solid core of her, that very last, tiniest, crudest doll which you knew was the last one but always twisted anyway, hoping it would open to reveal something better inside.
That hard little core that was Rachel Clark.
She had to convince the police that she was just what she seemed – a woman devastated by her husband’s brutal murder. An innocent woman.
When they arrived, she would bring them in here to the family room. The heart of the home, full of their ordinary lives – Beckie’s pictures on the corkboard, her puzzle books on the coffee table, Flora’s new green cardigan from White Stuff chucked over the arm of one of the sofas. A book on hamsters and some DVDs in an untidy pile under the TV.
A nice ordinary family room.
That was what the architect had called it when they’d had the extension put on. The ‘Kitchen/Family Room’. She could remember the words printed across the plans, in a friendly, arty font.
Yes. She would bring them in here to the family room rather than the more formal sitting room at the front of the house. She would sit them down and they would look around them and see the handmade kitchen, the cosy sitting area with all Beckie’s things, the smiley photographs of them all, Flora and Neil and Beckie, in happier times.
She would tell them all about the Johnsons and the harassment and –
And they would look again at Saskia Mair’s murder because of the connection, and they would ask Flora where she’d been –
But not today.
They weren’t going to ask her that today. She could think about it later. And anyway, who remembered where they’d been weeks, months ago? She could just say she didn’t remember.
But today.
They would be here any minute.
She would tell them where Alec was and then she’d say she had to go to Beckie. She had to go back to Caroline’s and tell Beckie…
Oh God.
She had to tell Beckie.
28
It wasn’t the police who came first, it was the paramedics – two tall men in bulky green and black coveralls who told her to stay where she was as they headed upstairs. But she followed them. She had to follow them into that bedroom.
Alec was still on the bed.
Of course he was.
His face was turned towards her, grossly inflated, purple and red, and as one of the paramedics bent over him the ludicrous thought went through her head that maybe he wasn’t dead, maybe they could actually help him.
‘He’s dead,’ she said, and the paramedic must have heard the question in her voice, because he turned to her and said:
‘Yes, he is. I’m sorry.’
The other man put an arm across her shoulders. ‘I think you –’
But the doorbell was jangling again. She fled from the room, stumbling as she negotiated the stairs, arriving in the vestibule breathing heavily.
‘Mrs Parry?’
She nodded and stepped back to let them in: two middle-aged policewomen. She had expected men. Surely, if a violent crime had just been committed, sending two women was taking political correctness too far? Alec would say…
Alec would have said.
What? What would he have said?
‘The paramedics are upstairs. He’s – he’s dead. My husband. He’s dead. I have to – my daughter… She’s with my friend… Just down the street. Can I go to her? Please?’
‘Of course you can,’ the blonde one said at once, touching her arm. ‘Why don’t we do that while my colleague stays here and does what’s necessary?’ And she raised an eyebrow at the brunette, who nodded.
‘Flora, isn’t it?’ the policewoman said as they left the house. ‘I’m Sue.’
Flora nodded.
Round and round her head were going the questions: How can I protect Beckie from this? How can I make it okay for her? How can I make it right? But they were questions with only one answer:
I can’t.
‘I’m so sorry.’ Sue had a hand under her elbow. ‘Do you think you can manage…?’
‘Yes. Yes. Thank you.’
But her legs had gone all wobbly, she found, as Sue guided her along the pavement like an old woman. This was good, though. Sue could see she was genuinely in shock, surely? But she had to hold it together. She had to hold it together for Beckie.
Beckie didn’t cry.
She just sat there on Caroline’s sofa, in the circle of Flora’s arms, passively resistant, her little face stiff, her eyes vacant. As if she had retreated somewhere Flora couldn’t follow. As if all the years of being their daughter had been wiped out, at a stroke, and she wasn’t Beckie Parry any more, she was Bekki Johnson, that traumatised little toddler who knew not to trust the world or anyone in it.
‘Oh darling, darling.’ Flora hugged her close, breathing her in, fruity shampoo and warm skin and a faint mineral sand-and-sea tang from their day at the beach.
Such a little bird she was, thin little ribcage fragile under her hands.
If only Flora could shelter her from it, if only she could wrap herself around Beckie’s little body so that nothing could touch her, so that all the pain, all the grief, all the hurt that had come for her could fall instead on Flora’s own shoulders.
She swallowed. Her mouth was so dry. Her throat. Weirdly, she’d never felt further from tears herself. She felt as if she’d been hollowed out, all her insides, leaving just a stupid trembly dry shell of skin and bone that wasn’t her proper body, that wouldn’t obey her instructions.
Beckie pulled away and got up from the sofa and said, not looking at Flora, ‘Where has that policewoman gone?’
‘She’s gone to get us some things from the house that we might need.’
‘Like what?’ Beckie went to the window and stood looking out.
‘Pyjamas and things. Toothbrushes. A change of clothes.’
Sue had got her to make out a list, with instructions on where to find things. Before she’d left, Lara, a family liaison officer, had arrived and would, Sue had reassured her, keep her updated on what was happening.
‘Are we staying here tonight?’ said Beckie.
‘Yes. Caroline has very kindly said we can stay as long as we like.’ Caroline was in the kitchen with Lara making sandwiches. Lara had not, Flora realised, left Caroline and Flora alone for a
second. Presumably so they couldn’t collude before their statements were taken, which would be happening in the next hour or so, Lara had told them. Someone would come here to do it, so Flora didn’t have to leave Beckie to go to the police station.
‘Was it the Johnsons?’ said Beckie.
Oh God.
‘What, darling?’ she stalled.
‘Did the Johnsons kill Dad?’
Flora drew in a breath. ‘Nobody knows yet what happened.’
And then, in a tiny voice: ‘Is he definitely dead?’ And Beckie turned, at last, and looked into her mother’s eyes.
Flora nodded.
Beckie ducked her head, covering her face with both hands.
But still she didn’t cry.
Flora flew across the room and gathered her up. Beckie clung to her, arms tight around her neck, legs wrapped around her hips, like she used to as a small child, as if she were trying to press herself inside Flora, into the empty space inside her.
Flora subsided back onto the sofa, cradling Beckie on her knee, rocking her.
Beckie said, in the same tiny voice: ‘If you hadn’t adopted me, Dad wouldn’t be dead.’
Flora squeezed her close. ‘We can’t know that. We can’t know what would have happened if we’d not had you. Dad loved you so, so much, Beckie. So terribly, terribly much. You made him happier than anything else in his whole life. I know for a fact that nothing… nothing that’s happened could have made him not want you as his daughter.’
Silence. Then, whispered: ‘You could have had another little girl.’
‘But she wouldn’t have been you, darling. She wouldn’t have been you.’
29
Jed’s getting right on Ryan’s tits. Ryan’s got on his old jeans and T-shirt and him and Connor are in the garden at the newbuild planting up the bonnie flowers and that from the garden centre, doing a wee bit chillaxing, but Jed’s following Ryan round like a fucking Labrador giving it ‘Wee spastic must have been bricking it, aye?’ and ‘Did he shite hissel’?’
Fucking psychopath willnae let it go, but Ryan’s no giving him nothing.