Her Deadly Secret

by Chris Curran

  Mrs Taylor crossed her legs and clasped her hands around one knee. ‘As I told you both when I phoned, I’ve been trying to get hold of you for some time.’

  Loretta cleared her throat, very conscious of Will’s silence. ‘Yes, I’m sorry about that.’

  A smile. ‘Well, you’re both here now. Thank you.’ She leaned forward, looking from one to the other. ‘I’m afraid we’re quite worried about Dexter. As you know he’s always been one of our most valued pupils.’ Another flash of that smile. ‘A credit to you both, just like Pearl.’

  Loretta wanted to shout at her to get on with it. ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘I’m not sure. In fact, I hoped you could tell me. He’s been missing the occasional lesson and there are a couple of absences that we were never notified about.’

  Will was leaning forward now, too. ‘We’ll speak to him and put a stop to that, of course.’ He was using his best social worker voice, but Loretta could tell he was upset. She didn’t blame him. It was her fault. She should have known if something like this was going on.

  ‘But that’s not all, I’m afraid. His teachers are also concerned about his work, which has deteriorated markedly. And he’s been belligerent when challenged about it.’

  ‘That’s not Dex.’ She was surprised to hear her own voice, sounding too high, and felt herself flush.

  ‘Just my thoughts when I heard. And …’ She looked from Loretta to Willard. ‘There may have been a couple of fights.’

  ‘Fights? Are you sure?’ Will’s voice was sharp and he looked over at Loretta.

  ‘Well, no, I can’t be certain. They weren’t in school, but his form tutor noticed he had some bruises. I expect you did too.’ She hadn’t. What kind of a mother was she? She didn’t dare look at Will. The head teacher was still talking. ‘He wouldn’t say anything about it. One or two of his friends suggested there was some trouble with a girl, but I suspect that was guesswork.’

  As they left the room, Will touched her arm. ‘Don’t say anything to him yet, eh. Let’s talk about it first.’

  Pearl was waiting outside with Dex and she threw her arms around her dad, the kind of smile on her face Loretta hadn’t seen for ages.

  Will flicked the beads in her hair. ‘Like the do, sweetie. Really cool.’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Dad. You couldn’t be cool if you tried. So …’ she grinned at Will and he joined in with the punchline, ‘don’t try!’ It was an old joke between them and Loretta felt a twist inside. Pearl reached up to touch the grey at Will’s temple. ‘And what’s this, Dad? Getting old, are we?’ Loretta had noticed it the last time they met. And he was having his hair cut close to his head nowadays, probably to hide where it was thinning. Even so, she had to admit he was still good to look at.

  She turned to Dex, but Will was pulling him over, an arm round his shoulder. ‘What say we go to the American Diner?’

  There was a lump in Loretta’s throat as she looked at the three of them. What a mess she’d made of it all.

  But Will’s brown eyes were warm when he turned back to her. ‘Come on, Loretta. My treat.’

  Rosie

  Stop it. Stop it. Rosie had hoped an hour or so in her garden would take her mind off things, but here she was again reliving it all. Blaming herself.

  It wasn’t just seeing her dad again that kept it in her head all the time. She still couldn’t stop herself watching the news about that poor girl from Swindon. They’d just shown the parents taking flowers to the place where she was killed. It was impossible to see the mother’s face, but the father looked as if he’d aged even since the press conference. It would never be over for them, just as Alice’s murder would always haunt her.

  She knelt by one of the big flowering borders, breathing in the leafy scents and tearing at a clump of weeds. The couple who lived here before had made the outside space beautiful and she tried to keep it up. But the recent rains had turned the soil to a heavy sludge and it was hard going. She tugged and stabbed her trowel at the stubborn roots of something she had a horrible feeling might be Japanese knotweed.

  What was she going to do about Mum? And him, what about him? She couldn’t just let it go, move away, and forget about them both like Oliver wanted.

  She sat back on her haunches and took off her gardening gloves. The knees of her jeans were caked in mud and she was sweating, but she’d read that Japanese knotweed could spread like a plague and destroy a garden. She tore at the green tendrils with her bare hands till they felt sore.

  It had taken her a long time to believe in her dad’s guilt and to stop feeling responsible for getting him into trouble. He told the police he didn’t know about the shopping list her mum had stuck on the fridge, whereas Rosie did remember it. And that was important because the police thought he had known about it and had come back to get it after dropping Rosie at tennis. That’s when they said he argued with Alice and killed her. It was a hot day so they couldn’t determine a very accurate time of death, and his movements for much of the morning were unclear. But it wasn’t just what Rosie said, of course. His whole story was a mess.

  His account of going to two shops because he couldn’t get the kind of risotto rice he wanted didn’t hold up. He was nowhere on the CCTV of the first shop and they did have that type of rice. And at the other place he had rushed around and bought only a few things, missing most of the stuff that was on the shopping list. He said that was because he didn’t know about the list and he was hurrying to get to the tennis club to give Rosie a lift after all, even though he’d told her to go home on the bus.

  They said he wanted to pick her up because he was afraid she would find the body. When he missed her, he made sure he got home soon after she did. He was trying to protect her, but he also wanted her to be there when he pretended to discover Alice’s body.

  After her mother turned against him, Rosie read the articles about her father in the papers and what was suggested at his trial. About what he might have been doing to Alice for years before he killed her, what she’d told some of her friends. There was no proof, but there were even hints that he might have abused some of the pupils he used to take for private piano lessons.

  It had been so hard to believe because none of it fitted with the Dad she knew, or thought she knew. But then, in a way, there had really been two Dads: the one before his illness and the one after it took hold.

  As principal violinist and leader of the orchestra he had been an important man. When Rosie was young, he had not been around very much and maybe that was one of the reasons she had adored him. She could remember how thrilled she’d been when her mum took them to the occasional performance. The day the orchestra played a special Christmas concert for kids at the Albert Hall stood out as a magical moment. She and Alice had new dresses. Rosie’s was blue silk that showed rainbow colours when she spun around. Her dad was right at the front next to the conductor, looking wonderful in his dinner jacket and bow tie. And at the end, because she and Alice were his daughters, they’d been able to go up and hug him.

  But that was a rare memory. He was often working at night and the weekends. And there were frequent trips abroad. But Mum and Alice were always there. And she loved Alice so much in those days and knew that Alice loved her.

  Then his illness began. The rheumatoid arthritis came on suddenly and got bad very quickly. After that he was at home all the time and, at first, Rosie loved it. Although he was ill and must have been very unhappy that he couldn’t play the violin, he hid it well, at least from her.

  At first, they all assumed his problems were only temporary and that with treatment he could get back to normal. But the doctors could only do so much. Certainly not enough to let him play the way he used to. He never went back to practising the violin and didn’t even use the piano much himself. He began to help out with the music at Alice’s school and took a certificate to allow him to teach swimming too. And he had a few private pupils for piano lessons at home. But none of these jobs paid much, so Rosie’s mum ha
d to find work and they told the girls there wasn’t enough money for school fees.

  When Alice got her scholarship, Rosie guessed it was in exchange for her dad’s work at the school. They didn’t use him much, but his name and past career must have looked good in their brochures. But there was no scholarship for Rosie.

  Even though that seemed unfair she never blamed her dad, but Alice and their mum seemed permanently angry with him. If anything, that made Rosie love him more. He drove her mad, at times, with the fuss he made about tidiness and finishing homework, but she loved him.

  When he was arrested and they said he’d killed Alice, she screamed at Mum that it couldn’t be true, but her mum had said: ‘I know it’s hard to believe, but sometimes people have two different sides and you’ve only seen one of them.’

  Rosie had been to a therapist for a while and he told her the same. As to why Alice never said a word to Rosie about him abusing her, if he had been – she must have been trying to protect her little sister. If only Alice had felt able to trust her; if only they’d been closer. Oliver, as always, was the one who helped most, telling her not to blame herself. To stop asking why and put it all behind her. And that’s what she’d tried to do.

  Rosie heard the phone ringing in the house. She had managed to pull out great coils of the weed, but it seemed to go on forever, twining round all the flower stems in this bed. Her nails were clogged with soil. She rubbed her hands together stood and stretched her aching back. She would have to stop now anyway if she wanted to do some shopping before meeting Fay from school.

  Inside, the message light was flashing. Her muddy finger hovered over the Delete button, not sure if she could face more of Mum’s outpourings. But finally, she pressed Play.

  ‘Rosemary, darling, can you come over at once? Dad’s gone out and he’ll be a while. I’ve got those letters and, if you come now, you can read them.’

  Joe

  Joe knew they could never be happy again but, sitting here in the garden with the sun shining and his arm round Hannah, he let himself think there might be some kind of future for them. A time when they could remember Lily without pain, could love each other properly again.

  They’d got the boy. That was the main thing, although Loretta kept warning them not to build up their hopes too soon. Apparently, the tossers at The Children of Light were giving him an alibi, but it was clear from what Joe saw on the Internet that it had to be the boyfriend. And the lad’s DNA was all over Lily’s clothes. So, it might be finished soon. Then maybe he and Hannah could try to make something of the rest of their lives.

  He was sweating where she was leaning on him and he pulled away. ‘All right, love? Not too hot?’ She shook her head. She was loving enough now, but still so quiet. He stood. ‘I’ll make us a cold drink, shall I?’

  In the kitchen, he chucked ice cubes into two glasses, added lemon barley to one for Hannah and orange squash to the other. The orange was in a huge bottle because Lily used to drink gallons of the stuff and, although he wasn’t keen on it, he felt he had to finish what was left. It gave him a pang every time, but it would be unbearable to leave the bottle to moulder away on the shelf, even worse to tip the juice away.

  Loretta was still on about the real dad. She’d had no luck with Hannah and asked Joe to give it a try. ‘It could be irrelevant, of course, but if it’s someone from The Children of Light, for instance, that might be important.’

  It was obvious she was thinking about the boy’s alibi. He claimed he saw Lily for the last time on the morning she died and then went off to one of The Children’s other houses in Lancashire. He’d been seen by people on the minibus. But they were all fellow brethren, so they would have good reason to protect him – and protect The Children’s name. If one of the bigwigs at the group was exposed as Lily’s real dad, then that would make their evidence even more suspect.

  Outside, Hannah was standing on the grass holding a crisp packet that must have blown there from the street. She was looking at it as if she had no idea what to do next. He gripped the worktop. He was trying to be gentle, to give her time, but it was getting to him. The way she wouldn’t say. It was true what he’d told Loretta. He’d never felt the need to know about Hannah’s life before she met him. As far as he had been concerned, Lily was his and it was better if he knew nothing about her biological father: he didn’t want the image of that other man in his head. But now he couldn’t let it go, even if it turned out to have no connection to Lily’s death.

  He carried the drinks out, put them on the plastic table and took the crisp packet from Hannah. ‘I’ll put that in the bin. You sit down.’

  She gave the half-smile he’d begun to get used to. ‘Thanks, Joe.’ Then, as he turned away, she rested her forehead on his back. ‘I love you.’

  He should have held her then, or at least answered, but, knowing what he was going to ask her, he couldn’t.

  When he came back they sat for a while, as he took great swallows of squash, the only sounds his gulps and the chink of the ice in his glass. ‘Hannah?’ She jumped at his voice, still hadn’t touched her drink. ‘You’ve got to tell us, you know. About Lily’s real dad. It doesn’t matter to me, but the police need to know.’

  He half-expected her to get up and go inside, but she didn’t move. Go on, don’t stop now. ‘Just say it, Hannah. He can’t hurt you, whoever he is.’ She crossed her arms tight over her chest. ‘Hannah, please. They won’t stop asking and it’s better to get it over with. I’ll tell Loretta for you if you want.’

  She jerked to her feet and turned away, twisting her hands in her hair.

  ‘Hannah, Hannah love.’ He stood and held her to him. She pressed her face into his shoulder and they swayed together for long minutes. He could feel her heart racing as he rubbed his hands up and down her back. He should probably stay quiet, give her time, but he found himself murmuring, ‘It’ll be all right. Trust me. He can’t hurt you. I won’t let anyone hurt you.’

  She made a noise that could have been a sob or even a laugh and pulled away, running inside. He couldn’t let her go. It was now or never.

  She was at the bathroom door when he caught her, but instead of going in she turned back, so close to him that her panting breaths made him blink.

  ‘For God’s sake Hannah, tell me. I can’t stand this much longer. If you don’t trust me enough to tell me something this important then we can’t go on.’ He wished the words unsaid as soon as they were out. Oh God, what if this finished them?

  She rested her head on his shoulder again and they stood like that for a long time. Then she touched his cheek and, when he looked down at her, her eyes were tender. And she kissed him, her lips so soft and warm he could have stayed like that forever. But she took his hand and led him towards the bedroom. ‘I love you, Joe. Make love to me, please.’

  She was so sweet, helping him undress, kissing him over and over. Then she clung to him, moving with him, looking into his eyes.

  Afterwards it was peaceful. Her head was on his chest and he felt her breath on his skin. ‘You know I love you, don’t you, Joe?’

  He kissed the top of her head, caressing her back. ‘’Course I do.’

  ‘Then don’t ask me again, please. I’m so sorry, but I can’t ever tell you.’

  ‘Why? What is it?’

  She shivered, reaching down to cover them with the duvet and lying away from him, on her back, staring at the ceiling. ‘I’ll tell Loretta I don’t know who it was. I was a slut and there were so many men, I can’t even remember their names. That’ll shut her up.’

  He was cold. Dragged the duvet higher over them and moved closer to her again. ‘That’s not true, though, is it?’ He waited but she didn’t move or speak. ‘Hannah, please.’

  She shifted to face him, touching his cheek again, her eyes brimming. He dabbed at her tears with a corner of the sheet, willing her to say more, but she just kissed his hand and closed her eyes.

  Chapter Ten

  Rosie

  Ros
ie pulled into the car park of the Bexhill block of flats. Mum had given her the impression that Dad was virtually housebound, so was this a trick to get her there? If he was waiting upstairs, it might even be a relief. She could walk out on them both and that would be it.

  She sat for a while trying to slow her breathing. She was almost certain these letters would prove nothing. They were probably from the woman her dad had been having the affair with. Even if she admitted being with him on that morning, he could still have had time to get back, kill Alice, and leave again.

  Or, and this thought was the one Rosie always tried to ignore, he could have done it while Rosie was upstairs. A dizzy moment when the world around her became unreal and images of that awful day filled her head.

  * * *

  The music was too loud and the living room door was closed when she got home. But the police said that Alice was already lying dead in there, because her dad had come back to get the shopping list. They’d fought, and he’d killed her. But what if that wasn’t right? What if Alice was still alive when Rosie got home?

  It was a very warm day so the time of death had always been vague. And those minutes after she opened the front door were vague for Rosie too. All she really recalled was how irritating Alice’s music had been and that even the closed living room door annoyed her. Alice was blanking her, as usual. Keeping her on the outside. Making her feel like a kid: someone pathetic.

  Rosie was upstairs in the bathroom with the water gushing fast and loud when her dad turned off the music and the house went silent. She didn’t know how long he had been home. It could have been long enough for him to kill Alice. Maybe, if he’d let Rosie run to her sister like she wanted, Alice would still have been breathing and she might have spoken. Told them who killed her.

  Accused someone.

  * * *

  Rosie leaned back in her seat. She felt sick and weak. Although she knew she should never have come and wanted only to drive home again, she couldn’t find the strength to turn the engine on. And then, without knowing how it happened, she was climbing the stairs to the flat.