by Phoebe Locke
He pulled his wife into a hug, pressing her into his chest. Tight – too tight; he felt her stiffen against him. He breathed in the smell of her hair, felt the erratic thud of her heart against his.
She moved back from him, her eyes locking on him properly now. ‘What’s going on, what’s wrong with you?’
‘Nothing.’ He passed a hand over his face, wishing he could leave it there, hide behind it. ‘Sorry, I’m tired.’
She pulled away fully and went to the window. ‘Still there,’ she murmured. ‘What is he doing?’
‘What?’ He looked over her shoulder at the road outside, panic rising through him again. ‘There’s no one out there, Sadie.’
He wasn’t so sure. There was no one there now – but had he seen a figure there just a second ago? Sweat prickled across the back of his neck again; beading on his top lip. And then, before he could stop it, he felt the familiar fury rising up. ‘You ought to book an appointment with another doctor, Sadie. You’re clearly losing it again, whatever the other one said.’
She drew back, the words like a slap, and he was glad. This was all her fault, after all.
Amber was sitting on the low wall that ran around the park, waiting for him. Her head was bowed, phone in hand as always, and the sun glowed behind her, the sky relentless and blue. He pulled the car up to the kerb and pressed the horn to get her attention. Watching her hop off the wall and lope towards him, he remembered her at five, skipping across the playground, pigtails flying. That strange, secretive smile she always had. There was a solid mass in his chest and he had to fight off tears.
‘Hey, Dad.’ She thumped herself into the passenger seat, slammed the door shut. She was not as tall as Sadie yet, but her legs still seemed impossibly long, her body suddenly stretched.
‘Hi, baby girl,’ he heard himself say, trying to swallow that pressure in his chest down. ‘I would’ve picked you up at Billie’s house, you didn’t have to wait here.’
She shrugged. ‘They had to go out.’
‘Oh. OK.’
‘By the way,’ she said, clicking her phone to locked. ‘Is it OK if I go on holiday with them?’
A car slowed as it passed them at the junction, a pale face turned in their direction, and fear prickled through him, the knot in his chest rising again. Suffocating him. He was hardly listening to her. ‘I don’t know. When?’
‘Like, tomorrow.’ She gave an embarrassed, small sort of laugh. ‘They’re driving to Scotland for a few days. It’s half term, remember? Can I go?’
‘Erm,’ he said, trying to focus on her words. They seemed to belong to a world he no longer lived in – holidays, trips, no ghosts. He could not let Amber see that. ‘Yeah. Sure. Why not? Sounds very wholesome.’
‘Really?’ Surprised – she’d clearly not been expecting it to be so easy.
‘Yep. I’ll give you some money so you can pay for drinks and food and stuff.’
‘Cool.’ For some reason he didn’t understand, he sensed disappointment in her voice; the lack of anticipated fight perhaps. ‘Thanks, Dad.’
‘You’re welcome. You deserve a break, you’ve worked hard this term.’
He had no idea if this was true or not. He couldn’t remember now any information she’d given him about school, whether or not he’d even asked. All he cared about, at that particular moment, was getting Amber as far away as he could; away from there, away from him, from Sadie. All he could think about was getting Amber to safety.
31
2018
They leave the following morning in a rented people carrier Federica has managed to magic to the hotel in the early hours. She’s dressed for travelling, leggings and an oversized sweatshirt, and greets them all with a grin in the underground car park. Amber ignores her, her hood pulled up, hands shoved in pockets, and Greta is still having to focus a good portion of her energy on not throwing up. Tom is loading equipment into the back, a cap pulled down low. Her stomach twists as she thinks of his hands on her, her naked belly exposed and her faded old bra above it. And then he glances up and sees them approaching, Amber dawdling behind, and she wants to disappear, she wants to turn around and run.
She manages to raise a hand in greeting, murmurs ‘Morning’ as she gets closer. She wills her face to stay its normal colour. Tries not to remember that first kiss at the table in the bar, her seat moved round next to his. Her hands on his face, his chest, his thighs. Kissing in the lift, the mirror cold against her back. Her stomach lurches again as he raises a hand in return and then turns away.
She’s distracted, anyway, by Amber threading an arm through hers. It reminds her of being thirteen, the way girls would walk around the school at lunchtime linked that way. Patrolling the playground like Victorian courting couples, their faces smug and other friends (usually Greta) left to trail behind. Amber’s arm feels thin but strong, her elbow sharp against Greta’s side. Her hand folds itself round Greta’s lower arm and the knuckles are cracked and white, a faint hairline scar between the second and third. Up close, she smells of smoke and shower gel and Diet Coke.
‘Good morning, girls!’ Federica steps closer, an arm extended as if she might attempt to put it round Amber’s shoulders, but it falters halfway, her smile still holding. She waves them towards the van instead. ‘Hop in and we’ll get on the road.’
‘Can’t wait,’ Amber mutters, removing her arm from Greta’s and thrusting her hands into her pockets again.
The van smells of smoke too, its seats threadbare grey with the track marks of a handheld vacuum visible. Greta shuffles her way into the back seat and wishes she’d thought to bring sunglasses like Amber. There’s plenty of space but Amber chooses the middle seat at the back, right next to Greta. She pulls her hood further down over her forehead and slouches in her seat, feet up on the cup holder in front of her. Her trainers have glittery neon pink laces; the edges grubby and splashed.
Luca climbs in, pushing up the seat in front of them and closing them in.
‘Too early,’ he groans, lying across the middle row.
‘Don’t mind us, Luc,’ Tom says, sliding the door closed. He gets into the passenger seat at the front and closes that door too. Greta tries not to think about how they stumbled into the hotel corridor, how her hands fumbled with his belt.
‘And off we go!’ Federica turns the key in the ignition. ‘Road trip . . . Anyone got any music they want on?’
‘No music. Too early.’ Luca kicks his shoes into the footwell and turns on to his back. He falls (noisily) asleep before they’ve even left the North Circular. Amber turns her face away from Greta and is silent, hoping for or feigning sleep too. Greta settles her head against the window and watches the steady grey sky start to lighten, the sun bleeding through.
She’s seen photos of the house – hundreds of them, actually, during the months of research, those months holed up in the tiny office in Federica and Millie’s rented flat. Fuzzy newspaper photos, old online listings, photo exhibits from the trial. It doesn’t feel the same way it did back in Texas when she was driving from the hotel to the Miller house the first time – that suffocating heat, her heart pounding. The Murder House, the locals called the Miller home, with its yard dug up and shreds of police tape still flapping in the dirt. Nobody knew what to do with it; it was tainted. Hayley told her a year after filming finished, in one of her weekly calls, that it had been knocked down, the land concreted over. Made into a parking lot for the rest of the barren street, those squat houses with their shuttered windows and their empty porches. The finished film of My Parents Are Murderers ended up full of shots of those houses, turned away from the Miller House in its place at the end of the lane, its yard and the things that happened inside shielded by badly planted trees and thorny shrubbery; shots of the empty rooms, a couple of the numbered cards used for police photographs left lying in the dust. The floorboards replaced but their secrets let out.
No, it doesn’t feel the same, driving north towards the Scottish cottage where Amber Banner be
came a killer. It only feels sad.
So she’s surprised, an hour later, when Federica pulls into a service station for coffee number three of the day and Greta has to scramble out, suddenly desperate for air. She throws up in the scrubby grass behind the petrol pumps, her back to the car.
From the diary of Leanna Evans [Extract E]
We set off bright and early – arriving to collect Amber by 6:00. Billie complained; she was never one for early starts and unfortunately I was tense and too highly strung to tolerate whining. It was the closest we ever came to arguing, that day, and I think we were both glad when we pulled up outside your house. You were there at the door to wave us off, your face sallow and drawn above your ratty old dressing gown. A state. A mess. I’m sorry to say it so bluntly. You looked beaten, abandoned. You looked as though you would lie down and accept what came next. You would let it happen.
I could have waited for Amber to get into the car and then driven away; I’m sure that’s what you were hoping for. Early morning, no need for small talk, pleasantries. And yet I knew this might be the last time we met. I climbed out of the car. I walked up the short driveway, and all the time, my eyes were on you.
The funny thing is, Sadie, your eyes were on me the whole way, too.
I smiled. You smiled. It almost felt as though all the pretences were over, that the end had been reached. But you weren’t quite ready. You said, ‘Thanks so much for this, Leanna. Amber’s so excited to have a holiday.’
And I played along. I said, ‘Oh, not at all. We’re very excited to have her with us.’
All of it truth. All of it a lie.
You tried to give me money, I remember that. It repulsed me; perhaps you could tell. You retracted it quickly, the notes brought back to your chest before they’d even made it halfway across the gap between us. ‘No, honestly,’ you tried, your voice weak and unsure. ‘For food and things. For petrol.’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ I said, and it was cold, I know that. I saw it register on your face. But I was hurt, Sadie, that this exchange was so pedestrian, so tawdry to you. As if money was the currency within which we were operating.
‘Well, thank you,’ you said, and the thing that I can’t understand is how much you seemed to mean it. You really did seem to be grateful to me; it was clear that this was what you wanted. That you were ready to be left behind again.
I went back to the car. I took the sunglasses down from their propped position on my head and slid them back over my eyes. I turned the radio up and we went on our way. I watched you in the rear-view mirror. You didn’t even linger. The door closed behind you and the curtains in your house remained drawn.
And that was that.
It was so easy to take your daughter, Sadie. The Tall Man must be proud.
After ten minutes of driving, they were both asleep, heads lolling towards each other, the duvet pulled up over their shoulders. It was so beautiful, Sadie. I wish I had a photograph to show you. I wish I could make you see.
They slept for hours, as teenagers do, and in the end I decided not to wake them until we were across the border, almost at Glasgow. They were special, those hours of driving alone. The hills rolled out before us and those two smooth-faced girls slept on and on. When we crossed the border, I felt it as an almost physical thing; a separation. I left ‘Leanna’ behind. I became – not myself again, but something closer. I could shed those months, those years. I could begin to rebuild things. It was a beginning.
I could have driven for hours and hours, for ever, like that, but I knew that it would be wrong to let them sleep. I knew that they were as much a part of this as me; I knew that they should see it. And so I woke them. I did it gently; I turned down the radio and I called their names. They felt like silk in my mouth, those four syllables in their pairs of two; their wings. Billie. Amber. Butterfly girls.
They stirred. It’s always something so special, isn’t it, to watch a child rise from sleep. That slack face of repose changing as consciousness slowly returns to it, their features reforming and firming until slowly, slowly, those eyes flutter open. I have never tired of watching that.
Of course, you’ve never seen it, have you? Never held a child and watched them wake? I do pity you that, Sadie. I’m not sure you knew what you were giving up back then.
‘Are we nearly there?’ Billie asked, her eyes still closed, and Amber, who’d hitched herself into a sitting position, laughed through her yawn. I told them that we were an hour away, perhaps, and that we would stop for something to eat along the way.
Amber caught my eye in the rear-view mirror as she stretched her neck and yawned again, and I saw a smile hidden there, her cheeks dimpling. It felt like we were in on this together, if that doesn’t sound too fanciful. It was as if she had been waiting for this; as if she knew this was the right thing to do. That this has all been the right thing to do.
In the Little Chef, Amber ordered a full breakfast while Billie, as she always does now, ordered pancakes. I opted for black coffee and pushed some fruit cocktail around a chipped bowl. I was too excited to eat. I was like a child, my tummy turning, unable to concentrate. I did my best to conceal it.
‘You’re going to love the cottage, Am,’ Billie said, spearing three segments of pancake on to her fork and pushing them through a pool of maple syrup. ‘It’s like the cutest place ever.’
It seemed a natural place for me to break my news; that the cottage we usually rented was unavailable, that I had found us a better one. Neither of them seemed to mind. I felt giddy, giggly. I felt free. I looked out at the rolling green hills beyond the road, and I could finally, finally, breathe.
We arrived at the house two hours or so later, the last thirty minutes of which were spent juddering along a potholed track around the gorgeous, glittering Loch Earn. Both the girls were stunned into silence by the beauty of it – I suppose it’s possible that they were both tired and grumpy from being wedged in the car for so long, but I think it truly was the magnificence of the loch. It needs to be seen to be believed, Sadie. Although I’m sure you will, now. It made me happy to think of you standing on its shores, looking out over those endless, silvering waves, and wondering. Searching. Looking for us as I have looked for you.
The house itself is hidden up a steep drive, sheltered by overhanging trees and overgrown honeysuckle, and I had to slow right down to a crawl to navigate it. I was afraid I had got my directions wrong. Then, round a corner, it was revealed; small and whitewashed and perfect. I exhaled, and I caught Amber’s eye in the rear-view again. She looked less impressed than I felt, but that was OK. I knew she’d come to understand eventually.
We climbed out, legs stiff, and looked around. The land outside the house sloped steeply, buried beneath gorse and shrubs. And beyond, the loch, vast and churning, the hills gathering at its banks.
Billie clambered on to the small, ancient-looking deck attached to the side of the house, and craned over the railing to get a better view. Amber climbed up beside her. You can imagine my panic. I know I called out ‘Careful!’, my heart rate spiking as I took in the broken railing, the spiny sea of gorse beneath them. They both rolled their eyes and I knew I had to control my fear, my need to protect them. I turned and busied myself locating the key – the owner had told me it would be beneath a plant pot at the front of the house, of which there were many. Heavy things, fat and ceramic. By the time I located the right one, the girls were down, the danger passed. I could breathe again.
The key retrieved, I unlocked the door, the girls now behind me. It opened smoothly, the air clean and cold inside, a smell of dry firewood and clean sheets. We stepped in together, our eyes adjusting. It was dark, with slate tiles and dark wooden banisters leading up the stairs. Low ceilings and dusty-looking rugs lining the way. But once we made our way inside, the window in the living room gave a perfect view of the loch, the boats on it tiny white dots, and the kitchen was clean and well-stocked. I opened the fridge and found a bottle of Chardonnay in the door. And –
you’ll like this part, Sadie, it’s exactly what you would do – I thought to myself, Why not? I took the bottle out and poured myself a glass in one of the small, cheap wine glasses I found in the cupboard. The girls were bouncing across the floorboards above me, laughing, with the occasional thud as someone dropped their bag, a squeak as one of them collapsed on to one of the twin beds in their bedroom. Lovely sounds; normal family noise. It made every bone in my body sing.
I took my wine glass and went back through to the living room, looked out over the water below. So vast. I hadn’t realised. So dark, so deep; as deep as it is wide, they say. That seemed incomprehensible.
Sadie, it seemed perfect.
I made a shepherd’s pie, using the mince left for us in the fridge, the handful of floury potatoes. There were a couple of bottles of red wine left behind, too, and by the time I served the food, I’d finished my white and was ready to move on. I suppose to you that might seem normal, expected behaviour, but for me it was unusual. I was getting too excited, I was counting my chickens before they’d hatched, as they say. It was dangerous and yet I felt more relaxed than I had in years. As a treat, I even poured both girls a glass too.
‘Put some music on, Amber,’ I suggested, and she plugged her phone into the stereo thing in the corner, surprising me by selecting Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons instead of something poppy and new.
I took my seat at the head of the table, suggesting that Billie served as I stifled a hiccup. I was drunk; too drunk. But there was no risk. It felt, for the first time in a long while, safe.
Billie stood up and started cutting carefully into the dish, suddenly self-conscious under our scrutiny. Such easy tells; the sudden flashes of blotchy colour that strike up across her cheeks, the way her voice begins to wobble and crack. One of the things I love best about her. A purity; no sense of pretence. She picked up the ladle and attempted to scoop up the first uneven section she’d marked out.