by Paula Daly
‘I’m Detective Constable Aspinall,’ she says. ‘Are you Mrs Natasha Wainwright?’
I nod mutely. Try not to look as alarmed as I feel.
‘Is it all right if I ask you a few questions, Mrs Wainwright?’
Again, I nod. Unable to speak.
‘Good. Okay if I sit down?’ she asks.
‘What? Yes, sorry, of course,’ I say, stumbling, ‘Alice, get the detective a drink.’
‘Tea would be great,’ she says, without being asked. I was thinking water so I could get rid of her quicker.
I can feel the two girls exchanging mortified stares behind me. ‘What’s happened?’ Alice asks. ‘Are you here about my dad? Has he done something wrong?’
DC Aspinall’s face gives nothing away. She’s like an undertaker, trained to remain unruffled no matter what’s put in front of her. ‘It’s probably for the best if I talk to your mum alone,’ she suggests.
Alice comes to my side. ‘Mum?’
‘Make the tea and go through to the lounge, Alice. I don’t think this has to do with your dad.’ I glance at DC Aspinall, who gives one small shake of her head.
We sit in silence as Alice makes the tea, not something she’s particularly good at. So far she’s set two kettles on fire by forgetting to fill them with water.
Felicity tells us she’ll be upstairs, and when the tea is ready Alice leaves us as well. I’m fully aware they’ll be eavesdropping, but I’m also aware that if I make a big deal about excluding them, their curiosity will be raised almost to danger level.
DC Aspinall takes a gulp, grimaces and takes out a notepad. Alice has given her the Earl Grey. It’s not for everyone.
‘We’ve had a report of an incident occurring this afternoon in Windermere from Dr Eve Dalladay.’
‘Hmm-mm.’
‘She says you repeatedly drove your car into her at Booths’ car park before driving away, leaving her with serious facial injuries requiring medical attention.’
I do my best to appear shocked. ‘What?’ I say, and DC Aspinall reaches for her mug, before thinking better of it. ‘That’s what she said?’
She looks at me levelly. ‘Yes. That’s what she said. She wants to press charges.’
‘But that’s simply not true,’ I say.
DC Aspinall tries to get the measure of me before speaking any further. Eventually, she says, ‘Mrs Wainwright, you’re newly separated, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘And this Dr Dalladay is the lady who is now with your husband?’
‘Yes, but that doesn’t mean I’d try to hurt her. We were friends and I’m really not that sort of person, I—’
‘I noticed on my way in here that your car has been in an accident. It’s actually quite smashed up . . . That is your car outside? The Cayenne?’
‘Yes,’ I say quickly, ‘but that’s not what happened. I didn’t do what she’s accusing me of.’
DC Aspinall maintains an air of tolerance. ‘Mrs Wainwright, I should tell you that as soon as it’s available I will be viewing the CCTV footage of the car park. I suggest you tell me now exactly what happened, because it’s clear your car didn’t get into that condition on its own. So, did you ram Eve Dalladay’s car, or not?’
I’m about to answer when there’s a small yelp from the doorway. Alice and Felicity are both standing there. Alice has her hand over her mouth. She lowers it to her throat, and says, horrified, ‘Mummy, you didn’t do that, did you?’
‘No,’ I say, and again I address DC Aspinall. ‘Eve is lying. I was behind her car and out of nowhere she slammed on the brakes. I went straight into the back of her. I thought a child must have run out into the road, but she did it for no reason. As if she wanted me to crash into her. On purpose.’
‘Odd that your airbag didn’t inflate, don’t you think?’ she says.
‘I wasn’t speeding. My airbag didn’t go off because I must have been doing less than thirty miles per hour. And hers didn’t inflate either, so I can’t have hit her that hard.’
‘Or, as she is claiming, she was stationary. And had already removed her key from the ignition,’ DC Aspinall says accusingly. ‘That also would prevent her airbag from inflating.’
‘No,’ I say firmly, ‘we were moving. We were definitely moving.’
‘Why didn’t you contact the police?’ she asks.
‘There was no reason to. It’s not like we had to exchange insurance details. Sean owns both cars.’
‘And where did this happen?’
‘Coming out of Booths.’ She jots down the details. ‘Have you actually seen Eve’s face?’ I ask. ‘Because I’m sure she must be making more of this than it really is.’
Without raising her head, DC Aspinall says, ‘I’ve not seen her, no.’
I fold my arms across my chest. ‘Well, then.’
I glance at the girls as DC Aspinall continues to document my version of events, and I can see they are rattled by the presence of a detective in the kitchen. Naturally, they hate Eve. They can’t stand what she’s done to us by stealing their dad away. But they must be wondering if their mother has really gone and done something as crazy as ramming her car. They must not know what to think.
Even ramming the car as I did, it wasn’t possible to get any real speed up, so I can’t imagine Eve is injured. I did it to humiliate her. I did it to piss her off. I didn’t do it to harm her.
‘Surely this is a domestic issue?’ I say to DC Aspinall, taking the opportunity to divert attention away from the actual incident. ‘What a waste of police time!’ I scoff. ‘It’s a disgrace that Eve should contact you when this is clearly something between me and her.’
DC Aspinall raises her head. ‘Perhaps,’ she concedes, ‘but then there’s that deep scrape along the right-hand side of your car, Mrs Wainwright. I’d say that’s inconsistent with a simple shunt collision, wouldn’t you?’
‘I . . .’
‘And of course there’s the issue of your suspended prison sentence, because as much as I’d like to—’
There’s a sharp intake of breath again from the doorway as Alice blurts out, ‘Her what?’ She strides in to face the detective. ‘I’m sorry, but what did you just say?’
‘Alice, don’t,’ I whisper, now aware that my lie is spiralling into something more altogether.
‘Mummy, what is she talking about? She’s saying you’ve been to prison? Mummy, whatever does she mean?’
DC Aspinall hesitates a moment and explains, ‘It was a suspended sentence. Not a custodial sentence.’
‘Well, what is that?’ asks Alice, her voice shrill with terror.
‘It means she didn’t have to go to prison, moron,’ mutters Felicity. ‘It means she did something wrong, and instead of sending her to prison, they gave her another chance.’
With my head in my hands, I part my fingers to see Alice spin around, her mouth gaping open. ‘So, what did you do, Mummy?’ she cries out. ‘What on earth did you do?’
14
I MET EVE ON my third day at Manchester University. It was September 1997 and I’d arrived in the halls of residence under a cloud of melancholy, nursing a wound I wasn’t sure I would ever recover from.
Formal lectures were not about to start for another few days. This was Freshers’ Week. And Freshers’ Week, I’d learned from former Lakes school pupils who’d been there and done that, was the week you made lots of new friends, only to spend the next three years trying to get rid of them again.
With this in mind I began my time in Manchester cautiously. I’m not sure I could have behaved in any other way, but this was the excuse I told myself. I decided against tagging along with a gaggle of girls to the Students’ Union bar before we’d even unpacked; decided not to stay up the entire first night with the three sociology students next door drinking 20/20, necking Bols Blue straight from the bottle, flashing my tits out the window at four in the morning, thinking it was just about the funniest thing ever.
By day three I was desperately lonel
y. I missed my mother in a way I’d not experienced in the longest time, and the home-sickness seemed to be cleaving away at my spirit. At fourteen, I’d suffered episodes of depression after Mum died; periods of a few weeks, sometimes extending into a couple of months, when my dad didn’t know what to do with me, hoping it would pass. And eventually it did pass – the antidote to my grief coming in the form of Sean. Looking back, I’m not sure if claiming he filled the scooped-out parts of me is placing a little too much merit on the shoulders of the young, gentle-natured lad Sean was then. But that’s how it felt to me at the time. Now I think perhaps he just took my mind off things. And when I moved to Manchester he could no longer do that.
Sean and I met at a sixteenth-birthday party. We lived pretty near to one another but he was a weekly boarder over at Sedbergh School. When he returned to Windermere at weekends we were inseparable, spending every available minute together. His mother was kind, courteous, always made me feel welcome in her home – right up until we got our A-level results.
Then, catastrophe.
Encouraged by his parents, Sean and I had made the very grown-up, rational decision (we thought) of attending separate universities. He would go to Manchester to study law, and I would go to Edinburgh to study biology. Not so far apart that we’d never see each other, but far enough for us to have an independent university experience – ensuring we came out of it with new friends, new interests, conceivably even a new world view.
It was a sensible approach and, even though I dreaded being away from Sean, I was sufficiently level-headed to know that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. This was the moment you put your academic future above any notions of romance. And it hadn’t escaped my notice, either, the looks of utter relief I’d had when telling well-meaning adults of our plans for separate cities. Put bluntly, if you follow your first love to university, you are a total saddo. Everyone knows it spells disaster in the long term.
So I accepted an offer from Edinburgh in the March, and was, outwardly at least, happily preparing to go. But when in mid-August I received my grades, achieving only two Bs and a C, instead of the requisite A and two Bs, I had to re-evaluate my options. Fast. Because the clearing process allows only a matter of days to secure your university place, and my options were now woefully limited.
It was a frantic time of crazy ideas. Should I switch fields to study marketing? Philosophy? Urban planning? All I was sure of was that I didn’t want to attend some second-rate polytechnic on the outskirts of a town I’d never heard of. Did I love biology that much?
Eventually, I rejected the idea of biology. After taking advice from the careers advisor at school, I plumped for a vocational degree with a guaranteed job at the end of it. My choices were physiotherapy (though I didn’t really want to touch people’s bodies), podiatry (categorically didn’t want to touch people’s feet) and radiography (the most reasonable and palatable option). In three years’ time I would come out with a ready-made career. A career that would take me anywhere in the world, if I so wished, and one which I could dip in and out of later on, should I want children.
And wouldn’t you just know it? The only university with a spare place available and willing to accept my grades was Manchester.
I was elated. Totally thrilled. And so was Sean – he was round at my house, declaring: ‘We had done everything practically possible to stay apart.’ This was providence, he said. Fate somehow intent on keeping us together. It would work out. It was going to be—
‘Natty?’ my dad called up the stairs, an uneasy edge to his voice.
I looked at Sean and shrugged, the joy of the moment spilling over into rational thought and not for one second thinking my dad’s tone could indicate anything other than all the brilliant things to come.
‘Natty,’ he repeated, ‘you best come down. Someone here to see you.’
At the foot of the stairs was Sean’s mother, Penny. She wore a pale turquoise suit – the shoulders on the jacket a little too wide, a wedding outfit left over from the eighties, possibly – and very tall stilettos.
I descended in a bit of a daze, confused by her presence in our hallway, because she’d never visited before. As I got closer she made an attempt to smile, but her face was rigid with tension. It had the effect of baring her teeth – like an old horse with its head over the stable door – and I stopped dead in my tracks.
Something was wrong.
‘Sean,’ I called out to him, ‘your mum’s here for you,’ because I assumed she’d come to collect him. I assumed he’d done something he shouldn’t, maybe not been where he was supposed to be. Missed a dental appointment.
Penny turned to my dad. ‘Is there somewhere we can go to talk?’ she asked. And my dad, more attuned to her mood and motive than I was, said, ‘Of course.’ We could talk in the lounge.
Long before everyone went cream, mushroom and taupe with their contemporary décor, before the arrival of the big chocolate leather sofas in Dad’s lounge, there were two plain, hessian-coloured sofas in our lounge. And before that, back when I was in secondary school, my dad had two rather fussy apricot sofas with a turquoise stripe. I remember thinking Penny matched the sofas rather appropriately in her suit as she perched on the edge of the two-seater, her snakeskin shins, scaly from too much sun, sticking out from beneath her skirt.
Sean appeared and she requested he sit down. He did as she asked and I watched his face carefully, trying to discern what Penny’s presence here might mean. But there was nothing other than the usual quiet watchfulness Sean displayed around his mother.
‘Mr Odell,’ she began.
‘It’s Ken, please,’ my dad replied.
‘As you wish,’ said Penny stiffly. What followed was a moment of awkwardness as she readied herself to talk.
Penny cleared her throat. ‘I’ll start by saying that my husband, David, was due to accompany me here today, but he’s been called to Carlisle on urgent business. You can rest assured, though, that my views are his views, and what I’m about to say has been discussed at length between the two of us. We are united on this issue and he sends his apologies to you, Ken, and hopes to meet you at some point in the future.’
My dad made a face to imply this was duly noted and then began rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
My stomach tightened. It was in moments such as this that my dad was in the habit of calling a halt in the proceedings. He’d start rolling a cigarette, claiming he could only listen properly to what was being said if he smoked. I prayed hard he wouldn’t do it today.
‘I’m afraid,’ said Penny, turning to address me, ‘that this situation which has arisen, Natty, is untenable.’
She waited for me to speak.
‘I don’t know what that means,’ I said honestly.
She tried to smile, finding at the last second she had to avert her eyes. ‘I mean that you accompanying Sean to Manchester is just not going to work for us as a family.’
Sean cut in by saying, ‘Natty’s not accompanying me, Mum . . . she’s going there on her own to—’
Penny held up her hand. ‘You’ll get a chance to put your views across in a minute, Sean. For now, I’d appreciate it if you kept silent.’
The three of us – me, Sean and my dad – exchanged worried glances.
‘What are you suggesting?’ my dad asked carefully.
‘Well, I don’t have anything firm,’ Penny replied, ‘but David and I thought one option would be for Natty to defer her place at university, perhaps for another year.’
‘Why would I want to do that?’ I asked.
‘Yes, why would she want to do that?’ repeated Sean.
‘Don’t take that tone with me,’ Penny warned, and Sean shrank back into the sofa, sulking at being reprimanded, but not challenging his mother all the same.
It dawned on me that in every conversation we’d had about university in Penny and David’s kitchen, UCAS forms spread out across the table, a frisson of excitement in the air, it had never once occurred to
me that the reason Sean’s parents didn’t want us to attend the same place had nothing at all to do with him being distracted by a girlfriend, it was that they didn’t want a girlfriend like me. It later became evident the reason for this was because they wanted a privately educated girl for Sean. Someone with better breeding.
Suddenly I felt deeply hurt, as if they’d been pretending. My pride fought hard to push this rejection away and as I studied Sean’s reaction it became clear that this was not exactly news to him. I sensed he’d been arguing the case for me for some time.
My face hardened, and Penny, sensing she was about to delve into territory she didn’t want to get into, quickly tried another tack.
‘Natty,’ she said, ‘let me ask you something. Do you really want to study radiography? Is that really what you see yourself doing for the next ten, twenty, perhaps thirty years?’
Did I? I thought. I wasn’t sure. Possibly. Probably. It’s not like I’d wanted to do it my whole life or anything. But who did?
Eventually I answered her. ‘I think so,’ I said.
‘You think so,’ she repeated flatly, lifting her chin. ‘Natty is a bright girl, Mr Odell,’ she said. ‘I’d hate to see her waste her future on a subject she has no real interest in, just to ensure she and Sean can be together.’
‘But that’s not what’s going on here,’ I protested. ‘I—’
‘Wouldn’t it be more sensible for her to repeat her final year of A levels?’ she continued, as if I’d not spoken. ‘Wouldn’t it be more prudent to take the time now to strive for excellence, instead of accepting second best, instead of—’
‘Mrs Wainwright,’ said my dad gently, ‘that would be for Natty to decide. And I reckon she’s already made her choice. How about you tell us why you’re really here. An’ I’m thinking it’s probably best if you talk frankly from now on, so as not to confuse matters. No sense in beating about the bush.’ He sat back in his chair, deciding then that, indeed, a roll-up was in order after all.