by Paula Daly
‘Sean,’ she says firmly, ‘I can handle this. Have some faith. I know what I’m doing. If you go in there and apologize, start stuttering your words, falling over yourself with regret, you are sending very mixed messages to a vulnerable young woman. She needs an explanation. A full explanation about what it means to be an adult and how confusing it can seem at times. I promise you I will take it steady and I will certainly not push our relationship on her. But I must handle this professionally, because you will get it wrong and she won’t know what to make of it. We could risk scarring her for a very long time.’
‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’
Eve slips off her heels and steps into her Laura Ashley dress. She decides to remain barefooted. ‘You need to trust me here. I don’t want to tell you how to deal with your daughter, but remember, this is what I’m trained for . . . Sean, this is what I lecture on, for heaven’s sake.’
He’s startled by her last sentence. Eve sees him flinch, but then, little by little, he starts to let go of the tension. She’s given him a lifeline. Given him an excuse not to face the problem looming in front of him. Someone more qualified should handle this, he’s thinking. Yes, absolutely.
He sits down on the chair by the dressing table and covers his face with his hands.
Eventually, he says, ‘You’re right. It would be so much worse coming from me. Christ, Felicity would be mortified if I went in there explaining what she just saw. You do it. That would be best.’
Eve nods. ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘I’ll do it now, before she has chance to get upset.’
‘What are you going to say?’
‘I’ll be led by her. Let her air her feelings first.’
‘Will that work?’ he asks.
‘I think, as long as she feels like I’ve really heard her and we’re taking her feelings into account, we should be okay.’
‘Okay, that sounds good.’
Eve makes a quick trip to the en suite bathroom to remove her slutty lipstick, replacing it with a more neutral toffee colour. On her way back she pauses in front of Sean, kissing the top of his head.
He lifts his chin and grabs her hands, their eyes locking. His eyes brim with tears. ‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘Thank you for doing this.’
‘I’ll make it better, Sean,’ she tells him. ‘I promise.’
24
I AM TRYING TO be brave. Really, I am.
I’m filling my head with the images of poor, desperate women from around the world: refugees fleeing war zones; mothers on the backs of covered wagons, on donkeys, clutching their hungry babies, carrying their whole lives with them in one shoddy satchel.
I’m trying to imagine what that feels like. Imagining the fear, the not-knowing, the grief of leaving behind a former existence. And I’m looking around my police cell and telling myself that things could be much, much worse. Women endure far worse fates than this.
I mean, in truth, if I squint a little, turn my head to the side – blocking out the barred window and the metal door – I could actually be in a Travelodge.
The walls are breeze block, painted magnolia, and a royal-blue carpet covers the floor. ‘The only cell with a carpet,’ DC Aspinall remarked as she led me in, and I told her I was grateful.
I lie on the bed that’s affixed to the wall, atop the sleeping bag, trying not to think of cleanliness at this moment. I begin stroking the floor with my hand. The carpet has a strange, wire thread running through it that sticks up at odd angles, offensively, like the first grey hairs to appear on the crown of my skull.
I find myself pondering if the wool used to make the carpet came from a really old sheep. Or a Herdwick, perhaps. The breed gives a good flavoured meat; they were once kept by Lake District author and farmer Beatrix Potter. But the wool is very tough, not at all suitable for making clothes.
At the hotel, the guests would go a bundle on Herdwick lamb when it came into season.
‘Herdwick.’ They’d say it reverently, as if eating something sacred. Our menu is littered with similar dishes: Salt Marsh Lamb, Goosnargh Chicken, Galloway Beef.
Bizarrely, meat has now become like wine and books – if you don’t put an ‘AWARD-WINNING’ sticky label on it, the consumer will not buy. I used to wonder what would happen if you were to switch around those tags in the supermarket – exchange the book clubs for the award-winning sausages. The gold-medal-winning wines for the champion black puddings.
But I digress. There’s a sharp pang of grief as I think about the days, weeks, the months, before Eve came. I went through those days blindly. Attending to everything in front of me, worrying about the things to come. Ticking off events with relief when they’d passed by.
I made it so very easy for her.
Eve waltzed in, fixed her attention on Sean, something I’d not been doing for way too long, and she beckoned him away with something as simple as . . . remember the Bisto commercial? Kids playing in the street, pausing from play as they caught the scent of Mum’s gravy wafting through the air? That’s how I imagine it happened with Sean.
There’s a noise from the door. Keys in the lock, the sound of the bolt being slid across. Immediately, I sit up, demurely perch on the edge of the bed, ankles delicately crossed, my hands held in my lap. I am Princess Diana in one of the early portraits. My aim is to give the person on the other side of that door the impression I have been wrongly incarcerated.
An officer I’ve not seen before pops his head around. ‘Solicitor’s here for you.’ He gives a well-practised smile.
I stand, dusting down my clothes, picking off the stray hairs and bits of lint, and wait, expectantly.
A second later, he’s back. ‘You not coming, then?’ he asks.
‘What?’ I say, flustered. ‘Oh, I thought the solicitor was coming here.’
‘Nah,’ he says, ‘they don’t do roughing it. C’mon, love,’ he says, holding the door for me, ‘I’ll take you on through.’
Whatever I’d been expecting in a solicitor, this person is not it.
For a start, she’s a woman, and immediately I become aware of a latent prejudice I didn’t know existed in me. Yes, I know women can do the job just as well as men. Better, in most instances. And yes, of course, women must be equally represented in the workplace, paid the same money, have the same opportunities to lead, govern, inspire.
But what if this solicitor suddenly has to rush home to her kids? What then? This is my life we’re talking about, not some utopian model of equality.
I want a male solicitor. I don’t want a multitasking female. I want a person capable only of focusing on the job in front of him.
I want a single-minded, selfish, arrogant man.
‘Mrs Wainwright,’ she says, extending her hand, ‘I’m Wendy Hogg from Foster and Updike. How are you?’
I regard her uneasily. ‘Scared,’ I reply.
She’s early fifties, with a round face of loose flesh, no eyelashes that I can discern, and stands at around five foot one. Her face is clear of make-up and her coarse, colourless hair is cut sensibly into a Victoria Wood-style bob.
She looks less like a solicitor and more like a social worker. One who has recently returned to work after being on long-term sick leave.
Has Sean sent this woman? Has Sean sent her to make certain I have no way out of this?
We’re left alone, and Wendy Hogg lifts a briefcase from beside her chair and places it on the table. As she withdraws a thick-barrelled fountain pen, she says, ‘I’ll get on with the particulars in a moment. Your husband, Mr Wainwright, kindly gave me a brief recap of the incident when he requested our services. If you could just begin by telling me how many times you rammed the car, Mrs Wainwright . . . and why.’
I check over my shoulder to make sure we’re alone and sit down opposite. When I don’t answer her, Wendy Hogg tilts her head. ‘Mrs Wainwright?’ she prompts. But I’ve read the Michael Connelly books (not the Harry Bosch ones, not so keen on those, but I’ve read the ones featuring Mickey Haller
– The Lincoln Lawyer, etc.), so I know that the client absolutely does not reveal their crime, not even to their own lawyer.
‘I didn’t ram the car,’ I tell her decisively.
‘You didn’t?’ she asks, frowning. ‘So that wasn’t you on the CCTV footage I just viewed? It certainly looks like you.’
I drop my head. What am I supposed to tell this woman? What if I admit to this, and she’s totally incompetent, and what if she has no idea of how to—
‘I can get you out of here tonight,’ she says without emotion.
At once I’m snapped to attention. ‘You can?’ I reply. ‘How?’
‘You tell me exactly what happened, and I’ll proceed with how we expect to deal with the case after that. First, I’d like to hear your side of the story, make sure we don’t miss anything.’
‘But I thought I wasn’t supposed to admit to hitting Eve’s car, I thought—’
She cuts me off. ‘You thought wrong. Now, let’s start again. You admit to ramming the car, yes or no?’
I glance away, as if I’ll find inspiration beyond this featureless room.
‘Yes,’ I answer miserably.
‘Three times?’
‘Possibly four,’ I say, and sit forward in my seat, ‘but can I ask you something? I don’t mean to be rude, I don’t mean to question your suitability or anything, but I was under the impression it was Mr Updike who handled this sort of thing.’
As she jots down notes, she says, ‘Mr Updike will represent you in court. I’m employed by Foster and Updike to do the legwork in cases such as this, by which I mean driving offences. Now, was Eve Dalladay wearing her seatbelt?’
I’m about to answer no, when I stop myself.
I had assumed Eve had removed her seatbelt prior to my slamming into her, but now I can’t remember her flailing forwards a great deal as I made contact.
‘I think she could have been wearing her belt, actually.’
Wendy Hogg makes a note of it. She looks up, and for the first time there’s the hint of warmth in her face. ‘Just so you know,’ she says, ‘I’m the person who looks for inconsistencies, I’m the one who’s finding reasons for you to avoid being charged.’
‘There are inconsistencies!’ I blurt out, almost leaping across the desk. ‘I tried to tell the police and they wouldn’t listen. I did ram Eve, but I know I didn’t cause the damage to her face.’
‘You’re saying she did it to herself?’ she asks. ‘For what reason, do you suppose?’
For a minute there I thought she was on my side. Now she’s asking the same questions as everyone else, making out like I’m paranoid.
‘I’m not testing you, Mrs Wainwright,’ she adds. ‘Feel free to speak openly. I’m trying to ascertain the motivation of Eve Dalladay. Can you shed any light on the matter?’
‘She stole my husband,’ I tell her, and to my ears this is starting to sound a bit feeble. ‘I even received a note to say that she’s done it before. And now I suspect she doesn’t love him and she’s attempting to make me seem like a madwoman. And I can’t find any trace of her on the internet. It’s as if she never existed.’
‘Interesting,’ Wendy Hogg says, nodding. ‘The fact that she wants your husband could be motivation enough.’
‘Really?’ I ask. ‘You don’t think I’m deluded?’
‘Not sure we can do much with the note you received, but no, I don’t think you’re deluded.’ She sits back in her chair, places her pen by the side of her notepad. ‘On my way here I made a visit to Windermere train station and viewed their CCTV. As you know, the station sits alongside Booths’ car park. There’s a very clear side-view image of you ramming Eve Dalladay from across the tracks.’
‘There is?’ I ask, not sure if that’s actually a good thing.
‘Yes,’ she says, ‘there is. And it does appear as if she was wearing her seatbelt. What’s more, in the footage, her face never comes close to hitting the steering wheel. Not once.’
Eve had found Felicity with her eyes locked on the screen of her laptop, headphones completing the barrier between Felicity’s immediate environment and the wider world beyond her bedroom.
Eve surveyed her from the doorway. She’d known Natty’s girls since they were babies. Not well, needless to say, but she played the role of absentee aunt rather effectively, misleading Natty with tall tales of travel and responsibilities from across the Atlantic which were only partially true. Eve turned up when she had nothing better to do. Spoiling the girls with sweets and cinema visits, when the occasion called, but not because it gave her any real pleasure. She did it to appear normal. Did it because that’s what people do for a friend.
Eve could remember the girls being around six and four. She had taken them to the viewing platform at the top of Orrest Head in Windermere. It was quite a hike for short legs and Alice, always eager to please, marched ahead, discussing pine cones, acorns, pieces of wood she found along the way that were shaped like animals.
Felicity, however, held back. She didn’t seem to trust Eve.
She watched Alice and Felicity play from the summit. It was a cool day in late autumn. The trees were bare and the view of Lake Windermere was spectacularly striking: the water a deep sapphire blue, the sky already pinking nicely over in the west, though it wasn’t quite yet three o’clock.
Eve sat alone on the bench, the worn wood feeling more like a slab of granite beneath her. She watched as Natty’s girls ran around happily, their cheeks ruddy from the cold, and as they moved a little near to the edge she called out to them, ‘Come back over here, girls!’
But they ignored her. Pretended that they couldn’t hear her, and she had the overwhelming urge to smash their skulls against the bench. Over and over.
The urge had come upon her quite suddenly, as was often the way, and she could think of no real grounds for her compulsion besides scratching the itch to aggrieve Natty. She wondered what it would be like to truly eviscerate someone who considered Eve a friend. Someone who thought they were shielded from the world because they used the most expensive car seats, never left their children unattended, gave their family a perfectly balanced diet with no additives, no colours, no fun. As it turned out, Eve didn’t get to indulge in that particular curiosity until a few years later, when an opportunity presented itself that she couldn’t pass up.
Felicity removed her headphones. ‘What?’ she said to Eve now.
‘You came home early, Felicity. Is everything all right?’
‘Fine,’ she replied flatly, and faced the screen. ‘You can go now.’
Eve felt herself drawn towards the angry teenager in front of her. Felt propelled to the chaos inside Felicity’s head. Chaos Felicity was doing her damnedest to conceal with a mask of insolence. ‘I told your dad I’d talk to you about what you just saw.’
‘I didn’t see anything.’
Eve smiled. ‘We both know you did.’
Felicity kept her eyes averted and said, ‘Okay, so we talked. You. Can. Go. Now.’
Eve had been in this situation once before, funnily enough. Shortly before the Cameron Cox debacle, she’d signed a six-month rental agreement on a plush office unit over in Richmond, North Yorkshire. As usual, the clients had come thick and fast, there being a gap in the market for an attractive therapist radiating success, and Eve almost immediately began screwing a guy who’d come for help with his insomnia.
She moved in with him quickly – as planned – and everything was going well, until his teenage son came by unexpectedly, caught them and went apoplectic. His father had his face lodged hard between Eve’s legs as she writhed and bucked on the Queen Anne dining table.
Eve had taken charge in that instance, too. Explaining to the boy that this was adult behaviour – This is what adults do – as he well knew from the variety of porn sites he’d been visiting recently. It was unfortunate that he’d seen them, she said, but she would not apologize for something that was entirely normal, entirely human. She told him he would be free to part
ake in these activities himself if he ever decided to bring a girl home.
The boy had accepted Eve’s scalding rebuke with tears rolling down his face and told her he was sorry for judging her, and, yes, he did agree that his father was entitled to some love after so many years married to a person who found him repulsive.
It had actually gone rather well, considering.
Eve regarded Felicity now and decided that the same approach was unlikely to be successful this time.
‘You’re still here?’ Felicity said, one eyebrow arched.
And Eve marched across the room, grabbing hold of her by the chin.
‘You fuck with me and I will destroy your mother.’
Felicity stared back at her, at first too shocked to speak.
‘Do you understand?’ Eve repeated.
‘You’re hurting me.’
‘I know things about your mother that—’
‘Yes, and I know things about you too, Eve,’ Felicity whispered. ‘It’s not the first time I’ve seen you like that.’
Eve slackened her grip. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Christmas, two years ago? At the hotel? I walked in on you and that tosser who comes by helicopter each year. The married guy?’
‘I don’t remember,’ Eve said dismissively.
‘Yeah. Sure you don’t. You didn’t look that into it, if it helps.’
Eve narrowed her eyes as Felicity stared back defiantly. She waited a moment, then slapped her. Slapped her hard across the mouth.
Leaning in, only inches from Felicity’s face, Eve warned her once more. ‘You heard me the first time. Fuck with me and I will ruin your mother. I know things about this family that will kill her. Now, for the last time, is that what you want?’
Felicity shook her head.
‘Say it. Is that what you want?’
‘No!’ cried Felicity. ‘No, I don’t want that! Don’t do anything to hurt my mum. Please.’