‘Were you the father, Ethan?’
He’s still staring out of the window, with one tear in the corner of his eye. He frowns, then his head snaps towards me. ‘What?’
‘Were you the father of Grace’s baby?’
‘What?’ His mouth drops open and his eyebrows knit together. He shakes his head slightly, as if in disbelief. ‘What? I don’t understand.’
‘Grace was pregnant when she died, Ethan. Didn’t you know that?’
The blood drains from his face. ‘That isn’t… That isn’t possible.’
‘It is,’ I say calmly. ‘She was pregnant. Why do you think it wasn’t possible?’
‘Because we didn’t…’ He rubs his eyes with the sleeve of his top. ‘She wouldn’t…’
‘You didn’t have sex?’
He can’t meet my eye as he shakes his head again.
‘But you were her boyfriend and she was pregnant when she died, so I find that a little hard to believe.’
A rasping noise escapes from his throat and his head bobs up and down, still with his sleeves balled into his eye sockets. When he speaks, it’s muffled but high-pitched. ‘We promised we’d wait. That’s what she told me before…’
‘Before what?’ I ask.
‘Before we decided to just be friends. We’ve not been going out for quite a while now. But she didn’t want to tell anyone we weren’t together anymore, so we kept it between ourselves and hung out as normal.’ He rubs the palms of his hands on his jeans. ‘I thought we might get back together, but we… didn’t.’
‘Are you telling me the truth?’
Ethan pulls a signet ring from his finger and flings it onto the carpet. I reach down and take it. It’s gold, plain, boring. ‘When we were still together we had promise rings. She gave me this. And then suddenly she wanted to be friends. I didn’t get it. But we never… That’s what the ring was for. To say we’d wait.’
I find myself surprised that I believe him. The idea of a promise ring is strange to me, but this generation is different, more sensitive perhaps. Did Grace have one that matched? I can’t remember her ever wearing anything with such a dull design. Grace’s jewellery usually involved some sort of nature symbol: bumblebee earrings, unicorn necklace, hummingbird ring.
‘Is everything all right?’ Louise appears at the door, half in, half out. Perhaps she has been listening to our conversation. I don’t particularly care if she was. Charles might, though, when the gossip spreads throughout the village.
‘I must get going, Louise. Thank you for the tea. And thank you, Ethan, for letting me know which flowers were her favourite. I’m sure Grace thought very highly of you.’
As far as I know, Grace did think highly of this boy, who is currently sitting on his desk chair sniffling, but I don’t. I know bitterness when I see it and he’s full of it. How long has he been angry with Grace for wanting to be friends rather than a couple? Though I don’t trust Ethan, I do believe, until I’m proved wrong, that he didn’t know about Grace’s baby. But when he told me that Grace was upset, he dismissed her problems as insignificant and irrational. Perhaps he had an opportunity to save her and let it go. I’m not sure how great a part this boy played in my daughter’s death, but I am sure that he wronged Grace, and I might have to find a punishment for that. Could I ever live with the loss of my daughter if I didn’t?
Nine
A silver-haired girl laughs at the camera, while my Grace, still honey hued at this point, plays the theme to Star Wars on the violin. Occasionally Alicia joins in with her flute, making pretty eyes at the camera. The clip has been watched over fifty thousand times. How did I not know that Grace’s videos were this popular? Her face has been seen by strangers all over the world. I scroll through the comments and find disturbing opinions about her appearance, the way she talks, how young she looks. From creepy to bitchy to downright strange, people word-vomit up their feelings about a three-minute clip of two teenage girls messing around in someone’s bedroom.
Since the meeting with Ethan, I’ve been racking my brain in an attempt to decipher all the confusing aspects of Grace’s death. Ethan appeared genuine to me, even if I didn’t like him, but that means nothing. If he was telling the truth, then he isn’t the father of Grace’s baby. But if the father isn’t Ethan, then who is? Now, a week after first identifying the body, I find myself leaving Charles alone with his demons while I invade Grace’s space, immersing myself in her videos, watching her over and over, hoping the answers will hit me.
The video with the Star Wars theme wasn’t recorded in Grace’s room. The walls are a violet shade, there are posters of Little Mix on the wall and a black cat stretches lazily on a bed with pink sheets. This must be Alicia’s room, the clip filmed there and then posted on Grace’s vlog.
How many of these internet weirdos have sent a private message to my daughter? Had she been barraged by phallic imagery from perverts across the globe? Should I have banned my daughter from an activity that appears on the one hand an innocent pastime, and on the other a dangerous and reckless pursuit? At seventeen years old, Grace could have moved out and lived on her own if she wanted to. Then I wouldn’t have been able to police anything at all. But while she resided here, under my roof, should I have done more? There’s a line that every parent haphazardly walks: the line where we give our children enough freedom to allow them to evolve, while at the same time guarding them from danger. I always wanted to provide Grace with safety – because I never had it – but I also wanted her to grow, to make mistakes and to keep her heart open. It didn’t work. Now here I am, hoping that if I watch this video over and over again, it might reveal the secrets Grace was hiding away from me before she died.
Yet again, my mind drifts back to the conversation I had with Ethan yesterday. He pointed the finger at Alicia and Sasha, suggesting that there’d been some sort of falling-out, but without Grace’s phone, or her passwords to Facebook or Instagram, it’s hard to know what happened. I need to see them, to be face-to-face when I ask them what happened. But first I want to see my daughter again. Not this clip of her laughing, which I’ve watched twenty times on a loop, but my actual daughter. She’s alone. I need to be with her.
* * *
Perhaps it’s morbid, but while I stand with the body of my daughter I listen to her last voicemail on repeat. It’s a boring message. Hey, going to orchestra rehearsal after school. Totally forgot about it so don’t have a cow, okay? Bye. It makes me sound like an ogre of a mother who yells at her kid for barely any reason, but it’s clearly an exaggeration. When Grace turned thirteen I swiftly learned that teenagers are prone to them.
Her cold body has no answers and the voicemail is a fantasy I’m playing to myself to ease the pain of her absence. But nothing good can come of obsessing, of weeping over her lifeless corpse. Will the question of what happened to you keep me going, Grace? I hope so.
On the way back from the funeral home I take a left rather than a right, drive out of the village, up a narrow, winding road surrounded by wild garlic, and come to a sprawling house that I’m more than familiar with. While Uber drivers will come to Ash Dale, the teenagers here can’t rely on them. Mum and Dad are the taxis until the kids pass their driving tests. I’ve spent many an evening ferrying Grace to Alicia’s house, but I’ve never come here without her, or without collecting her.
There’s a keypad next to the gate, a security feature that Emily Cavanaugh eschewed when she was alive. ‘Oh, it’s too “new money”, darling,’ she’d rasped to Charles. ‘We’re perfectly safe here.’ And, honestly, she was probably right. I’d seen far more crime in poverty-stricken Old Barrow than in Ash Dale. Poor people steal from each other because it’s easier. Stealing from the rich requires planning and smarts. If someone wants to rob us, a gate with a telecom probably isn’t going to stop them.
‘Jenny, it’s Kat,’ I say when the small silver box comes to life.
There’s a pause, and then the gate opens. When I park up on the drive, she’s w
aiting on the front steps with two spaniels scurrying around her feet. She’s dramatically clutching a shawl about her shoulders despite there being no chill in the air, and I can already see that she’s crying, her mouth gaping open and her eyebrows high up her forehead, like a clown imitating sadness.
Stop grieving for me.
‘Kat!’ Her arms open expectantly and a fat tear rolls down her cheek. I fold dutifully into her, inhaling her floral scent, placing my head down on the cashmere shawl. She withdraws, holds my shoulders and says, ‘But I didn’t expect to see you today. You must be in bits.’
‘I need to ask Alicia a question,’ I reply.
She nods. ‘Of course you needed to come to Alicia and me. We were a unit, weren’t we? I’ll put the kettle on.’
The phrasing catches my attention because it isn’t strictly true. While we are friends, we weren’t a group of bezzie mates eating ice cream and watching sitcoms together. Warning bells ring in my head, as they often do when I’m around Jenny. Too often, Jenny exaggerates situations in a dramatic fashion. The thought of her doing the same with my daughter’s death ignites that spark of anger I’m continually carrying with me. But at the same time, I might find answers here.
Jenny calls out Alicia’s name as we enter the kitchen. I take a stool at the breakfast bar, leaning on the marble surface. Charles and I have known Jenny and Malcolm Fletcher for several years. They’re the couple we’ll arrange dinner with or bump into at a function. Both Jenny and Malc come from money, and both have careers that are mostly for show. Jenny writes a column for a newspaper no one reads anymore. Malc owns an investment company that someone else runs for him. Still, Charles and Malc do some business together every now and then.
One of the spaniels nips at my ankle but I ignore it. Jenny comes around the bar to shoo him away.
‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘He reacts to strong emotions. I think he can smell them emanating from people. When I cry he sits on the floor by my leg and growls at me. He hasn’t left my side since Grace died.’
There are a lot of statements like this from Jenny. She gave me healing crystals at Christmas and has a wellness guru instead of a therapist. But not all of her endeavours are altruistic. She makes money via social media using affiliate links to the same healing crystals and gurus. Often her ‘gifts’ are a subtle way of attempting to get me to endorse them too. The more endorsements she gets, the more sales she makes.
‘You must be in so much pain.’ As the kettle boils, she reaches over and grasps my hand. ‘We haven’t stopped crying since we heard the news. Malc tried to call this morning to speak to you both.’
‘I was out,’ I reply. ‘I went to see her again.’
‘Grace?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you seen her a lot?’ she asks.
‘I guess this is the third time now.’
Jenny’s eyes widen and she lets go of my hand. Her reaction suggests that it’s strange for me to visit Grace for a third time. I decide to break the awkwardness by explaining, ‘I don’t like the thought of her there alone.’
Jenny begins to cry as she pours boiling water into mugs. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I keep thinking about it being Alicia and I can’t stop myself.’
Does she want me to comfort her? I don’t have the energy. Her outpouring of emotion is draining me, and that familiar thudding headache returns. In the absence of alcohol, I rub my temples, praying for it to leave me be.
After a long, dramatic sniff, Jenny walks over with the two mugs and then places a milk jug and a bowl of sugar next to them. ‘You’re so brave. I don’t know how you’re even walking and talking right now.’
‘I think I’m still in shock,’ I reply. Perhaps it’s true, I don’t know.
‘Of course.’ She takes my hands again. ‘You mustn’t blame yourself, you know. I had a long talk with Alicia when we heard the news. Neither of us saw anything in Grace that would make us think… well…’
I pull my hands away.
‘What I mean is, not one of us saw this coming,’ she continues. ‘So you couldn’t…’ She falters, the ghost of an awkward smile on her lips. Then she places a hand on her chest. ‘Oh, that poor girl, in all that pain.’
What did you say to her? My mother’s words come back to me like an echo. Grace was fine, she was normal, she was a regular teenage girl. She wasn’t suicidal and she wasn’t like me. There wasn’t anything to notice, because she didn’t kill herself.
Before I can react to Jenny’s statement, Alicia steps into the kitchen, humming to herself. She glances at me and falters. In the brief moments that follow, I make a mental note of everything I see. Firstly, there are no tear tracks or red eyes. Her black eyeliner is either freshly applied or she hasn’t been crying. According to Jenny, ‘we haven’t stopped crying’. Unless the ‘we’ refers to her and Malc. Secondly, Alicia appears shocked to see me, which isn’t surprising, but what is surprising is the worried expression on her face.
‘Kat’s here,’ Jenny says. ‘She has a question for you.’
Alicia stops between the kitchen door and the counter. She holds her hands together in front of her body and her expression is somewhere between nervous and neutral. Is she trying to rid her face of emotion? Is she scared of me?
‘Hey, Alicia. I wanted to stop by and see how you were.’
She moves her hands from the front of her body, plunging them into the pockets of her shorts. ‘I miss her,’ she says quietly.
‘I know how close you were with Grace, so this must be hard for you. But I wondered whether you’d consider speaking at the funeral? You were like a sister to her, Alicia. She would’ve wanted to hear what her best friend had to say about her.’
As I watch Alicia process this information, there’s a yapping from one of the spaniels, followed by a mewing. As Jenny scolds the dog, Alicia scoops up the same black cat that I saw in the YouTube video, stroking its head.
‘Bloody Jasper keeps going for the cat,’ Jenny says, exasperated. She runs her fingers through her messy strawberry-blonde hair. ‘What do you say, Lissie? Do you think you would be able to say a few words?’
Alicia’s hand makes its way down the cat’s back. ‘I… It’ll be hard.’ She doesn’t look at me. ‘But yes, I’ll do it.’ Her silver hair ripples as she shakes her head a little.
‘Were you and Grace okay before she died?’ I lightly drum my fingers against the breakfast bar, drawing out the moment. ‘I spoke to Ethan yesterday and he said you’d had a falling-out. It’s okay if you did. Grace loved you no matter what, you know that. I wanted to let you know that it’s okay.’ I turn to Jenny. ‘Teenagers fall out all the time, don’t they? I don’t want Alicia to feel even worse than she already does.’
‘You okay, chick?’ Jenny walks over to her daughter and hugs her, making the black cat squirm between them both.
‘Don’t squash Marshmallow,’ Alicia cries, as the cat leaps out of her arms with a hiss. ‘Mum, look what you did!’
‘It’s okay, Lissie—’
‘No, it’s not.’ There’s an expression of pure thunder on Alicia’s face as she backs away from her mother, spins on her heel and runs out of the room.
Jenny faces me with a sheepish expression on her face. ‘She’s struggling. She’s young; she doesn’t understand what grief is.’
‘It’s not any easier when you’re older either.’ My voice is quieter than I thought it would be. Smaller. I’d come into this house with the intention of uncovering the truth, of keeping an emotional distance from the situation, but yet again my grief has caught up with me. ‘I should go.’
‘No, stay and finish your tea. I just need to have a chat with Alicia. She’ll come down again and we can talk it through.’
‘It’s fine. I’ll give you a call about the funeral arrangements.’ The word ‘funeral’ leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
‘Whatever is best for you.’ Jenny begins to rub my shoulder as I walk with her to the door. ‘Kat, can I make a suggestion?’
‘Okay.’
‘Do you want me to put you in touch with my psychic? Look, I know it’s… Well, it might be too soon. But she’s an excellent medium.’ Before I can speak, she holds up a hand. ‘No, don’t say anything yet. Think about it. Wait until you’re ready. Wait until you need closure.’
There’s nothing I can say to that. While Jenny can be offensive in an ignorant way, her blunders are in character with the woman I know. Alicia, on the other hand, is acting like she has something to hide.
Ten
She wasn’t a clingy toddler at all. Her first day at nursery was a breeze; she didn’t even glance back. The primary school remarked on how independent she was – even went as far as to say she was a natural-born leader, bossing the other four-year-olds around in the playground. But when Grace hit her teenage years, I noticed an insecurity that hadn’t been there before. She was still bouncy and sweet at home, but out in public, she’d changed. During her short life, she’d smiled through her puppy-fat years, grinned her way through braces and chatted inanely with anyone and everyone who had a spare five minutes. But as soon as secondary school started, I noticed a difference.
She would curl up on the sofa with me, insisting that we watch movies together. Suddenly her wardrobe wasn’t good enough, and Charles suffered through an internet-shopping binge to get her what she needed. I’d insisted on a budget, and it was a good thing I had. In the evenings, I’d shout her down for dinner, only for her to watch make-up tutorials on her phone as she sat at the table. She’d hover in the doorway to our bedroom and watch me do my hair.
One memory stands out: her finger twisting a wispy blonde lock as she said shyly, ‘Will you show me how?’
At thirteen years old, she sat next to me on my ottoman and I showed her how to curl her hair.
Later that week, we’d smothered coconut oil onto our scalps and sat together watching reality TV. Now, when I sit on the same sofa, the coconut wafts over to me and I almost expect her to be next to me.
Only Daughter: An gripping and emotional psychological thriller with a jaw-dropping twist Page 6