She was livid with Mark for leaving the police entirely to her, literally leaving them. She had told them she had been lying in the sun reading, and even described how the heat was somewhat mitigated by a refreshing cool wind and how her blue and white umbrella positioned to the left of her lounger shaded her face and book while allowing the rest of her to tan. Police liked detail.
‘Oh, and it was factor fifteen, in an orange squeezy thingy. No idea what’s happened to it. I’m sure I had it outside. Mark was lying on my lilo which my daughter, this one here, my eldest, gave to me last year.’
She turned to Gina for confirmation. They needed corroboration. Statements backed with hard evidence:
‘It was last year, wasn’t it? Or the year before?’
‘It doesn’t matter, Mum. They don’t care about the lilo.’ Gina had glowered at her toes. She blamed it all on Isabel, of course. Even today it was not Mark’s fault.
‘We went to the Caribbean the year before, so yes, it was last July.’ Gina’s commitment to accuracy got the better of her.
Gina had gone to the hospital with Mark’s body, hovering possessively close as they zipped him up in a shiny black body bag and loaded him on to the gurney before wheeling him round the side of the house to the drive. Absurdly the wheels rattling over on the gravel reminded Isabel of a supermarket trolley and she had stifled a shout of laughter. She had expected Gina to be squeamish – as a girl she had been unable to contemplate her dead hamster – but she had been devout in her attention to her drowned father. She had even tried to make Isabel come in the ambulance too.
‘I’m not ill. There’s nothing the doctors can do for either of us, me or your father.’ She had already disowned him.
‘You’ve had a shock, they could sedate you.’
‘A large gin could do that.’ Isabel was shapeless in Jon’s gigantic pullover and Gina’s jodhpurs, which hung loosely on her thin legs. None of them had thought of going upstairs for her clothes, but had grabbed what they could find in Jon’s car. Her hair had dried in clumps but now there was no Mark to care. Or so she had said to Jon when he offered to find her a brush. She could see the dismay in her son-in-law’s chlorinated eyes, and knew that he saw Isabel’s abandonment of her appearance as a sign of madness. Perhaps it was. It was a long time since she had lived in the real world.
Finally Isabel had upset Gina over the sun lounger. Her eldest child had never been good at relaxing.
‘What are you doing?’ Isabel had found Gina in the hall filling out a label on the side of the cardboard box containing the luxury lounger.
‘I’m sorting this out. It’s not like anyone will want it.’ Gina gave the cardboard a thump.
‘I want it. I’ve been waiting absolutely ages for it. It’s come from Italy.’
‘Isn’t there enough to deal with? Police, forms, questions; a frightful mess?’ Gina continued to write, then she looked up and spat out: ‘There’s going to be a post mortem.’
‘What’s going on?’ For a brief moment, it was Mark. Isabel had never properly noticed how much Lucian resembled him. Had the quality of likeness changed now there was only Lucian?
‘Nothing.’ Gina had screwed up the address label and stood close beside the box.
‘We have to be a team on this one.’ Lucian was brisk.
‘On what one? No we fucking don’t.’ Isabel had snapped. ‘We just have to get through without ballsing up.’ Her children instantly became a team.
‘I’ll get scissors.’ Gina had moved towards the kitchen, but Lucian produced a blade from the key ring in his pocket and slid it precisely along the rim of the box.
‘Where do you want this? It’s um, rather busy at the pool.’ He grinned quickly and for a second she had back her young son.
‘Oh, stick it out the back. I can lie on the lawn at least.’
Gina had elbowed Lucian out of the way and set to unpacking the bed and studying the cleaning instructions.
In the hours after his death Isabel had been intent that Mark’s death should not stop her living as he had during life. But he was stopping her. Isabel’s lifestyle was being raked over and awarded marks. She wasn’t doing very well. She had told the police:
‘I went inside for some orange juice and when I came out my husband had gone.’ Gina had been beside her on the swinging Jack and Jill seat with frilly blue and white canopy a little way from the pool. The police had wanted to interview Isabel in the house, but she had said she couldn’t bear to be indoors on such a sunny day. Gina was holding her arm in a show of emotional support although it was Gina who needed it, so Isabel held her hand. The double seat swung if they moved only slightly so this arrangement kept them stable if nothing else.
‘So was that your husband’s gin and tonic by the side of the pool?’ The young man knew it wasn’t. Isabel was glad she had made him sit on a stool at their feet.
‘It was lunchtime, my daughter was due any minute.’ At this she had felt Gina stiffen as if unwilling to be implicated and Isabel became momentarily flustered.
‘Did I say orange? No the gin was mine.’ Silly old bag, he was thinking. Out of the corner of her eye, Isabel caught Gina biting her cheek, doing that dreadful face, pulling her mouth across like rubber. She already had lines around her mouth and now it might make her look unreliable. Isabel only just stopped herself from slapping Gina’s hand. The seat swayed, making the policeman teeter backwards to avoid being kicked.
‘Mark drinks whiskey,’ she added for good measure. Mark was not getting off scot-free.
‘So Mark had been drinking?’ The young man was sure of himself. He had soon dropped ‘Professor Ramsay’, no doubt the result of communication training. Use first names to make them feel at ease. Isabel remembered the detective talking to Eleanor when Alice Howland went missing. He had been deferentially polite, and never gave away what he was thinking. Perhaps he had been cleverer than she had given him credit for. He had never found Alice so he wasn’t that clever. She wondered if he was dead too, policemen died young, they worked such terrible hours.
She had roused herself:
‘No, my husband said it was too early.’ She hadn’t meant to say that and quickly offered: ‘He was driving into Lewes. He never drinks if he’s driving.’
Drank. She wasn’t in denial. She knew Mark had gone and was not kidding herself, saying ‘we’ because she couldn’t bear ‘I’, but it was too soon for past tense and besides she needed Mark to be in this with her. Later she caught a young constable – a boy – looking at her. She knew the expression, and felt a frisson of triumph that she could still inspire that look in the opposite sex.
‘Was he in a funny mood recently? Low, distracted, uncommunicative?’
‘Oh yes, always!’
‘Mum’s joking.’ Gina squeezed her arm. ‘You’re in shock, Mum. Is this okay? They can stop for now.’
Isabel thought of Eleanor over thirty years ago, refusing to take Richard Thingummy’s questions seriously. Perhaps she was entering her second childhood.
‘Mark was the same as ever. There was nothing different about him.’ But there had been. Suddenly she knew what it had been like; Mark had behaved as if he was being hunted.
‘Is there anything special about today? The 6th of June, is that significant?’