‘I don’t know. I keep changing my mind. One minute it seems so crazy and the next… She was so keen to help after it happened. It made me suspicious. Ten minutes earlier she’d made it pretty clear she hated me.’
‘Oh, come on,’ Esther says scornfully. ‘There’s no mystery there. She’s dim, isn’t she? She sounds it, from everything you’ve told me about her. A dim person would always instantly forgive an enemy who’d nearly died.’
‘Would they?’
‘Yes. Sentiment would triumph over reason. “She nearly died, so I have to like her now”-that’s what Pam will have thought. Bright people continue to hate those who deserve to be hated, irrespective of contingencies.’ Esther’s voice is full of pride, and I know she’s thinking about her boss, the Imbecile. I listen to her loud exhalations as she tries to calm down. She hates not being in charge. ‘Look, Nick wouldn’t necessarily find out,’ she says. ‘It’s well known that the police protect adulterous witnesses.’ She talks over my snorts of derision. ‘It’s true! Most of them are at it themselves. Cops are real shaggers-everyone knows that. They won’t even disapprove. All they’re interested in is getting the facts so they can do their job. If you tell them everything you know, they’ll do their best not to involve Nick.’
‘You have no way of knowing that,’ I say, and put the phone down before she can argue with me. I wait for her to ring me back but she doesn’t. My punishment.
All they’re interested in is getting the facts. What was the Alfa Romeo’s registration? I knew it this morning. I memorised it.
I’ve forgotten. In the hours between then and now, it has slipped out of my mind. Idiot, idiot, idiot.
I pick up the four photographs, take them downstairs and put them in my handbag. Then I go back to the lounge and throw the two wooden frames into the wastepaper basket. The chances of Nick noticing or asking about them are zero; for once I’m glad I haven’t got a husband who’s observant and on the ball.
I think about the police. Real shaggers. How observant can they be if they didn’t find the two hidden photographs? Assuming they were hidden. Surely the house was searched after Geraldine and Lucy died. Why didn’t anybody find those pictures?
I know what school Lucy Bretherick went to: St Swithun’s, a private Montessori primary in North Spilling. Mark… the man at Seddon Hall told me. I’d heard of Montessori, knew it was a kind of educational ethos, but I wasn’t sure what exactly it entailed, and didn’t ask because he clearly assumed that as a fellow middle-class parent I knew all about it.
I don’t, but I plan to find out as much as I can-about the school, about both girls whose photographs are in my bag, and their families. Tomorrow morning, as soon as I’ve dropped Zoe and Jake off at nursery, I’m going to St Swithun’s.
Police Exhibit Ref: VN8723
Case Ref: VN87
OIC: Sergeant Samuel Kombothekra
GERALDINE BRETHERICK’S DIARY, EXTRACT 3 OF 9 (taken from hard disk of Toshiba laptop computer at Corn Mill House, Castle Park, Spilling, RY29 0LE)
23 April 2006, 2 a.m.
Tonight, Michelle babysat while Mark and I went out for dinner. I didn’t have to negotiate about bedtime, how many stories, brushing teeth. I didn’t have to turn on the night light or leave the door open at exactly the right angle. All that was Michelle’s responsibility, and she was paid handsomely for it.
‘Mark’s taking me to the Bay Tree, the best restaurant in town,’ I told Mum on the phone earlier. ‘He thinks I’m stressed and need a treat to cheer me up.’ There was a touch of defiance in my voice, I’m sure, and after I’d delivered my news I sat back and waited to see if Mum would agree or disagree.
She asked her usual question, ‘Who’s looking after Lucy?’, her voice full of concern.
‘Michelle,’ I said. She always does, on the rare occasions that Mark and I aren’t too shattered to venture out at night. Mum knows this but still asks every time, to check I’m not going to say, ‘Oh, Michelle’s busy tonight, but don’t worry, I found a tramp on the street earlier-he’s agreed to do it for a bottle of methylated spirits and we won’t even have to give him a lift home afterwards.’
‘You won’t be back late, will you?’ Mum asked.
‘Probably, yes,’ I said. ‘Since we’re unlikely to set off till after eight thirty. Why? What does it matter what time we get back?’ Every time Mark and I dare to go out for the evening alone, I think of that poem I learned at schooclass="underline" on a dark night, full of inflamed desires-oh, lucky chance!-I slipped out without being noticed, all being then quiet in my house.
Mum said, ‘I just thought… Lucy’s a bit funny at night at the moment, isn’t she? This whole scared-of-monsters thing. Will she be okay if she wakes up and there’s only Michelle there?’
‘If you mean would she prefer to have me dancing attendance on her in the small hours, yes, she probably would. If you mean will she survive the night, yes, she probably will.’
Mum made a clucking noise. ‘Poor little thing!’ she said. ‘Mark and I could always just have a starter and a glass of tap water each and be back here by nine thirty,’ I said-another test for her to fail.
‘Do come back as soon as you can, won’t you?’ she said.
‘Mark thinks I need a break,’ I said loudly, thinking: This is absurd. If I took a half-hearted overdose, everyone would be quick to say it was ‘a cry for help’. But when I actually cry for help in the more literal sense, my own mother can’t hear me. ‘Do you think I need a break, Mum?’ For over thirty years I was the person who mattered most to her; now I’m just the gatekeeper to her precious granddaughter.
‘Well…’ She started spluttering and making throat-clearing noises, anything to avoid answering. What she thinks is that I shouldn’t even be aware of my own needs now that I’m a mother.
I didn’t enjoy the meal, as it turned out. Not because of Mum. I never do enjoy my breaks, long or short, from Lucy. I look forward to them intensely, but as soon as they begin, I can feel them starting to end. I feel the temporariness of my freedom, and find it hard to concentrate on anything other than the sensation of it trickling away. Proper freedom is the kind you can keep. If you have to buy it (from Michelle), and are only granted it by someone else’s kind permission (school, Michelle), then it’s worthless.
When I’m not with Lucy, it’s almost worse than when I am. Especially at the end of a period away from her, when ‘crunch time’ is approaching. I dread the moment when I first see her, when she sees me, in case it’s worse than ever before. Sometimes it’s fine, and then the dread goes away. I sit next to Lucy on the sofa and we hold hands and watch TV, or we read a book together, and I say to myself, ‘Look, this is fine. You’re doing fine. What’s there to be so terrified of?’ But other times it isn’t fine and I run round the house like a slave pursued by the master’s whip, trying to find the toy or game or hairclip that will pacify her. Mark says I set too high a standard for myself, wanting her to be happy all the time. ‘No one is happy all the time,’ he says. ‘If she cries, she cries. Sometimes you should try just saying, “Tough,” and seeing what happens.’
He doesn’t understand at all. I don’t want to see what happens. I want to know what’s going to happen in advance. This is why I can’t relax in Lucy’s presence, because there seems to be no law of cause and effect in operation. I do my absolute best every single moment that I’m with her, and sometimes it works and everything is fine, and other times it’s a disaster-I put on her favourite DVD and she shrieks because it’s the wrong episode of Charlie and Lola. Or I suggest that we read her favourite book and she spits at me that she doesn’t like that book any more.