Mum’s looking at Ella. “She’s beautiful.”
I wrap protective arms around my daughter, as though by hiding her from view I can shield her from her grandmother’s lies, but Ella arches her back and fights my embrace. She twists to see this stranger in our kitchen, this thin, ill-kempt woman who stares at her with filmy eyes I will not acknowledge.
I will not.
And yet my chest aches with a heaviness that has nothing to do with what my parents did, and everything to do with the pain I see on my mother’s face. The love. A love so tangible it arcs between us; so tangible I’m convinced Ella feels it. She reaches out a pudgy hand toward her grandmother.
A whole year, I remind myself.
Fraud. Conspiracy. Lies.
“Could I hold her?”
The audacity takes my breath away.
“Please, Anna. Just once. She’s my granddaughter.”
There’s so much I could say. That my mother relinquished any familial rights the night she faked her own death. That a year of lies means she doesn’t deserve the reward of Ella’s chubby hand in hers, of the talcum-powdered scent of a freshly washed head. That she chose to be dead, and as far as my daughter is concerned that is how she will remain.
Instead I walk toward my mother and hand her my baby.
Because it’s now or never.
Once the police know what she’s done they’ll take her away. A trial. Prison. The media circus. She had the police out searching for Dad, when all the time she knew he was fine. She claimed his insurance money. Theft, fraud, wasting police time . . . My head spins with the crimes they’ve committed, and with the fresh-found fear that I am now an accessory to them.
My parents brought this on themselves.
But I’m not a part of it. And neither is Ella.
My daughter shouldn’t be punished for other people’s actions. The least I can give her is a cuddle with a grandmother she’s never going to know.
My mother takes her as gently as if she were made of glass. With the ease of experience, she nestles her into the crook of her arm and runs her gaze across every detail.
I stand inches away, fingers twitching at my sides. Where is my father? Why has Mum come back now? Why come back at all? A hundred questions run through my head, and I can’t bear it anymore. I snatch Ella back, so swiftly she lets out a cry of surprise. I shush her in my arms, pressing her against my chest when she tries to turn back toward her grandmother, who sighs softly—not in admonishment, but something more akin to contentment. As though her granddaughter were all that mattered. For a second my mother and I lock eyes; we agree on that one thing, at least.
“You need to leave. Now.” It’s more abrupt than I intended, but I no longer trust myself to stick to the script. Seeing my daughter in my mother’s arms is softening my heart. I feel myself wavering. I have to do the right thing. I have to tell Mark, the police.
She’s my mother . . .
She lied to me.
“Ten minutes. I want to tell you something, and if you still feel the same then—”
“There’s nothing you can tell me that—”
“Please. Just ten minutes.”
Silence. I hear the grandfather clock tick in the hall, the call of an owl from the garden. Then I sit.
“Five.”
She looks at me and nods. She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Your father and I haven’t been happy together for many years.”
The words fall into place as though I’ve been waiting for them. “You couldn’t split up, like normal people?”
Lots of my friends had divorced parents. Two houses, two holidays, two sets of presents . . . No one wants their parents to separate, but even a child can learn to understand it’s not the end of the world. I would have coped.
“It wasn’t as simple as that.”
I remember hiding in my bedroom once, with my music turned up to drown out the argument going on downstairs. Wondering if this was it; if they were going to get divorced. Then, in the morning, going downstairs to find everything calm. Dad drinking his coffee. Mum humming as she put more toast on the table. They pretended everything was fine. And so I did, too.
“Please, Anna, let me explain.”
I will listen. And then, when Mark gets back, I will tell him. To hell with what Joan thinks. I’ll phone the police, too. Because once everyone knows, I can distance myself from this insane scheme cooked up by my parents as a preferable alternative to divorce.
“You found a vodka bottle under the desk in the study.”
She’s been watching me.
And I’d thought I was going mad. Seeing ghosts.
“Did you find others?” Her voice is calm. She stares at the table in front of her.
“They were Dad’s, weren’t they?”
Her eyes snap to mine. She searches my face, and I wonder if she resents me for not acknowledging this sooner, for leaving her to shoulder the burden alone.
“Why did he hide them? It was no secret he liked a drink.”
Mum’s eyes close briefly. “There’s a difference between liking a drink and needing a drink.” She hesitates. “He was clever about it, like many alcoholics are. Careful to hide it from you; from Billy.”
“Uncle Billy didn’t know?”
Mum gives a humorless laugh. “The cleaner found a bottle of vodka stashed in the bin under Dad’s desk. She brought it to Billy in case it had been thrown away by mistake. I panicked. Told Billy it was mine. Said I’d bought the wrong sort and no one would have drunk it so I’d thrown it away. He didn’t believe me, but he didn’t push it. Didn’t want to, I suppose.” She stops and looks at me, and there are tears in her eyes. “I wish you’d told me you knew Dad drank. You shouldn’t have had to cope with that on your own.”
I shrug, an obtuse teen again. I don’t want to share confidences with her. Not now. The truth is, I’d never have said anything. I hated that I knew. I wanted to exist in my happy bubble, pretending everything was perfect, and never heeding the myriad signs that told me that they weren’t.
“Well.” Another deep breath. “When he was drunk—and only when he was drunk”—she rushes to make this clear to me, as though it makes a difference; as though any of this makes a bloody difference in light of what they’ve done—“he hit me.”
My world spins on its axis.
“He never meant it—he was always so sorry. So ashamed of what he’d done.”
Like that makes it all right.
How can she be so calm? So matter-of-fact? I picture my father—laughing, teasing—and try to reframe my memories. I think of the arguments that would end abruptly when I came home; the shift in atmosphere I took pains to ignore. I think of my smashed paperweight; of the stashed bottles around the house. I had seen my dad as a lovable rogue. A loud, jovial, generous man. Fond of a drink, occasionally crass, but ultimately good. Kind.
How could I have gotten it so wrong?
I open my mouth to speak, but she stops me. “Please, let me finish. If I don’t get it out now, I don’t know if I can bear to do it at all.” She waits, and I give the tiniest of nods. “There’s so much you don’t know, Anna—and I don’t want you to know it. I can spare you that, at least. Suffice to say, I was scared of him. Very, very scared.” She stares out the window. The garden light is on, and the shadows around the patio flicker as a bird flies across its beam.
“Tom messed up at work. He took out a business loan without telling Billy, and they couldn’t make the repayments. The business started going downhill—oh, I know Billy will have told you it was fine, but that’s your uncle for you. Tom was mortified—three generations, and he’d put them into debt. He came up with a mad plan. He wanted to fake his own death. He’d disappear, I’d claim the life insurance, and then in a year or so he’d turn up at a hospital and pretend he had amnesia.”
r /> “And you went along with it? I can’t even—”
“I thought it was the answer to my prayers.” She gives a shallow laugh. “At last I’d be free. I knew there’d be repercussions when he turned up, but all I could think about was not being frightened anymore.”
I look at the clock. How long does midnight mass last?
“So you went along with it. Dad disappeared.” I want to know about how he made it look like suicide, but the detail can wait till I know how this ends. “You were safe. And then you . . .”
You left me, too, I want to say, but I don’t. I’m keeping emotion out of this; treating it like a case study. An awful, shocking story that happened to someone else.
“Only I wasn’t safe,” she says. “I was stupid to think I would have been. He kept calling me. He even came to the house, once. He wanted money for a fake passport. Documentation. Rent. He said the life insurance was his; that I’d stolen it. He’d changed his mind about faking amnesia; said it wouldn’t work. He wanted the money so he could start a new life. He said he’d hurt me if I didn’t pay up. I started giving him small amounts of money, but he wanted more and more.” She leans forward and pushes her hands toward me. I stare at them but make no move to take them. “That money was for your future—it’s what you would have inherited when we died. I wanted you to have it. It wasn’t fair of him to take it.”
I feel numb. I’m still trying to equate this version of my father with the man I thought he was . . .
“You have no idea what he’s capable of, Anna,” she says. “Or how frightened I was. Your father died to pay off his debts. I died to escape him.”
“So why come back?” My words are full of bitterness. “You got what you wanted. You got your freedom. Why come back at all?”
She leaves a silence that makes me shiver even before the answer lands.
“Because he found me.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO
I have a temper. Hasn’t everyone?
I’m no more or less out of control than you are; no more likely to lash out than you. It’s all about the triggers.
We all have one. Just because you haven’t found yours yet doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Better that you know about it; otherwise, one day someone else will press your button, and the red mist will descend.
Know your trigger and you can control it. At least, that’s the theory.
Mine’s alcohol.
I’m not your stereotypical drunk. You won’t find me asleep in doorways with piss down my trousers and a can of Tennent’s Extra in one hand. I won’t roll down the street, shouting at strangers. Getting into fights.
I’m what they call a functioning alcoholic.
Smart suits. Never a hair out of place. Schmoozing customers, giving them the patter. Smiling at the staff. A drink at lunchtime? Why not—that was a great sale!
Money makes it easier. Look at the races, look at the pretty young things in their posh hats tottering along with a bottle of champagne in each hand. It’s fun, right? But swap the posh hats for filthy beanies, and the bubbly for cooking brandy, and you’d cross the street to stay out of their way.
Money means silver hip flasks at a school sports day, when paper bag–concealed whiskey would cause an outcry. Money means you can drink Bloody Marys on a Sunday morning, G&Ts after work, Pimm’s whenever there’s a glimpse of sun, and nobody gives you a second glance.
I had my pick-me-ups, of course. You can’t drink Bloody Marys when you’re wrapping up a test-drive, but you can sip from a water bottle of vodka. You can take a swig from something stashed among the plant pots, in your desk, under the stairs.
When I started drinking, I drank for fun.
Later I drank because I couldn’t stop.
Somewhere in the middle, I’d lost my way.
That baby trapped me. You wanted marriage, domesticity, family trips to the zoo. I wanted my old life. I missed London. I missed noisy nights in bars, picking up a one-night stand and not caring if the bed was cold when I woke up. I missed taking home a paycheck without worrying whether the business could afford it. I missed my freedom.
It made me bitter. Resentful. Angry. All of which I could handle—sober.
My trigger is alcohol.
Alcohol makes me lose control. It makes me numb to the consequences of my actions. It makes my fists fly.
I know a lot about functioning alcoholics. I know a lot about anger, now.
I knew a lot then, too.
Except how to stop.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE
ANNA
Mum takes a piece of paper from her pocket and unfolds it. It’s a black-and-white photocopy of the inside of a card.
Suicide? Think again.
The card I was sent.
I think of how hard that day was; how I woke up with grief tugging at my heart, and how every minute had felt like an hour. I think of the kick in the stomach as I slid out the card to see the Happy Anniversary message, and the nausea as I read the message inside.
On Mum’s photocopy, beneath the printed message, and scrawled in red marker pen, is another line.
I could tell her everything . . .
“Dad sent it?”
She nods slowly. Reluctantly.
“But why?”
“To show me I couldn’t get away that easily? That he could still control me, even from the grave?” Tears roll down her cheeks. “I thought I’d been so clever. I went somewhere we’d never been together—somewhere I hadn’t been for years. I rented a horrible flat because it was the only place the landlord didn’t ask for references. I cleaned loos for cash in hand. I didn’t go online. I didn’t make any contact with anyone, even though I wanted to—Anna, I wanted to so much! And he still found me.”
It’s too much to take in.
“You’re going to have to start at the beginning. I don’t understand how Dad managed it—there was a witness . . . She saw him jump.”
She doesn’t speak, but her eyes say it all.
My head reels. “You made the 999 call. Diane Brent-Taylor. That was you.” I might have been the first in the family to go to university, but that didn’t make me any cleverer than the generations before. I always knew Mum was smart—too smart to be working in reception at Johnson’s Cars—but the deviousness . . . It’s hard to take in.
“He planned it for weeks. Talked about nothing else. He made me practice, over and over, and every time I messed up he hurt me. He gave me a mobile to make the call; made me hold it into the wind as I spoke, so my voice would be distorted. He’d thought of everything.”
“You should have gone to the police.”
Her smile is sad. “Easy to say now. When someone has you under their control like that, it’s . . . it’s hard.”
I think of my job, of the children around the globe everyone works fiercely to protect. So many of them are abused, cowed, coerced. So many could tell a teacher, a friend. Yet so few do.
“I kept thinking he’d never actually do it. That it was fantasy. Then one day he woke up and said, ‘Today. I’m doing it today. While Anna’s away.’”
I remember that morning. “Enjoy yourself,” he said. I was running late, rifling through my bag for my keys with a piece of toast in my free hand. Dad was sitting at the island, reading the Daily Mail and drinking strong black coffee. It took two cups to get him out of bed; three before he managed conversation; a fourth when he reached work, to get him firing on all cylinders.
“Work hard, but play hard, too.” He’d winked. And that was that. He hadn’t hugged me, hadn’t told me he loved me or given me sage advice I would cherish later. Just work hard, play hard.
In the months after his death I decided I was glad of the lack of ceremony. It meant he hadn’t been planning to kill himself, I decided. If he’d known it was the last
time he was going to see me, it would have felt different.
But he did know. He just didn’t care.
“That day was horrendous,” Mum said. “He picked fights with everyone. Billy, the reps, me. I thought it was an act—that he wanted to make his suicide convincing—but I wonder if it was nerves. I said it wasn’t too late for him to change his mind—that we’d find a way to pay the money we owed—but you know your dad. He was always stubborn.”
Do I know my dad? I don’t think I do anymore.
“When work finished we went our separate ways. He took an Audi from work, told Bill he wanted to see how it drove. That was the last time I saw him.”
I can’t sit still anymore. I walk to the window and stare into the garden, at the big bay tree in the pot and the roses Mum trained along the fence between our garden and Robert’s. I glance upward to Robert’s house and think of his planned extension and my irrational accusation that he had something to do with the rabbit on our front step.
I pull the curtains. “What happened then?”
“The agreement was that I’d hear nothing till ten A.M. He’d researched the tide times; he knew that at high tide, if a body is weighed down, it can be dragged out along the seabed. That it might never be found.” She shudders. “But at nine thirty he sent a text to say he was sorry.” She screws up her face and I see she’s trying not to cry. “And I didn’t know if he was sorry for what he was making me do, or for all the times he’d hurt me, or if it was just another part of his plan.”
I cross the kitchen again and put the kettle on the Aga, then change my mind and take it back off. I get out two glasses and the bottle of whiskey reserved for hot toddies, and pour myself a finger of rich amber liquid. I look at Mum and hold up the bottle, but she shakes her head. I sip mine and hold it in my mouth until it burns.
“At ten the second text came: ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ I started to believe he was really going to kill himself. I decided that I had to go through with it. That no one could prove I knew anything about his plan. I did what he’d told me to do. I replied to his message; then I called the police. I called you.”