That Night

by Gillian McAllister

  ‘It felt like the only way,’ Cathy says. ‘You know?’

  ‘Frannie said … something like this. Ages ago.’

  ‘She’s smart. Smarter than you think. I just figured –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I have nothing to lose,’ she says, with a small shrug.

  ‘That’s so sad, Cathy,’ Joe says, his lips wet with whisky, his mind soft and yielding like honey.

  ‘And, besides,’ she says, ignoring him, ‘neither of you would be willing to do it. But I was.’

  ‘Was?’ Joe says.

  ‘Yeah. I mean – I don’t know. I’m sort of inclined to wait now, aren’t you? It’s been a week since they said they were searching the area. They haven’t found it yet. So far’ – Cathy dabs at a spot of whisky on the table – ‘so far so good,’ she finishes huskily, looking at him with a curiously positive expression on her face, like she’s just let it out briefly, and then covered it up again.

  ‘We’re fucked if they find out,’ Joe says. ‘They won’t give us any leniency for confessing. We’ve done too much other bad stuff. Lydia wanted me to just – to just hand Frannie over. Just like that.’

  ‘I bet she didn’t,’ Cathy says immediately. ‘She probably just wanted to be – I don’t know. To be considered. Not kept out.’

  ‘It was for her own good that I kept her out.’ He pauses, wondering how to word it. And then he just says it. ‘You know. You don’t need to take the blame. It wasn’t your fault.’

  Cathy stares into her lap, her eyes wet. ‘You don’t mean Frannie.’

  ‘No. I don’t.’

  She raises her eyes to Joe. Those big watery eyes on his.

  ‘I know,’ she whispers.

  ‘So you can’t.’

  Cathy, predictably, says nothing. She reaches for his bottle of whisky and pours herself a measure. She fiddles with the glass, raising it to her lips and sipping repeatedly, small sip after small sip.

  ‘When you said it was about Rosie, for you –’ she says.

  ‘I mean. It’s why we’re all so close, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it?’ Cathy says, blinking at him like he’s just turned on a bright light.

  ‘Yeah – I mean, I always thought so … bonded by tragedy and all that.’

  ‘Maybe it’s time to move on,’ she says softly.

  He pushes the balls of his hands into his eye sockets. ‘You know, I’m not feeling myself,’ he says, his hands still covering his eyes like a child.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I just feel so fucking angry all the time, Cath,’ he says. Cathy reaches for his hand across the table, draws it away from his face. His are hot and clammy; hers warm and dry.

  ‘You were always a hothead,’ she says affectionately. ‘Remember the sports day?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he says with a small and silent laugh. ‘The post deserved it.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says morosely, still holding on to her hand like it is a buoy out at sea. ‘I feel like I’m keeping everything together. This whole crime. But I’m doing it in – all the wrong ways. Aren’t I? Is Frannie mad at me?’

  ‘We love you unconditionally,’ Cathy says. ‘We know you didn’t mean to be scary.’

  ‘I’m fucked up because of it too, you know,’ Joe says. ‘I felt all this – I don’t know. I feel all this pressure to be like – the patriarch, you know?’

  She looks at him curiously across the table. The glass is to her mouth, her head tilted back slightly, but her eyes remain on him.

  ‘I see,’ she says.

  ‘I just … I could’ve done something, at work,’ he whispers.

  ‘Done something?’

  ‘I really could’ve hit someone.’

  She leans across the table again towards him. ‘Who – me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We’ll get used to this,’ she says, his sister, a ray of positivity he takes for granted, like somebody who lives somewhere with constant good weather.

  ‘I just mean … I have said some mad things. I threatened Evan.’

  Cathy winces. She finishes the whisky and stands up. She’s already swaying. She could never hold her drink. She’s so little compared to him. Something in his gut twists at the thought. His baby sister. Not the youngest, not Frannie or Rosie, but still a baby to him.

  ‘I’m worried what I’ll do,’ Joe says.

  ‘To Evan?’

  ‘No. I have a plan for Evan. I don’t know.’

  ‘To Frannie?’

  ‘To the people I care about the most,’ Joe says, sidestepping the direct question. He balls his fists up on the table. ‘This stress, you know? It lives in me.’

  ‘What kind of a conversation is this?’ she asks.

  Joe’s mouth moves in the vague direction of a smile at their family joke. ‘I don’t know,’ he lies. All he can think is that if Frannie weren’t here any more, none of them would have any problems.

  Cathy nods, just once. ‘What’s the plan for Evan?’

  ‘I’m going to tell him we’ll rip up the agreement if he comes back for more. Nobody knows about it. We haven’t registered it anywhere. If he tried to sell his share, we could all stop him.’

  ‘Good,’ Cathy says softly, then leaves his kitchen. He doesn’t hear her close the front door behind her, she does it so quietly, almost as though she were never there at all.

  61.

  Cathy

  It’s the end of the day. Cathy and Frannie are in the backroom, Frannie has on red tasselled earrings, some attempted grab at normality, no doubt, but they only seem to highlight her skinny cheeks and pallor. Nevertheless, it’s good, in a way, to see her trying. ‘Going out?’ Cathy says.

  ‘Yeah. Mum and Dad have Paul. Just going to go for a quick burger with Deb. Come if you want.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Cathy says, waving Frannie away, hoping she doesn’t talk too indiscreetly with her. ‘Nice earrings.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Frannie says, standing framed in the doorway. ‘Haven’t had a chance to do my make-up or hair.’ She smiles in a breathless sort of way at Cathy. ‘It’s been one of those days.’

  ‘Isn’t it always?’ Cathy says.

  ‘I’m late already,’ Frannie says. ‘But, while I remember, the eye drops are out of stock again. So we’re back on the ointment.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘You all right?’ she adds, her head tilted slightly to one side. Cathy finds herself, despite everything, wondering how her sister knows how to act so beautifully. As though she chooses even the way the light hits her features.

  ‘Oh, yeah. Fine. Going to spend some time organizing stuff here.’

  ‘Okay,’ Frannie says, waving a hand as she leaves, but, as she walks away, Cathy sees that her features have fallen, just slightly, as though she is disappointed in Cathy.

  The door closes behind her, and Cathy stands with her hands on her hips, surveying the room. She wants immersion. Not thinking about her siblings or the man they killed or how she has burdened Tom with it. They parted ways the other night, and he said he’d be in touch, but he hasn’t. She’s just … waiting. They all are.

  Their cleaner Joanie arrives, carting the Henry Hoover awkwardly by her side. She’s blonde, with tanned skin and impossibly long nails that reach a fine point at their ends.

  Cathy works alongside her, as she has done a thousand times before on Friday nights. She does it without thinking, the way she always has.

  She starts straightening papers and shredding unimportant items, collecting mugs and washing Joe’s old coffee stains out of the bottom of them. By the time she begins a general drugs audit, she’s immersed, ticking and crossing off what they have, ordering some of the chemotherapy drugs the nurses can’t order.

  She puts some music on the television in reception as she turns to the appointment system. She knows that she is looking for tasks to do, but her heart still lifts as she finds one. She will sync up the bookings so she and Joe can make them on their computer
s in their consultation rooms too. She’s been meaning to do it for ages. Their system is old and creaky.

  She sits at the desk and puts in the practice’s password. Frannie evidently tried a few different pairs of earrings this afternoon and she left them out, so Cathy puts them in her drawer for her.

  By nine o’clock she’s exhausted. The systems are synced, she’s working in the same way she used to, but she no longer feels the same way. Because of Tom.

  Sod it. She’ll text him. See how he is. She’ll finish this task on Frannie’s computer and then text. She sighs and navigates to the start menu, her face lit up in the darkness. As the computer considers her request, the fan whirring next to her, she cups her face in her hands and considers what she wants, not what her brother and sister want, for the first time. She looks out at the August skies, dark already, autumn racing ever nearer, summer having evaporated into a months-long spell of rain, and thinks.

  The computer shows the desktop and Cathy presses shut down.

  ‘Three items open,’ it prompts. ‘Do you want to quit?’

  She tuts and task switches, irrationally annoyed at Frannie for leaving things open. asos.com, hotmail.com and their drugs portal are open. Cathy shuts the portal and the fashion website, but something makes her hesitate over her sister’s email.

  Cathy clicks on the tab and gazes at it. Mostly spam, mostly unread. It’s organized, hardly anything in the main inbox. Cathy clicks on the deleted items. She doesn’t know what makes her do it. Perhaps the feeling that Frannie might delete things she doesn’t wish to see, that Frannie merely pretends to be happy and sunny and fine, that Frannie avoids, that Frannie moves real-life conversations into deleted folders.

  An email jumps out at Cathy. Something hot and acidic flashes across her body as she sees it.

  William McGovern.

  62.

  Cathy

  Cathy reads every single email. She never thought she would invade her sister’s privacy in this way, but then none of them ever thought any of this would happen.

  And now, sated, all of her questions answered by a faceless Hotmail inbox, she puts her elbows on the desk and rests her chin in her hands, trying to think, trying to work it through. The desk gleams in the light from the street-lamp outside. All Cathy can hear is the whirr of the computer and her own thoughts.

  Her hands leave sweaty patches on her forehead after a few minutes.

  I will not be parted from my child in this way.

  That is what William’s latest email said to Frannie.

  Of course. Frannie got pregnant three years ago in Verona. Cathy’s mind circles over it.

  And then she thinks back, all the way back, to the beginning. The altercation with the stranger in the market. To the blood loss. To the warrant.

  William wasn’t a stranger to Frannie. The market altercation wasn’t a random event, bad luck, a rare overreaction from Frannie. She knew him. He was Paul’s father. He’d been trying to get Frannie to give him contact for over a year. He wanted half and half, fifty per cent of Paul’s time to be spent in Verona. His emails became increasingly aggressive. What will it take for you to cooperate with me? he said. And then: I have to say, Francesca, I am disappointed by the tone of these emails. Children should see their fathers. And then: I am minded to use the full force of the Italian law over here.

  That last email, dated two days before his death, suggested they meet, said he had a document for her to see. She refused. He must have shown her in the market, maybe, or later on.

  Cathy stares at the screen until her eyes sting. So there never was a warrant. There was only ever a legal document naming a Joseph Plant. But Joe isn’t the only Joseph. Paul Joseph Plant, the Paul ripped off. It was some sort of residency order.

  Cathy sinks her head back on to her hands and tries to work it through. No wonder Frannie panicked. But she also killed him.

  She looks up, her eyes glassy, making the reception blur around her.

  Her sister murdered the father of her child.

  And it also means there is a paper trail, linking Frannie to Will.

  Cathy sighs as she locks her front door behind her. She walks down her garden path and up Frannie’s. She’s waited until Frannie arrived home.

  She lets herself in and steps forward, into the light of Frannie’s kitchen. Better now than later. It must be faced. ‘I know who Will McGovern was,’ she says.

  There’s a silence as Frannie digests this. Cathy stares at her, becoming vaguely aware of something in her peripheral vision.

  It’s Joe, in the darkness of the utility room.

  ‘Who is he?’ he says.

  63.

  Joe

  Joe’s littlest sister is sitting at her table, looking up at him. He is so mad he could kill her.

  Her jaw has jutted forwards in that way that it does before she cries angry tears. Her forearms lie parallel on their sides on the table, her wrists an inch thick at most. The truth comes from Frannie easily, like a river overflowing after months of rain.

  Afterwards, Cathy is standing in her raincoat, holding her keys, her face like she’s just detonated a bomb.

  ‘And that’s the truth,’ Frannie says. Joe hears the bones of her arms thud against the wood of the table. ‘I’d told him about Paul. When he was born I thought it was the right thing to do. But then he began harassing me. He was going to get residency of Paul using the Italian courts. So I thought. I said we’d talk it out when I was over, but he wanted a lawyer’s meeting. It escalated so quickly. I told myself I’d just avoid him, in Verona. It’s a big place, that it would be stupid to miss a holiday because of him. But then there he was! At the fucking market, of course. He showed me the document at the market on his phone and then, when I wouldn’t engage, he rang, late, drunk, to say he was coming over.’

  ‘So you deliberately killed him,’ Joe says flatly. Frannie drops her head. Cathy is saying nothing, her brow crumpled, looking like somebody approaching forty for the first time ever.

  ‘There was no cigarette, at the market?’ Cathy says eventually.

  ‘No. I saw him there and we rowed. And then when he called to say he was coming – I think he’d been out, in a bar – I went out to meet him, somewhere neutral – I didn’t want him in the villa around Paul – I wanted to try and … to try and talk him down.’

  ‘And then what?’

  Frannie heaves a sigh, a long, sad sigh that seems to go on and on. Several Lego figures sit on her kitchen table, and she reaches over and messes with one, passing it from hand to hand. ‘He said he would be able to get full custody of Paul,’ she says in a soft voice. ‘Because I hadn’t negotiated with him over the years. Because I’d tried to limit access to his child. It sounded like it might be bullshit, but I didn’t know. You just don’t take the risk – not with your kid. I’d just always said I’d let him see Paul when we were over, but that’s all. Each July.’

  ‘What was he like?’ Joe says quietly.

  ‘He was just so … so forceful. So powerful, you know? He would. Not. Let. It. Go.’ Frannie rubs at her eyes as she says it. ‘Every morning, some days, there would be a new email. I tried everything.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything? Ever?’ Cathy says.

  ‘Oh, God, imagine, imagine the receptionist telling the vets,’ Frannie cries. ‘It’s all so fucking unsavoury. Joe and Lydia are married and trying for a baby. You’re happily single.’ Cathy sniffs, not looking at either of them. ‘It’s so – I don’t know. I felt like a fucking EastEnders character with problems with the one-night-stand dad.’

  Joe blinks a few times, shaking his head and looking around him. At Frannie’s American-style fridge, a huge space-grey one with an ice dispenser in the front. Her luminous green garden beyond the bi-fold doors. Her huge table, the sheepskin rug draped stylishly over the bench. How are they here? In the most middle-class of kitchens, speaking of murders, of threats, bribes, burying bodies. It all seems so insalubrious, suddenly, that he wants to walk o
ut of this kitchen, leave her house and get straight in his shower. Scrub it all off.

  ‘So basically,’ Cathy says, her voice unusually loud and clear in Frannie’s kitchen. ‘You let us –’

  ‘We have almost no time, then, do we?’ Joe says. ‘The body will be found soon, but there’s a … there’s a paper trail.’ Cathy throws him a look which tells him that she’s had the exact same thought. ‘Isn’t there?’

  ‘You let us,’ Cathy says slowly, ‘you let us take risks we didn’t know we were taking. We thought he was somebody random. Not somebody connected to you through the fucking courts. God, Frannie.’

  ‘I spent the half an hour before I called you deleting his emails,’ Frannie says. ‘I deleted every one off the Gmail server on his phone. When I was doing it I found –’ She swallows, a tiny, almost imperceptible movement, but neither of her siblings misses it. Joe unconsciously braces his shoulders. He knows something’s coming. Another confession, in a whole line of them. ‘I found that he’d used a site to fake legal documents,’ Frannie says. ‘That look like they’re from a family court.’

  Cathy lets out a breath through the side of her mouth. It makes a whistling sound in the quiet. ‘So he was never going to be able to take Paul. If the documents were fake.’

  ‘So there’s no trail,’ Frannie insists, leaving the rest unsaid: So I didn’t need to kill him.

  ‘You still let us be complicit with you in something we didn’t know the full facts about,’ Cathy says. ‘We didn’t know it was murder. This began as a hit-and-run. And now it’s – it’s this – this grotesque, awful …’ When Joe turns to look at her, he’s surprised to see she is near-vibrating with rage, almost the exact same way Frannie was trembling with fear when they went to help her on that night. Joe reaches to straighten one of the fridge magnets – the Juliet Balcony in miniature form.

  ‘Look. There’s no paper trail,’ Frannie repeats. ‘No courts.’

  ‘I find it hard to believe a word you say,’ Cathy says icily. Joe looks at her in surprise.