The Babysitter

by Phoebe Morgan

  DS Wildy: We’re not trying to upset you, Mrs Grant. We wanted to chat things over with you, seeing as you came in to see us. We thought it might help. Would you like a glass of water?

  JG: [beginning to hyperventilate] I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe – I can’t, why are you – please don’t –

  DS Wildy: [glares at his colleague] I think that’s enough for now. Interview terminated at 16.50. Mrs Grant, we’re going to fetch the doctor, OK? You stay there. You stay right there until I come back.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ipswich

  16th August

  Siobhan

  Callum looks awful. His face is covered in stubble and he looks as though he hasn’t washed since he got off the aeroplane back from France two days ago; perhaps he hasn’t. There is a strange smell as I move closer to him, a musty tang that even his expensive aftershave seems unable to mask.

  DCI Gillian McVey telephoned this morning, asked me if I could come in to the station to answer a few more of their questions. At her words, my heart began to beat faster; I could feel the blood rushing up and down my limbs, making me feel almost light-headed. I don’t know why. I’m not the one who’s done anything wrong, am I? They don’t know anything about me. I’d told them already I’d been at book club that night, with some of the uber-mothers.

  ‘We do it every month,’ I’d said, ‘a group of us. I came straight home afterwards, went to bed. I was tired.’ I’d smiled at that, made a joke of it. ‘I’m a mum, I’m always tired. You know what it’s like.’ I left out the extra glass of wine I’d had when I got in – there was no need for them to know

  The DCI told me that I’d be able to see my husband, that he’d been asking for me. For a moment or two, I thought about refusing to come, imagined the look on my husband’s face when he was told in no uncertain terms that actually, his wife didn’t feel like seeing him right now, seeing as he’d spent most of his marriage lying to her about his extra-marital affairs and God knows what else. But of course, I didn’t refuse. I told DCI McVey that I’d be there as soon as I could.

  ‘Don’t delay, Mrs Dillon, will you,’ McVey had said, ‘I’d really like to speak to you as soon as I can.’

  After she’d hung up, I stared at the phone for a minute, replaying her voice in my head, searching for anything untoward in what she was saying. I thought about what I’d said to them, about hearing Callum come in that night, creeping into the spare room. About Emma, promising her that everything would be OK. You’re being paranoid, I told myself, but then, if I’d been more paranoid in the past, perhaps none of this would have happened at all.

  I got my bag together, the house keys, my mobile phone. A book, in case they planned on keeping me waiting, although I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to face the book club women again after all of this. I could feel myself dithering, delaying the moment I had to actually leave the house and go talk to them.

  Maria and Emma stayed at home, listlessly completing a jigsaw puzzle in the kitchen. None of us know what to do with ourselves – our lives are in limbo.

  ‘What did the police say they want you for?’ Maria asked me, concern in her eyes, and I told her what the DCI had said.

  ‘Do you think I should come with you?’ she’d asked me, and I told her no, asked if she could stay with Emma.

  I walked to the police station; it isn’t far. My legs felt like jelly the entire way – both at the thought of seeing Callum, and the thought of that DCI with her laser-beam focus on me. At the front desk, I announced myself to the duty sergeant, who nodded straight away, as though he’d been briefed to expect me. As though I was a person of interest.

  ‘We’ll take you through to see Mr Dillon first,’ he said, and he led me down a long corridor, walking too quickly. I struggled to keep up. I felt my breath catch in my throat as he pushed open a door, nodded at me, and left me alone with my husband for the first time since France.

  Now I stand in front of him, my mouth dry and my palms sweating. I wish I had my handbag to hold onto but they wouldn’t let me bring it in. I don’t know what they thought it contained – it’s mainly lipstick and tissues.

  ‘Siobhan,’ Callum says, the minute I step further into the room, the room of the station with its dingy white walls, nailed-down plastic seats, and stark yellow lighting. It is horrible; depressing and bleak. For a second when I see his face I forget what has happened and on instinct, feel as if I should reach out to him, wrap him in my arms, but I cannot, I don’t want to, and besides there’s no doubt several police officers are watching us from behind the safety of camera screens in the next room. And the man in front of me is someone I don’t know any more. Plus, there is the smell.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says hoarsely, ‘I’m so sorry about Caroline.’ There is a pause, as he waits for me to speak.

  ‘I didn’t do this, you have to know that, Siobhan, you have to believe me.’ He is staring at me, his eyes slightly wild, his lips chapped and sore. I swallow, hard, and sit down on one of the chairs, not trusting my legs to hold me up for the duration of our conversation.

  ‘Where were you that night, Callum?’ I ask, and he lets out a noise, a sort of sob in the back of his throat.

  ‘You sound like them. Jesus, Siobhan, I’ve had three days of questioning, first the French and now the idiots here, and that’s the first thing you say to me! I was at home in the studio. Like I told the police. It’s the truth.’

  I don’t say anything.

  ‘Where is Emma? How is she?’

  ‘She’s at home with Maria,’ I say, ‘she’s OK. In the circumstances. But I can’t imagine this has done her any good, Callum, can you?’

  He looks pained. ‘Why would I do this, Siobhan? How could you possibly think me capable of what they’re accusing me of? Jesus, we’ve been married fifteen years.’

  I just watch him as he almost writhes before me, tying himself into knots. I prepared myself for this meeting, you see. I told myself not to waver. I promised I’d be strong. My husband’s powers of persuasion can be powerful; remarkably so.

  ‘How could you have an affair?’ I say coldly, and the look on his face is, for a moment, sweetly satisfying. It’s a moment I’ve imagined many times over, ever since I found out – the moment where I confront him about sleeping with Caroline Harvey, but in all my imaginings it’s fair to say I never thought it would happen quite like this – in a police station, with a dead woman and a missing baby all over the news in connection with our family name.

  ‘It just – it just happened,’ he says, and he’s beginning to cry now. He is so very, very different from the confident, careful man I pledged myself to fifteen years ago. It’s funny how people change. I force myself to look straight ahead, not to let the tears that are lurking just behind the surface of my own eyes make their way to the top. I feel foolish, embarrassed and ashamed for letting him walk all over me for all this time.

  ‘But it was over, Siobhan,’ he says, and the tears are turning into sobs, awkward and embarrassing, not suitable for a TV exec with an over-inflated sense of self. ‘It was over! You can check my phone if you don’t believe me, you can check my emails. I finished it; I wanted a fresh start. I wanted to focus on you, on Emma. Our family.’

  ‘I can’t check your phone, Callum,’ I say, ‘it’s in police custody. Remember?’

  The chair I’m sitting on is so uncomfortable; the plastic digs into my skin. My mouth feels dry and sand-papery. There is no air in the police station, or at least none left for me.

  ‘Siobhan,’ he says, taking a deep breath, obviously trying to pull himself together, ‘please. You can’t honestly think this is something I’m capable of doing. Someone killed her, Siobhan. They stabbed her with a knife, she bled to death. Presumably they took her friend’s baby too. Is that something I’d do? Are you telling me seriously that that’s something you think I’d be able to carry out?’

  And now he is doing what Callum always does: he is becoming angry, he is beginning to t
urn the blame onto me. The tears are slowing to a stop, replaced with something darker. I can feel it happening, feel the balance of power shifting. I steal a sideways glance at the camera in the corner of the room, wondering if they really are watching us, and I grip the sides of my chair a tiny bit tighter.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say to my husband, through gritted teeth. ‘I don’t know what to believe. I don’t know what you’re capable of any more. When I married you, Callum, I didn’t think you were capable of having an affair, not at first, and I didn’t think you were the kind of man who’d be able to lie to me, time and again. But you are. Not only once, but multiple times. Did you think I never knew, Callum? About any of them?’

  His face changes, paling even further as the impact of my words sinks in. Good. It is hard to hold back, now. I carry on speaking, the words rushing out of me like a dam that has been broken.

  ‘I didn’t think you were the kind of guy to ignore his teenage daughter in favour of some no-strings shagging down the road, but you are. I didn’t think you were the type of guy to enlist a hot-shot lawyer at the first inkling of trouble, but you are. I didn’t think you were the kind of guy to text their mistress whilst on holiday with your family, but you are. And the minute I found out about you and Caroline, do you know what I did? I went through your phone. I became that woman. You turned me into someone I never wanted to be.’

  I don’t add that I’ve been going through his phone for years; there’s not really any need. I’m slightly out of breath now, almost panting, but Callum is looking at me strangely.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ he says slowly, ‘so you knew?’

  Too late, I realise my mistake.

  But he’s quick. ‘You knew about me and Caroline before this – before all of this happened? You knew whilst we were in France? Before we were in France?’

  I can see his brain ticking, the realisation dawning on him. I bite down on the inside of my mouth, furious with myself for giving this nugget of information away.

  ‘I – no, I didn’t know for sure,’ I say, backtracking slightly, ‘I didn’t know who she was.’

  ‘But you said you went through my phone,’ Callum says, quick as a flash, ‘just now, you said you’d become “that woman”. Which means you did know who she was, because you saw our texts, you saw her name. Didn’t you, Siobhan?’ He leans forward on his plastic chair, and he’s stopped crying now.

  ‘Yes,’ I say quietly. ‘Yes, Callum, I knew you were having an affair. I’ve known for months.’

  I raise my head to look up at him, expecting to see more sorrowfulness in his eyes now, more regret at what he has put me through. But that isn’t what I see at all. His gaze is hard, and his words, when they come, make me gasp.

  ‘You’ve known for months,’ he repeats, and I nod, thinking back to that awful day in April when I’d found the receipt in his jacket pocket – dinner at the Blackbird in Norwich. It’s where he always used to take them, his little bits on the side. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was happening all over again. I’d been a fool to think it was over, a fool for thinking I’d won, that my patience and virtue had kept our family together and stopped him looking elsewhere.

  That afternoon, I’d answered his phone for him whilst he was in the shower, heard her purring down the line. The hideous embarrassment of it all, when I realised I was right, when I looked back through his call history, his messages. It was like being in a time warp, backtracking eighteen months. When she’d phoned, I’d thought it was the plumber. Tragic, I know. I may as well have been wearing my pinny at the same time. I’ve always wondered whether she wanted me to find out, calling him so brazenly like that in the middle of the day. I hung up at the sound of her voice.

  ‘So if you’ve known about Caroline all this time, who she was, what she was to me,’ he says, ‘what I want to know is, where were you on the night she died, Siobhan? Where were you on the night little Eve Grant went missing?’

  Oh, for God’s sake.

  ‘I was at book club,’ I say slowly, ‘you know where I was.’

  ‘That’s where you say you were,’ he says, ‘but how do I know you’re telling the truth? We slept in different rooms that night, after all.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ipswich

  16th August

  DS Wildy

  ‘He’s a real dick,’ Dave says, stuffing a Malteser into his mouth as the two of them watch Callum try to implicate his wife in Caroline’s death.

  Alex nods, reaches for the bag of chocolates which are steadily melting in the heat. ‘He is,’ he agrees, ‘but look, maybe he’s got a point. Don’t you think? I’ve been thinking we need to look at the wife more closely.’

  Dave makes a face, getting to his feet with a sigh. ‘Personally, I can’t see it. Siobhan Dillon? Look at her, she wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

  They both look, taking in the way she’s staring her husband down. She appears tired, with dark circles around her eyes, which is unsurprising given the circumstances. Her hair is pulled back from her shoulders, tied neatly with a few strands escaping. She looks younger than her forty-four years.

  ‘McVey wants to chat to her now,’ Dave says, ‘woman to woman. Think she’s got a bit of a thing about it.’

  Alex nods, wiping a smear of chocolate off his hand and onto his jeans. ‘What McVey wants, McVey gets.’ He pauses. ‘Has anyone checked out Siobhan’s book group alibi?’

  Ipswich Police Station

  Interview Room 3

  Present: DCI McVey, Siobhan Dillon

  DCI McVey: It’s nice to see you again, Mrs Dillon. Thank you for coming in. Please state your name for the tape.

  SD: Siobhan Elizabeth Dillon.

  DCI McVey: Thank you. Mrs Dillon, as you know, we are currently holding your husband in custody in connection with the murder of Caroline Harvey, and the potential involvement in the disappearance of Eve Grant. We are nearing the end of the maximum period of time for which we can hold him in regards to this offence, meaning that it’s of paramount importance that you answer my questions honestly, to avoid us wasting any further time. Is that clear, Mrs Dillon?

  SD: Yes. [pause] Can you call me Siobhan, rather than Mrs Dillon?

  DCI McVey: Of course. Siobhan. Did you know that your husband Callum Dillon had been conducting an extra-marital affair with Ms Harvey?

  SD: [pause] I did learn of the affair very recently. Yes. I did.

  DCI McVey: That must have been upsetting.

  SD: Yes. It was. Of course.

  DCI McVey: How did you find out about the affair, Siobhan? SD: [sighs] Do I have to go into that here?

  DCI McVey: Well, it would help if you did.

  SD: [pause] I found a receipt in his jacket, for a place he – a place he used to take women. And then I answered a phone call meant for him. From her. I thought it was the plumber, the boiler was on the blink and we were waiting for him to call. Callum was – he was in the shower. I guess he’d got complacent, he left his phone on the side and I picked up without thinking. I wouldn’t normally. [pause] But after I heard her voice I looked through the phone, saw a message from her.

  DCI McVey: What did the message say?

  SD: I can’t remember the details of it. But it was obvious. Kisses and everything.

  DCI McVey: Lots of people put kisses after their texts. What made you so sure that this was indicative of a sexual relationship?

  SD: [sighs] Trust me, Detective, it was obvious. [pause] I’m sure you’ve been through his phone records anyway. It isn’t exactly the first time he’s done any of this. He doesn’t really care about getting caught. I usually turn a blind eye – I’m sure I’m not the first woman you’ve heard say that in your time.

  DCI McVey: [inclines her head] Siobhan, can you tell us a bit about the days leading up to you and your family’s trip to Saint Juillet, France?

  SD: Yes. My sister owns the villa, she was driving out there anyway to take over some furniture, bits for the house. She’s been doing it up fo
r the last two years, she’s a designer. So she asked if we wanted to come this time, fly out and see the place for ourselves.

  DCI McVey: And it was your husband who booked the flights, sorted out when you’d be going.

  SD: Obviously, yes. But we all wanted to go.

  DCI McVey: Siobhan, do you think your husband arranged the holiday in advance to remove himself from the country following the premeditated murder of Caroline Harvey? That he knew what was going to happen that night and wanted to ensure he had an escape route in the morning?

  SD: I – no. I don’t know.

  DCI McVey: Siobhan, please don’t be afraid to tell me the truth when I ask you this next question. [pause] Has your husband ever been violent towards you?

  SD: [pause]

  DCI McVey: Siobhan?

  SD: No. No, he’s never hit me. Nothing like that.

  DCI McVey: Are you sure about that?

  SD: Yes, I… Yes, I’m sure. [knots her hands together in her lap] Please, Detective. I’m sure.

  DCI McVey: You say he’s had affairs before. Have you ever confronted him about them?

  SD: No, I haven’t. I was trying – I wanted to keep things together. I wanted to remain a family. And I thought –

  DCI McVey: You thought what?

  SD: [speaking more softly] I thought the affairs had stopped. He seemed to stop. I thought it meant I’d done the right thing, you know, keeping quiet about the other women. For about two years it all calmed down, he was around more, I didn’t think he was seeing anybody else.

  DCI McVey: So you’re understandably angry, then. You were angry to find out that he’d begun a relationship with Caroline.

  SD: [pause] I was upset, Detective. Not angry.

  DCI McVey: OK. Siobhan, have you ever met Jenny and Rick Grant before?

  SD: No. Their names meant nothing to me until – until all of this. I don’t know them, and neither does Callum, as far as I know. He’s never mentioned their names to me.

  DCI McVey: How can you be sure about that, Siobhan? When up until a few months ago, you had no idea your husband was sleeping with Ms Caroline Harvey?