Their Little Secret

by Mark Billingham

  Sarah smiles.

  Of course, she thinks, you can’t possibly be inviting a lonely single woman for dinner, can you? That’s best avoided. It’s awkward and embarrassing for all concerned.

  ‘I’ll see you in the park, then.’

  ‘You certainly will,’ Sarah says.

  ‘I’ll be the one chasing an unruly Cockapoo and picking up dog-mess.’

  Sarah moves towards her, but the woman waves a hand graciously, then leans to lay it on her hostess’s arm. ‘Don’t be silly, I can find my own way out. I’ll leave you to carry on clearing up.’

  She could probably do the school run in her sleep. Left on to the main road, the cut-through down to the tube station, then straight on past the posh houses; the ‘village’ green and the overpriced gastropub, crawling through traffic which thickens with oversized 4 × 4s every half a mile or so.

  It makes her feel slightly ashamed of her own little car.

  Parking, when she gets to Brooklands Hill, is the usual circle of hell. The angry gestures and the leaning on horns as the battalion of shiny black Chelsea tractors jostle for a spot as near to the school as possible. Sarah isn’t bothered. Once in a while, someone with no idea what indicators are for will pull out of the ideal space just as she’s arriving, but she always drives past, letting the car behind her nab it. She much prefers somewhere on one of the roads a little further away.

  She parks and walks the few minutes back, waving at one or two parents who have already collected, until she reaches the school gates. A woman called Savita immediately beckons her over.

  ‘Bloody nits again.’

  ‘Oh, God. Arjun?’ Sarah is very good at remembering the other children’s names.

  ‘Well, not yet, but it’s only a matter of time. Going around apparently. Be a good idea to check Jamie.’

  ‘Yeah, I will.’

  ‘Makes me feel scuzzy just thinking about it.’

  ‘It might just be in one class.’

  ‘No chance. Spreads like the bloody plague …’

  Now, Heather – definitely one of the nicer mums – has arrived, and David, a single dad, is right behind her. They all greet one another. Air-kisses, like actors mingling outside a premiere.

  ‘I was just telling Sarah there’s nits going round,’ Savita says.

  David barely has time to react before his daughter comes charging through the gates, followed quickly by Savita’s son, Arjun.

  Sarah looks beyond them towards the school and shakes her head. ‘Jamie’s taking his time as usual,’ she says.

  She and Heather say goodbye to David and Savita as they usher the children towards their cars, but no sooner have they gone than a woman named Caroline bowls up, dressed to the nines, as always. If there’s time, Sarah tries to make an effort on the school run, but she draws the line at full make-up and Ugg boots. Caroline begins talking before anyone has had so much as a chance to say hello.

  ‘Stupid meeting overran again. It makes me so angry, because they know I need to get away.’

  ‘Don’t panic,’ Sarah says. ‘Jacob hasn’t come out yet.’

  ‘Plus, I’ve got a mountain of paperwork to do when I get home.’

  The woman is a little full of herself, forever banging on about her high-powered job as a PA to someone or other and how she just manages to juggle career and motherhood. From the little Sarah has seen of her son, Jacob – who is only marginally less fond of trumpeting his achievements than his mother – the apple hasn’t fallen too far from the tree.

  Heather catches Sarah’s eye and winks. ‘That’s what comes with having it all, Caroline,’ she says.

  Sarah smiles at Heather. ‘Living the dream,’ she says.

  For a few minutes, she listens to Heather and Caroline talk about some school quiz-night they’ve let themselves get roped into. There’s a microphone to organise, and catering, and a raffle. Sarah’s happy enough to stand back, because she’s never really been the type to get involved with fetes and fund-raising, committees and what have you.

  It’s fair enough, because some people aren’t, are they?

  Though she’s rarely the one driving the conversations, Sarah’s content to spend this time here every day, hanging out at the gates and chewing the fat with an interesting bunch of fellow parents. She’s grown fond of Heather and Savita. There’s a dishy dad called Alex who she flirts with a bit sometimes, and a woman called Sue with whom she’s been having a fascinating debate about the stringency of DBS checks.

  There’s all sorts.

  Most are pleasant and made her welcome when Jamie first started, and even if one or two – she glances at Caroline – can sometimes be a little … poisonous, she always enjoys the banter, the intrigue and the silly chit-chat, while she waits for her son.

  Eventually, once quiz-night duties have been allocated, Sarah steps forward and, after another hopeful look towards the exit, says, ‘I suppose I’m going to have to go in and look for him. Again!’

  ‘Don’t worry, mine’s the same,’ Heather says.

  ‘Send Jacob out if you see him,’ Caroline says, busy with her phone.

  They continue to make sympathetic noises behind her as she moves through the gates and heads across the playground. She smiles at the children, bundled up in hats and coats on their way out, exchanges nods with several of the teachers, then pushes open the doors to the school and steps inside.

  Sarah closes her eyes for a few moments.

  The warmth and the smell.

  It’s where she feels safest, where she feels as though she’s part of something.

  THREE

  Mary Fulton lived in a small house in a side-street off Shoot-Up Hill, close to Kilburn station. Waiting on a freezing doorstep for his knock to be answered, Thorne was thankful that the death message had already been delivered; that the woman he had come to see had been told about her sister’s suicide the previous afternoon by two of the officers who had been first on the scene.

  The shitty end of the stick for uniform, same as usual.

  When the door was finally answered, Thorne presented his warrant card and introduced himself. He said, ‘I’m very sorry for your loss,’ hoping that his surprise at seeing a woman so much older than he had been expecting was not obvious. As usual, his face had failed miserably to disguise what he was thinking.

  ‘Pip was twenty years younger than me,’ Mary said. She shook her head and manufactured a thin, sad smile. ‘She always called herself “The Accident”.’ The woman was probably in her late sixties, her grey hair cut fashionably short. She wore a long tartan skirt and dark cardigan and, as the smile evaporated, she reached to toy with a silver chain that hung at the neck of a white blouse. ‘Sounds horrible now, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Not that it was an accident, of course.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The exact opposite, if anything.’

  Looking over her shoulder into the house, Thorne caught sight of a younger woman emerging from a side room. She glanced towards him before turning away down the hall. ‘I’m quite keen to take a look inside your sister’s flat,’ he said.

  ‘Oh.’ The older woman looked nonplussed. ‘Do you need my permission?’

  ‘To be honest, I’m not really sure,’ Thorne said. Had Philippa Goodwin been the victim of a murder, then by now her home would have been swarming with police and Crime Scene Investigators, but there was no clear protocol when it came to those who had taken their own lives. ‘I’d like it, though.’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll have to go over myself at some point, of course.’ She turned briefly away, as though distracted by something. ‘Sort things out.’

  Thorne reached into his pocket for the bunch of keys that had, as per health and safety requirements regarding personal effects contaminated by blood, been thoroughly disinfected. ‘I’ve got these.’

  ‘Oh.’ Mary tentatively reached out a hand and Thorne l
aid down the keys on her palm. The woman’s fist closed slowly around them.

  ‘Actually, I was hoping you might come with me,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Only if you feel up to it, obviously.’ He watched as the woman uncurled her fist and stared down at her dead sister’s keys. She rubbed the worn leather fob between her fingers. ‘I’d quite like to talk to you about Philippa on the way. Again, only if you want to.’

  ‘Can my daughter come too?’ She turned as the younger woman appeared in the hallway behind her once again. ‘She’s been here ever since we got the news.’

  ‘Of course.’ Thorne waited as the two women looked at one another. The younger one seemed a trifle reluctant, but eventually shrugged her assent.

  Mary Fulton said, ‘Just give us five minutes.’

  The older woman said little, hunched in the front seat of Thorne’s BMW as they drove east towards Tufnell Park. The younger woman in the back seat was considerably more talkative, though she spoke as if for the sake of it, her tone colourless. Looking at the woman in his rear-view, her eyes puffy and red-rimmed as she stared out of the window, Thorne guessed that talking was preferable to weeping.

  ‘This is a nice car,’ she said.

  ‘I used to have a vintage one. Much nicer.’

  ‘Policemen must get paid a lot more than I thought.’

  ‘This was second-hand.’ Thorne slowed for lights, took another glance at her. ‘Very second-hand.’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be well paid. I mean, it’s a horrible job, isn’t it? Horrible. Seeing people at their very worst, seeing terrible things, dealing with the … fallout, whatever. It’s hard to imagine all that wouldn’t change someone, day in day out, do something strange to them … and I really can’t imagine anyone actually enjoying it.’ She lengthened the seat-belt and leaned forward. ‘Do you enjoy it?’

  Thorne eased away from the lights as Mary Fulton turned to look at her daughter.

  ‘I’m not really sure that’s—’

  ‘I’m only asking.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Ella’s got no filter at the best of times,’ Mary said.

  ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘So, now …’ Mary tightened her grip on the black handbag clutched in her lap. ‘You know, being so upset.’

  Thorne made eye contact with Ella in the rear-view. ‘Were you close to your aunt?’

  Ella sat back hard and shook her head. ‘What kind of question is that?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Jesus …’

  ‘It was a stupid question.’

  ‘They were very close,’ Mary said.

  Half a minute crawled past, somewhat awkwardly, then Ella sighed and spoke as if she were talking to herself. ‘She was more like my best friend than my aunt. She was only a few years older than me …’

  They drove on in silence to Chalk Farm, then Thorne took a series of cut-throughs he knew well and turned on to Kentish Town Road, no more than two minutes from where his own flat was. It had begun to rain, which did little to improve their progress in traffic heavy enough to grace rush-hour almost anywhere else in the country.

  Thorne said, ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking, but do you have any idea what might have made Philippa want to take her own life?’

  The silence returned with a vengeance and Thorne sensed the tension immediately. He looked in the mirror and saw Ella Fulton turn her blank gaze back towards the shops crawling past her and the grim-faced pedestrians scuttling through the rain. Next to him, Mary Fulton flinched when a driver ahead leaned on his horn.

  ‘Are you going to tell him?’ Mary asked her daughter. ‘Or shall I?’

  Ella said nothing.

  ‘What?’ Thorne waited.

  Behind him, the younger woman shook her head. ‘I’m not sure—’

  ‘Oh, come on.’ Mary turned to look at Ella. ‘We’ve been tiptoeing around the subject ever since we found out what happened. You know what Pip had been going through as well as I do.’ She smacked her hand against the top of her seat. ‘Ella …?’

  Ella puffed out her cheeks and leaned towards Thorne. ‘There was a man she’d been seeing.’

  ‘I can think of a few other words for him,’ Mary snapped.

  ‘It didn’t end well.’

  ‘Was she dumped?’ Thorne asked.

  Mary grunted. ‘That’s one way of putting it.’

  ‘Pip was extremely unhappy,’ Ella said. ‘The whole thing obviously hit her very hard.’

  Mary Fulton turned in her seat until she was staring at Thorne. She said, ‘So, not only can I tell you why my sister jumped in front of that train, I can tell you the name of the man who was responsible for it.’

  FOUR

  Mary Fulton muttered, ‘Right then,’ and used the keys Thorne had given her to open the front door to Philippa Goodwin’s flat. The rain had petered out. Ella moved forward to slip her arm through her mother’s and the two of them stepped inside.

  ‘Why did she walk all the way to Highgate?’ Mary seemed unduly bothered by the question. She turned and pointed. ‘There’s a station just round the corner.’

  ‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever know,’ Thorne said.

  Giving herself enough time to change her mind, he thought. Or to pluck up the courage. Once mother and daughter had gathered up the mail from the tiled floor, he followed them into the hallway.

  A selection of brightly coloured hats and scarves had been hung in a row above a large mirror. Beneath it, a shiny black bicycle was leaning against the wall, its lock neatly coiled inside the basket. Thorne watched Mary touch the saddle as she walked past.

  It was warm inside and what sounded like folk music drifted down from the property upstairs. Thorne thought he could smell caramel, or vanilla. He looked and saw one of those glass infuser things with sticks sitting on a low table.

  ‘It’s all junk,’ Ella said, dropping the mail on to the table next to it.

  Thorne was no expert on London house prices, beyond knowing that they were stupid, but he could not help but wonder how a university lecturer had been able to afford a flat which took up the entire ground floor of a large terraced house in Tufnell Park. Mary Fulton clocked his expression as they walked into the sitting room and, once again, it became apparent that the question had registered on his face.

  ‘Our parents were pretty well off,’ she said. ‘Big house in Hampstead, all that. When they died there was enough for me to pay off the mortgage and for Pip to get this place.’ She nodded towards her daughter. ‘For Ella to get somewhere, too.’

  ‘Must have been a hell of a big house,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Not really.’ Ella crossed to one of the windows and raised a blind, revealing a decent-sized rear garden.

  ‘Actually, there was still plenty left over,’ Mary said. ‘Enough for all of us to have something tucked away for a rainy day.’

  Thorne nodded. It sounded as if the Goodwin family money could buy any number of gold-plated umbrellas.

  Ella sank, sighing, into an old-fashioned armchair; one of several items of artfully mismatched furniture. Talk of her inheritance had changed her grief-stricken expression into one that seemed rather more sullen. ‘My place isn’t quite as nice as this, by the way. I mean it’s a bit bigger, but it’s not in a very nice area.’

  Thorne said nothing, asking himself why it was that so many people with money – especially those into whose laps it had conveniently fallen – seemed embarrassed by it, or even ashamed, taking time to let you know it actually meant nothing; that material worth did not define them.

  That it hadn’t spoiled them as human beings.

  He began to mooch around, casting an eye towards Ella Fulton every so often and wondering if he should perhaps volunteer to make things a little easier for her. He was here to help, after all. He could ask if she fancied bunging the odd ten grand his way, seeing as having a few quid in the bank was cle
arly such a burden to her.

  ‘What is it you’re looking for?’ Mary asked.

  ‘I honestly don’t know,’ Thorne said.

  The stripped wooden floor had been all but covered with a selection of faded rugs and the walls were randomly decorated with framed prints: pencil sketches; Mediterranean landscapes; posters for exhibitions and film festivals. There were magazines strewn across almost every available surface, textbooks lying open on a desk next to a dusty computer and many more stacked in a floor-to-ceiling bookcase near the window. He stepped closer to take a look. There were a few authors whose names he recognised, but none he had ever read. There seemed no apparent method to the way the titles had been arranged – fiction next to non-fiction, hardback next to paperback – and he could not help but think how outraged at least one person he knew would be by such haphazard filing; by the chaos.

  ‘He’s looking for a note,’ Ella said.

  Mary said, ‘Oh,’ and sat down on an old leather sofa, opposite her daughter. ‘Yes, I suppose she’ll have left a note. They usually do, don’t they?’

  Thorne would have been very happy to have discovered that Philippa Goodwin had left a note – something which might provide some of those answers he did not usually get – but he wasn’t holding out much hope. He said, ‘No, actually they don’t.’ The truth was that most people who took their own lives did so without leaving written notification of intent or convenient explanation. That they did was one of the many myths. Thorne knew very well that most suicides did not, in fact, take place around Christmas or between three and four o’clock in the morning and that even though more men than women killed themselves annually, women made more attempts.

  He knew, he thought, rather too much.

  Thorne walked into the next room and saw that the somewhat disordered state of the sitting room was in direct proportion to the neatness of the small kitchen. Either Philippa hadn’t eaten at home in the days before her death or simply believed that order and cleanliness mattered in some places more than others. A quick look in the bathroom confirmed the latter theory.