All Your Fault: a gripping psychological thriller that will keep you guessing

by NJ Moss

  She said it with her natural detachment, but the words were like a soothing balm. For so long, I’d wanted to make her proud, wanted her to say something, anything positive about me. And here it was, the validation I’d been seeking. I didn’t care if it made me pathetic or needy or childish. I held on to it. Because I knew it was only a passing moment and probably didn’t mean much – if anything – to her.

  As we walked together to the café, I ignored the voice taunting at the edge of my good mood, the voice that told me the greatest thing I could be to Isabella Addington was a stranger on a park bench.

  25

  The feeling of control stayed with me for a week, a persistent buzz thrumming beneath everything I did. If I couldn’t sleep, it was because I didn’t want to sleep. I’d read instead. Or listen to music. It was time taken, not stolen. If my heart was a rave banging in my chest, fine, it was the best damned rave in England, the sort where lives were made and relationships were forged.

  Insomnia was a gift of glorious time, I decided, time that let me binge make-up channels on YouTube and learn their art. I hid behind a mask of finely-sculpted features, using it more expertly than I ever had before. It didn’t matter how my face really looked as long as outwardly I was fierce.

  I was in charge of myself. I was in charge, full-fucking-stop.

  If this was mania then it was the sort that was paying off. Even Clive, ever reticent with positive feedback, seemed impressed with me one day after a meeting with Timothy Richardson, one of our most finicky clients. Richardson had yet again failed to implement Clive’s advice. He’d disregarded notes about restructuring and had failed to make ten per cent of his workforce redundant.

  These were the cards we dealt with in Langdale Consulting: redundancy and disarray.

  I leapt in when it appeared as if Mr Richardson was going to withdraw his business. “Then you should tell us to leave and never come back,” I snapped, already standing as if I was going to march out.

  His face collapsed. Beside me, I felt Clive tensing.

  “Excuse me?” Richardson hissed.

  “I said,” I went on, resting my hands on the desk and staring him straight in the eye like the craziest bitch in the nuthouse, “if you’re not going to take our advice, what’s the point of us being here? It’s like going to a strip club and staring at the wall, a rather fruitless endeavour, I think we can all agree. Your business is failing. It’s already failed if you refuse to put your ego in check. You’re drowning and instead of clutching on to the rope we’re throwing you, you’re strangling yourself with it. So, which is it to be? We’re actually quite busy today, Tim, so if you have no use for us, we’ll be on our way.”

  I stormed out, head held high.

  A few minutes later, Clive emerged, a disbelieving smirk on his face. “Jesus Christ, Grace. You’ve got some goddamn stones on you.”

  I was shocked at the vicious way I’d spoken to Richardson, but then I hadn’t always been the woman rooting around for colouring pens under the settee. I felt old parts of me emerging into my personality, aspects of myself that had collapsed under the weight of Hope’s death. I felt confident and brand new. So what if we were basically fleecing Timothy Richardson? It wasn’t our fault he paid us and then did the opposite of what we told him.

  When Russ’s trampoline arrived, I assembled it myself at half past six in the morning. With a light drizzle lacing the air and the security light guiding me, I grunted and sweated and then, when Russie woke up, it was there waiting for him.

  “Mummy!” he yelled, bubbling with excitement. “Can I go on it before school? Please? Please?”

  “Of course you can. But only if you promise to jump as high as you can, okay?”

  “Daddy, look what Mummy did,” Russ said when Troy came to the back door in his dressing gown.

  “I told you I’d do that tonight.” He looked at me like I was a new person. It reminded me of the first few weeks after the university party where we met. He’d had this glint of fascination then, as though he’d never tire of learning all the little details about me. “What’s gotten into you lately?”

  “You’re saying you don’t like it?” I laughed, grabbing him and kissing him hard.

  “Mum,” Mia said, staring bleary-eyed from the hallway. “Do you know how gross that is?”

  “Mwah, mwah, mwah.” I chased her up the stairs as she giggled and flapped her hands at me. We ended up on her bed, wrestling, until she remembered she was almost eleven and far too mature to be wrestling with her silly old mum.

  Things kept getting better.

  We danced around the kitchen when Troy received his advance from the small independent publisher: two thousand pounds, the most money he’d ever earned for writing by far. “Now I need to get on with writing the bloody book,” he said good-naturedly.

  He showed me the publisher’s website as if to prove it was legitimate. It looked like any other website to me. And the money was evidence enough. It wasn’t vanity publishing. They hadn’t published many other books, but they wanted to invest in Troy. Somebody had finally realised how talented my husband was.

  “I don’t know how I’m going to juggle work and the book,” he said one evening, leaning against the kitchen counter.

  “So quit.”

  He recoiled as though I was radioactive. “Grace, be real.”

  “I am being real. All our lives, Troy, we’ve been living in fear. What might happen. What could happen. But this is it, your big chance, and we’re in a situation where you can quit and I can support us. Anyway, it’s not like you won’t be working. You’ll be working at what you love doing. It’s your dream.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” His voice caught with emotion. I knew he was already envisioning himself discussing this moment at a writer’s convention. I couldn’t have done it without her. “Are things at work really going that well?”

  I grabbed him and kissed his stupid handsome goatee, and then wrapped my arms around him and sunk deeper into the kiss, feeling his desire flame in step with mine. “I want to do this,” I said, breaking it off as suddenly as I’d started it. “I can do this. I know I can. Right now… God, I don’t want to sound conceited. But right now I feel like I can do anything.”

  “You’re not conceited.” He brushed hair from my face. “I’ve always known you could conquer the world if you wanted to.”

  26

  Vicky didn’t protest when Troy put in his notice, which conjured up all sorts of paranoid theories in my mind about why she’d suddenly taken a disliking to him. Troy had had an affair with her and jilted her. Troy had been caught watching porn at work. Troy had tried to steal from the company. Troy had done all manner of underhanded or even illegal things. All nonsense, of course, but the confusion persisted.

  Why does she hate you, Troy?

  They’d seemed to get on okay for years. I’d seen them together at work functions and never detected any resentment, not until the past few months. But it was done. I’d made the offer on a high and when the low came it was too late to retract it. The notice was put in place. From the way Troy described it, Vicky was glad to kick him out the door.

  One afternoon I googled the symptoms of caffeine addiction and found I fitted most of them. Restlessness, rambling thoughts, difficulty concentrating, a general feeling of fogginess… on and on, and, of course, my beloved insomnia. When I looked back on the week of my first pay cheque and the way I’d glorified insomnia, I cringed.

  Enough whining, I snapped at myself one afternoon, sitting in my office. It’s time to do something about this.

  I made a chart and decided I would track the number of coffees I drank in a day, but when the first day showed I’d consumed six, I lost my nerve. Then I decided I was taking all of this rather too seriously, becoming quite obsessive, in fact, and it was this – the obsessive thinking about caffeine – and not the caffeine itself that was driving me bonkers. Everybody consumed caffeine. It wasn’t a big deal unless I made it a
big deal.

  Then I decided I was making excuses and I had to quit again.

  About an hour later, Olivia came to visit me, wearing her usual impish smile and bearing her usual mug of lightning, which I drank because…

  Well, fuck it. What was I, a monk?

  Life was better than good and yet this sense of utter dread lurked over everything I did. In fits and starts I’d retrieve the feeling of power my first payday had brought. I kicked ass more than once, my reports were always professionally written and researched, and even if Zora and Derrick and a few others enjoyed intimating Clive and I had some sort of romantic relationship, they were gracious enough to keep their remarks veiled.

  But the whispering voice would always return, telling me something was wrong, I was wrong. I’d have to face up to it one day.

  “You’re a demon, Grace,” the man in the black hat told me casually one night, perched on the end of my bed as I lay pinned in sleep paralysis. I tried to move; my mouth wouldn’t open to scream. He smirked and his teeth were bright in the dark and I knew this without looking, because it was a dream. Wake up, Grace. Or was I awake? “You’ll realise that one day.”

  I stopped arguing with Clive about the overtime. Once Troy’s final payday came and went I’d be the sole breadwinner. The thought had made me feel heroic at first. Now I felt a weight bearing down. This was how Troy had felt for the past ten years, I scolded myself.

  The reports made more references to car collisions, but only here and there. Incidental. Buried. I saw them because I was looking for them. A slippery road. Did that count as a reference or was I reading too much into it? But then why say road and not the more commonly used slope?

  On the evenings I had to wait for Mr Self-Important Dickhead to ring, the phone remained silent.

  Russ wet the bed three more times over the next two weeks, walking silently into our bedroom and shaking me awake. He always watched Troy as he did this, as though ashamed his father would wake and discover what he’d done. I changed the sheets quietly and then held him, sometimes falling asleep in bed with him. I talked to his teacher again, but all was fine, she assured me. He was doing well.

  Some children struggled with Reception. I wished people would stop telling me that, no matter how true it was.

  Russ’s Reception struggles spread through the house; one day I was taking a pasta bake from the oven and I heard a clattering noise from the dining room. I rushed in and found Mia had dumped all the plates and cutlery in the centre of the table. She usually took pride in setting the table, but now she sat with her head bowed, tears glistening in her eyes. Her closed fist rested on her knee and her other hand moved to her hair and smoothed it over her face.

  “Mia.” Terror stabbed me in the chest. Mia was the calm one. This was the equivalent of punching a hole in the door for her. I walked over and tried to place my hand on her shoulder, but she flinched away. “What’s wrong?”

  “Like you don’t know,” she scoffed. “Why don’t you go and ask Russ?”

  “Mia, look at me.” She stared at the table, bottom lip trembling. “Please.”

  She slowly met my eyes. “I’m looking at you. Now what?”

  “I promise I don’t know what this is about.”

  “That makes it worse. It means I might as well disappear and nobody would even care.”

  I pulled up a chair, feeling like the worst excuse for a mother. I made to place my hand on her again and then thought better of it. I wanted desperately to smooth the tears from her cheeks, but I knew she wouldn’t let me.

  “Talk to me. You know you don’t have to keep anything from us. Not ever.”

  “I shouldn’t even have to say.”

  Wind howled outside. A memory struck: pressing my ear against the cold winter glass, wondering if I listened hard enough I’d be able to hear Hope’s voice. I pushed it away. I’d been a confused teenager, grieving. Of course it was natural to have silly thoughts.

  “If you don’t tell me what’s wrong,” I said, some bite in my voice, “how are we supposed to discuss it?”

  “Who said I wanted to discuss it?”

  “Young lady, you’re testing my patience.”

  Her shoulders slumped and she picked at the table with her thumbnail. “It’s just it’s all about Russ. If Russ has a good day at school then it’s all about that and if he has a bad day it’s all about that and… Mum, I’m not selfish. Really I’m not.”

  “I know.” A sob tried to crack my voice. I swallowed it down. “You’re the furthest thing from selfish.”

  “But it’s not fair everything is about Russ all the time because this is his first year in school. I didn’t cry like a stupid little baby when I started school.”

  “It’s harder for him. Everybody’s different. Some people take longer to adjust. But you’re right. We haven’t been giving you the attention you deserve and I’m glad you said something. Really, I am. I know what it’s like to live in a house and feel like you’re invisible and I’d never want to do that to you. I love you so much. The day you were born, it was the happiest day of my life. I felt like I’d spent all my life searching for something, and you were it.”

  I trailed off, realising I’d begun to cry. Mia looked at me with surprise and then she was the one to reach across and smooth the tears from my cheeks. “I’m sorry, Mum. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

  “You have nothing to apologise for. I don’t want to make you feel unloved. I love you more than I could ever explain.”

  “I love you, too,” she said, leaning across to hug me.

  I savoured the moment, which was getting rarer as time went on. I held her tightly and inhaled the scent of her hair, the same way I’d spent hours breathing in the smell of her as a baby. Then we got up and starting setting the table together.

  “Mum,” she said, without looking up.

  “Hmm?”

  “Do you think things will go back to normal soon?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like with Grandpa picking us up from school so much.”

  “Well, your father will be picking you up every day from now on. He’ll be working from home so he can fit it around his schedule. Don’t you like it when your grandparents pick you up?”

  “No. I mean, yes. It’s…” She paused, glancing at me shyly, and then turned back to the table. “I like it when you pick us up.”

  I thought about what to say, but then I realised Mia wasn’t waiting for a reply. She had wanted me to know how she felt. Now I did. And there was nothing I could do about it. In all likelihood, I wouldn’t be picking them up from school for a long time. I’d spoken to Clive about getting more permanent full-time hours and he’d sounded optimistic. Even if this was something I should be proud of, it was hard not to think about everything I was losing.

  27

  I returned home from book club with tension tugging at every part of me. We’d read The Virgin Suicides, chosen by Mike, and the discussion of the book was driving a drill into my head. We’d had to push the meeting back by a couple of weeks; life had gotten in the way, like always. I’d thought the gap might make me forget the rawness of the novel. But talking about the deaths of the little girls, I couldn’t help but let my mind stray to Hope, to the awful evening that would never leave me the hell alone.

  Troy was on his computer when I walked into the living room, as he often was lately. Except instead of staring at a blank page, he was typing up a storm, orchestral music blaring loudly from his over-ear headphones. I stood in the doorway and watched him for a few minutes, brimming with pride.

  “I needed that first glimmer of hope,” he’d told me a few nights earlier. Hope. “I’ve got it, Gracie-kins. And nothing’s going to stop me.”

  I went upstairs and looked in on Russ. He was already asleep, his nightlight showing me his pensive face. He’d looked so peaceful in sleep, once, but ever since school a new heaviness had come over him. He was slowly returning to his old self at home, but I knew it w
ould be a long process. And he still disliked school. He hated maths. He hated English. He hated anything that didn’t involve building or playing. I silently asked whoever was listening to let him be all right.

  Mia was awake, sitting at her desk, her lamp reflecting off the glass of the photo frame. A tremor moved through me when I saw it was a school photograph of Hope, enthralling with her cheeky smile and her vivacious eyes, her signature braid draped over her shoulder. An insane thought spiralled into my mind. Mother had given Mia this photo to screw with my head, to drive me mad, because she hated me more than anybody, resented me for that rainy evening, and she wanted to torture me, to make my hold on reality as tentative as her own mother’s had been, before—

  Quiet, Grace.

  Mia turned. “What do you think, Mum? Do you think it’s good? Or is it terrible? I don’t even know.”

  I strode over to the desk, telling myself Hope wasn’t watching me, judging me, hating me because I was here and she wasn’t. Mia was sketching the photograph. In black and white, Hope seemed much less happy. It was as though Mia was painting her ghost, the harsh pencil strokes adding ancient years to her face.

  “It’s incredible. You’re very talented.”

  Her cheeks reddened like they always did when she was embarrassed by praise. “Mum, how come you never talk about Hope?”

  “What? I do. All the time.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Not really.”

  I sat on her bed and interlaced my fingers. “What do you want to know?”

  For some unknown, unknowable reason, panic was streaking through my body like a torrent of fire. I made my exterior calm and open and not, I hoped, as strangled and terrified as I felt inside. I smiled and forced myself to look into Mia’s eyes and project the message this conversation wasn’t making me want to run away as fast as I could.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Like, did you have a secret language? What sort of games did you used to play? Did you ever play pranks on each other? Stuff like that. I’ve never had a sister.”