Just over three and a half thousand cupcakes. Plus a three-tier centrepiece to match. Could she do it? Should she? It would be a nightmare, but the money was good and who knew how many word-of-mouth recommendations it would lead to. Maraschino’s circle of friends could be a gold mine.
She decided to go for it and after agreeing a price and morning delivery time she quick-marched the rest of the way home, keen to get back and draw up a shopping list of ingredients.
Opening the front door, though, she was derailed by a postcard on the mat. A picture of a tiny ginger kitten with huge eyes, and the back scrawled with Aisling’s huge bubble-shaped handwriting.
I’m sorry. I love you. I miss you. A x
It was like her heart was being squeezed.
What were you supposed to do, she thought, when the person you most wanted to be around, the person who made you happy, was also the person who had betrayed you?
Her phone rang. She thought it might be Jane again, calling to discuss some extra forgotten detail, but when she looked it was an international number.
‘Is this Hannah?’ said a woman with a Kiwi accent. ‘Aisling’s friend?’ A tannoy screeched in the background. ‘This is Heather, Aisling’s mum.’
Hannah’s first thought was that Aisling had asked her to call on her behalf, that this was some desperate last-ditch attempt at reconciliation. Hannah had never met either of Aisling’s parents but she’d seen pictures of them. Bespectacled and smiley, they tended to wear matching green fleece jackets and could usually be seen flanked by their beloved Alsatians, Bernie and Clive.
‘The British police called this morning.’ Aisling’s mum spoke as though on autopilot, her words flattened. ‘We’re about to board for Heathrow.’
‘Police?’
‘Aisling’s dead,’ she said, her words hollow with disbelief. ‘Murdered.’ The airport tannoy sniped again, louder than before. ‘Our girl, she’s gone.’
Hannah
Hannah opened the oven, hauled out four trays of cupcakes and placed them on the side.
Two thousand nine hundred down, seven hundred and fifty to go.
She’d been at it for three days straight and, with the deadline closing in, had got up this morning when it was still dark to try to make sure she got them all finished in time.
She knew that, under the circumstances, most people would have walked away, told Maraschino to find someone else. She had considered it. But she also knew that baking was the one thing that would get her through this first nightmarish part of her grief. That she would be able to cling to it like a raft in the blackest of seas.
Aisling had been found in a hotel room in Southwark. Strangled. Her massage table set up in the corner, towels laid out. Early investigations suggested that someone using a false name and stolen credit card had booked her via an app but they had yet to track down a suspect and CCTV had revealed nothing. Hannah had given the police a description of the guy from the Heath, told them how Aisling was sure he was stalking her. They were looking into it, but they didn’t have much to go on. Hannah didn’t even know his name.
The guilt was devastating.
Aisling had said in her voicemails that she was frightened, that the dormouse was following her, and Hannah had ignored them all. Last night she’d finally plucked up the courage to listen to the messages she’d deleted. They were mostly the same, pleas for Hannah to call her as soon as possible, but then the final voicemail she’d left was a little odd. In it she’d said she’d remembered something about the events leading up to John’s death. ‘Please call, Hannah, I think this might be important.’
She iced the cakes with buttercream and set to work on the individualised decorations. A tiny white yacht to symbolise the couple’s honeymoon island-hopping the Ionian Sea, a rectangular reproduction of the logo from Boujis, the Chelsea nightclub where they’d first met, a fondant Maraschino figure in a red dress to represent the song they’d first danced to at their wedding.
In the garden Mr Dalgleish was sitting on a chair, supervising Jem’s outside session. Jem usually used this hour to work out but when Hannah looked she saw that he was chatting to Pru over the fence. Pru was in her swimming costume and cap and, from what Hannah could surmise, was currently lying flat on her lawn, demonstrating her backstroke technique.
Once his time was up, Mr Dagliesh escorted Jem inside. Hannah grabbed the key and was about to lock the door when Mr Dalgleish stumbled against a stray cake box and grabbed the cell bars.
‘Mr D?’ Hannah went to help him but he shook her off.
‘I’m fine,’ he said gruffly and nodded at the door. ‘Get on with it.’
‘Where are you in your treatment?’ she asked, turning the key. ‘Have they said how many more cycles they think you’ll need?’
He shrugged, as if this was not his concern.
‘See you in two days for his shower,’ he said, signing and dating the form. He glanced at the chaotic worktops and stacks of white boxes littering the floor. ‘Try to have the place cleaned up by then. It’s a health hazard.’
In recent weeks she’d let him see himself out but today, wanting to make sure he was OK, she followed him up the stairs.
At the door she watched him go. Once he’d cleared the garden gate, she was about to return inside when she saw something move on the other side of the street.
She stepped onto the path, squinting into the sun. Someone seemed to be standing by the wall in the shade of the horse chestnut. She moved closer and had just reached the pavement when the figure shifted and she glimpsed the lower portion of their face. A man.
There was something about his build, wiry with long legs, that gave her pause. He shifted again and this time she saw his glasses, the eyes behind them black and small. The dormouse? Was he watching her house, or was she being paranoid, her brain strung out from the stress and sleep deprivation of the last few days? He couldn’t possibly know where she lived – could he?
She went to cross the street, wanting to be sure, but as soon as she stepped out onto the road he took off, half-walking, half-running.
‘Wait!’ she shouted, still not sure. ‘Hey, you.’ But the man ignored her and, picking up his pace, launched into a sprint.
Hannah stood in the middle of the tarmac, watching him go, already doubting herself.
9 p.m. and by Hannah’s calculation, even if she worked through the night she was going to miss the deadline. Maraschino would be furious.
She stepped back from the counter, head in hands.
‘You OK?’ said Jem.
‘My wrists are killing me and all I can think about is Aisling.’ She’d told Jem of her friend’s murder the same day she’d learned the news. He’d comforted her as best he could from behind bars. She rotated her fingers left and right, trying to release the muscles. ‘I keep imagining what it might have been like for her, at the end. How frightened she must have been, how alone, but even though I’m thinking all that it’s like my brain hasn’t got it yet, like it can’t process the fact she’s gone.’
‘Come here,’ he said, placing his hands through the bars.
Hannah hesitated. They’d never touched on purpose before.
‘Come,’ he said, opening his palms out flat.
She did as he said. Gently, he took her hands in his, then he circled his grip so that her hands were resting on top of his.
‘Sometimes,’ he said, sliding his thumbs towards her wrists, ‘the body knows first, the body understands first. How you’re feeling. What’s happened. It just takes the head a little while to catch up.’ The pressure was firm but good. Again and again, he pushed at her aching ligaments, shifting his thumb across the arc of her wrist like he was searching for something beneath the skin.
‘I’m no baker but maybe I could help with the basics,’ he said, changing to a slow circular motion in the spot just above her pulse. ‘Show me what to do and I’ll do it.’
‘Maybe the icing?’ She bit her lip. ‘That’s the easiest part.’
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Slowly, he released her wrists from his hold. The pain was gone and her hands felt light, like she’d been carrying something heavy and had just put it down.
‘OK then.’ He clapped, ready. ‘Let’s do it.’
Hannah dragged the dining table alongside the cell and Jem did the same with his small table. Once they were sitting side by side she passed a selection of bowls, trays and ingredients through the hatch and after she had demonstrated how to smooth the buttercream on with the spatula they were set.
Every time Jem filled a tray he placed it in the hatch, then Hannah would pull it out and set to work populating the icing with another collection of tiny figures and objects.
‘I am sorry,’ he said once the third batch was complete. ‘About your friend.’
Hannah nodded, her throat dry. She’d seen Aisling’s parents a number of times over the last few days but that had been more about helping with practical arrangements and, although Rupert had texted to say he’d heard the news and was very sorry, she’d yet to speak to anyone about her grief.
‘We fell out,’ she said, shaping a nub of blue fondant into a diamond choker, ‘before she was killed.’ It felt good to tell someone, to confide. ‘I discovered she and John had had an affair.’
‘John was cheating on you?’
‘For years.’
‘So that night,’ he paused, trying to understand, ‘he was going to meet her?’
‘I don’t know. She said not, but it seems that way.’
They didn’t speak again till dawn, when Jem lifted his arms in the air and stretched, his T-shirt riding up over the flat of his stomach.
‘We make a good team,’ he said and smiled, and for the first time since she’d heard about Aisling, Hannah felt like she could keep her head above the waves, that something was buoying her up toward the air and the sun.
Hannah delivered the cakes to Queen’s Crescent with five minutes to spare. Exhausted, she returned home and got in the shower. She wanted nothing more than to put on a clean pair of pyjamas, eat breakfast with Jem and then spend the rest of the day in bed.
First John, now Aisling. She thought it strange, how no one warns you about the physicality of mourning, how it can rifle through your insides, like a rat through a bin, the way it can make you feel like you’re trapped on a waltzer, spinning and sickly, the way it can make you have to concentrate on the simple action of breathing in and out.
Not long after John had died she’d been reading an article about losing someone you love and had learned of a Portuguese word, an equivalent to which did not exist in the English language. Saudade. It described a deep emotional state of unmet longing; a yearning, a kind of homesickness, for something or someone you can no longer have. She remembered telling Aisling about it and how Aisling had smiled sadly and told her she thought it beautiful, perfect even.
She stepped onto the bathmat, wrapped herself in a towel and had just started combing out her hair when she realised that, in all the chaos, she’d forgotten to tell Jane how to operate the lazy Susan at the heart of the cupcake display. It would be a disaster without it. She’d call and talk her through it now, before it was too late.
Her phone was in the living room and so, hair dripping, she dashed downstairs and grabbed it from the mantelpiece.
It took her a few seconds to notice him.
Standing by the sofa, he was examining a framed picture of her and John.
‘There you are,’ he said, placing it carefully back down. His eyes travelled from her shoulders to the bottom of the towel and her still-wet thighs. He nodded at the sofa. ‘Sit.’
Hannah tried to speak but her ribs had pinioned themselves around her lungs, squeezing so hard against the soft meat that no air could get in or out. She felt for the red button round her neck – if she pressed it she could alert the prison service, they’d send someone out to check on her – only to remember she’d taken it off to shower.
Her best option was to make a bolt for it, to get out of the house into the street and shout for help.
She pretended to do as he’d said and moved toward the sofa, then sprinted toward the door, but she hadn’t gone two steps when he moved in front of her, blocking the way. She cried out and he clamped his hand over her mouth.
Her scream died in his palm.
He pulled her to him, her damp hair blotting his shirt.
‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he said, his mouth in her ear, ‘I just want to talk.’ He took a breath as if to continue, but then he stopped, his body jerking back and forward as he emitted a loud sneeze.
The dormouse. Aisling’s stalker and, Hannah was certain, the man responsible for her murder.
‘Sorry to descend on you unannounced,’ he said once he’d recovered from the sneeze. He walked her over to the sofa and, after positioning her there like a doll, removed his hand from her mouth. ‘I’ve been hanging around for days trying to catch you at home.’ Hannah remembered the man she’d spotted across the road the day before. ‘Then this morning the door was open so I let myself in.’ Open? Hannah thought back to when she got home from dropping off the cakes; she was tired but had she really forgotten to shut the door properly? Registering her horror, his hand went to his chest in a gesture that was half-apology, half-hurt feelings at the insinuation he might have done something wrong. ‘I did knock. There was no answer.’
Hannah became aware of a noise, low and urgent. It sounded like someone shouting further down the street. She didn’t dare turn her head to the window to look.
‘It’s about Aisling,’ said the dormouse and stopped. Saying her name out loud seemed to upset him. He flexed his hand, stretching his fingers out wide, and examined the blanched palm. He kept going until the skin was pulled as taut as it could go, the ligaments buckling, and then he curled them back in again, into a fat balled fist. ‘The night she died I was there, at the hotel. I saw everyone who went in and out, front and back. I think I know who did it.’
‘Then go to the police,’ said Hannah, ‘tell them.’
‘I can’t, they won’t believe a thing I say.’ He smiled to himself and shrugged. ‘My history.’ Hannah thought of the vigilante women and their taser. ‘That’s why I wanted to talk to you, to tell you, then you can pass on the information. The person who did this can be brought to justice.’
‘How did you even know who Aisling was?’ said Hannah, then stopped, listening. There it was again. Someone outside, shouting. ‘That day, we didn’t tell you our names.’
He smiled and tapped his nose.
‘Her T-shirt. It had the logo of the clinic where she worked.’ He lifted his hand in the air. ‘I googled it, scrolled through the staff list, found her name.’ Each time he listed a new step he released a finger. ‘Called up, asked what shifts she worked, went from there.’ He brought his hands together, proud of a job well done. ‘Easy.’
Hannah made no attempt to hide her disgust.
‘You followed her around for weeks. You stalked her.’
‘I wanted to get to know her better,’ he said, a new bite to his tone. ‘I’m shy, it takes time to build up the courage to ask someone out.’
‘What kind of freak are you?’ she said, hoping to provoke him. Anger often put people on the back foot. If she could disarm him, even a little, she might be able to get away. She got to her feet and, making sure to hold on to her towel, prepared to make another run for it. ‘I wish we’d left you to get your balls fried.’
As soon as the last word left her mouth he brought the back of his hand down hard against her cheek. Crunch. He lunged forward, wrapping his fingers round her throat.
‘I loved Aisling, I would never have hurt her.’ Up close she could see how his glasses were smattered with greasy fingerprints. Behind them his eyes were bloodshot, the pupils black seeds. ‘Why won’t you listen to me? I saw the guy that did it, I can give you a description.’
She tried to struggle free but he had her held fast. His grip seemed to be getting stronger, his fing
ers squeezing and pressing against bone and cartilage. She opened and closed her mouth, straining for air. Her arms grew limp, then her legs. She felt herself melting into the grey, and had just closed her eyes when his hands loosened, then fell. He staggered back, the smooth part of his head crinkled in surprise, then toppled to the floor with a thump.
Hannah coughed and wheezed, blinking, trying to understand what she was seeing.
A red and white baseball cap. A kneeling rooster, bowling ball in hand.
A mouth, curved like a mountain range.
Jem.
‘I heard you scream,’ he said, his voice hoarse. ‘I wanted to make sure you were OK.’
‘You’re out of the cell?’ She pulled her towel higher, cowering against the cushions.
‘I shouted and shouted.’ He put down the hunk of marble, John’s darts trophy from the shelf in the hall, and held up his hands to show he meant no harm. ‘Then I pulled at the cell door, out of frustration more than anything, and it opened.’ He looked to the floor, uncomfortable with the accusation he was about to make. ‘Last night, you must have left it unlocked?’
The cell, and the front door. Hannah remembered how tired she’d been, how Mr Dalgleish had stumbled, taking her attention elsewhere. But still, how could she have been so careless?
She started to shiver.
Jem grabbed a blanket from the sofa and covered her with it.
‘Are you hurt?’
‘My neck’s bruised but I’m OK.’
‘Who is he?’ He crouched down next to the prone man and rolled him into the recovery position. ‘A burglar?’
‘Aisling’s stalker. We used to call him the dormouse.’
‘The dormouse?’
‘His eyes. We both thought he looked like one. He wanted to tell me he didn’t do it, he didn’t kill her. I saw someone hanging around over the other side of the road last night. I thought it was him but I couldn’t be sure.’
The Captive Page 18
