by Flynn Berry
The coroner’s court was in Westminster, on Horseferry Road. In the quiet classroom, I wrote that down. I’d thought taking notes would make it easier, but already the inside of my cheek was raw from biting down on it. It was only dusk, though the heating seemed to have switched off for the night, and I sat reading the transcript in my coat.
The coroner interviewed the paramedics, officers, and forensic pathologists who’d seen Emma that night or examined our house afterwards. Since Emma didn’t die of natural causes, he also interviewed detectives, neighbors, witnesses, friends of hers and our family, and Mum.
He conducted the interviews in a public court, acting as a sort of judge and prosecutor. I couldn’t read the first part of the transcript, when he interviewed the pathologist about the postmortem. The second part, the testimony from the paramedic, was also difficult. My jaw clamped, and I put my knuckle between my teeth, the way I did at night to stop grinding them.
I couldn’t imagine Mum sitting in the coroner’s court, listening to this testimony with my father’s friends in the rows behind her. A few years before, I’d seen the famous picture of Mum that made it look like she’d come to the coroner’s inquest in bare feet. She was on a bench outside the court, in a blue dress, without shoes. Her dress was a few inches too short and made of a bright, shiny material, like a satin nightdress, and she had a remote, dazed smile. She looked casual and eerily girlish, with her hands on either side of the bench and her legs swinging. Her feet were wrong too, the heels rough and cracked, and the nails done in orange varnish. The picture had been reprinted thousands of times.
She’d told me her shoes were too tight, she’d only slipped out of them for a moment. But her bare feet and glassy eyes made her look disturbed, unstable, unwell, all the words his friends had used for her.
Before the inquest, Rose, James, Sam, and the rest of their friends had given press interviews saying Mum was sick. According to them, she’d hired someone to kill Emma and framed my father. They often mentioned that Mum’s wounds were on the front of her body, and found a doctor to say that yes, in theory, all of her injuries could have been self-inflicted.
And they said dozens of other things to make the accusation more believable, like that she was greedy over his money. That she was so volatile she’d once smeared her menstrual blood on the wall after an argument. That she had strange sexual tastes, that she liked to wear PVC bodysuits and use an electric cattle prod during sex.
One of his friends said Mum talked with her mouth full. I’d never seen her do that, but it was a clever thing to say, it was small enough to sound true. They must have enjoyed it. Sitting in a room at the Clermont, inventing more and more lurid tastes for her. His friends had always loved parlor games.
I understood why they worked so hard to discredit her. If my father were convicted, the Frasers could be on trial for harboring a fugitive or conspiracy to commit murder, and his other friends might be damaged by their association with him. The forensic results proved that my father was at the scene, but not that he had attacked the women—none of his skin under either of their fingernails, no ripped hairs—so the main evidence against him would be Mum, she was the only witness. They wanted to make sure no one would believe a word she said.
During the break in the inquest, Mum ate alone in the canteen, while his friends went to the pub across the road. She might have been able to see them, laughing and talking at tables crowded with pints and orders of chips.
I didn’t know why Mum went to the inquest alone, if no one had told her that she was allowed to bring a companion, or if she had thought watching someone else listening to it would be even worse.
After the break, the coroner interviewed Rose. In the transcript, I read Rose’s description of my father’s arrival at Ashdown on the night of the murder, and the account he gave her of walking past the house and seeing a fight inside. The coroner asked, “Why was Lord Spenser passing the house?”
Rose said, “He was worried about his children.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t think his wife was a fit mother.”
“Why not?”
“Faye had a difficult time after her daughter’s birth,” said Rose. “She once told me she didn’t trust herself near the baby with a knife.”
My body jerked, like my foot had caught on the edge of a kerb. I didn’t want to be in the classroom anymore, with its burners and bottles of hydrogen peroxide, the smell of it coating the back of my throat. I hurried out of the building onto Buccleuch Street and started to walk towards the Grassmarket. Edinburgh was dark, and busy with people on their way home from work or school. I wanted to stop someone and ask for help. It didn’t make sense that I couldn’t call Mum and ask, Did you want to hurt me? Did you wish you’d never had me?
I didn’t know then what I do now about postnatal disorders. A lot of mothers have thoughts of dropping their baby on the stairs, drowning them in the bath, pushing their pram into the road. It doesn’t mean they’ll do it, or that they secretly want to. The thoughts are a way of testing themselves, making sure their child is safe.
But I doubt Mum knew that at the time. I imagine the thoughts tortured her, that she worried there was something wrong with her, that she shouldn’t be left alone with me. She must have gone to Rose for help, and this is what Rose did with what she’d told her.
19
I PRACTICE HITTING on the wall by the public courts near my house. It’s been years since I played tennis, and I wonder how good she’ll be. Alice learned on the court at Ashdown. It’s something we have in common, my father taught me to play there. He was a good teacher, he didn’t become impatient even when I hit the ball over the hedge and we had to go search for it.
It’s starting to get dark, and the strip lights have come on in the stairwell of the council block above the court. My next swing misses, and Jasper chases after the ball.
I wonder if my father still plays tennis. I often wonder how he’s kept busy. He used to be a member of the Beaufort hunt, maybe he’s bought a horse. He must have missed it. They rode all day sometimes, twenty horses and riders in black coats, galloping across a field. Or he’s learned how to cook. Or taken up painting. These thoughts always make me furious, and I keep hitting until my arms and back burn.
* * *
*
• • •
Alice is already on the other side of the fence when I arrive. Burton Court is private, she has to come unlock the gate for me. I shade my eyes to look across the vast green lawn surrounding the tennis courts. This amount of space, in the center of Chelsea, seems even more improbable from inside the fence. “What was this originally?”
“A parade ground, I think. The Royal Hospital owns it now.” Alice is wearing white shorts and a maroon jumper with varsity stripes. The jumper looks old, it might be hers from school. Ahead of us, two women are playing in white pleated skirts. I’m wearing leggings and a gray top, I hadn’t realized people actually wore tennis whites.
“Which one’s your parents’ house?” I ask, and she points across the field to a townhouse covered in ivy. We’re too far to see into the rooms, I can just make out the gold knocker on the front door.
“Want to volley first?” she asks. The ball floats back and forth over the net. When it rolls away, I look to the townhouse. It’s Saturday morning, her parents might be at home.
Alice is the better player, but she’s rustier. Presumably she didn’t spend this week practicing, though she still wins two of the three sets. Afterwards, we’re breathless, and the fine hairs around her face have curled in the heat. She says, “We’ll sleep well tonight.”
That sensation, like a defibrillator shock. It was one of Mum’s stock phrases. She always said it after we’d spent the day on the beach, or hiking on the coast path, and hearing it made me inordinately proud.
I need my mum. I need her to tell me what to do about Robbie. He’s sti
ll in Lancashire, he won’t be back in London for at least another month, and I hate thinking of him alone in a hotel. At least he’s busy, the firm makes its assessors work long hours after a storm.
As we cross the lawn to the gate, Alice tells me a story about her father. I listen, and ask questions. I think, I spent three months watching your father. I followed him to his office, his house, a train station. I watched him enter a spa for a massage and waited until he came out.
After we say goodbye, Alice walks to the King’s Road for a cab, and I go the other way, past her house. The wind has lifted and the ivy courses on its front wall. I look at the fanlight and remember watching James roll a suitcase to the door the last time I was here.
James has known my father since boarding school. They went to Eton together, along with Sam. I visited Eton once, as part of my research. My father was happy there. What does it do to you, to go to a school where you live in a house with a tradesman’s entrance? Where you have a three-course dinner prepared for you every night, ending with biscuits and a cheeseboard? Where tourists come to photograph you? It must have an effect. You must expect things to go a certain way for you. He couldn’t have planned a murder, I don’t think, without that confidence. He thought he would get away with it.
At Eton, he and James lived in Godolphin, and Sam was nearby in Waynflete. They were together for six years, from age thirteen to eighteen. When my father needed their help two decades later, they must have been pleased at the chance to prove themselves. They couldn’t, as children, have invented a better scenario for testing their courage and loyalty. If they had been caught helping my father leave the country, they would have gone to prison. They chose to help him and not to protect themselves. I imagine they still like to think about this, to go over every detail in their minds, and that the memory warms them.
I continue past the Frasers’ house and turn down Flood Street. I call Robbie again, but he doesn’t answer, and I try as hard as I can not to picture his phone ringing in his pocket while he lies unconscious.
20
WHEN I WAS SIXTEEN, Mum brought a computer home from her office. Her boss had said he was going to throw it away since they’d ordered new ones. It needed to be restarted often, and the dial-up was so slow that I usually had time to go downstairs and make a snack while a page loaded. Robbie had taken to humming the sound of the modem dialing as he went past my room.
I’d known, as soon as Mum carried it through the door, what the computer meant, and had considered telling her I didn’t want it, or shoving it off the desk to the floor.
I’d never searched for information about my father before. I could have asked the librarian in Crail for help finding articles about him, or used the computer lab at school, but not with any privacy. And I wanted to know less about that night, not more. For a year afterwards, I had trouble walking without jerking and catching myself, like something was under my feet.
A week after she brought home the computer, Mum said, “I have to pick up my new glasses in St. Andrews, want to come?”
While she waited at the optometrist’s, I walked to my favorite university building, the gothic stone hall at the edge of town, above the sea, which held Moral Philosophy and Logic and Metaphysics. My exam results were good, so far. I might be applying to St. Andrews the next year. I might take a class in this building, on logic and metaphysics. The thought made me happy, even though I had almost no idea what such a class would cover.
A group of girls with soft leather backpacks and high, clear accents came down the road, and I turned away. My old school, Francis Holland, sent a lot of girls to St. Andrews, and I was scared of running across one of them.
Even if they had been from Francis Holland, they probably wouldn’t have recognized me. It had been eight years. After the inquest, we moved to Crail, a fishing village on the coast north of Edinburgh. No one there had recognized us. Before we moved, Mum dyed her hair auburn and changed its cut. She’d gained weight too, she wasn’t frail anymore. And she dressed differently. That day she was wearing jeans and a soft, faded leopard-print coat.
I walked back through campus to the high street. At the bookshop, I used my babysitting money to buy a new hardcover novel, which I showed to Mum and Robbie on our way to the Chinese restaurant. Mum ordered wonton soup, I had chow fun and most of Robbie’s fried rice.
I didn’t start my homework until after nine o’clock, and decided to do an hour, then go to bed and wake early to finish it. I began to outline a chapter from my physics textbook, then stood to close the door. I left the textbook open on my desk and turned on the computer.
I still wanted to forget everything about that night, and I was also typing his name. An image came into my mind of Emma’s wet hair, and I stared at my textbook until it went away. Then I waited, for ages, as the first result loaded.
The site had small red font on a black screen and was divided into four sections: Background, Crime, Investigation, and Aftermath.
I looked around my bedroom. The books on the nightstand, the heap of clothes on the floor, the posters, the cards stuck in the mirror. The hair rose on my arms, like whoever made the site was watching me, and would be adding all of this under Aftermath.
My tongue felt swollen and stripped, like I’d eaten too many sweets. I’d known there would be things online about my family, but not how many. The site had a forum with dozens of active members. Its creator, someone named Neil, began the section on the crime with a description of what we’d eaten for dinner that night.
I stopped reading, and went across the hall to Mum’s room. Her slippers were next to the bed, and her body rose and fell under the blanket. I thought about waking her up, but didn’t know what I would say.
Downstairs was dark except for the lights on the Christmas tree. They were set to a timer, which never worked. I moved to the window. Someone had already come to put salt on the road, since it was supposed to snow in the night.
I checked the lock on the front door. All of the people on the forum liked researching us. I wondered if any of them had figured out where we lived.
Through the window, Crail looked the same as usual. The small houses across the road had wreaths on their doors and strands of colored Christmas lights. Those houses backed onto the sea, and they hung lights there too for the fishermen.
I lifted our dog, Finn, from the sofa and carried him upstairs with me. He curled in a circle on my bed, and I sat at my desk and thought, You can stop when it gets to the bad part.
• • •
My father ate dinner before he came to our house, I learned. The police found dishes in his sink.
Earlier that day he’d gone to work, according to the site. He sat in meetings, returned calls, and ran out in the afternoon to collect a suit from a tailor on Conduit Street. At six, he returned to his flat. He talked on the phone to his cousin and bought a paper from the newsagent’s. One of his neighbors saw him, he’d changed out of his work clothes into a pearl-gray cotton polo shirt.
Then he made dinner. He wasn’t too nervous to eat. I couldn’t imagine what was in his mind. How did he know he’d be able to do it?
I wanted to know what he was thinking when he walked to our house and climbed the back wall. If he was scared. If he almost turned back. If the garden looked strange to him, or familiar. He’d spent so much time in it. He’d planted all of the trees and shrubs that he walked past on the way to the door.
How long did he stand outside? From the garden, he would have been able to see a woman sitting at the kitchen counter, with her back to him, under a pendant lamp. He must have thought she was Mum.
He broke the lock. That part must have happened quickly, since Emma didn’t have time to run. She reached across the counter for a knife and knocked the draining rack to the floor. Reading about him hitting her made my teeth chatter and my mouth fill with water. It was an effort to swallow, and to breathe.
Emma managed to turn around. Her face would have had blood on it by then, but not enough to hide her features. He must have seen that she was the wrong woman. He could have stopped, but instead he lifted the pipe again.
He knew I was upstairs. Did he think I wouldn’t hear? Or had he known I’d be too much of a coward to come down?
• • •
The police found the dinner dishes in his sink and a rag dropped on the counter. He hadn’t cleaned his flat or packed a bag, he must have expected to return home afterwards, that he was going to shower, throw away his stained clothing, practice his alibi, get away with it.
He must have done so much research. He wasn’t an idiot, he’d have known the police would suspect him, and that he’d need to create some other, plausible explanation. If it had worked, I realized, he would have custody of me and Robbie. We would have gone to live with him, and never known what he had done.
• • •
“You were up late last night,” said Mum. She was at the kitchen table in jeans and a red-and-black-checked flannel shirt.
“What?”
“I heard you go to the bathroom.”
“I had a lot of homework.”
She nodded and reached around me for the coffee. Did she know what I’d been reading? She was good at that sort of thing. She often set out aspirin before I mentioned having a headache.
Mum yawned, put bread in the toaster, went to the back door and said, “Wasn’t it supposed to snow last night?”
No, I thought, she doesn’t know. Robbie came in and Mum offered him a piece of toast. He said, “I’m not hungry.”
“Have some and I’ll finish the rest,” said Mum. He was small for his age, she was always trying to get him to eat more pasta, butter, cream.
