by Sue Watson
Despite resenting Simon for his treatment of her mum and me, she seems to have accepted the fact he killed and in her own way forgiven him. She even insists on going to see him in prison, which surprises me. She says he’s still her dad and she loves him, which makes me so proud of her – she’s a bigger person than I am, but perhaps it’s her way of coming to terms with everything.
Sophie took her A levels over the summer and, against all the odds, she achieved the required grades to study Forensic Science at university. She’s passionate about it – but has taken a year out, says she wants to be home with the family. We all feel the same. The boys are more clingy too; our therapist, appointed by social services, says it’s perfectly natural. We all need to heal, and the best way is to talk openly to each other about how we feel and spend time together as a family. The therapist says children as young as the boys can pick up on abusive behaviour, without actually seeing it and without parents even realising, and this can have a lasting effect on their lives and their own choices. But together we’re working on that, I can’t change the past, but I can help shape their future.
I still think about Caroline. I feel guilty that I couldn’t save her, and after our last meeting, I even wonder if we might have been friends. We were both destroyed by the same man – but I got out just in time and though I’m glad I did, I do suffer from survivor’s guilt. I know we only met a couple of times, but Caroline’s social media was shut down after she died and weirdly, I felt the loss. Her Instagram and Facebook was all I’d known of her, and now it’s like she never existed, which is why I can’t bring myself to delete her phone number from my phone. It would feel like I was deleting her memory too, it’s all I have left. But I try not to dwell too much on Caroline or Simon – they chose their path, I just got caught up along the way and finally I’m beginning to think that one day I’ll be free of the past and not feel a painful twisting deep in my stomach when I have to pass her cottage, or see a woman with short blonde hair in Waitrose.
Until today it felt like we were all emerging into the sunlight and finally putting the past behind us. But this morning I have a visitor.
DI Janet Cornell’s on the doorstep, says she’s passing by and could she have a cuppa. It’s not the first time. Janet sometimes calls in when she’s in the neighbourhood, keeps me up to date with everything.
I put the kettle on while she chats away, sitting at the kitchen table, and when I turn around, I almost drop the two mugs I’m holding. There on the table is the sea-green velvet scrunchie that I’d made for Sophie from scraps left over from the bag. At first, I’m puzzled – what’s that doing here?
‘Do you recognise this, Marianne?’ Janet’s saying between mouthfuls of chocolate digestive. ‘It was found at Caroline’s cottage… not far from the body. Looks like someone dropped it.’
How on earth did Sophie’s scrunchie turned up at the murder scene?
‘We found it hours after the murder and wondered if it might be relevant and asked Simon. He said Caroline was wearing it the day she died – it must have come off in the struggle… he told us it was part of a set, and you gave it to Caroline when you gave her the bag. But then it was mislaid in evidence and when he confessed it didn’t seem relevant anyway. But it has bugged me Marianne because… I don’t recall you mentioning that you gave Caroline this hair scrunchie too?’
It wasn’t part of a set. I didn’t give it to Caroline. It was Sophie’s.
I don’t know why, but something stops me from telling Janet the truth.
‘Yes… it’s the one I made…’ I say, looking more closely. ‘Part of a set, yes… I made it to match the bag, gave them both to her.’ I’m hoping my words make sense while my mind is elsewhere, somewhere it doesn’t want to go.
We finish our tea while she tells me all about a burglary up the road, but I’m not listening and minutes later she’s heading for the door.
I walk back into the silence and sit at the rickety little kitchen table – inside my head feels like a box of jumbled thoughts that I don’t want to look at. But I have to force myself. Sophie knew Caroline from the tennis club; she was rude to her when I opened her bedroom door on the night of the party and introduced them. Perhaps she knew all about Caroline and her father? She was old enough to see what was going on. But then I come to my senses, all this is just me putting two and two together and making six again… isn’t it?
The killer was left-handed. That’s why we know it was Simon.
But Sophie is also left-handed.
The killer was three or four inches taller than Caroline.
Sophie’s three or four inches taller than Caroline.
I go into Sophie’s room, search her desk, cupboards, drawers and find nothing. I’m relieved but unsettled. I want to walk away from the very idea, the horrible images filling my mind – but I have to know. So I pace up and down, thinking, thinking; if there’s anything it will be here.
But I don’t want to find anything.
I go through her suitcase, handbags, and then, just as I’m about to give up and tell myself it’s fine, I’m being stupid, I discover her old iPhone tucked at the back of a bookcase. The battery is dead and I know it’s nothing, just an old phone, but I’ll do one last check and then put this crazy idea to rest. Without Simon’s mind games I’ve been so well and managed without medication for twelve months now – surely my paranoia isn’t starting up again? I bring the iPhone downstairs and charge it, waiting for the bars to light up, my heart beating, my mind raging on and on. I doubt the phone will give me any clues, but something tells me I have to make sure, and there might just be something. All the time my mind is whirring, desperately trying to come up with an answer, a reason why these terrible, terrible thoughts in my head must be wrong. In his note after he confessed, Simon said ‘I know Sophie will be safe with you.’ What exactly did he mean by that? I’d always assumed it was because he was finally giving me custody, the chance to adopt her even. But now I remember what else he’d said in the note, that he’d ‘do anything for his kids’. Did he do anything for Sophie?
Did Simon take the blame for murder?
Eventually the phone lights up and I click on it, not sure if I should even be doing this and not even sure what I’m trying to find. I’m now an expert at guessing pass numbers. I try Sophie’s birthday, the boys’ and then finally mine, and I’m in and I’m instantly touched by the fact that I’m so special to her that my birthday is her pass number. But I can’t dwell on anything, my emotions mustn’t overwhelm me. I have to know… though what I’m not even sure. I’m trembling as I open up the contacts, looking for Caroline, stopping at every C but after much searching there is no Caroline, and I’m temporarily relieved. But I can’t relax yet because I know that if Sophie’s guilty of something she’d know not to put Caroline’s number under Caroline’s name in her phone. So I check the call log, and when I see the word ‘whore’ my heart almost beats out of my chest. I compare the number against Caroline’s number in my phone. And the breath is sucked from my lungs as I begin to realise. I’m standing in the middle of the room holding two phones and looking at my worst nightmare. I check the log for this number on Sophie’s phone and my suspicions are confirmed. So many calls were made – they were all just a few seconds long, the most about one minute – all at around three in the morning.
Sophie was making the anonymous calls to Caroline.
She probably knew about Caroline, and was calling to freak her out, even scare her off, or just hurt her like she was hurting us. This is evidence of phone calls made, a cry for help, a child protecting what’s precious to her – family. It is not evidence of murder.
My mind is hot, whirling, and when I open up the photos on the phone I’m grateful to see nothing incriminating, but then I see a folder: ‘The C Word’. I open it up and there are screenshots of Caroline’s Instagram, the day on the beach on our picnic rug, the photo of rumpled sheets and wine posted on the night her dad didn’t turn up to see her brothers pl
ay rugby and so much more. So Sophie had been watching Caroline too.
While I was obsessing and scrolling the internet in my corner of the house, our daughter was doing the same. Both hurting, both threatened, both scared.
Both of us keeping the same secret.
* * *
That night, I wait until the boys are in bed and Sophie and I are alone, before I mention DI Cornell’s visit. I have to talk to her, I can’t go over and over this in my head any more, because I can’t come up with a rational reason for this all on my own. Surely Sophie will have one though… won’t she?
‘Janet… the detective, told me the police found your velvet scrunchie, the green one I made like the bag… it was at Caroline’s cottage,’ I say, unable to think of a subtle way of revealing this.
Sophie’s face pales – she stops looking at her phone and looks directly at me.
‘Did you tell her it’s mine…?’
‘No.’
I sit for a while. I want to know so much, and yet I don’t.
‘Did you… did you go to the cottage… Was it you?’
She doesn’t answer.
‘Mum, it’s in the past – I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘We have to talk about it, Sophie.’
‘Dad said I can’t tell anyone, not even you.’
She starts to cry and I go over to her, putting my arm around her and kissing her head – it smells of apple shampoo. I’m reminded of the little seven-year-old who awkwardly shook my hand and asked if I was going to be her mummy now.
Yes darling, I’m your mummy now.
‘Was it the baby?’ I ask. ‘Caroline’s baby. Is that why you…?’
She doesn’t respond directly. It’s like she’s in a world of her own, remembering life before Caroline. Eventually she nods, very slowly. ‘I was frightened of losing you… of Dad bringing her and her baby into our house, his perfect new family… He wouldn’t want us any more…’
‘Oh darling, you should have talked to me.’
She’d been as scared as I was that Caroline was going to change our lives. Sophie was worried about me being sent away, she saw the baby scan and knew something had to be done.
‘How could I? You weren’t well. Some days you were like a zombie and I didn’t want to tell you about her and make you even more sad. I hated the way he’d text her all the time, sending her heart emojis and treating you like shit. He’d take me to the tennis club, but it was only so he could see her – they’d disappear for ages when he was supposed to be spending time with me. I once asked him if you could come along. You were always asking me about what it was like there and he said no, that you were too ill, and might cause a scene. He was with her all the time, even gave me a driving lesson and made me drive to her fucking cottage. That’s how I knew where she lived.’
‘Darling, I’m so sorry, you shouldn’t have had to be part of that,’ She was just a young girl dealing with adult emotions, just as angry as me at the abandonment and betrayal.
‘Tell me Sophie… about that night. Was it you… who … hurt Caroline?’
She nods, slowly.
‘Did you mean to… for her to die?’
I don’t want to ask, but I need to know.
‘No.’ She shakes her head and more tears. ‘Not in the beginning – it’s not like it was premeditated or anything. I found out about the baby. I saw a picture of a baby scan on Instagram… and I just knew… I just fucking knew it was his. Then there was trouble after your party. I didn’t know what happened, but I knew you were upset, Dad was angry and I was worried. The next night, when you were asleep and he’d gone out, I picked up the spare keys I used when he gave me a driving lesson and took his car from outside Jen’s.’ She looks guilty. ‘I knew where he was.’
‘You knew about Jen?’
‘I kind of guessed. I saw the way she looked at him, the way they were dancing together at the school barn dance last summer and… she dropped the boys off here once. You were in the kitchen. I think they kissed in the hallway.’
I don’t hurt any more because he numbed me, but I’m hurting for Sophie.
‘So you drove over to Caroline’s in Dad’s car?’
‘Yeah, I went over there to tell her to back off.’
That would explain why his car was caught on CCTV driving in the direction of Caroline’s cottage the night she was killed.
‘I went there, knocked on the door and when she opened it I was upset and it was raining so she let me in. I told her to leave my dad alone, I didn’t want another stepmother, you’re my mum and… I’d heard Dad saying something to her at the tennis club about coming to live in our house and I was fucking mad. I didn’t want her thinking she could do that. I just wanted to scare her off.’ She breaks down again, huge, childlike sobs that I don’t think will ever stop. I put my arm around her. I want to take her pain and guilt away, but I know I won’t ever be able to do that.
‘What happened?’ She has to share it with me and unburden her guilt.
‘She tried to make out it was all over with Dad…’
Caroline must have felt so guilty. I’d been round earlier, and then Sophie was back on her doorstep fighting for her dad, defending me, just trying to keep her family safe.
‘She was being mean, telling me I didn’t understand, that I was “just a child”, but I did understand. I’d understood since I was really little, when my dad came home smelling of perfume that wasn’t my mum’s. I started shouting at Caroline about the baby and said she was a slag and a whore, and I think she realised then that I’d been the one calling her… I used those words.’ She looks down, ashamed.
‘The late night phone calls?’
She nods, unable to meet my eyes.
‘So what happened then… just talk to me, Sophie.’
‘She looked sort of scared, said I was upsetting her, told me to go and when I said no, she said she was going to call the police. Then I saw that she was wearing that bag and… I… I thought Dad must have given her one of your beautiful bags that we used to make together and I thought about you and how sad you were… and just lost it.’ Sophie’s sobbing in my arms. I can barely hear what she’s saying. ‘I wasn’t trying to hurt her. I wanted the bag back and I tried to pull it off her, but it was round her neck and she started fighting. She thought I was trying to hurt her and screaming and… then she fell.’
‘It’s okay, darling,’ I say, stroking her hair to soothe her like I’ve always done. ‘So what happened then?’
‘She got up off the floor, yelling that she was really going to call the police. She was shouting in my face, really freaking out and I panicked, I just grabbed the knife and…’ She cries again, but I need to know everything.
‘I know this is hard… but what happened then?’
‘She was coming at me, telling me to get out, pushing me, and I was holding the knife out to stop her… I never meant to… The knife went in… We both screamed and then she started screaming for help and shouting about her baby and I was scared… I just … the knife went in, again and again, until she stopped screaming. I wanted to just run away, but I stayed and tried to clean it up. I knew what to do and tried to take everything that might have my DNA on. Then when I got home, I realised I couldn’t find my scrunchie, it had been on my wrist.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I was frantic, I couldn’t go back to Caroline’s to look for it even if I’d wanted to because I’d already taken the car back to Jen’s. I stayed awake all night crying and worrying, then Dad came home the next day to take the boys out. You were still asleep. He shouted at me, knew I’d used his car. He checks the mileage – he was angry, thought I’d been out joyriding with my friends. I wish I had. I ended up telling him everything, it just poured out and then I told him I’d lost my scrunchie. We both just sat there looking at each other. We were both crying and after a bit he told me to just do as he said and not question anything, so he put the boys in the car – we all went to the cinem
a. He bought four tickets and came in with us but sneaked out through an exit when the film had started. He said he’d find the scrunchie, and I wasn’t to tell anyone, just stay there with the boys. I was so upset I just sat staring at the film until he came back.’
‘But he didn’t find it?’
She shakes her head. ‘He looked everywhere, but just couldn’t find it and had to come back. Later on, when the police had taken you to the station I sat at the top of the stairs and watched you go. Dad came to me and said the police thought you’d done it. He said there was always a strong chance the murder would be traced back to you or him – both of you had been at the cottage. Your DNA would be everywhere. He said it would be best for everyone if they found you guilty, that you had a motive and it would be good for you because they’d put you in a clinic and make you better. He said Jen would come and live with us, bring her kids and look after the boys so I wouldn’t have to miss out on going away to university. He said I had to live my life… he just kept saying it. But I knew he was just trying to pin it on you and I said no, I’d go to the police and confess… tell them it was me. But he said no because it would devastate both of you if I went to prison. Then he asked me who I wanted to stay and look after us all and I was so upset because he’s my dad and I love him… but I said “I want Mum”.’
