‘Of course,’ she says. ‘It’s good to have some time alone with you anyway, sis. I feel like we never get to do that any more.’
Beneath me, I can feel my limbs starting to stick to the lounger, the plastic melting into my sticky flesh. Licking my top lip, I taste salt.
‘We used to be so close, S,’ she says, and now she’s angled her body so that it’s fully facing mine, a parallel image of my own.
‘We still are,’ I say, and then, quickly, ‘thank you for inviting us out here. You know how much I appreciate it.’
She blinks at me, long dark lashes sweeping smooth skin. She’s right, I suppose – we’re not as close as we have been in the past; even though she’s only in Woodbridge we find ourselves caught up in our lives, me with Emma and the school, her with her interior design business and her mysterious liaisons with men she pretends don’t exist but must. There are gaps in our story, times where weeks go by without me seeing her. But still, she makes an effort – she texts Emma, takes her shopping for too-short clothes without batting an eyelid. She’s always been a brilliant aunt.
‘You do know I mean what I said, don’t you? You can tell me anything, S. Whatever’s on your mind.’
I am cursing not having my own sunglasses with me; I feel exposed and suddenly vulnerable as she assesses me from behind her protection of dark glass.
‘How do you think Emma seems?’ I say at last, when the silence between us has become too thick and foggy, and it seems to momentarily do the trick, distract her attention away from me. Focus instead on the girl we both care about. ‘She didn’t eat much last night,’ I carry on, and when Maria doesn’t reply, I take this as my cue to continue. ‘And she seems so angry all the time, have you noticed? I barely recognise her any more. She’s so up and down, as though we’ve all done something terribly wrong but I don’t know what it is.’
‘I think Emma’s probably worried too,’ Maria says at last. ‘She’s worried about you.’ Her voice lowers slightly, changes tone. ‘So am I.’
In front of us, the blue water of the pool sparkles. Inside me, it feels as though the pressure is rising, higher and higher. Callum’s face flashes in front of my mind, the buzz of his iPhone against my hip, the image of Emma pushing her food around her plate, her eyes glaring at us from across the dining table, the screech of her music blasting upwards to the terrace, the sound keeping her sealed away from us inside.
‘Why are you worried about me?’ I ask Maria, and she gives a little snort, a half laugh, as though my question is ridiculous. ‘No, really,’ I say, ‘I want to know.’
Maria sits up a little, pushes herself to a seated position. Her back is straight against the plastic chair; she always did have good posture. Her stomach stays flat even as she moves herself upright; no roll of fat at all. Neither of us have touched the croissants.
‘I don’t think you’re being fair to yourself, Siobhan.’
My heart is beating fast, and I turn my face away slightly so she can’t see my expression. Does she know?
‘In what way?’ I say, fighting to keep my voice even, not to display the panic bubbling up inside my stomach.
‘You and Callum,’ she says, ‘you’re not happy, S. I can sense it. I’m your older sister, I’ve always been able to tell when there’s something the matter.’ She shakes her head, blows out her breath. Her lips look glossy, tinted red in the sunlight. ‘Is there something wrong between you two?’
‘No,’ I say dully, ‘everything’s fine.’
She exhales, gazes up at the sky, impossibly blue and clear. ‘I don’t know why you ever got married, Siobhan,’ she says, ‘all it does is bring misery. You should’ve done the sensible thing, stayed a free agent like me. I can have my cake and eat it, whenever I like.’ She stretches forward, grabs a croissant and takes a bite. Golden flakes of pastry glisten on her lips.
‘Aren’t you jealous?’ she says, teasingly, trying to lighten the mood, ‘just a little bit?’
Chapter Four
Ipswich
3rd August: One week earlier
Caroline
By the time we’ve finished our pasta, Jenny’s drunk too much. I can tell by the way she’s talking and stroking Rick’s arm. Her eyes are very bright and her neck is sort of flushed; red mottles peeping out from the collar of her shirt and staining her skin. Perhaps the girl with a WKD in each hand isn’t as far away as I’d thought, even if she is wearing a mumsy cardi with a one-year-old in the next room. Speaking of, as it reaches ten o’clock, baby Eve starts crying, little mewls at first that turn into full-blown screams, and Rick excuses himself to go see to her. I hear the creak of the floorboards as he pads upstairs and over to her cot, then the sound of him shushing her. She stops crying really quickly, but he stays upstairs for a few minutes. Jenny and I are quiet. And then she says it.
‘So what’s going on with Callum, Caroline?’
There’s something in her tone that is different now, something barbed. Although we are in her hot little kitchen, I feel suddenly cold, a chill running down the nape of my neck.
Jenny wasn’t even supposed to know about Callum. No one was.
We met at work, as so many people do: 34 per cent, according to a survey I read online on a day when I’d nothing else to do. It was a Monday, and my old boss, Darren, was overly excited because his publishing house had ‘the television people’ coming in. I’d been invited to the meeting because I’d illustrated the book they were interested in, a children’s book about a little girl with anxiety who changed into a chicken whenever she got too nervous. The editor, Lucy, grabbed me as I came in. I’d made an effort for the television people, worn a nice patterned shirt and extra mascara. It was a couple of months after I’d gone freelance and I was spending too many days in tea-stained pyjamas as it was, but that morning I’d told myself that this was important. This meeting could be life-changing. Turns out that it was, but not in the way I’d expected. The project was abandoned after a couple of months. It’s tough to make it in TV, Callum always tells me. He’s one of the talented ones. Or the lucky ones.
I’d been on my own for a while at that point, after my last relationship had blown up in my face. For a while, I’d had a sense of being untethered, somehow, afloat from the world, and the freelancing actually made it worse. I was spending too much time on my own. Dad had called me a few times, but I’d stopped picking up. He only ever wanted to talk about Mum, and I found it too painful. So I was in a bit of a strange mood the day I walked into the meeting.
‘They don’t pay their taxes. You shouldn’t buy from them,’ was the first thing he ever said to me, nodding at the takeaway coffee I was clutching in my hand, wrinkling his nose at the branded logo on the side. His expression, when I glanced up at him, was deadly serious, and as he frowned at me I felt momentarily panicked.
‘No, I know,’ I said hurriedly, ‘it’s just it’s the only place on my way in, you know, and I don’t function very well without coffee! But you’re right, I should make it at home and bring it in. It’s just I’ve only started freelancing recently so I wanted to feel part of the real world again, you know, and…’ I’d tailed off, blushing, wondering why on earth I was telling him all the boring elements of my sad little life. Around us, my former colleagues were bustling into the room in their smart office wear and heels, all of them a little bit more dressed up for this meeting than they’d normally be, all of them slightly on edge. Callum had grinned at me.
‘Don’t worry,’ he’d said, ‘I won’t hold it against you. They do a good gingerbread latte at Christmas, so I’m as guilty as you are.’
I’m as guilty as you are. The words come back to me now, buzz in my head like flies.
He pulled out the chair next to me and sat down, placing a pile of papers on the huge boardroom table. We were on the fourteenth floor, the highest in the building, overlooking Ipswich. For a moment I felt a sense of dizziness, as though I was about to fall.
‘Welcome, everyone,’ the publisher was saying
, his voice barely containing the obvious excitement he had that TV executives were actually in his building, in little old Ipswich, here to talk about one of his books. It so rarely happened for an independent house. There were plates of chocolate biscuits in the centre of the table, which I knew from experience nobody would actually touch. Under the table, I picked at my fingers, pulling off the skin around my nails.
‘So you’re the illustrator, huh,’ Callum said to me, his voice low as the publisher began with the niceties. Despite the large room, I felt something intimate in his voice, as though he and I were the only two people at the table. I could feel myself growing hot under his gaze, because by now I’d realised that the man next to me was, in fact, inordinately attractive. And a television exec, too. I know it sounds silly, but to me, with my little flat in Ipswich and my oh-so-fledgling freelance career, it seemed glamorous. It seemed like something I might be able to tether myself to.
We looked at their pitch for the book, and eventually someone did cave and take a biscuit from the plate, and the whole meeting lasted for about two hours, but none of those things were really very important. What was important was the sentence Callum said to me at the end, catching me by the arm just as everyone was getting ready to leave.
‘Can I buy you something other than coffee tonight?’
I didn’t notice the wedding ring until much later. OK, that’s a lie. I did. I was as guilty as he was.
‘Caroline?’
Jenny’s voice is edged with accusation and I take another sip of wine, even though I’ve barely eaten any of the pasta she’s made and my head is beginning to feel fuzzy.
‘I haven’t seen him, Jen,’ I say eventually, meeting her eyes. Her own gaze narrows and she tilts her head to one side, as though trying to work out whether I’m telling the truth or not. In the background, I hear Eve begin to cry again, and the sound of Rick shushing her, his voice low and deep. He’s there for her, I think, he actually wants to be here with his family. I don’t know what that’s like.
‘When was the last time you saw him?’ she asks me, and I feel a flash of anger. I’m not a naughty child, being held accountable for my every move.
‘I haven’t seen him for two weeks,’ I say eventually, and the pain of the words is just as deep, just as fresh as it felt when I walked away from him. ‘I just – I can’t do it any more.’ Of course, I’m not telling her the whole story. I’m not telling her the depths of his betrayal. I can’t bring myself to talk about it.
Jenny’s face softens, and she reaches out a hand to where mine is clenched on the table. My fist is tight, tense from thinking about our last encounter. The way he went back on his promise.
‘Keep it that way, Caro,’ Jenny says to me, stroking her thumb against the back of my hand. It feels nice, comforting. ‘You’ve got to remember – he wasn’t yours to have in the first place.’
I stiffen. ‘I know that, Jenny,’ I say to her. ‘You don’t need to remind me.’
Rick comes back into the room and we spring apart from each other as though we’ve been caught doing something illicit. I wonder how much she’s told him, whether they discuss me when they’re tucked up in bed at night. You won’t believe the mess Caroline’s got herself into now… Jenny takes her hand from mine. Rick kisses her as he walks past, and I feel it again, the pang of jealousy. I want to be like that – wholesome, motherly, someone worth something.
Things are slightly strained for the next hour of the evening, but gradually, we pull the conversation back around, and by the end of the night it’s as though our chat about Callum hasn’t happened at all. I force myself to let them talk me into the thought of a dating app, pasting a smile on my face so that they don’t think I’m a bad sport. The sides of my cheeks begin to ache from the effort.
It’s as I’m getting my things together that it happens. I’m slightly tipsy by this point, preparing myself for the walk home, struggling a little to pull on my left shoe. It’s Rick who answers the phone, and at the sound of his words I tense, feel my breath hold still in my chest. People’s voices change when they get bad news. Jenny has been stacking our wine glasses and plates into the dishwasher, but she stops suddenly as Rick turns to us, his face slack and white.
‘It’s my mum,’ he says hoarsely, ‘she’s in the hospital. They think it’s a heart attack.’ He raises a hand to his eyes and I’ve never seen him like this, so untethered, so diminished. I know he and his mum are close; Jenny used to moan about it when they first got together. We see more of his bloody mother than anyone else I know.
Instantly, Jenny’s by his side, her cardigan-clad arms stretching around his torso, holding him as though he might topple at any minute.
‘We’ve got to go,’ Rick says. ‘They said this – they said this might be it.’
His eyes are staring past me, unseeing, translucent. I feel sick – I know what’s coming even before she asks me.
‘Eve’s asleep,’ Jenny says, and she lets go of her husband for a moment, comes over to where I’m standing sloppily in their porch, one shoe on, one shoe off. ‘Caroline – you couldn’t stay, could you?’
I stare at her, my heart beginning to beat fast and tight, like a drum. She reaches out and takes my hand again, squeezes it in hers. Her skin is soft and warm.
‘I’ll call you from the hospital, as soon as we know what’s happening. It won’t be long. I just—’ She glances back at Rick, who is still ashen. ‘I just need to be with him, and I don’t want to wake Eve. It’s – she doesn’t often get to sleep so easily.’
‘I don’t know,’ I say quickly, the words coming out in a rush. ‘I don’t know, Jen – are you sure you can’t take her with you?’
She releases the pressure on my hand for a second as Rick begins to move, grabbing his mobile and shoving it into his jeans pocket, reaching for the house keys.
‘Please, Caro,’ she says, ‘please.’ Her eyes are big and wide and begging. I imagine it, little Eve and me, her relying on me if anything goes wrong. I don’t know if I’m capable of it. I don’t know if I trust myself. But oh, how I want to.
‘I’ll ring you as soon as I can, Caro,’ Jenny is saying, and she is sliding on her coat and kissing me sloppily on the cheek, telling Rick that he will have to drive because she thinks she might be over the limit.
You definitely are over the limit, I think to myself, and then the door is slamming, the house reverberating from the noise, and their footsteps are hurrying away down the path and to their car.
I stand there, my breathing too loud.
And that’s how I’m left alone in Jenny and Rick Grant’s house with their baby, for the very first time.
The place feels very quiet without Jenny and Rick. I make myself a cup of tea, feeling skittery and on edge. Quarter to eleven, eleven o’clock, and still Jenny doesn’t ring. It must be taking longer at the hospital than they thought; I picture his mother lying supine on a bed, the anxious beeping of machines surrounding her. My own mother died very quickly, a car accident on the A12. The car that hit her was a learner driver. I googled pictures of him for years afterwards, but he never looked like a killer, he just looked like a normal teenage boy. Proof that nobody ever looks quite what they seem.
Eventually, because I can’t put it off any longer, I leave the kitchen and stand in the corridor outside Eve’s room. The door is very slightly ajar, and a thin shaft of light from the window falls onto the floor, highlighting my socked feet on the unfamiliar carpet.
Carefully, I push open the door. The smell of baby hits me, the soft, milky sweetness of it. My stomach is churning. You see, I wanted a baby. Someone to care for. I wanted one so much.
Callum took that away from me, and I let him. It’s something I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive myself for.
The cot is in the corner of the room, a pretty blue and white mobile dangling over it. If I stay very still, I can just about hear the sound of Eve’s breathing, the shallow little breaths, the occasional snuffle. I take a step close
r, feeling my way through the semi-darkness. For a few minutes, I allow myself to imagine what it would be like to hold her in my arms, her warm little body pressed against me. Me, not Jenny. I let myself feel what it might be like to pop her into a sturdy, expensive-looking pram and have strangers smile at me in the streets, watch their faces melt as they bend down to look at her.
These are not the sort of thoughts my brain normally lets me have. I don’t think about babies any more because I don’t let myself think about them.
Not after what happened.
Eve shifts slightly in her sleep, the thin pink blanket over her moving in the darkness. She must be hot; I am. I can feel sweat beginning to prickle along the back of my neck, despite the fact that Rick has left the window open, just a crack. It is silent apart from the sound of Eve and I breathing, and for a moment, I feel as though it is just the two of us against the world. There is no Rick, no Jenny, no Callum, and no Siobhan Dillon.
A buzzing sound disrupts the silence, making me jump. For a moment, I get the sense that somebody is behind me, waiting in the shadowy doorway, but then the moment passes as quickly as it came and I realise that of course, it’s just my phone in my back pocket. My fingers trembling slightly, partly from the disturbance and partly from the adrenaline of being so close to Eve, I pull it out of my jeans and press the button to unlock the screen. I’m expecting it to be Jenny with an update from the hospital but it’s not, it’s from someone else. A number I don’t recognise.
I know what you’re doing, it says. Don’t take what isn’t yours.
I stare at the words, shining out at me from the screen, the bright light casting an eerie glow against Eve’s bedroom floor. The wine I had earlier is churning around in my stomach, suddenly making me feel nauseous. Stupidly, I suddenly want Jenny to come home, for her and Rick to burst through the door, with their irritating habits and their warmth; I want them to come in and flick the lights on, boil the kettle, check on little Eve.
The Babysitter: From the author of digital bestsellers and psychological crime thrillers like The Girl Next Door comes the most gripping and addictive book of 2020! Page 4
