by Helen Cooper
* * *
—
Another two years from this day, Mum will be dead. I will have nothing left, nobody to care for, and I’ll know the time has come to confess.
I’ll put it off, though. I’ll keep working hard, as many hours as I can get, leaving myself no time to think about the past. My bosses will promote me from cleaner to server, and then to the first-class lounge, recognizing me as someone who’s never off sick and never turns down a shift. Every day I’ll watch the travelers and wonder what it’s like to be them. Eventually this game of displacement will consume me and I’ll reinvent myself bit by bit as Stephanie Shaw, a name glimpsed on a boarding card during a transaction. A name that sounds like a character from a book.
“Stephanie Shaw” has always lived in London. She’s independent, lives alone by choice. Though it’ll break my heart to leave Dominique, I’ll move into a flat closer to the airport and one day I’ll make it official: I’ll legally become Stephanie Shaw. Kate Thomas will no longer exist.
Then, without meaning to, I’ll meet a man. I’ll be drawn toward him, sitting lost in his thoughts in the first-class lounge. Perhaps I’ll sense that, like me, he’s both a blank sheet and a labyrinth of secrets. I’ll fall for him so quickly I’ll barely know it’s happening, and I’ll let myself be happy for a while.
Then the guilt will return, even stronger. How can I lie in a comfortable bed, in this man’s arms, while Becca’s in prison? I’ll feel it again: the certainty that I have to turn myself in, and the fear of everything that will follow.
Because there’s still something only I know.
The effects of the carbamazepine were not just increased because of antidepressants and alcohol. The level in Nick’s blood appeared higher than the dose Becca and I agreed to give him because, quite simply, it was.
I was so scared it wouldn’t be enough. Scared that two small white pills would have no impact on tall, broad Nick. So as he was waiting for Mum to get ready, sipping a second beer between ordering a taxi and packing last-minute things, I snuck two more tablets into his drink.
This is the part I’ve never told a soul. The part that might get Becca out of jail, switch our places, reverse the courses of our lives.
But just when I’ve gathered every scrap of courage from every corner of myself, I’ll discover something that changes my whole perspective.
I’ll discover I’m pregnant.
My life will become about that baby instead. I’ll realize that whatever I tried to do for Mum in the past, whatever I know I should do for Becca, it doesn’t compare with what I would do for her, my daughter, my Freya.
71.
STEPH
“Are you warm enough?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want my coat?”
“I’m fine.”
“Is your head hurting?”
“A bit.”
“How much?”
“A bit! That’s as precise a unit as I can give you, Mum!” Freya rolled her eyes but she was half smiling, and both expressions made Steph want to weep with relief. She was back and she was still Freya. Probably shaken and scarred in ways that were yet to reveal themselves, but still Freya. And they were driving her home after the longest ten days of their lives.
Steph thrummed with nerves as they drew close to their neighborhood, gripping Freya’s hand for her own sake now. She and Paul had slept in a cheap hotel near the hospital for the last five nights, wanting to stay close. Now this had the momentous feel of a homecoming after years abroad. Surely everything would be different, strange.
I’m so sorry, she said again, to her daughter and husband, but in her head this time, because Paul had banned her from repeating it. She wanted to say it every day for the rest of their lives, and she was reminded of feeling the same after Becca had gone to prison.
Her cousin was in custody. Again. And Steph, like her sixteen-year-old self, was back to waiting and wondering whether she would incriminate her. So far, no officers had threatened to take Steph away from the family she’d only just been reunited with. The questions they’d asked hadn’t touched on her involvement in Nick’s poisoning, or that she’d been harboring somebody who’d broken parole. They’d told her Becca was being tight-lipped about her motivation for trying to damage the Harlows’ life. She’d cited jealousy, old grievances, nothing specific. So perhaps she was still keeping Steph’s secrets, even after everything.
The idea sat uneasily with Steph, despite the anguish Becca had caused. Hadn’t the time come to tell the truth? Hadn’t other people suffered enough for her mistakes? But then she would look at her family and think, How can I leave them?
Her dilemma was knocked from her mind as they turned into their street. She and Freya were sitting together in the back, Paul driving, and Freya began to giggle. “We’re like royals and Dad’s our chauffeur.”
“I live to serve,” Paul said from the front, doffing an invisible cap.
Nervous laughter bubbled out of Steph too. She caught Freya’s eye and they were off, Paul joining them, the joy of it like a drug. Steph couldn’t help thinking of the giggling fits she used to have with Becca over practically nothing. She and Freya were the same sometimes, or had been before Freya’s faith in her had been rocked. A pang dented Steph’s laughter. She couldn’t give this up.
They laughed harder as Irene from number 12 came rushing out of her house to wave, and Freya performed a subtle royal wave in return. But their amusement faded as they progressed along the street and saw other neighbors emerging onto the pavement to welcome them home. Clearly word had got around that they were due back. People were clapping. Crying. Somebody had had the foresight and the kindness to remove the missing posters from the trees.
A lump expanded in Steph’s throat. She glanced at Freya and saw the shock in her face, the sudden childishness of her blinking eyes. Perhaps she hadn’t realized how many people had willed her to be found. If she was honest, Steph hadn’t realized either, in the whirl of it all. She didn’t allow herself to look toward Chris Watson’s basement, to wonder whether Vicky was watching, how she must feel. The darker shades of their street, and of their story, could be held at bay for this moment of slow-motion happiness.
Emma was there, too, as they stepped out of the car. Standing on crutches, with Zeb, in front of their railings. She was wearing the baby-pink 1960s coat that Steph had often admired, and her hair was a turbo-charged shade of blue, as if freshly dyed. Steph held her gaze, and thought she saw Freya catch Zeb’s eye, something unsaid momentarily connecting them all. It seemed that one of them might speak, like maybe they all wanted to, but Emma just smiled and stuck close to Zeb, and Steph looped her arm around Freya as they moved toward their front door.
Then she noticed the sign. to let.
Steph’s stomach corkscrewed with jittery relief. Vicky was leaving, of course. Would she start again, like Steph had once? Would she spend her life trying to forget what her husband had done, or would she stick by him?
Steph blinked, though, as she registered what the sign actually said: Two-bedroom ground-floor flat. She swiveled back to Emma. “You’re moving?”
Emma flushed a little, and nodded. “It’s all happened quite fast. I’m giving my business another go, fingers crossed . . . but until I start making money I can’t afford the rent on this place as well. So I’ll live above the shop temporarily. Zeb’s going to stay with his dad a bit longer. They’re helping me spruce up the shop . . . and then we’ll see.”
Steph wasn’t sure what to feel. It seemed her relationship with Emma—however she might define it—probably wouldn’t evolve beyond the intensity of this period. And maybe it never would have, because where was there to go from here? It was already becoming dreamlike: Steph trusting Emma with the address she’d kept secret for years; running beside her in pursuit of a man who was still unidentified. Now they’d reverted to two neigh
bors in the street, talking politely, their children beside them.
“Well, that’s great,” Steph said. “Good luck.” For old times’ sake, she added: “Your earrings are spectacular.”
Emma touched the dangling peacock feathers. “If you fancy something similar, swing by the shop in a few weeks.”
“Not sure I could pull them off,” Steph said, and Emma smiled in recognition of their familiar script.
“Welcome home, Freya,” Emma added, turning to her, a sudden dampness in her eyes. “It’s such a relief to see you.”
Freya murmured her thanks, seeming overwhelmed. Zeb nodded beneath his curly fringe, and a moment of quiet settled. It was Paul who broke it, suggesting they should get Freya inside to rest.
Steph glanced toward the basement steps, just for a moment, before she urged Freya into their cool, quiet hallway.
At the entrance to their flat, Freya stopped and breathed in. Unmistakably, there was the smell of Elizabeth Arden perfume. And homemade ginger cake. The source of both scents ran out from the living room with Brian behind, then Jess. They gathered Freya into their arms. Heather kissed her all over her face, Brian cried almost as much as Jess, and Paul was sucked into their messy, teary huddle too.
Steph found herself hanging back. She watched her family and imagined, in different circumstances, two extra people: her mum and her cousin. Alive and free, driving each other mad, but with nothing huge to forgive or be forgiven for. Would her mum and Heather have got on? Would her cousin have become Freya’s Auntie Bec? What was the use in wondering?
Freya turned to look for her, and Paul held out his arm to bring her into the fold. Steph shook off her sadness and stepped toward them. This was another moment that shouldn’t be tainted, another outbreak of joy before the process of putting their lives back together had to begin.
* * *
—
That night, Steph climbed the attic stairs. Halfway up she paused and looked down, seeing Paul through the living-room door, in his usual armchair wearing his suede slippers. How quickly they’d rediscovered their routines: their places in front of the TV and round the table, Freya’s favorite cheesy pasta for dinner. Ordinary things made extraordinarily precious.
Paul glanced up and saw her watching him. He smiled, and Steph’s stomach fluttered with love, and gratitude, and residual guilt. While they’d been staying near the hospital, they’d talked and talked about their lives as other people. Yet there was still that one part of her own story she hadn’t shared and probably never would. It wasn’t a chapter, not even a page, only a paragraph, a line. But it was the axis upon which the story spun. The two extra pills that might have made the difference between Nick living and dying.
She pointed to indicate that she was going to check on Freya. Paul nodded, and Steph tiptoed up the last few wooden stairs to knock on her daughter’s door. Still part of her expected a furious “Leave me alone!” but Freya invited her in. Steph paused a beat to appreciate, again, the miraculous fact that her daughter was back where she belonged.
The room was warmly lit by the bedside lamp. Freya was in bed cocooned by pillows. As she took her earbuds out of her ears, the murmur of a Harry Potter audio book seeped from them. Steph glanced at Freya’s other books, her Agatha Christies and Conan Doyles, and thought about her daughter playing detective, emulating her dad or her favorite characters, but going to extreme lengths. Blackmailing her driving instructor, behaving in unrecognizable ways. Why didn’t you just ask me, Frey?
But why hadn’t Steph asked her if anything was wrong?
Why hadn’t she asked Paul about his past?
It wasn’t always easy to ask the question.
Steph perched on Freya’s bed and brushed her hair back from her face, checking the dressed wound. She couldn’t help picturing, for the hundredth time, the moment of Freya’s head hitting Chris’s dashboard. Freya couldn’t remember it, or much of her four delirious days in Becca’s spare room, kept hidden but alive. Apparently, just before Steph had arrived at the maisonette, Becca had been planning to alert the police to Freya’s whereabouts and then disappear. She was denying sending the note or the book. A question mark still hovered over those things.
Steph let Freya’s hair fall back into place. Then she opened her mouth and suddenly she was telling her daughter the story of a girl called Kate Thomas. A girl only a few months younger than Freya was now, who had thought she’d understood something, thought she could fix it. Much like Freya had.
It was a twisted bedtime story. Steph felt herself dividing as she told it, the same as when she’d first been interviewed by the police with her appropriate adult beside her. The version of herself that owned the whole truth was floating toward the attic ceiling, disappearing through the skylight with those extra pills in her fist. It was Kate, carrying away the snipped-out portion of the tale, leaving Steph on the bed with her daughter, sharing only as much as she could bring herself to confess. Only as much as she had told Paul.
Freya stared into space as she listened. Then her eyes moved to Steph. She looked calm, but her neck had reddened, like Becca’s did when her emotions were rising to the surface.
“You never even told Dad your real name?”
Steph shook her head. “I wanted to be Steph Harlow. And when I was with you and Dad, I was. You made me better. Helped me forget.”
“You killed someone.”
Steph swallowed. “Yes.”
“Did you mean to?”
Steph tensed. She’d never actually had to answer that question before. She thought of the adrenaline that had exploded through her as she’d snuck the additional dose into Nick’s drink. The thud of despair when she’d returned from Costcutter to find him unharmed. Later, when her mum had called from the hospital, the reality of what she’d done had ripped into her. But up to that point, deep down, had she wished him dead?
She met her daughter’s eyes, which seemed to brim with a kind of troubled fascination. Steph couldn’t let Freya think of her as a killer. She’d never really come to terms with the idea that her mum might have seen her that way, underneath their pretense.
“No,” she said. “I was scared and desperate. But of course I didn’t want to kill him.”
Freya plucked at her bedclothes. Steph knew her face was going to crumple even before it did, and she shuffled closer to hug her, stroking her back as she cried.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered into her hair. “I love you so much, Frey.”
“What’s going to happen?” Freya asked. “You won’t go to prison, will you? You and Dad aren’t going to split up? Will I get into trouble for blackmailing Chris?”
“No!” Steph rushed to promise her. “None of those things are going to happen.”
She checked herself, remembering all the times she’d over-promised in the past, convincing both Freya and herself that their charmed life was untouchable.
“At least, I’ll try my hardest to make sure they don’t,” she amended carefully. “There might be some things out of our control. But Dad and I are solid. And all three of us made some mistakes but we’ve paid for them pretty thoroughly already, don’t you think?”
Freya nodded. “I . . . I did other stuff too.”
“What stuff?”
“The eggs, the banana skins, the stupid parenting book . . . Well, Zeb did them, but it was all my idea.”
Steph couldn’t stop her mouth twisting with this final shock.
“It was all part of my anti-Mum campaign,” Freya said, “once I’d got it into my head that . . . but I don’t think you’re a bad mum. The opposite, actually.”
It was one more thing to absorb. It made Steph’s limbs feel heavy. She sank down next to her daughter and Freya shuffled to make room for her on the bed. A rectangle of star-peppered night hovered above them. Steph pictured the sky rippling and churning, and her breathless teenage self, wa
tching the turmoil without knowing her life was about to be thrown into similar disorder.
“I don’t want Zeb to get into trouble,” Freya said as they looked up. “But I just want to be completely honest with you, like you have with me. Get it all out in the open.”
Steph squeezed her hand. Her overwhelming feeling now was a desire to give in to a dreamless sleep. The stars were hazy and the wind was a lullaby. She remembered all those times, as a worn-out young mum, when she’d put Freya to bed and ended up dropping off beside her. Paul used to do the same on his turns. She’d discover him snoring peacefully, as he would no doubt discover her in an hour or so, creeping up to check where she’d got to.
Hopefully, he would leave them to sleep. When Steph woke, spring sunlight would be pouring through the windows, and Freya would still be close.
“I . . . haven’t been completely honest,” Steph murmured.
She closed her eyes, listening to the wind, the missing scenes of her guilt playing out behind the lids. But she had spoken softly, almost under her breath, and she knew Freya was already asleep.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’ve been incredibly lucky to have so many talented and supportive people helping me, and my book, along the way.
To my brilliant agent, Hellie Ogden: a huge thank-you for all your support, wisdom, advice, inspiration, and for always keeping the faith! You really have brought me a long way. Thank you also to Will Francis, Kate Longman, Kirsty Gordon, and all of the fantastic Janklow & Nesbit team.
To my incredible editors: Kimberley Atkins at Hodder, for your vision and enthusiasm from day one, and Danielle Dieterich at Putnam, for all the extra insight you brought. You two have an astonishing talent for bringing out the best in a book. Thank you for taking so much time and care, and for giving feedback that made me excited about rewriting! Thank you also to Helen O’Hare for seeing the book’s potential in the U.S. and for your invaluable input in the early stages of editing. Thanks to Hazel Orme and Madeline Hopkins for the perceptive copyediting, Amy Batley at Hodder for all your help, Rebecca Folland and the rights team at Hachette, and to everyone at Hodder, and at Putnam, who have made the whole process extremely enjoyable.
