by T. M. Logan
‘Who?’ I said. ‘Who was she with?’
Odette looked at us, all of us, her big hazel-green eyes seeming to see us for the first time. Slowly, tentatively, she raised her hand and pointed.
74
My husband tensed beside me, his hands bunched into fists, the muscles in his arms hard against mine.
There is a witness to what you did, Sean. A real live witness.
But would they take the word of a five-year-old girl against a grown man?
Absently, I wondered how he was going to react when he was accused, if I would visit my husband in a French prison, or if the kids would want to visit. Where would it be? How long might the sentence be? Or would he be extradited back to the UK?
Odette didn’t blink. She didn’t speak, or cry, or hide her face.
She just pointed.
Her finger shaking, her whole hand shaking, her index finger singled out one person sitting on the sofa opposite.
Jennifer.
Time seemed to slow down as all eyes in the room turned towards her.
‘What?’ Jennifer said, a confused half-smile on her face.
Finally, Odette found her voice. ‘They were shouting. Saying mean things to each other. And then the smoke blowed in the way and when it was gone again only Jake and Ethan’s mummy was standing there. The other lady was gone.’
‘That’s not true,’ Jennifer said. ‘I was nowhere near the cliff edge.’
Rowan turned to her daughter again.
‘Do you think maybe it was another lady that you saw, Odette? Was it someone else’s mummy?’
Odette shook her head but said nothing.
‘Maybe it was Lucy’s mummy?’ She gestured to me.
‘Uh-uh,’ Odette said, shaking her head. ‘The tall blonde lady.’
Jennifer said, ‘Lucy’s blonde, too.’
‘Jake and Ethan’s mummy!’ Odette said indignantly.
‘She seems quite sure,’ Rowan said, ‘that it was you, Jen.’
Jennifer threw her hands up.
‘She’s five years old, for Christ’s sake – not exactly the most reliable witness, is she?’
‘She doesn’t lie.’
‘She’s an attention seeker!’ Jennifer said, her voice rising. ‘She’s been doing it all week, only everyone is too polite to point it out!’
‘What?’ Rowan’s face was flushed with anger. ‘Where the hell do you get off, having a pop at my—’
‘She’s acting up again now! Just to get attention!’
‘Rather than being model citizens, like your boys?’
‘How dare you!’ Jennifer pointed an accusing finger. ‘You have literally no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘How dare you criticise my child when your eldest spent last night rolling around in his own vomit!’
Their raised voices began to overlap in a continuous barrage of accusations and counter-accusations, colliding and clashing and bouncing off the walls.
‘You have no right to bring my boys into it—’
‘You have no right to talk about my daughter—’
‘She’s a spoiled little—’
Russ joined in, veins standing out in his neck.
‘You’ve got a bloody nerve—’
‘I’ve got a nerve! Says the man whose daughter could have drowned while he was—’
‘That is absolute bull—’
‘And then virtually accused my boys of—’
‘For all we know, your boys could have started the fire in the first—’
‘For all we know, you could have coached Odette to say she saw—’
‘Coached her? Are you out of your—’
Abruptly, Rowan stopped.
Odette had her hands tightly over her ears and was crying, silently, fat tears rolling down her freckled cheeks.
‘Shh,’ Rowan said, stroking her daughter’s hair with a shaking hand. ‘It’s OK, baby, I’m sorry, no more shouting. I’m sorry, it’s OK.’
Silence returned. The shouting had stopped but the tension in the room lingered like a bad smell.
Finally, Jennifer held her hands up. ‘I’m just trying to help Kate and do the right thing for Izzy, that’s all.’
‘We know,’ I said. ‘Everybody’s in shock.’
‘But I have no idea why Odette would think she saw me with Izzy. I was much more worried about getting my boys out of there.’
It was true that Odette could not be considered a particularly reliable witness. If we were all totally honest with each other for once – and as parents, we had all learned long ago never to be totally honest when it came to talking about each other’s children – she had been acting up since the day we arrived. It was what she did. The fits of temper, the fussiness with food, the bedtime routine, were all ways of getting attention from parents whose focus was more often on their mobile phones.
And yet . . .
And yet she had been sure, she had been positive, that she had seen Jennifer at the cliff edge with Izzy. She had been near enough to see, despite the smoke. Near enough to hear the two of them arguing.
They were shouting. Saying mean things to each other. And then the smoke blowed in the way and when it was gone again only Jake and Ethan’s mummy was standing there. The other lady was gone.
It didn’t fit. It didn’t make sense, didn’t mesh with what I knew.
Until a few minutes ago I had been resigned to the fact that I had discovered the sordid, dirty truth at the heart of my marriage, was resigned to the fact that I would not lie to the police, would not withhold evidence, would not go against everything I believed in. Resigned to the fact that my husband – the father of my children, the man I loved with all my heart, the man I had wanted to grow old with – had betrayed me. Resigned to the fact that betrayal had somehow tumbled into murder.
But Odette’s words didn’t fit.
And there was something else, something more, just beyond my eyeline. I could sense it was there, but when I tried to look straight at it, it slid out of sight.
What if I had been looking at everything the wrong way, all this time? A few days ago I had been convinced that Rowan was the guilty party, then Jennifer, and now Izzy. I had been getting it wrong all week. Now my friend was dead – and maybe I was still wrong. What if I had let my emotions get the better of me? What if I hadn’t parked my ‘work brain’, as Sean liked to call it, but put it to use here instead?
I remembered the very first crime scene I had been called out to, after I’d qualified. A burglary at a house, nothing particularly unusual apart from the large volume of jewellery, cash and electronics taken by burglars who had not left a single forensic trace. No fingerprints, no footprints, no DNA. It had been a scrupulous job. It had also been totally bogus: the homeowner, a CSI Miami fan angling for an insurance payout, exposed months later when his pictures of a ‘stolen’ Rolex were found to have been taken after the burglary had supposedly taken place.
At the time, though, as a green-as-grass newbie with only a week in the job, I had been completely taken in. And the question hung over me now: had I been taken in again?
I thought back to my conversation with Izzy in the dining room, only a couple of hours ago. What had she said? What had she actually said?
This is tough, Kate, but I’ve given it a lot of thought and I know it’s the right thing to do under the circumstances.
I don’t know how to say this. I’ve agonised over whether to tell you about—
I didn’t realise on Tuesday that—
Didn’t realise what? I had assumed at the time that meant she hadn’t realised I was on to her, that I already knew Sean had betrayed me. But maybe I had jumped to the wrong conclusion.
Outside, the thunder was getting closer. Something clicked in my head and finally, finally, I thought I might be starting to understand.
75
I studied my friends on the sofa opposite. Rowan comforting her daughter, jigging her gently on her knee. Russ, slapping a pack o
f Marlboros into the palm of his hand, looking as if he’d like to continue the shouting match. Jennifer, close to tears again, spots of colour high in her cheeks.
‘Jen,’ I said, ‘why did you send the kids away?’
‘What?’
‘Ten minutes ago. You sent the other four kids downstairs to the games room.’
She shrugged, distracted.
‘I thought there were things they probably shouldn’t hear.’ She threw a pointed look at Rowan. ‘And I’m mighty glad I did, now.’
‘Anything else?’
‘It’s so tough for teenagers to process grief. It’s a new experience for them, I didn’t want them getting any more upset than they already are. They’re devastated, trying to deal with what’s happened. And . . .’ She hesitated. ‘I guess I didn’t want to embarrass you.’
‘I get all that, and I appreciate it.’ It was my turn to hesitate. ‘But what was the other reason?’
‘Other reason for what?’
‘Separating the kids from this conversation.’
‘Not sure I follow you.’
‘What I mean is, what has all of this got to do with the kids?’
She shrugged.
‘Nothing. Apart from them being here this week, with all of us.’
Cogs were turning in my brain. My daughter’s tears. A conversation on the beach. A tribute page on Facebook. Ethan sprawled in the grass, staring up at the night sky. Jake so drunk he couldn’t stand. Izzy bringing him back from the gorge.
Every time we stopped for him to be sick, he wanted to have a chat, she had said.
About what?
All kinds of stuff.
All kinds of stuff.
‘I was wondering,’ I said, ‘what Jake told Izzy last night. When he was drunk?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Really? No idea at all?’
It was almost imperceptible. Almost invisible, but not quite: a slight twitch of the muscle under her eye.
‘You saw how bad he was,’ she said. ‘Absolutely blasted, he was almost incoherent most of the time.’
‘He was “looking for oblivion”, according to his brother. Why would he be doing that?’
‘They’re teenage boys. They’re testing boundaries, looking for new experiences.’
I changed tack.
‘Do the boys know someone called Alex Bayley?’
I thought I caught a flash of something crossing her face, just for a split second. Then it was gone. My judgement had been so wide of the mark this week that I almost dismissed it.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I mean, I don’t think so. Did he go to their school?’
Something about that didn’t quite ring true either, but I let it go for now.
‘How about the fire?’ I continued. ‘Why today? How did it start?’
She held her hands up in exasperation. ‘We’ve been through that already. What is this, twenty questions?’
‘Because one fire could conceivably have been an accident. But it looked to me like the fire had been started in two different places, and I started out thinking that Jake and Ethan had—’
Jennifer stood up, eyes brimming with tears.
‘Enough! How long have we been friends? I can’t believe all of you think it’s OK to attack my children like this. Again. It’s just so hurtful and horrible, I can’t believe what I’m hearing. We’re all devastated and heartbroken about what happened to Izzy, me just as much as you.’
I raised my hands in a calming gesture.
‘Let me finish, Jen. I was thinking that two boys meant two fires. But what if it wasn’t that – what if it meant something different?’
‘Like what?’ Russ asked.
‘Two fires to make sure it caught. To make sure it got going, make sure there was lots of smoke. To make sure it couldn’t be put out straightaway.’
‘What would be the point of that?’
‘To cause a distraction,’ I said. ‘A diversion.’
‘An actual smokescreen,’ he said.
‘Exactly.’ I turned to his wife. ‘Do you remember, Rowan, when we first saw the smoke and the three of us were running down through the vineyard? Me, you and Izzy?’
‘I remember being terrified.’
‘But do you remember the last thing Izzy said to us, as we ran into the woods?’
Her expression changed, eyes flicking to Jennifer and then back to me.
‘She said she was going to find Jen, help her round up the boys.’
‘Yes. That’s what I remember, too.’
The silence stretched out for a long moment.
‘So?’ Jennifer said. ‘So what?’
‘Izzy went looking for you,’ I said. ‘To help you. And she did find you, because Odette saw you together a few minutes later.’
Jennifer was moving towards the door.
‘You know what? I don’t have to listen to this, it’s ridiculous!’ Her voice was shaking with anger. ‘My friend is dead because of a terrible, horrible accident but all you want to do is find someone to blame. Well, how about you look a little closer to home for that, Kate? How about you look at your role in all of this? You’re the one who stalked your own husband for a week, you’re the one who figured out he was fucking one of your best friends, you’re the one who confronted her. Why don’t you tell the police all that, see how it goes for you?’
‘Yes,’ I said, a strange calmness coming over me for the first time in days. ‘That’s exactly what I think we should do. I think we should tell the police everything.’
She shot me a look of disbelief, mixed with pity.
‘Good luck with that, honey.’
With that, she stormed off, calling to Jake and Ethan to go to their rooms and start packing.
To my surprise, Sean jumped up and followed her out. Seconds later the sound of a hushed but heated exchange of voices reached us.
Rowan handed Odette to her husband and came to sit next to me.
‘Are you OK, Kate?’
‘No. You?’
‘Not really.’ She squeezed my hand. For the first time I could remember, she seemed to struggle to find the right words. ‘Do you really think she did it?’
I shrugged.
‘Honestly? I don’t know. But that’s for the police to decide, not us.’
‘But what do we do now?’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘If she’s capable of something like that, who knows what she might do next?’
I didn’t have an answer for her. We had sailed off the edge of the known world into uncharted waters, and there was no map to take us home. There was only one thing left to do: keep on going.
‘We have to sit tight, Rowan, until the police get here. In the meantime, I’m going to talk to Sean. Find some answers.’
He was in the kitchen, Jennifer backing him into a corner. The argument died on their lips as I appeared in the doorway.
‘I need some air, Sean. Let’s go out to the balcony, shall we?’
He nodded. He looked like a man who was on his way to the gallows and knew his soul was already damned.
‘Aye,’ he said softly.
It was time for the truth.
76
The air outside was thick with humidity, the storm to our south casting the land into deep shadow. It was pushing up fast and would be overhead soon. For now, though, the evening sun continued to beat down on the villa with an intense, relentless Mediterranean heat that started to bake my skin as soon as we stepped outside. Sean and I found a couple of chairs and sat down at the far edge of the balcony, the French countryside spread out below us like a watercolour painting in vivid greens and deep, earthy browns.
‘Before I say anything else, Sean, I just want to make one thing clear between us.’
‘OK,’ he said uncertainly.
‘I’ve never trusted anyone in my life the way I trust you,’ I said. ‘Not even my parents or my sister. The things I tell you, the things we share – I trust you completely.’
; He nodded but said nothing.
‘But this week that trust has been tested to the limit, to the point where I thought things would never be the same again, that we could never go back to the way they were. But I still think there’s a chance we can go back. Do you?’
He swallowed hard.
‘I hope we can.’
‘Well, the only way that’s going to happen is if you trust me. You have to trust me. You have to tell me what’s going on, right here, right now. I need the truth.’
‘I know.’
‘And I swear to God, I swear on my life, if you don’t tell me the absolute truth – and I mean everything – the first thing I’ll do when we get home is file for divorce. It’ll kill me, but I will do it.’
‘Don’t,’ he said quickly. ‘Don’t do that.’
‘No more secrets, then.’
He nodded. ‘No more secrets.’
‘Good.’
He seemed to buckle in on himself, slumping into his chair as if he had been holding something back for so long that all of his energy was exhausted. When he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper.
‘I didn’t do it. I didn’t push Izzy over the edge.’
I took his big right hand in both of mine. ‘I know, Sean. I know you didn’t.’
He looked up, blinking in surprise. ‘You do?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you thought I . . .’
‘Not any more – I’ve finally figured some things out.’ It was nowhere near the truth, but I needed him to think that I knew, to push him into telling me. ‘I just need you to help me put the pieces together in the right order.’
He leaned back in his seat until he was staring straight up at the sky, at the dark clouds gathering overhead.
‘Jesus, what a mess. What a fucking mess.’ He looked down at me again. ‘It was when you mentioned Alex Bayley that I knew there was no point carrying on. That it was all over.’
‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘All of it.’
He rubbed his face in both hands, exhaled heavily and looked out at the view for a moment, at the dark hills in the distance, before turning his attention back to me.
‘It all started a few weeks ago,’ he said.
‘Go on.’
He hesitated, then ploughed on.
