I sit up straighter when I hear something tapping. It’s only gentle, like the scraping of the water pipes.
Maybe it’s Charley, gently tapping on the floor, urging me to follow her upstairs. Come on up, it’s much comfier in bed than on the sofa.
There it is again… tap-tap-tap.
I jolt up as I realise there’s somebody at the front door. I’d not closed the curtains and there’s a police car at the end of the drive. Fiona is at the door. I race around from the living room through the kitchen to the front door and pull it open.
‘It’s not what you think,’ she says straight away. ‘I didn’t want to ring the bell in case you were completely out of it. We can do this later if you want.’
‘Do what?’
‘We were wondering if you can come and identify a wedding dress…?’
Twenty-Four
I’ve never been in a police car before.
I remember having a Matchbox toy one when I was a kid. It was part of some sort of set, along with a fire engine and an ambulance. I’d sit on the kitchen floor while my mum cooked, zipping them back and forth.
‘I’ll break my neck on one of those cars,’ she’d say. ‘Is that what you want?’
I’d offer to go into the living room or outside, but she’d smile and tell me to move into the corner instead.
I wonder how many parents have ever broken their necks when it comes to things they claim they might break their neck on. Probably none.
Being inside a police car is not that different to being in a regular car. Someone I don’t know is driving and I’m in the back seat with Fiona, the liaison officer. The passenger seat is empty and there’s that seed of doubt planted by Pamela that makes me wonder why. Is Fiona here in case I try to jump out? Aren’t there child locks anyway? Do they think I’ve done something wrong?
It’s only as we move away that I realise there are no journalists or photographers outside the house any longer. Either that, or I missed them. Perhaps there’s a photographer up a tree and he snapped a picture of me getting into a police car. That will look good, won’t it? Exactly the type of thing Pamela told me to be careful about. Anyone who’s not a police officer in a patrol car looks guilty of something by default.
Too late now, I suppose.
‘Where did you find a wedding dress?’ I ask.
‘We got a phone call late last night,’ Fiona says. ‘A farmer from a few miles outside of town found it on the edge of his property. It was tangled into a tree.’
‘Do you get many reports of stray wedding dresses?’
‘None.’
That sounds ominous.
‘It could be some sort of fancy-dress thing,’ Fiona adds, although it doesn’t take much for me to know she’s trying to put a brave face on things.
‘Sometimes there are stag or hen parties on their way to the city in a minibus,’ she adds. ‘We don’t want to make any assumptions about what it is, about who it might belong to, without first asking you.’
‘But you think it’s Charley’s?’
Fiona doesn’t reply, but that’s enough of an answer in itself. They’ve not sent her out to find me at five in the morning with no reason. They’ve got a photo of Charley in her dress, so they’ll have a pretty good idea of what it looks like.
I rest my head against the door and close my eyes. It’s not that I feel unwell as such, more that everything is sluggish. When Fiona says something, it takes me a few moments to process. It’s as if I can feel those electrical impulses trudging around my nerve endings, taking their time about it.
Slooooooow.
And then I realise the implication. It’s obvious. I’m not sure why I didn’t pick up on it before. If it is Charley’s dress that’s been found, that means she was undressed at some point. It’s not like she took a change of clothes with her. All of her things are back at the house.
I open my eyes and blink back into the car.
‘You already know it’s her dress, don’t you?’ I say.
Fiona says nothing.
The Willis Curse
By Samantha Bailey
(Archived four years ago)
Liam Willis fidgets constantly as he tries to find the words. We’re in a booth, think faux leather and coffee stains, him on the side that offers a view of the door. His gaze snaps off towards the front of the café as the bell tinkles, but it’s nobody he knows.
‘You don’t have to answer,’ I assure him, but he shakes his head.
‘It’s not that,’ he stammers. ‘It’s just I don’t know what to tell you.’
Perhaps his nervousness is because he’s aware that, like it or not, he’s a part of this so-called jinx. If it can affect his parents and sister, is he next in line?
‘I don’t know,’ he repeats. ‘I mean… a curse? You think it’s nonsense. It’s like all those horror movies. You think it’s all made up and then it keeps happening.’
In his own way, Liam has spelled out the exact dilemma this reporter had when asked to talk to the eldest Willis child.
A curse? That’s ridiculous – except that it does keep happening.
Eleven years ago, it was Paul and Annie Willis. They were the beloved television personalities slayed in their own home while their youngest daughter, Charlotte, cowered in an upstairs wardrobe. The killer has never been found.
It’s only now that the open verdict has been reached on the death of middle child, Martha, that we can truly ask, ‘Is there a Willis Curse?’ Perhaps more specifically, is the Willis house cursed?
Three deaths on the same spot, all unexplained.
I ask Liam if he feels threatened, expecting an instant rebuttal. That’s not what happens. He looks up to the ceiling, lost in thought.
‘I’m not sure I’d say threatened,’ he replies.
‘What would you say?’
‘Worried.’
Liam was born when his parents were at the height of their fame. Paul was a household name when that meant something. A charismatic and friendly family figure, he could shift from giving away cars on a Friday-night game show to showing off the latest technology on a magazine show by Monday.
If he was the king of evening TV, then wife Annie was the queen of breakfast. Along with her health-conscious recipes, her yoga and exercise routines inspired hundreds of thousands of women to lose weight.
Liam went to a boarding school, but he assures me he never felt abandoned.
‘They always found time for me,’ he says. ‘I’d be home on weekends and we’d take holidays together. We’d talk on the phone all the time. They wanted the best for me.’
Two years after Liam was born, his sister came along. Little is known of Martha Willis in the early days, though Liam says she was a happy youngster. It was much later that she became the so-called ‘wild child’, well-known for her drinking, drug-taking and bed-hopping antics around Camden.
As the Willis machine rolled on, the couple became more and more popular until reaching the apex of their careers when they jointly hosted the Royal Variety Performance.
A year after that and, according to media rumours at the time, their marriage was in trouble. Liam calls that suggestion ‘total rubbish’, with the only definitive fact being that Annie Willis gave birth to a third child nine months after those rumours surfaced.
Charlotte Willis was the catapult that sent Paul and Annie back into the limelight. With bouncing blonde curls and twinkling green eyes, she was a glossy magazine darling from the day she was born. Annie Willis wrote two books about parenting and co-presented a show with her husband that followed similar themes for almost six years. Paul Willis, meanwhile, found himself as the face of Wheel Of Fortune.
It’s said that everyone knows where they were when they heard of the death of John F. Kennedy or John Lennon – but a few generations on and many identify with where they were when they heard of the Willis Massacre.
In the aftermath, Charlotte controversially went off to live with wild child Martha, while Lia
m tried to crack America.
‘It’s harder than it sounds,’ Liam says with a rueful smile.
‘It sounds pretty difficult.’
‘I got through to a few final auditions for pilot shows – but never more than that. I don’t think they were looking for Brits at the time and I never quite mastered accents.’ He pauses and then adds: ‘Good times, though.’
I don’t press on what those ‘good times’ might have entailed, but the smirk says plenty.
‘What is it that worries you?’ I ask, taking him back to his own choice of words.
‘In what way?’ he replies.
‘Is it the so-called curse that worries you, or is it that your parents’ killer was never caught?’
Because that’s the terrifying truth. A killer is still out there and, according to the inquest, there is now a third death that’s unexplained.
Martha burned to death in a fire at her parents’ house a few months ago. Her husband and friends insist she was happy, that there was no reason for her to take her own life. The police and fire investigators have been unable to shed any further light on things.
Perhaps the curse is not a curse at all. Perhaps, like most demons, it is human. The police say there is no connection – but they have taken eleven years to not find a killer.
‘She might have set the fire herself,’ Liam says, somewhat out of the blue.
‘Your sister?’
‘Yes.’
It’s an astonishing allegation.
‘Does that sound like the type of thing she would do?’
‘We didn’t talk much. She was angry.’
‘About what?’
Liam shrugs, unable to offer anything more specific. Martha is not around to defend herself, but Liam’s thoughts do not match the coroner’s. In his report, Martha was noted as a ‘loving wife and mother’ as well as a ‘devoted sister’.
The sister is, of course, Charlotte Willis. Liam has remained, to some degree, in the public limelight. Martha struggled to shake off the ‘wild child’ tag – but little is known of the final Willis youth. For someone whose childhood was consumed in the spotlight, it is perhaps no surprise that her adolescence has been spent shunning it.
As for the possibility of that Willis Curse, Liam does eventually decide that’s it something in which he does not believe.
‘It can’t be real, can it?’ he says later in our conversation.
‘Why do you say that?’
He pumps up his chest, flashes a toothy smile as if he’s auditioning to host one of his father’s famous game shows. ‘Because I ain’t going nowhere,’ he says.
Twenty-Five
Now
Seth
Pamela the publicist arrives at quarter past seven, laden with two soft suit bags. I can only imagine what time she got up because she’s got a full face of make-up and her hair is as high as the night before. She tells me there’s more in her car, hands me the keys and then disappears into the house. I’m already lugging the suitcase from the back seat of her BMW when I realise I could have told her to get it herself.
She has a way of giving orders that means there’s not even a question of refusing to do something. This is probably how Mussolini started. One minute he was telling someone to get the bags from his car, the next he was founding fascism.
The reporters and photographers have seemingly gone. I lock her car, then the front door and carry everything into the living room. Pamela is clinging onto a pair of suits and presses one against my chest, muttering, ‘no, that’ll never do’ to herself.
‘I have my own suits,’ I tell her, but she’s not listening, she’s pressing the second one against me instead. It’s dark grey with light grey stripes.
‘Do you have any Savile Row?’ she asks.
‘Who?’
‘This one,’ she says, passing me the second suit. ‘That’s a four-thousand-pound suit, but it doesn’t look it on camera.’
‘How much?!’
‘I’m owed a few favours – I guessed your size last night. You can borrow it for today.’
I take the suit and hand her the suitcase. Inside is an overwhelming selection of shirts, ties, cufflinks, socks and even underwear. She brought underwear!
There’s an iron in there because ‘I wasn’t sure you’d have one’.
She might be many things, but Pamela is not afraid of work. Before I know it, she’s erected some pop-up expandable ironing board and is busy pressing a shirt. The iron zips back and forth with ruthless efficiency and it’s only when I mention the wedding dress that she stops to look up.
‘They found Charley’s dress?’
‘In a hedge a few miles away.’
This is the first time I’ve seen her something close to flustered – and even then it’s only a blink that gives her away.
‘I had to identify it,’ I add.
‘How do they think it got there?
‘No idea. There was a bit of a rip at the bottom, but that might have happened at the hotel. She accidentally stood on it earlier in the day. There was no blood, the zip still works, it wasn’t torn. She must have taken it off.’
I’m still trying to get my head around it myself as the pace of the iron across the shirt increases.
‘That’s very evocative,’ she says. ‘Very powerful.’
I’ve tolerated Pamela so far, but this is what takes me to the edge. I can’t take the bubbling condescension any longer: ‘This is my wife you’re talking about.’ I don’t realise I’m shouting until it’s too late. ‘She took off her wedding dress at some point. It was left in a hedge.’
Pamela puts the iron down, smiles sadly and rubs my arm. ‘I know, honey. I know. I meant that it might jog someone’s memory. We’re hoping someone comes forward to say they remember something. We want Charley to be found. That’s all I was saying.’
She removes her hand and somehow has me feeling like I’m the monster here.
I say sorry and even though she replies that it’s fine, I apologise a second time.
It’s like I’m not in control of myself. I can’t blink away the image of Charley’s wedding dress. The police had wrapped it in clear plastic, ready to be tested for whatever. It was unmistakably hers: sleeveless; smooth and shimmery across the top with a dotted trail of small decorative imitation pearls along the back. The first time I saw it was when she walked along the aisle – but that was enough that I’ll never forget it.
Pamela has moved on. She passes me the shirt to go with the suit. It’s plain white, the type of which I have half a dozen upstairs. Then she hands me a navy tie, cufflinks, socks and underwear. ‘Brand-new,’ she assures me. ‘Diane’s getting here for eight ready to go for ten, so best get a shift on.’
It’s no surprise that the clothes fit perfectly, nor that Diane Young turns up at exactly eight o’clock. She’s in her own chauffeur-driven car, but there’s a satellite truck behind and half a dozen blokes lumping equipment.
Pamela is in her element, throwing around air kisses as if she’s married to the invisible man.
Everyone spends two hours running around setting up lights and cameras in the living room while I’m in the kitchen with Pamela and Diane, who goes over the list of questions.
The two women are seemingly from a similar mould but with a decade between them. Diane is immaculate: brown bob of non-moving hair, bright red nails, scarily white teeth. She oozes authority. It’s a good job they apparently get on because I dread to think how an argument between them might go. Like planets colliding.
I find myself marvelling at how much stage-managing goes into making something look authentic. My living room is still mine and yet it’s been dialled up to eleven. Someone’s got hold of the wedding photo Emily had given the police. They’ve printed it out, framed it and placed it between two pot plants I’ve never seen before. That’s all in the background of the shot, with the foreground two huge leather-backed chairs that I’ve also never seen. It’s smart yet not too over the top. ‘Man of t
he people,’ Pamela says.
Everything’s happened in such a whirlwind this morning that I can’t quite take it all in. I’m pretty sure I’m not comfortable with any of this – the wedding photo especially – but it’s too late now. It’s three minutes to ten and the cameras are ready to roll. We’re not live, but Diane says they need editing time for her evening show. They’re also going to drip snippets onto the news broadcasts.
We sit in silence for the three minutes until the producer or whoever he is says everything is ready. Diane thunders into action, reeling off the age-old list of tragedies through which Charley has lived and then reiterating that she’s been missing since the wedding on Saturday. I’m mentioned in there somewhere, but it barely registers.
‘I can’t imagine how hard this is for you,’ Diane coos.
I mumble something about wanting Charley back, missing her. Hoping she’s watching. We rehearsed this in the kitchen, but the lights are making it feel like a midsummer’s day in the desert and I’m struggling to concentrate.
‘Can you tell the viewers how you met?’ Diane asks.
‘It was at her shop,’ I say. ‘She runs a sandwich place with her friend. It’s called Martha’s—’
‘A tribute to her sister, of course,’ Diane adds.
‘I’d gone in for breakfast and there was this woman behind the counter wearing a bright green apron with a frog on the front. I remember looking up to the menu and then I saw her smiling at me. I was the only customer there and we got chatting.’
‘Did you recognise her as Charlotte Willis?’
I grope at the words for a moment. ‘Charlotte’ has thrown me off. She’s never been that to me.
‘That’s not the type of thing I’d have noticed. She was just the woman behind a counter who wanted a chat.’
The Wife’s Secret: A gripping psychological thriller with a heart-stopping twist Page 14
