One Year Later

by Sanjida Kay

  ‘So you agreed. But then you had a better idea. You said: Why should you take the blame, Bethany? It would be the end of Bethany’s relationship with her family. As a semi-famous presenter, it would be the end of her career. David is old, you said. No one would blame him, especially as he’s becoming a little forgetful. And Bethany let you talk her into it, because she too wanted to be a star. She too wanted to keep her family around her and her reputation intact. And Bethany, ever since she was your age, has hated my father for not protecting her from his paedophile colleague. You knew the story of what had happened to her and, because you loved your aunt, you hated him too.

  ‘Once you’d both agreed to blame my father, Bethany gave Dad one of her sleeping tablets, and then she put out a bottle of red wine for him. She threw away half of it, so it would appear as if he’d drunk it, and then she used Ruby-May’s Calpol syringe to put drops of Merlot on his shirt and his tongue. He slept, smelling the wine, tasting it, and when he woke, he drank the rest, even though it was dangerous because he’s on Warfarin. But once a semi-alcoholic, always a semi-drunk, right? You, meanwhile, put the key to the garden gate back in the house. And, only after all of this had been done, did Bethany call an ambulance.’

  Chloe’s head is bowed. I can see the perfect white line of her parting. I go closer and she cringes.

  I say softly, ‘You, though, took it one step further. When we were on holiday you thought everyone would realize that Dad didn’t have dementia. You wanted to be certain everyone believed Bethany. So you and your friend Carlo started playing tricks on Dad. It was Carlo who was in his bedroom that night, wasn’t it?’

  I hover over her. She’s trembling. I force myself to take a step back and then another. She nods.

  ‘You and Carlo hid his journal and you stole the heart-shaped framed photograph, and then you put them back in obvious places, so everyone – including Dad – would doubt he was in his right mind.’

  I swallow. My throat hurts and my head is starting to pound.

  ‘I don’t think Bethany knew what you were up to on holiday. And you and Bethany might have got away with what you did last summer, except that Luca had seen her. He’d been looking out of the window of his bedroom that day, and he’d caught Bethany giving our father a blue pill and putting out a bottle of red wine for him. He thought nothing of it, until we were on holiday and he noticed that Bethany took Temazepam to help her sleep. She gave some of her tablets to Dad to stop him wandering around at night. He also discovered that Dad doesn’t drink any more.

  ‘The thing is, Luca loved Ruby-May. He loved that little girl as if she were his own. He worked out that Bethany was to blame and that she’d drugged Dad. He wanted Bethany to take responsibility for what she’d done. He tried to force her to tell him the truth. But Bethany wouldn’t, because she didn’t want to betray you.

  ‘When Bethany realized I’d found out and that I, like Luca, assumed she’d been responsible for Ruby-May’s death, and she knew that I was going to tell Amy, she decided to leave the country. She left everything she knew and everyone she loved. She did it for you.’

  After all, it’s not the first time Bethany has taken the blame for someone weaker than herself. I wipe my hand across my eyes. Oh, Bee.

  ‘How did you know? I mean, that it was me and Carlo moving his stuff around?’

  ‘There were a couple of photos of the two of you on your iPad. Just teenagers mucking about, I thought at the time. Flirting is what the Carabinieri said. You were holding a heart against your chest. I only realized later that it was the back of the picture frame – the one that had gone missing. I’d searched everywhere for it. I should have known when it turned up in Dad’s jacket pocket – the exact jacket I’d looked through earlier.’

  Chloe is crying. ‘She didn’t deserve it. Bethany didn’t deserve to take the blame.’

  ‘What I don’t understand is why you’re spending so much time with Dad now, in Somerset. You must hate my father, to do what you did to him.’

  She shakes her head and tears trickle across her temples. ‘I didn’t hate him. I thought it served him right. Bethany told me about his affairs, how he drove your mum away, how he drank, and then the horrible stuff your dad’s friend did to her… David should have looked after her! And he didn’t look after you, either. She still feels guilty about it, you know. Leaving you on your own with him. So I thought: why not? Why not let him take the blame? He’s retired, he has no life, nothing to lose.’

  She takes a breath and shivers. ‘When we were on holiday, I went with him to buy bread from the farm because I wanted to see Carlo, and I thought no one would know what I was up to, if David was with me. But I felt guilty. I mean, he’s not the way Bethany described; well, not any more. He’s like this kind, friendly grandfather. He’s my grandfather. And now he really is losing his mind, it’s like I wished it on him!

  ‘I went to visit him in Somerset when we got back because I felt sorry for him, and then I realized… I realized that he actually loves me. He always has.’ She rubs her eyes with her sleeve again and sniffs. ‘I’m sorry. I am so sorry.’ Almost immediately she starts crying again and I can barely make out what she’s saying. ‘I wanted to tell Dad. I thought maybe then Bethany could come back home. I sent Bee a message on WhatsApp, but she said not to tell anyone. She said I’ll lose everything – Dad, Amy, Lotte and Theo. And Granddad. A family. She said the damage is already done, and she’s got a new life out there.’

  Chloe scrubs at her face with her sleeve, for once in her life unconcerned about the mascara ringed round her eyes, her running nose.

  She says quietly, ‘It’s so lonely at Mum’s house. She works all the time. I’m just, like, on my own. I don’t have any friends any more. I can’t… connect with them.’ She tugs at the sleeves of her jumper, wraps her arms around her chest. ‘I think about it all the time. About finding Ruby-May… I can’t concentrate at school. I failed my GCSEs. I know that sounds like nothing. It is nothing, compared to what happened to Ruby-May. What I did to – to my sister. And my grandfather. Bethany. Amy. Dad. You.’ She looks down at the photo of her and Ruby-May laughing into the camera. ‘It was so awful when we found her.’ She puts her hand over her mouth and shuts her eyes. She’s shaking.

  I look away, suppressing the howl that’s rising in my chest, trying to block out the image of the small shape on the stretcher, covered by a white sheet. The pond with its surface skin of lilies, pockets of water reflecting the clouds, as if nothing had happened.

  After a few minutes Chloe says, ‘Are you going to tell?’ She looks like a sad, lost child. ‘You told everyone as soon as you found out, or thought you knew, it was Bethany.’

  I think about Luca saying, I don’t know what to do with this knowledge.

  Bethany was right: if I tell Amy and Matt, they’ll struggle to keep Chloe in their family. They will fall apart; Matt won’t be able to reconcile his feelings about Chloe with his love for the child he had with Amy. How do you deal with a daughter who lets your other daughter drown? It will ruin her relationship with Dad, when he discovers it was his oldest granddaughter whose idea it was to blame him for the death of his youngest grandchild. If they know, it’s going to do more than make Chloe fail a bunch of exams: it’ll affect the rest of her education, her future career. And, as Bethany knows better than most, if anyone other than our family finds out, Chloe’s life will become a living hell online.

  But if I say nothing, I sacrifice my sister. As a family, we will never see Bethany again. And I will have to keep Chloe’s secret for the rest of my life. Chloe and I will be tied together, for ever. I lean against the windowsill, rest my forehead on the glass pane. But maybe that is how it should be. After all, she is my niece. I realize I’ve stopped wanting to kill her. Instead I feel sick: I’m sick with sadness.

  There’s no help from Star Wars today. Of all things, I suddenly remember a line from Nashville, where Avery Barkley tells Gunnar Scott: You can’t push that kind of pain away. You go
tta own it. Deal with it every day. That’s being a man.

  I force myself to turn and face Chloe. She lifts her head, smooths her hair out of her eyes. She holds herself very still, preparing herself for the blow. A part of me admires her bravery. A part of me hates her.

  ‘You’ll always carry the death of Ruby-May within you,’ I tell her. ‘It’s who you are now. I guess that’s punishment enough.’

  I push up the window and let the night air flood in.

  ‘Give me your phone.’ She hands it over without protesting. ‘Go downstairs. Eat your pizza. Tell them I’ll be there in a minute.’

  I sit on the windowsill and look out across Bristol. The door closes quietly behind Chloe. Even in the dark, I can see where the bright lights of Bristol end and the green fields of Somerset begin. I think of Luca’s book and I wonder if he left it behind on purpose, if he meant me to have it. I recall the last line: We emerged to see once more the stars.

  I inhale deeply, fill my lungs with the crisp, cold air. I could stay here, I think, right here, until the stars come out, and tomorrow I’ll tell Lotte and Theo how I saw all seventy thousand million million million of them. I turn Chloe’s mobile over in my hand and open WhatsApp and find Bethany’s number. As it connects, I wonder if she’ll answer. I wonder what time it is in LA, but then it is the city that never sleeps.

  On the ninth ring, she answers.

  ‘It’s me,’ I say.

  ‘Haaaaay,’ she replies, like I’m still her favourite person. ‘It’s Mr Nick Flowers!’

  ONE YEAR LATER, SOMERSET

  EPILOGUE

  AMY

  They bought her a new purple swimming costume for the occasion. It’s got a unicorn head with a rainbow horn printed on her tummy, and she was delighted with it. She’s wearing a matching purple swimming hat and goggles and, most importantly, as far as Amy is concerned, she doesn’t have a life-vest, a float or armbands and she isn’t sitting on a giant inflatable horse. She waves at them from the shallow end.

  ‘She looks like a blueberry,’ Matt says, and Amy digs him in the ribs.

  The coach holds her hand up and blows a whistle, and the children start swimming. Amy sits up straighter, and Nick and Matt jump up.

  Theo hops from one foot to the other at the edge of the pool and yells, ‘Go, Lotte, go!’ His new rash vest that Nick bought him has the Andromeda galaxy swirling across the front, and his bronze medal, looped round his neck, hangs like a UFO in the centre.

  It’s early August and they’ve come to the outdoor pool in Street for the village swimming gala. They’ve set up deckchairs in the grass for the adults, a picnic blanket for the kids. Bethany – the lifeguard doll Nick got Lotte last year – is sitting on top of the coolbox, plastic fists punching the air, silently cheering Lotte on.

  ‘Is she winning?’ asks her father.

  He has his glasses on, but she doesn’t think he can see well enough to make out the purple blob halfway down the third lane that is Lotte.

  ‘Come on, Lotte! You can do it!’ yells Matt, in his loudest fivea-side football coaching roar.

  It’s a beautiful day, warm, but not too hot. The flower beds are lushly planted with hot-pink zinnias and Day-Glo orange canna lilies. A line of swallows twitter on the cables and swoop over the heads of the children in the pool. There’s a large ornamental pond, and water lilies, with leaves as big as plates and perfect lotus-like blossoms, coat the surface. It feels as if they’re in the tropics instead of Somerset.

  Nick chants, ‘Come on, come on, Lotte!’

  It’s the first time she’s seen him wearing a vest. The scars running down his arms and snaking across his chest, just visible when he leans forward, are a livid white, but he doesn’t seem concerned about anyone seeing them now – not since he and Maddison got back together, anyhow. Maddison’s on a shift at the Grain Barge, the floating cider bar where she and Nick first met, and where she still works when she’s not making her screen-prints. She’s couldn’t get out of it, she told Amy apologetically, but she’s going to join them in the evening for pizza and a pint of Green Gold over at the Railway Inn.

  Lotte is swimming confidently, splashing the girl in the lane next to her with overenthusiastic sculling and kicking. Amy doesn’t care whether Lotte comes first or last; she’s just thankful that a year of swimming coaching has paid off and her children are no longer frightened of water.

  Lotte pulls ahead, and now she’s neck-and-neck with one of the other seven-year-olds in the far lane.

  ‘Second place!’ yells Theo, and Matt fist-bumps Nick as if their daughter has won an Olympic medal.

  ‘That’s my girl!’ he says when she runs over, wet and out of breath, beaming at them.

  ‘Did you see me? I was so fast,’ she shouts, and Matt picks her up and spins her round, showering them all with chlorinated water.

  ‘Well done, Lotte,’ her granddad says, and Nick gives her a high five.

  The children fling themselves on the rug and start rummaging through her bags, looking for snacks.

  ‘Where’s Chloe? She should be here,’ David says. ‘She often visits me, you know.’

  After he had sold The Pines, he’d moved to a bungalow in a retirement village in Sandford, which was once part of the old railway station. Amy visits him once a week, but it’s a comfort knowing that there are carers on-call, who check in at least once a day.

  ‘She’s in Zambia, David,’ Matt says. ‘I’ve got some photos to show you.’ He switches on his phone and thumbs through the pictures, before passing his phone to Amy’s father. ‘She’s doing some voluntary work…’ Amy notices him struggling not to say, Remember? They’ve been told by the consultant at the Memory Clinic that it’s undermining. Matt thinks it’s PC-bollocks, but he’s doing his best. ‘At a school. Teaching kids English. God knows what she’s telling them. Her grammar is shocking and she can’t spell for toffee.’

  He’s proud of her, but they were all taken aback when Chloe failed her GCSEs and then dropped out of the college where she was meant to be doing retakes. She’s on a gap year, volunteering for ActionAid. Amy would never have predicted that Chloe, who only last year had spent all her time borrowing Bethany’s makeup and posting videos of herself on Instagram, would choose to go and live in a country where most people are without running water, let alone an Internet signal.

  In a week Ruby-May would have been five years old. Amy finds it hard to imagine her as a little girl instead of a toddler: those soft, chubby cheeks disappearing, legs folded with rolls of fat suddenly long and lean. Ruby-May has been dead for almost as long as she had been alive. Amy thinks about her daughter every day, and sometimes the pain is unbearable. But a feeling has crept up on her slowly, not quite of contentment, and certainly not of happiness, but perhaps something approaching it.

  Matt slides his phone into his pocket and leans over and kisses her on the cheek.

  ‘Shall I get the picnic out, before these locusts eat it all?’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll give you a hand.’

  ‘Shame about the no-alcohol rule. I could murder a can of cider,’ Nick says, squinting at the sun. ‘Anyone want a coffee? Or an ice cream?’ he asks Lotte and Theo.

  ‘Nick! We’re just about to have our lunch,’ she says, as the children scream over her.

  Nick winks at them. ‘What are uncles for? Want to come with me and choose?’

  ‘I’d like vanilla in a tub,’ their father says, and Nick gives him a thumbs up.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Matt says, abandoning his attempt at finding plates and napkins. He ruffles Lotte’s hair and the four of them head off in the direction of the cafe, Lotte and Theo shouting out their favourite flavours. Amy has a momentary pang as she remembers that summer two years ago when her children ate nothing but ice cream for the best part of a week. Her therapist would tell her not to be so hard on herself.

  She has an urge to turn to Bethany and roll her eyes; to giggle, as her sister, always braver and bolder than she ever was, who
would have sneaked a bottle of chilled Prosecco into the park and would, right now, be attempting to pop the cork and pour the fizz into plastic tumblers without anyone seeing. In spite of everything that’s happened, she misses her, as if, like missing her daughter, it’s hard-wired in her to grieve.

  She’s aware that Nick and Chloe keep in touch with Bee, but she doesn’t ask about her. As far as she knows, Bethany’s still in Los Angeles. She takes out a bottle of ‘fake wine’, as Matt calls it, and pours her father a glass and then one for herself.

  ‘Thanks, darling,’ he says, taking a sip. He makes a face and sighs. She’s about to unpack the rest of the picnic from the coolbox, when she notices Nick’s phone. He’s left it on his chair. She picks it up, wondering if he meant to leave it or if she should shout after him. He’ll be back soon, though, she thinks. She’s about to slide it into her pocket to keep it safe, when she sees what’s on the screen. He’s been looking at an Instagram account: Trixie Flora. Bethany, of course. The profile photo is disconcerting – she can see traces of the sister she once had, beneath this new woman’s shiny skin, glossy gold hair, white teeth and small, straight nose. She doesn’t want to look at Trixie’s pictures – they’re a nauseating blur of swimmingpool blues and palm-tree greens, gold chains and designer bikinis.

  She takes a breath and a large swallow of the fake wine. It’s not bad, and drinking it over the past few months has helped her cut down on the real stuff. In any case, Ruby-May’s room has been turned into a spare bedroom – it’s where Chloe stayed before she left for Zambia – and that had meant getting rid of the bottle of gin tucked behind Peter Rabbit.

  But then, in spite of herself, she clicks on the last photo in her sister’s account. It’s of Bee in sunglasses, a tightly belted coat and killer stilettos striding through an airport with a large suitcase. She scrolls down to the text below and reads:

  At LAX!

  Taking a break from telly and heading back to Blighty. Thank you for all your support! Love and kisses