by cass green
Neve realizes belatedly that he is much, much drunker than she thought. The wall on the left of the car flashes past. A ripple of fear penetrates her fury and confusion now.
‘Can you slow down for God’s sake!’ she cries.
The car does slow a little. Neve places a hand against her chest. As she tries to catch her breath, she can feel the panicked thumping of her heart. The magpie feather is still on her lap and she quickly brushes it away with a shudder of horror.
‘Jesus, I don’t understand any of this,’ she says then. Her head aches. She feels sick. ‘Please can you calm down a bit and tell me exactly what has been going on?’
Will gives a small moan and rubs his face. In the light from the dashboard he looks ten years older than he did last night. He gazes at her, his eyes pleading.
‘We just wanted the cottage, that’s all,’ he says.
‘That’s why you frightened me half to death? So your bloody daughter could have the cottage?’
‘You don’t understand!’ says Will. ‘It’s got nothing to do with Lydia really. She isn’t coming home any time soon. That’s just what Sally said to you! It was a story.’
Neve lets out a long, exhausted breath of air. Today has been filled with horrifying riddle after horrifying riddle.
‘Okay,’ she says in the most controlled voice she can muster. ‘Talk me through this,’ she says. ‘Tell me every-fucking-thing.’
They are on a brief stretch of dual carriageway now. The headlights of the oncoming cars send flashes of pain into her tired, aching eyes.
‘It’s all about the land,’ says Will tiredly. ‘The cottage is worth nothing much on its own. Our place is worth more, but not as much as you’d think. And Briarfields is falling into the ground. But the land is valuable. If we can sell all three of them to Traemar we can fuck off out of this dismal country and go to Spain to retire. Sally had it all planned out. We’d never have to work again. That bit’s crucial, as she never fails to remind me.’
This last part makes no sense at all, but it feels as though the day has been filled with distressing riddles.
‘Hang on,’ she says. ‘Who is this … Traemar?’
The silvery ribbon of the road stretches ahead. They seem to be speeding up again, a little. Neve glances at the dashboard and a digital display says they are travelling at sixty-five mph. It feels too fast. But she doesn’t want to distract Will when she is on the cusp of understanding everything.
‘Traemar Investment Capital,’ says Will, wearily now. ‘Huge fuck-off property company. Want to build a housing estate and let all the plebs in. Fucking welcome to it.’
‘Okay,’ says Neve slowly. This still doesn’t make sense. She tries to untangle her thoughts. ‘But how could they guarantee I’d sell to your daughter anyway?’
Will barks a laugh that makes her jump.
‘Because my wife is a clever bitch!’ he says.
‘I still don’t get it,’ says Neve. ‘Start at the beginning. But first, can you slow down?’
Will sighs and rubs his eyes. The car wobbles dangerously but slows.
Neve lets out a breath.
‘So Sally heard a rumour,’ says Will dully. ‘That this Traemar lot wanted the land. Knows someone who knows someone. She cooked up a scheme with her old school friend; estate agent called Georgia.’
Neve lets out a breath as she starts to understand at last.
‘So what was she going to do?’
Will glances at her quickly, as though this is a stupid question.
‘It’s very easy for an estate agent to guide a buyer a certain way, don’t you think?’
‘Is it?’ Neve has no experience of the buying and selling of houses.
‘Yes of course …’ says Will. ‘You keep it below the radar … make a low valuation. All kinds of ways to do it, especially if you have been recommended.’
Sally and that persistent woman were in on it together.
There’s a pause. The road flashes by outside.
‘But is that even legal?’
‘Of course it isn’t!’ says Will. He turns to look at her, eyes gleaming, for far too long and the car wobbles. ‘Especially when you start intimidating people like she did with Isabelle.’ He’s pressing on the accelerator again.
It is only now that the full weight of what the Gardners have done presses down on Neve.
‘Oh my God,’ she says, ‘you knew all about Denville, didn’t you? And you used that to intimidate her? You drove her to her death?’
Will makes an anguished sound and wipes his face with his forearm. He is sobbing openly now.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he says, ‘I’m so very sorry.’
It feels like the car is devouring the road in front of them. Neve grips the sides of the seat, her knuckles whitening.
Seventy-five mph now.
‘Slow down, Will! Let’s just be calm, okay?’
‘I’m sick of it all!’ he shouts. ‘The whole thing! Isabelle wasn’t supposed to die like that. And Matty hates the both of us! I swear he knows something, but Sally says he doesn’t. She’s always babied and underestimated him! No wonder he’s so fucked up!’
Will starts to make a terrible keening sound. The car presses on, faster.
Eighty mph.
Eighty-five mph.
‘Sometimes I swear I could kill her, I just wish I had the—’
Neon white chevrons gash the blackness ahead.
And the car is spinning, spinning, spinning into the dark.
47
Sticky.
Sticky hands.
On her face. In her mouth. Warm and sweet.
She needs to wash it away. But her hands are so dirty. She’ll never get it off. Never be able to clean the dirty blood, which keeps on coming.
‘Miss? Miss, can you hear me?’
Someone is sitting on her. It hurts. They’re pressing on her shoulder, trying to squash her, and she’s frightened. She gasps and her eyes are open. The world falls around her and settles into ugly shapes. Everything is odd angles. A window. Darkness.
Neve tries to turn her head but the voice shouts sharply that she shouldn’t move.
She understands. She is lying sideways, looking through the car window at someone’s face, which is upside down. It’s a woman with short black hair and olive skin. For a minute she thinks it is Miri and she starts to cry.
‘It’s okay, love, we’ll get you out in no time,’ says the woman in a crisp Eastern European accent. ‘I’m Katya. Can you tell me your name?’
Neve believes she has said it clearly but the woman, Katya, says again, ‘Can you tell me your name?’
‘S’Neve.’ Her voice is thick but loud so she knows she hadn’t spoken before.
‘Good, that’s good.’ The face disappears, leaving only the blackness of the window. Panicked, she tries to cry out then she hears the reassuring hiss and crackle of a radio. There are voices outside and more lights that blink on and off.
It’s raining. The soft sound of it dropping so near to her face is soothing.
I’m hurt, she whispers. I’m hurt but I’m alive.
The moments just before the crash come back to her. She tries to look behind her for Will. But all she can see is a curved section of the pale interior roof. Her shoulder hurts too much to move any further.
‘Will?’ she calls out in a shaky voice.
But there is only the crackly radio and the shushing rain.
48
Lou is crying so hard she can’t speak.
Neve has never seen her like this, not even at their father’s funeral, where Neve thought she might actually damage her eyes because the tears wouldn’t stop.
She is only just emerging from a fathomless, narcotic sleep and everything feels too fuzzy and muffled for her sister’s wretchedness to reach her. All she can do is stare and wait for it to pass.
Finally, heaving a heavy sigh, Lou wipes her nose with several hard wipes of a tissue and attempts a watery smile.
Neve reaches across the rough, hospital blanket for her sister’s hand, gripping it as hard as her broken collarbone allows.
When they are finally able to draw breath, Neve says weakly, ‘I bet Steve wishes he hadn’t complained about my swearing now.’
Lou gives her a quick, shocked look and then starts to laugh, deeply, leaning forward, still gripping Neve’s hand. Neve tries to join in but the cosy blurring of the drugs is wearing off and the sharp edges of pain are poking through.
‘The thing I love about you,’ says Lou, wiping her red, chapped nose again, ‘is that you’ll always say the thing.’
They meet eyes and both smile weakly.
‘Seriously,’ says Lou, voice wobbling. ‘I’m so bloody glad you’re okay.’ She pauses. ‘It could have been a lot worse.’
Neve thinks about Will for a moment and then lets the thought slide away for now.
‘Where are the girls and Steve?’ she manages. Her own voice seems to weigh a ton. Dredging it up from somewhere deep is so tiring.
‘They’re in London,’ says Lou. ‘I thought it might be a bit upsetting for the girls and well, I just wanted to … to. Well.’
For some reason this unarticulated thought makes perfect sense to Neve and she squeezes her sister’s hand again.
‘They think you might be discharged tomorrow. You’re coming home with us, obviously.’
Lou’s tone is firm and Neve simply nods. She squeezes her eyes tightly shut again.
She tried to make a new start and she has failed.
All she did was lift the lid on something ugly and painful, and she can’t close it again. Knowing that she must process all this as soon as her physical infirmities begin to ease makes her want to burrow down into the pain; break her other shoulder, get back into that car and crash all over again.
There is a tidal wave coming that she has to somehow bear. Lou seems to sense what she is thinking about.
‘We have an awful lot to talk about, when you’re better,’ she says softly. ‘But just concentrate on resting, for now. All of it can wait. All of it.’
Neve nods. She can feel sleep beginning to drag at her again and she welcomes it.
Her big sister gently strokes her hair until she is deeply asleep.
49
May 2017
It’s the first really warm day of early summer. Londoners are revealing toes, shoulders and knees and the hot, city air presses on the eardrums with its buzzing energy.
She takes a sip of the coffee she’d forgotten by her feet but it’s cold now and the milkiness feels slimy in her mouth. She chases it with a swig from her bottle of water and looks out over the sparkling Thames.
She’d got off at Embankment forty-five minutes ago and walked over Waterloo Bridge.
Pausing exactly where all this started, she’d looked down into the water as people thronged past. Someone was playing a guitar and singing a Green Day song, badly, further along the bridge. Traffic rumbled by and the world felt so benign and ordinary today that it was hard to conjure the dreadful scene that had occurred here in December.
Isabelle’s wide eyes and her pale, pale skin.
The churning, black water and the lights of the rescue boat as they carried out their fruitless search for her body.
Looking around self-consciously, Neve had thrown the small bunch of flowers she’d purchased by the tube station over the side, one by one. No one really paid any attention to her.
She had wanted to get hold of something known as Twinflowers, which, the internet told her, was the unofficial national flower of Sweden. Then she’d discovered this wasn’t going to be straightforward at all and so opted for a bunch of cornflowers, just because they were pretty. There was no special significance to today. But she was feeling so much better and it was something she had been meaning to do. To come back to where all this started.
Except, that wasn’t really when it began, she thinks now. Isabelle had been living with it for much of her life.
Richard had wanted to come to visit her when she first got out of hospital. But she wasn’t ready. Still isn’t ready.
Her shoulder was broken and for the first couple of weeks she relied heavily on painkillers and sleep to get through each day. She’d refused visits from Richard, even when Lou had suggested gently it might be a good idea.
But some time later she had tentatively started a communication by email, which felt like the right amount of distance.
She discovered many things during the course of their correspondence, which was usually carried out late at night with only the glow of her iPad screen lighting the darkness while the rest of the household slept.
The most important piece of information was that he’d had no idea about what Sally and Will were up to. He’d been close to selling up when everything happened. He would have had no idea of the real value of his property and Georgia McColl had been confident she could ease the transaction in the right direction. The property company, Traemar Investment Capital, would buy Briarfields for a song. If the Gardners had been able to buy Petty Whin Cottage they would have been in a powerful position to negotiate a high price with Traemar.
The police had investigated all this but, in the end, there had been little in the way of proof so no charges were brought. Neve has learned that the company is now looking at land on the other side of Cornwall to develop.
Thankfully, Sally, newly widowed, has sold her house to some unknown buyer and she and Matty have moved to Spain to be with Lydia and her family.
Poor Matty.
Richard has filled her in a little more on the Gardners. Will lost his headship after having an affair with a sixth former and had been unemployed since then. Richard says now that he always felt there was something ‘a little off’ about Sally.
This, of course, is information that has come way too late …
Over a series of emails, Neve learned more about his sister too.
Her sister.
She’d tried to kill herself twice before. Once in her late teens and once after a breakdown in Australia.
Their father, he told her, had been a difficult man, and when their mother died of breast cancer at only forty-five, he had become something of a bully. His relationship with his adopted daughter in particular had been an unhappy one. Isabelle had always known she was adopted but it was only after having had the first breakdown that she learned about where she had come from.
‘She’d always had these awful nightmares,’ Richard wrote. ‘Woke the whole house up with her screaming. But our parents had been advised not to connect any of this with any memories she may or may not have had. They believed they were doing the right thing at the time.’
She’d spoken to Bob Dyer too, finally. He had guessed Neve’s identity ‘the very moment’ he saw her at the cottage, he’d said. He feared he had caused potential harm by helping Isabelle to locate her. And he was still struggling with guilt; neither he nor anyone else could ultimately save Isabelle from her own demons.
He had been able to fill in some of the gaps. He hadn’t known all the details but had made efforts to find out what she needed to know.
Neve’s parents had been well-known foster carers in the area before the pregnancy with Lou that came like a late gift. They still looked after a few children now and then, but only in an emergency.
And when Sofie Lindstrom was murdered, they happened to have been the best and most convenient choice. The girls had been separated because it was believed to be the best decision at the time. Isabelle, Richard told Neve, had been a little too rough with her baby sister. There were fears of her holding her too tightly and hurting her, such was her traumatized state. So it was decided that a clean break and a new start would be best for both children. Isabelle had been adopted quickly by the Shawcrosses.
According to Richard, Isabelle had talked often of having a sister when she
was tiny but the sibling had never been spoken of and, after a while, she had stopped mentioning her. It wasn’t the Shawcross way to rake up the past, it seemed.
Neve’s parents had then adopted her and the whole family moved away. Lou had never known the truth and had been too little to understand that the wished-for baby sister who arrived one day wasn’t her own.
Now, Neve raises her face up to feel the warmth of the sun. Gold light dances across her closed lids and she lets out a long sigh.
She’s glad she came. She’d been seeing Waterloo Bridge in her dreams for months now. If she had left it any longer, she wouldn’t ever be able to face coming back.
But she did it.
Go me, she thinks.
Small steps.
Resistant to therapy as she had been at first, Neve has been cajoled by Lou into the company of a quiet, grey-haired woman called Pam, who is gently encouraging her to talk about everything that had happened.
Lou was often right about these things, annoyingly.
She wonders what Lou will say when she tells her she’s leaving again.
Neve has taken out a loan against the value of the property to carry out repairs.
She’s never painted a wall in her life, or even wired a plug.
But she can learn. She’s bought a big book and been looking at YouTube clips for advice.
And anyway, Finn has offered to help.
He came to visit her in hospital, just after the accident. They’ve been WhatsApping a bit about her coming back to Cornwall.
He’s funny. Something might happen with him. Nothing might happen, and that will be fine too.
The priority is tearing down the bars scarring the windows, re-painting the peeling exterior and tidying up that garden.
Neve looks out at the Thames and takes a deep breath.
She still wishes she didn’t know any of it: could go about her business in blissful ignorance. But there is no way back now.
