by Sibel Hodge
I opened the front door and heard their voices, along with Ethan’s.
I walked into the kitchen and they were sitting at the oak table, empty mugs in front of them and a plate of digestives that were probably stale by now. I thought about adding digestives to my mental shopping list but then thought, Sod it. I didn’t care anymore.
‘Oh, hi.’ I put my bag on the island. ‘I didn’t know you were all here.’ I smiled tentatively at Ethan, who gave me a brief tight smile in return and looked away.
‘Have you got some news? About the DNA results?’ I asked hopefully.
‘I’m afraid not yet. Any time now we’re expecting it.’ DI Spencer stood and glanced at DS Khan, who followed his lead. ‘We’ve got more enquiries to make so we’ll leave you to it.’ He nodded briefly before they showed themselves out.
An oppressive silence settled over the room after they’d left, buzzing in my ears, and I had to fill it.
‘What did they want?’ I asked Ethan.
He shrugged. ‘They just wanted to talk to me about where I was that Sunday when Katie left home.’
‘Right.’ I sat down next to him. ‘Where were you? They asked me if I remembered what you were doing but I couldn’t remember. I mean, I know we saw each other in the evening, after I’d come back from looking for her, but—’
‘I don’t remember, OK? How am I supposed to remember what happened twenty-five years ago?’
I was momentarily stunned by the anger in his voice and the look in his eyes. ‘I remember.’
‘You only remember some of it. And that’s because you kept going on and on about it after she left. Just like Chris did.’
‘She didn’t leave, Ethan. She was murdered.’ I surprised myself by keeping my voice on an even keel.
‘We don’t know that yet.’
‘She had a fractured skull. She’s hardly unlikely to bash her own head in, is she? What’s wrong with you? I know you’re grieving about Tom’s death and frustrated and upset about his confession, but what’s happening to us? It’s like you don’t even want to be in the same room as me anymore.’ He was silent so I carried on. ‘You don’t want to talk about anything—’
‘Of course I don’t! Dad talked to you and looked what happened! That’s your job, the talking. And you go on about things until we have to talk.’ He said the word mockingly. ‘I don’t want to bloody talk!’
I counted to ten, trying to think of something nice to say. I carried on to twenty, but niceness had upped and disappeared somewhere. ‘Look, this isn’t my fault, so why are you blaming me? I had to do something. I had to tell the police. Stop distancing yourself. We’re supposed to be a family – bloody well act like it, instead of leaving me to deal with Anna and going off on your own all the time, brooding. You’re not the only one who’s upset by all of this. You’re not the only one grieving.’
He rested his elbows on the table and put his head in his hands. I didn’t know he was crying at first. I’d only ever seen him cry once before, and that was when Anna was born, so it seemed so alien that I didn’t understand. It was only the shaking of his shoulders that gave it away.
I sat next to him, arm around his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry.’ I leaned my forehead against the side of his, feeling his heat through my hair.
He turned towards me, his face a mass of anguished wrinkles. ‘I don’t know how to deal with something like this.’
‘Together. We’ll deal with it together.’
Whoever was up one minute was down the next and vice versa. Ethan was happier at dinner that night, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of impending disaster. Lucas was quiet and withdrawn, and Nadia was almost manic in her liveliness. Anna was back to asking a million questions, this time about the entomology of insects on buried human bodies. Not a very appetising conversation for the dinner table. Charlotte obviously agreed because she ran to the bathroom a few minutes later and vomited up Nadia’s roast beef. How Nadia had the time or inclination to cook a full roast dinner in the midst of everything going on beat me, but it was Lucas’s favourite, and since he was only home for one night before jetting off again, she somehow found the time, as she always did. Maybe that’s what Ethan needed: a nice roast dinner to make everything OK again!
DI Spencer and DS Khan appeared an hour after we all finished eating. Nadia poured red wine into large, almost bowl-shaped glasses. I looked at it as she handed one to me and thought that definitely wasn’t going to be enough to blot out what was going on. Lucas was on beer. Ethan hit the whisky. DI Spencer and DS Khan declined anything.
‘We just have a few more questions for you and Nadia, actually,’ DI Spencer said to Lucas. ‘You don’t all need to be here.’
‘Right.’ I stood up.
Ethan and I went into the lounge to wait, avoiding each other’s eyes. There was one of those awkward, fidgety silences that you get on a blind date when you find out you’ve got absolutely nothing in common with the other person. I chewed on my lip and stared out into the garden.
A little while later I heard Nadia talking in the hallway outside as she showed them out.
‘So, we’re no further forward, then?’ Nadia asked them.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ DI Spencer replied before they left.
Nadia poked her head round the door. ‘Come into the kitchen. I need another drink.’
‘What did they ask?’ Ethan asked her as he sat at the sparklingly shiny glass dining room table.
Nadia set her glass on the worktop and uncorked another bottle of wine. ‘They wanted to know if I remembered where Dad was that Sunday when Katie left home, but I don’t know. It was a long time ago. Apparently Chris told them that Tom mentioned he had something urgent to do that day and couldn’t give him a lift to boxing, and they wanted to know if he’d mentioned what might’ve been so urgent.’ She poured some wine into her glass and topped up mine, then sat in between Lucas and Ethan.
Lucas sighed. ‘They wanted to know if Tom could’ve been working at the barn, but he couldn’t have been, could he? He never worked on Sundays. Ever.’
Nadia took a sip of wine, and when she set it back down, the base of the glass clipped the edge of the table and the glass tipped over. She leaped back as red wine splattered across the glass and dripped onto the laminate beech floor.
I shot up and grabbed the tea towel resting on the back of the oven door as Nadia reached for the kitchen roll, and between us we mopped up the spilled mess.
‘Sorry. Sorry about that!’ Nadia sat back down, face flushed, wiping her hair away from her forehead.
Ethan took Nadia’s glass and silently refilled it. Lucas stared at the floor, looking blank. Or bored. I wasn’t sure which. Probably wishing he was a million miles away, just like all of us.
Chapter Twenty-Five
That night in bed it felt like I had the old Ethan back at first. After I’d seen a sullen and uncommunicative Anna to bed, we went upstairs to avoid Nadia and Lucas’s jibes to each other.
‘It’s only nine o’clock.’ Ethan lay on top of the bed, rigid, like a corpse. ‘I feel like a prisoner here, too. It’s like we’re in limbo. I can’t stay here anymore. I need my own space.’
I felt the same. The only one who was enjoying being at Nadia’s was Poppy.
‘What about Anna, though?’ I asked. ‘You said we’d stay until the weekend. This is a lot for her to handle. Just give it a few more days.’ I lay on my side facing him, propping my head up with the palm of one hand.
I twined my fingers through his. He stared down at them as if they were something foreign.
He sighed. ‘OK.’
I stroked the stubble on his cheeks. He hadn’t shaved in days, and it was flecked with grey now.
‘Are you growing a beard?’ I laughed, trying to lighten the mood. ‘I hate beards. Especially grey ones.’
‘What about Sean Conner
y? He’s got a grey beard and you fancy him.’
His words catapulted me into the past, sparking off a memory. I gasped. ‘I don’t think it was Tom’s baby.’
He glanced at me sharply. ‘Why not?’
‘Because I just remembered something. One day Katie and I were having a conversation about older men, and she’d said they were disgusting and they made her feel ill. I mean, I was talking about good-looking older men at the time, and I was listing my top five actors who I fancied.’ I waved my hand around. ‘Anyway, I said Sean Connery and Jack Nicholson and − God, I can’t remember who else − but she got . . . I don’t know, really angry about it, and upset. Saying it was sick and twisted to have some old man pawing at young girls and they had no right to do it and why didn’t anyone listen to them.’ I shook my head. ‘I mean now, suspecting Jack might have sexually abused her, it puts all that into context, but at the time I just thought she was overreacting.’
Ethan watched me without saying a word.
‘So, you know, she wouldn’t have slept with Tom, would she, if she felt like that? Did you ever see Tom looking at her in that way when she was at the house with Chris or us?’
‘In what way?’ He pronounced every word slowly like I was stupid, and it was clear he was only humouring me.
‘You know. A sexual way.’
‘I can’t believe you’re even saying it. No, I didn’t notice that. Of course not.’
‘Neither did I. Unless . . .’ Another horrible thought hit me. ‘What if he raped her?’
Ethan dropped my hand and sat up. ‘He did not rape her.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because no one needed to rape her. She would’ve dropped her knickers for anyone.’
A fire sparked in my head, molten anger bubbling to the surface. I sat up. ‘I can’t believe you just said that. How can you trivialise being raped?’
He rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, here we go again.’
‘What?’ I blew out an angry breath.
‘I can’t say anything right these days, can I?’
‘Well, neither can I!’ I hissed, hyper-aware that the walls were very thin and we were in someone else’s house. ‘Victims of abuse come in all shapes and sizes. Even the strong ones can be abused, you know. I once worked with this surgeon whose husband was beating her up. You’d never have guessed this composed, confident, competent woman was a victim of domestic violence.’
‘How do you know Jack wasn’t the one who got her pregnant?’ He bit back.
‘If Jack raped her, she wouldn’t have kept the baby, would she?’ I muttered.
‘What?’
‘DI Spencer said she was almost six months pregnant. Why would she have kept it, if it was Jack’s baby? She would’ve had a termination, wouldn’t she? I mean, no one in that situation would want to have their father’s baby.’
‘How the hell do I know what she thought? Maybe she couldn’t afford an abortion.’
‘She could’ve explained what happened and got it done on the NHS.’
‘Maybe she didn’t want to explain anything. She didn’t even tell you at the time how bad Rose and Jack were and you were supposed to be her best friend. She didn’t tell you she was leaving. And she didn’t tell you she tried to sleep with me!’ He had a defiant glint in his eye. ‘You didn’t really know her at all. All you’ve got is speculation and pieces of a puzzle that don’t fit anywhere. We’re just going round in bloody circles here!’ he spat out, trying to keep his voice down and failing miserably. ‘There’s no point in going over and over this until the police tell us the results of the DNA test. And even then I don’t know what that proves. No one saw anything, and the only people who remember much are you and Chris. Maybe we’ll never know what really happened. The police investigation is going nowhere. They’re not going to find out exactly what happened. Not after all this time. I don’t know why they’re even bothering. But just remember that if it wasn’t for you, none of this would’ve happened! Dad’s dead because of your actions. I just hope you’re satisfied now.’ He lay down and turned away from me onto his side so hard the bed bounced up and down under his weight. He stayed in that position, ignoring me, for the rest of the night.
I stared into the darkness, tears silently falling down my cheeks, wondering again if I should’ve done things differently. But then wondering just what I could’ve done instead. Whether I could’ve lived with myself if I hadn’t shared Tom’s terrible secret.
I waited for sleep to claim me, for some sort of reprieve from the blame I shouldered, but all I got were more tormented images of Katie in my dreams.
The next morning when I was heading to work, I bumped into DI Spencer outside Chris’s house again.
‘Morning,’ he said.
‘Morning. Is everything OK?’ I glanced at Chris’s front door. It was shut and the curtains were still closed. His pick-up was on the drive.
‘We were just giving Chris an update. It appears there’s no DNA match between the foetus and either Tom or Chris,’ DI Spencer said.
I didn’t know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. ‘What does that mean, then – that you can rule out the baby as a motive for murder?’
‘We’re not sure at this stage.’
‘And we won’t know who the father was until we have a suspect we can compare a DNA sample with,’ DS Khan said.
I felt terrible for not believing him when he said he hadn’t slept with her. How could I have suspected he had anything to do with Katie’s death? And if the baby wasn’t his, surely there could be no reason for him to have killed her.
But then I thought about jealousy, and how that could be a motive, too. What if Chris knew Katie was pregnant by someone else and he’d become insane with jealousy? Had he lashed out and killed her by accident? Had he enlisted Tom’s help to cover it up?
I’d hoped the results would prove something but all they’d done was give me yet more unanswered questions.
‘How did Chris take it?’ I asked.
‘He was . . . subdued,’ DI Spencer said.
‘Where do things go from here, then?’ I stared into space, chewing the inside of my cheek, deep in thought.
‘We’re still making enquiries. We’ll be in touch.’ DS Khan did her signature frown.
After they’d gone I walked past the shop and saw a couple of parents whose kids went to Anna’s school. They nudged one another and stared at me, whispering like five-year-olds. I could just imagine what they were saying. Did she know? Daughter-in-law of a murderer! Someone must’ve known there was a body in there.
It’s not my fault! I wanted to scream at them. A hot flush crept up my neck into my cheeks and I kept my head down, thankful that my phone was ringing to distract me. It was Mary from Mountain View Nursing Home. After she’d given me her condolences she apologised for calling but said they’d put together Tom’s things and she wanted to let me know we could come and collect them.
I drove over to the nursing home when I finished my shift, wondering what was left of Tom’s belongings. When we’d moved him in there they’d told us not to bring any valuables, so those were still in boxes in our loft somewhere. All he really had were minor things that signified his existence in the world. Apart from Katie, of course: she would be the major legacy Tom would leave behind. Thanks, Tom, for your generous contribution to society.
There were more condolences from Kelly on reception, who said she was sorry for our loss. I know it’s what you’re supposed to say, but I’d always hated it when people said that. It sounds as if you’ve just misplaced something trivial. As she asked me to sign for Tom’s belongings, which had been packed up in two square cardboard boxes, it reminded me again of being in prison − anyone would think it was me who had a guilty conscience! − and having your belongings returned when you were released back into society. There’d be
no chance of Tom going to prison now. No chance of justice for Rose for whatever part he’d played in Katie’s death. No chance for redemption. Not that the Crown Prosecution Service would’ve even tried to convict for murder with the condition he was in, anyway.
I wanted to take the boxes and throw them off the cliffs at Durdle Door after Tom. I imagined them hurtling through the air, hitting the water, slowly sinking. It would probably feel good for a minute or two − that momentary release of anger and frustration.
I didn’t, though, of course. Instead, I hauled them out to the car and dumped them on the passenger seat. I took the lid off the first one and rifled through. I didn’t know what I was expecting to find. A suicide letter explaining everything that had happened to Katie − something that said how she came to end up buried under the garage? Something that said how remorseful he’d been? That was obviously too much to ask, because all I found were folded-up pairs of trousers, shirts, a couple of cardigans, slippers, one odd shoe − where had the other one gone? − and the magic wooden box. I picked the box up and tried to open it. I remembered Tom telling me he’d carved it for Eve as a wedding present. Nadia had told me her mum loved it, and it had always kept pride of place on the mantelpiece. Apparently, she never put anything in it because she could never open it. Tom and Anna were the only ones who ever remembered the weird combination routine thingybob to it.
I threw it back into the cardboard box before my anger got the better of me and I chucked it out the window or something.
When I got back to the barn the place was deadly quiet without my family and Poppy. Normally, I loved this place. It had always felt warm and alive. Now it was oppressive and cold and evil. Was it a good idea moving back into the barn like Ethan wanted? Would I see Katie’s ghost in everything that happened here? Would it taint us? I wondered how long it would take to sell.
I put the boxes in a cupboard in the utility room out of sight so I could stop thinking about Tom and everything he’d done, or might’ve done, and trudged upstairs into my bedroom. Reaching into the back of my wardrobe, I retrieved an old shoe box where I kept my mementoes and old photos. Dumping everything on my bed, I picked out ticket stubs from the first concert Ethan had taken me to. His Valentine’s cards from before we got married. Stupid little notes he’d left me around the house when we moved in together. I smiled as I flicked through them. There were old pesos from the Dominican Republic where we’d been on our honeymoon. Train tickets to London − Christmas shopping trips Ethan and I and Anna had taken when she was little. A poster from a Christmas panto we’d seen in Weymouth. Anna’s baby teeth in a clear box, a lock of her hair, her hospital bracelet from when she was born. A lifetime of memories.
