My Husband's Wife

My head is still throbbing.

When I put up my left hand – the one that’s not hurting – to touch it, it feels sticky.

Blood.

My sight is blurred.

Yet I swear I can see something round the corner. What is it?

A shoe.

A red shoe.

A siren roars by.

I hold my breath with wild hope.

But the siren goes past.

If only I could turn back the clock.

But hindsight, as the three of us might say, is a fine thing.

What’s that I can hear?

My blood runs cold.

She’s still here.

24 Carla

Autumn 2013

‘Excuse me, but I believe you are in my seat,’ said Carla. She flashed a smile at the business-suited man next to the window, two rows from the emergency exit. It was a carefully cultivated smile. Exactly the right combination of charm and ‘don’t mess with me’.

‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand what you’re saying.’

She should have guessed. No Italian would wear such a terrible tie.

Carla repeated her sentence in English with the same smile.

There was a brief flash of annoyance on the man’s face, followed by a softening as he took in her smooth black bob, her full glossy lips, her flawless skin and her smell. Chanel No. 5. Her favourite perfume since borrowing Lily’s all those years ago.

‘I do apologize,’ he said, leaping up and almost bumping his head on the overhead lockers as he did so. Then he glanced at his boarding pass. ‘You’re right. I should be in the middle seat.’

He said it in such a way that Carla knew he had deliberately made the ‘mistake’ to get the window seat on this flight from Rome to Heathrow. She also suspected that if she had been less attractive or less determined, her fellow passenger might have achieved his goal.

The plane was only half full, she noticed, as it began to taxi slowly down the runway. There was no one on the aisle side. On her row it was just her and the man, who was now reading The Times. She glanced at the page he was reading.

NEW PLAN FOR REFUGEE CRISIS

Meanwhile, the stewardess was doing a safety talk about life jackets and putting oxygen masks on yourself before young children. Then there was a roaring noise that bellowed in her ears, followed by a sudden rush forward.

Carla’s hands gripped the sides of her seat. Her second-ever flight.

‘Nervous?’ asked the man.

‘Not at all,’ said Carla smoothly. Mentally she crossed her fingers. Another old habit from the past whenever she told a lie.

They were already up in the air! Through the window, she watched the tiny houses down below them. Goodbye, Italy, she said silently. Self-consciously, she touched the back of her newly bare neck. How odd it felt without her usual long black curls. ‘Your beautiful hair!’ Mamma had exclaimed when she’d returned from the hairdresser. But Carla had wanted a fresh look. To go with the new life ahead. She was nearly twenty-three! About time she made something happen.

There was a ping, indicating that you could take off your seat belt. Carla would rather have kept hers on, but the man next to her was removing his, so she did too. Two stewards were pushing a trolley down the aisle in their direction. Carla’s stomach rolled. She hadn’t been able to eat anything for breakfast and it was now early afternoon.

‘Would you like a drink, madam?’

‘Red wine, please.’

‘Small or large?’

‘Large.’

‘Please, let me pay.’ The man next to her laid a hand briefly on hers. ‘It’s the least I can do for making a mistake over the seat.’

‘It was nothing,’ she said.

‘Even so.’

He was flirting. It was no more than she expected. Graciously, Carla dipped her head to one side just as Mamma used to do for Larry. ‘That is very kind.’

‘Are you going to London for business or pleasure?’

‘Both.’ Carla took a large sip. The wine was not as good as that in Nonno’s cellars, but it helped her relax. ‘I have just finished my law degree in Italy and now I am going to do a conversion course in London. But I also intend to look up some old friends.’

‘Really?’ The man’s eyebrows rose. They were sandy-coloured, stirring distant memories of Ed’s head tilted over his sketchpad. ‘I’m in the pharmaceutical business myself.’

Carla could see where this was going. She’d already said too much, partly out of nervousness. It had encouraged him. If she didn’t take steps now, he would drone on for the rest of the journey. ‘I am so sorry,’ she said, draining her glass. ‘But I have a headache. I think I must sleep.’

His disappointment gave her a flash of pleasure. Not that she needed any proof that she could turn heads. The real test was whether she could turn the right heads.

Carla took out the silk sleep mask from her soft brown leather handbag. Adjusting her seat into the reclining mode, she closed her eyes. Just as she was starting to relax, there was a lurch followed by a ping and an announcement. ‘This is the captain speaking. We are entering a period of turbulence and I would advise you to return to your seats and fasten your seat belts.’

Silently, Carla began to recite her Ave Marias. Then, in a further bid to distract herself, she allowed her mind to slip back over the years. To the time when she had first flown in a plane. When she had been a scared, uncertain child. Not like the new Carla whom she had worked so hard to become.

She’d only just recovered from her appendix operation when it happened. Gossip travelled fast. After the discovery by her school friend’s mother that Mamma came from her husband’s birthplace, people in the valley and the mountains began to talk about Nonno’s daughter, who was not a successful London career woman as he had claimed, or a ‘widow’ as Francesca had maintained, but a struggling single mother, working in a shop. Prompted by Nonna, who had, it turned out, been behind those silent phone calls (‘I traced you through directory enquiries, but every time I got too scared and put down the receiver’), Nonno had summoned them ‘home’. And because Mamma could no longer pay the rent, they had had no choice.

From the minute they arrived, both she and Mamma found themselves firmly under Nonno’s thumb. Her grandfather would not allow Mamma to work. She must stay at home and look after Nonna – Carla’s grandmother – who had ‘aches in her bones’.

‘How I miss Larry,’ Mamma would tell Carla when they were alone in the bedroom they had to share.

‘But he was a bad man,’ she would reply.

‘He loved me.’

Instead, Mamma blamed Lily. Lily had forced him to stay away. Lily and her interfering ways.

Try as she might, Carla could not make Mamma see sense – Larry was as much to blame as Lily. Her mother’s hair grew lank. It lost its bounce and its sheen. Strands of grey crept in. Slowly at first. And then fast. She became thin. The bloom on her skin was no longer there. And she kept going over and over that last night in the flat. ‘I should have called the doctor earlier for you,’ Mamma kept saying. ‘You might have died.’

‘No, Mamma,’ Carla had reassured her. ‘You were sad.’

Mamma had nodded. ‘Perhaps you are right. If Lily had not threatened Larry, none of this would have happened.’

Was that true? Carla wondered. After all, she had planned to get rid of Larry. But when Lily had done it for her, she realized it hadn’t been such a good idea after all.

Already their lives were regulated by Nonno. She was never allowed out late, even when she became a teenager. She was banned from parties that her friends were invited to. ‘Do you want to end up like your mother?’ he always demanded.

‘Shh,’ Nonna would say.

But Carla already knew the truth. One of the neighbours had let the cat out of the bag, as the English would say, soon after they had moved in. ‘Your poor mamma.’ She said the ‘poor’ bit with a sneer, as though she wasn’t to be pitied at all. ‘To have been betrayed by that man. To think he was already married with a child of his own.’

‘How do you know about Larry?’ she had demanded.

The old woman’s face had frowned. ‘Your papa’s name is Giovanni. He used to live in Sicily, but I heard he has now gone to Rome.’

So her father was not dead at all? Carla felt she should be shocked. Yet something inside her had suspected this all along. After all, it wouldn’t have been the first lie Mamma had told her. Giovanni must be the man with the funny hat under Mamma’s bed. The neighbour’s remark prompted Carla to take another look at the box, which, now they were back in Italy, Mamma had hidden at the back of the wardrobe behind her clothes. Sure enough, tucked inside an old envelope, was her birth certificate. There was a blank space in the section for the father’s name.

Despite this, Carla knew that she must not ask Mamma anything or she would be even more upset than she was already. So she talked to Nonna instead. ‘Do you have his address so I can write to him?’ she asked. ‘If he knew I was here, he might want to see me.’

‘Hush, child.’ Nonna put her arms around her. ‘I am afraid he wants nothing to do with us. You must let the past be the past.’

Carla reluctantly did as she was told. What choice did she have? No one would even tell her what her father’s real surname was. Cavoletti was of course her mother’s maiden name, something she’d never thought of when they sent those postcards to Nonno and Nonna.

‘I should have said nothing,’ added the neighbour. ‘And don’t press your mother or grandmother. They have been through enough.’

But that didn’t mean she couldn’t plan for the future. ‘Don’t worry,’ she would say, holding her mother in her arms when she wept every night. ‘We will be all right in the end.’

‘But how?’ her mother had sobbed.

Her fists clenched. ‘I will think of something.’

Before long, Carla showed the natural aptitude at school that she had just started to discover back in England, before it all went wrong. Nonno began to boast about his granddaughter who got such excellent grades. He even began to listen to the teachers who said she should consider a career in the ‘professions’. How about becoming an avvocata? Carla showed great skill during school debates.

And that’s when the idea began to form. She would go to university to study law. It was a five-year course – a commitment – but it would be worth it. You can do it, her teachers had assured her. (Indeed her grades were so good that she’d been put up a year at school.) But the real reason that Carla wanted to take the course was because Lily had proved that law gave you power. A right to decide other people’s future. The Lily she’d seen in the corridor that last night was full of it. It might also make her rich enough to rescue Mamma from the stultifying atmosphere in Nonno’s home.

With the hindsight of time, Carla realized that Mamma had not behaved as well as she might have done in England. Perhaps she should have called that doctor sooner. Maybe she should not have had an affair with a married man. But she had been a vulnerable single mother. Now it was up to her, Carla, to protect her.

It was during her final year at university in Rome that one night, when researching a particularly dull case, she had suddenly felt a burning need to see what would happen if she put Ed and Lily’s name into Google.

So! Lily was a partner now. It was not fair that she was doing so well while Mamma was almost a prisoner in Nonno’s home as a result of Lily’s actions. The headshot on the firm’s website showed that she had cut her hair into a bob. Lily looked almost glamorous. Nothing like the Lily she once knew.

As for Ed, she could find very little about him apart from the odd small exhibition here and there. But then a picture jumped out at her from an obscure arts site. Her heart started pounding. The picture was of a little girl with black curls and a smile playing on her lips which somehow managed to look both innocent and knowing at the same time. The colours were dramatic – a crimson-red dress against a sky-blue background – but it was the way the child looked out of the frame that really got you. It was as if she was there in the same room.

Which of course she had been. Because the child had been her. The dress had in fact been black. But an artist, Ed had said at the time, was ‘entitled to change things’.

‘Artist sells acrylic painting to anonymous art collector for a five-figure sum,’ announced the text below.

A five-figure sum?

Stunned, she read on.

‘Ed Macdonald has given hope to all up-and-coming artists everywhere after a collector made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. “I actually painted The Italian Girl some years ago and entered it for an award where it won third prize. However, it didn’t find a home. I was stunned when a buyer, who has asked not to be named, recently walked into a gallery where I exhibit and bought it on the spot.” ’

It wasn’t fair! If it were not for her, there would have been no painting. So Carla wrote to Ed. She had not been paid for her services as a model, she pointed out. Perhaps Ed might like to share some of the money he had been paid.

After three weeks, there was no reply. Maybe they had moved. So she sent a second letter to the gallery mentioned at the end of the article.

Still nothing. How dare he not acknowledge her? The more she thought about it, and the more phone calls she had from poor, housebound Mamma, the more she became convinced that she was owed something. The bitterness grew and grew inside her.

Then a chance remark from a tutor gave her an idea. ‘You are fluent in English, yes? Perhaps you should consider a transfer course in the UK. It will increase your earning power.’

It would also take her nearer to the people who had hurt Mamma, including Larry. To claim what was rightfully hers. And to have what Lily had. Money. A good job. A new look – maybe a bob would suit her too. And whatever else she could take.

There was a gentle touch on her arm. Carla started. Woken from the dream-like memories of the past. ‘We are about to land,’ said the man with the terrible tie. ‘I thought I ought to tell you.’

Peeling off her eye mask, she smiled at him. ‘Thank you.’

‘Not at all. Where are you going to stay in London?’

‘King’s Cross,’ she said confidently, thinking back to the hostel she had found on the Internet. It had looked so nice, and it was reasonably priced too.

‘Have you been to London before?’

‘Of course. But many years ago.’

‘Things have changed.’ He took a business card out of his pocket. ‘Here is my number in case you feel like a drink sometime.’

She glanced at the silver wedding band on his left hand. If Mamma’s experience had taught her one thing, it was that married men were not worth it. ‘Thank you but that is not necessary.’

His lips tightened. ‘Your call.’

There was a bump, followed by a high screaming of brakes. They were hurtling forward so fast that she wondered if they would be able to stop. This time, there was no comforting pat on the arm. Instead, her companion was restless. Keen to get up and grab his bag. If she’d accepted his card, Carla told herself, he might have taken her out to dinner.

But nothing must be allowed to distract her from her plan.

EU ARRIVALS THIS WAY.

Heathrow was so busy! The queues were never-ending. It took so long for her little red suitcase to come bumping down on the conveyor belt that Carla had almost convinced herself it had been lost. Relieved, she started to haul it off, but a nice young man stepped in to do it for her.

Where should she go next? Bewildered, Carla stared at the various signs. Taxi? Perhaps the Tube would be cheaper. Nonno had given her some money for the course and her living costs, but it was not very much.

It took a long time to reach King’s Cross station after taking the wrong train twice. ‘Excuse me,’ she said to the man selling newspapers outside, ‘but can you tell me where this street is?’

Ignoring the address she put before him, he served the customer behind. It was getting dark now and she’d forgotten how much colder England was than Italy. Shivering and hungry, she asked directions from person after person in the crowds swanning past. Each one walked away as if she hadn’t spoken. Eventually, after going into a ‘Late Nite’ chemist, she found someone who was kind enough to get out their phone and warn her that it was a ‘good fifteen-minute walk’.

Eventually she found it. Carla stared with distaste at the dirty concrete building with peeling green paint on the door. Two girls came out, arm in arm, wearing tights with big glaring holes in them. Over the tights were denim shorts.

Smoothing down the neat cream linen jacket which Mamma had made specially for the trip, Carla went in. ‘I have booked a room,’ she said politely to the woman at the desk.

‘Name?’

‘Carla Cavoletti.’

The woman sniffed and handed her a key. ‘Third floor. First on the right. Lift’s out of order.’

The steps smelled of pee. Someone had scrawled rude words on the wall in red paint. Carla’s heart sank. This room was like a monk’s cell! The bed was narrow with a scratchy grey blanket. There was a desk, but the lighting was so poor that it would be hard to study there. The ‘en suite’ bathroom was a cupboard with a washbasin. The notice on the wall informed her that the toilets on this floor were not in use. PLEASE USE THE FACILITIES ON THE SECOND FLOOR.

Carla sat down on the edge of the bed and flicked on her phone. ‘Ring when you arrive,’ Mamma had said.

‘Hello? It is me. Yes, the flight was wonderful and the hotel, she is beautiful. You know what my plans are, Mamma. I’ve told you so many times. Tomorrow, I register at the college. Yes, Mamma. I told you. I will also find Larry to tell him where you are. I love you too.’

As Carla ended the call, a cockroach scuttled out from under the bed. Ugh! She swiftly ground it into the floor with her stiletto heel. There was a scrunching sound. Disgusting! Yet also strangely satisfying.

Kicking the dead body under the bed, she took out her cigarette case, despite the NO SMOKING sign on the wall, lit one and inhaled deeply. That was better. Then she walked to the window. Outside, London glittered with lights and roared with the constant hum of traffic and possibilities. Somewhere out there were the three people she needed to find. And find them she would.

25 Lily

‘No. NO! You have moved my shoes. Now I can’t wear them. Why did you do that? WHY?’

Breathe, I tell myself. Breathe. Don’t shout. Don’t snap. Don’t try to reason. None of it works. It only serves to make me feel temporarily better, and then the guilt will set in. Guilt that I’m leaving all this – yes! – in ten minutes to get the London train. Guilt that I’m leaving Tom with Mum to escape back to my job and my home with my husband. Guilt at the thought that perhaps we shouldn’t have had him in the first place…

No. That’s not right. Of course I love my son. Love him fiercely with every inch of my body. The second I had him I knew I’d never go back. But we didn’t know what we were doing. And it’s hard when your eleven-year-old behaves like a toddler at times and an intellectual, with a reasoning worthy of a genius, at others. It’s why we’ve never had another child.

‘I’ll sort it, darling. Don’t worry.’ Mum’s smooth, reassuring voice cuts in as she rearranges the offending shoes, which had been moved out of line from Tom’s precise positioning of the evening before. It’s one of his ‘little things’, as Ed calls it. A ritual which appears to give our son a security that we’re unable to provide ourselves.

‘I see this sort of thing all the time,’ said the specialist. He gives a little sigh. ‘And no, it’s not your fault. Asperger syndrome has probably always been around, but now we have a label for it. It can be hereditary. But it can also come up right out of the blue without any family history.’ My mouth was dry as he continued. ‘Usually it starts to reveal itself from the age of eight months or so. But some mothers say they suspected from the beginning that something wasn’t quite right.’

I thought back to Tom’s birth. His eyes had darted from side to side as if to say, Where the hell am I? He’d been much quieter than the other babies on the ward. But when he did cry, it had been a shrill, unhappy cry that scared me rigid. Or was that because I was scared myself? Terrified of being a new mother at a time when my career was just taking off. When Ed and I were still clumsily trying to start our marriage over again.

From the minute I had shown my husband the blue line on the pregnancy result kit, it had become an unspoken agreement that we would no longer ‘keep trying’ to make our marriage work. We would make it do so. My mind had gone back to my teenage days when I had overheard my mother accusing my father of having an affair. I had been terrified they would break up, and so relieved when they had stayed together. Many children, it is true, grow up perfectly well in a single parent family. But then Carla and Francesca had flashed into my head. Did I really want to end up like them?

And anyway, Ed was a changed man. ‘A child,’ my husband had said, placing a hand on my belly. His eyes had shone. ‘Our child. It can be our new start.’

‘But how will we manage?’ I’d demanded. My voice had sung with guilt, anger, resentment and downright fear. ‘Everyone wants to use me now after the case. I’ve been promoted. You haven’t even got a job.’

If that sounded cruel, I’m ashamed to say that I intended it that way. I was livid with Ed because I was livid with myself.

‘Then I’ll work from home and look after him at the same time.’

I have to admit it. Ed was a natural. He doted on Tom. My sister-in-law’s words proved true – at least at first. Fatherhood grounded him. He even gave up alcohol for a while, although he now just tries to drink in moderation. Even when our son screamed blue murder as we tried to lift him out of his cot or dress him, my husband showed a patience I had never seen before. Later, when Tom refused to play with the other toddlers in the postnatal group and even bit a little girl when she tried to take his precious blue toy train that went everywhere with him, Ed merely declared he showed ‘character’. ‘He’s much brighter than the others,’ my husband would say proudly. ‘This morning he actually told one of the other kids to “give me space”. Can you believe it? It’s almost as if he’s a mini-adult. And he can count to ten on his fingers. I bet not many two-year-olds can do that. Just imagine what he will be like when he’s older!’

But then Tom’s behaviour began to get more extreme. He asked one of the other mothers why she had a ‘hairy moustache’. (Plain speaking can be another Asperger syndrome trait.) He threw his green plastic beaker at another child, causing a big bruise on his cheek, because it wasn’t the usual yellow colour. Ed was asked to find another playgroup.

At home, it was just as difficult. ‘No,’ snapped our son when I tried to make him put on a soft blue velour jumper which Ross, his godfather, had sent him for Christmas. ‘I don’t like the feel on my skin.’

Even Ed began to worry. ‘What’s the matter with him?’ he asked when Tom refused to go to bed because his duvet had been washed in a new soap powder and smelled ‘wrong’. ‘The mothers at the new playgroup are giving me the cold shoulder now. They seem to think it’s my fault.’

My parents had once been accused of poor parenting too.

‘There has to be an answer,’ Ed insisted.

Through our GP, we found a specialist who eventually gave his opinion. Asperger’s. An autism spectrum disorder, as well as obsessive behaviour. ‘Very little that one can do,’ the specialist said. ‘Could try cutting out certain foods… these children are usually very bright… see it as a different mindset…’

Tom, I told myself in my darkest moments, was my punishment for something so terrible that I could barely admit it to myself, let alone anyone else.

As Ed wept in my lap (‘I’m trying, Lily, I really am’), I wanted to tell him this. Yet how could I? He would surely leave if he knew what I had done. A child like Tom needed two parents. We were bound together now, just as my parents had been.

‘Let us help,’ my mother finally said when she had come up to London for her usual monthly visit. By then, Ed and I had moved to a three-bedroom Victorian terraced house in Notting Hill, thanks to his grandfather’s death, which had released the trust fund money. Meanwhile, my healthy salary had meant that Ed could be a stay-at-home dad while trying to make it as a freelance artist. That was great in theory, but in practice it was proving impossible for Ed to work while looking after a child who could do complicated long-division sums in his head one minute and then jump up and down screaming that his hands were ‘dirty’ from play clay the next.

‘We could look after Tom during the week,’ Mum added, looking round at the untidy sitting room, strewn with toys and half-finished sketches, where Ed had clearly been trying to work while saving Tom from himself. (A few days earlier he had trapped his finger in the window after undoing the knot in the sash cord ‘to see how it worked’.)

‘It will give you some time to yourselves.’

Mum was always a bit nosy when she came round. In the years after Daniel she’d become more interfering, as if his absence had left a hole which she needed to fill by playing a more active role in my life. But it became more intense when Tom was born. Had she noticed the telltale signs in the spare room? The book under the bed. Ed’s clothes in the pine chest of drawers. The half-empty bottle of wine in the bottom of the wardrobe. (Not mine – I’d given up drinking as soon as I was pregnant.) All clues that this was the room that my husband usually occupied at night.

‘It’s easier for my back,’ he had said when first suggesting separate bedrooms. I was hurt initially. But the more Tom yelled when I tried to brush his hair (‘It hurts my head’) or when someone moved his ‘special cup’ (‘Where is it, where is it?’), the more irritated Ed and I became with each other. Sometimes it developed into full-blown rows.

‘I can’t cope with two kids having tantrums,’ I snapped during one particularly nasty argument when Ed had told Tom to ‘get a grip’.

Tom’s face had creased into confusion. ‘But where do I find one?’ he had demanded. Language had to be crystal clear. ‘Pipe down’ got confused with my father’s pipe at home. ‘Having your head in the clouds’ meant, in Tom’s book, that you had somehow flown up into heaven and got stuck in the sky. ‘Can you go to bed’ meant ‘Are you capable of getting into bed?’ A question, rather than an instruction.

Anger or tears on our part did nothing. Tom seemed to have a problem recognizing other people’s emotions. ‘Why are they crying?’ he asked one day when seeing a stream of refugees on television.

‘Because they don’t have homes any more,’ I explained.

‘So why don’t they just get some new ones?’

Some of these questions might be normal in a very young child. But as Tom grew older, they became increasingly inappropriate.

It was exhausting. Almost like the bad old days at the beginning of our marriage when we had nearly split. But Mum’s suggestion saved us. Tom moved to Mum and Dad’s in Devon by the sea. There was a school down the road where my brother and I had gone. They’d had more ‘special children’ like him since then, the head told us brightly. We mustn’t worry. And Ed and I would come down every weekend to see him. There was no doubting what the move would do for my parents. Since Tom had been born, my mother no longer had spells when she thought Daniel was still alive. She had another mission now: her grandson.

Much as I hate to admit it, Tom’s absence also gave Ed and me a chance to be a couple again. There was time to talk over meals. To lie on the sofa in the evenings, my legs wrapped round his in companionable silence. To rediscover each other’s bodies in one bedroom. I can’t say it was – or is – wildly passionate. But it’s comfortable. Loving.

Meanwhile, Ed was still trying to make a name for himself. We’d both hoped it would happen sooner, especially after coming third in that award. But the market was slow, or so he was told. Every now and then he persuaded a gallery to let him display some of his work. But it was hard going until an anonymous buyer bought The Italian Girl. Finally Ed got enough money to achieve his dream – to start his own gallery.

Ironically, my career has blossomed since Tom’s birth. To my delight, I was made a partner on the back of my continued success after the Joe Thomas case, which led to a cluster of settlements throughout the country and a change in the law on health and safety. Our contribution has gone down in the law reports. I’ve made a name for myself.

Just as important, in my mind, has been the fact that Davina is now safely married to a Yorkshire landowner. We declined the wedding invitation. Ed swore blind that he had never been unfaithful to me with her, but I still felt awkward in her presence.

Still, Ed and I have become much stronger as a couple. They say that when you have an ill child or one who presents certain challenges, you either grow apart or together. Surprisingly we have done the latter.

‘MY SHOES! I can’t wear them now you’ve touched them!’

My son’s anger brings me sharply back to the present. If I don’t catch the early morning train to Waterloo, I’ll miss my meeting.

‘I’ll sort it,’ says Mum firmly. At times, I’m convinced she’s taken Tom on in order to get it right this time. She failed with Daniel, or so she thinks, but she won’t do the same with her grandson. ‘Here. I almost forgot. This letter came for you during the week.’

And so I go, coward that I am. I leap into the car where Dad is waiting, and I lean back, closing my eyes with relief.

‘Ed meeting you at the other end?’ he asks.

I shake my head. Unusually, my husband hasn’t come down with me this time. He was invited to attend a Sunday showing in an elite gallery off Covent Garden which is displaying a copy of The Italian Girl. There is something about that painting – the vibrant, almost harsh, colours, and the half-knowing, half-innocent look – that unsettles me every time I see it. Or is it just because I still feel irritated about Francesca using us as babysitters so that she could be with Tony Gordon? Or rather Larry. How could someone live two lives?

Now, as the train jolts through Sherborne, I turn over the envelope in my hand. I’m not going to let Joe Thomas touch me. Not even mentally. I’m not going to allow myself to think about my part in helping a guilty man to walk free. If I do that, I won’t be able to live with myself.

And that’s why, as soon as I get to London, I’m going to tear up this envelope, with my former client’s distinctive capital-letter writing on it, and drop it in the nearest bin.

When I reach my office, there’s the usual urgent, steady, controlled panic. I love every minute. Adult panic. Adult battle of wills. Adult adulation.

It’s not just my career that’s on the up. It’s my body too. Some women age badly, like Davina – I can’t stifle my grin of triumph – whose picture in Tatler’s Bystander column the other month showed her looking decidedly heavy jowled. Others, like me, appear to improve. Or so I’ve been told. ‘Middle age suits you,’ Ed told me the other morning as he gazed down at my flat stomach and slim thighs.

I’d tickled him with mock indignation. ‘Middle age? Forty is the new thirty, I’ll have you know. Or thirty-eight at the very least.’

The ironic thing is, after Tom was born, I was too busy to comfort-eat. My baby weight quickly disappeared (breastfeeding helped) and continued to do so as he grew older. The more my son smeared food on the wall, or – at times – something far worse, the less I felt able to eat. My inability to deal with a child who insisted on everything being in its place, yet at the same time was equally insistent on creating chaos, was far more effective than any diet. I also began to run before work. Just puffing once round the block at first, but then further. Running, especially at 6 a.m. when the world was just waking, helped me to escape the demons of my dreams.

As the weight fell off and my cheekbones began to perk up, I found myself able to slip into size twelves and then tens. I went to an expensive hairdresser in Mayfair and had my long blonde hair cut into a ‘take me seriously’ bob. People watch me now as I stride purposefully through the office in my new red stilettos. Power shoes. Clients do a double-take, as if one isn’t capable of winning a case and looking good. Once, in court, the opposing lawyer slipped me a note, asking if I’d like dinner that night. I turned him down. But I was flattered.

Court. That reminds me. I need to be there in precisely one hour. Ever since ‘that case’, I’ve specialized in serious cases like murder and manslaughter. Watching Tony Gordon strut across the floor all those years ago lit something inside me. Solicitors can take an extra qualification known as the Higher Rights of Audience in order to take on cases in court that would normally be handled by a barrister. It is another string to your bow and it increases your earning power considerably. So that’s what I did.

However, I will only take on cases if convinced of my client’s innocence. Any qualm on my part and I will pass him or her to someone else, claiming that I am ‘too busy’. I have no doubts about this afternoon’s case. A teenage girl. Knocked off her bike by a lorry driver. Justice has to be done.

‘Ready?’ I glance impatiently at our latest intern: a young boy fresh out of Oxford whose father is a friend of one of the other partners. I don’t like it, but what can you do? Nepotism flourishes when it comes to law. The boy is still fiddling with his Old Etonian tie as we stride along. ‘Aren’t we going to get a taxi?’ he whines.

‘No.’ My stride is long and measured. Walking is another way I continue to stay slim. And besides, the fresh autumnal air helps me to think as I run over the details of the case.

‘Do you get nervous in court?’ The boy looks up at me and I feel a touch of compassion. Good education and a privileged upbringing are no security blanket when it comes to baring yourself in front of a row of jurors and a judge – the latter don’t suffer fools kindly.

‘I don’t allow myself to be.’ We swing up the stone steps and into the court. It’s not as big as the Old Bailey but it’s imposing enough, with its grey stone pillars and clusters of black gowns, flapping as they walk. Unfair as it is, men still outnumber the women and yet…

‘Lily?’

I stop as a grey-faced, grey-haired man pauses beside me. Swiftly, I search my memory. I know him, I’m certain, yet his name eludes me.

‘You don’t recognize me.’ This was said in a rasping tone that was a statement rather than a question. ‘Tony. Tony Gordon.’

I’m shocked. I haven’t seen him for months, and then only in passing; just a small nod in recognition, as if we never spent all those hours together, heads close, poring over papers which would eventually result in a grave injustice. I’ve tried as hard as I can to forget those hours ever happened.

‘How are you, Lily?’ As he speaks – and as the shock dissipates – he touches his throat. And then I see it. An unmistakable lump rising from above the top of his collar. ‘Throat cancer,’ he rasps again. ‘They’ve done what they can, but…’

His words are almost swallowed by the busy, echoing voices around us. Beside me, my Oxford intern is shuffling from one foot to the other in embarrassment.

‘I saw your name on the list and wanted to catch you.’ Tony’s eyes – one of the few things that hasn’t changed about him – fall on my companion.

‘Can you wait over there, please?’ I tell the young man firmly.

My old colleague’s mouth twists as if in amusement. ‘You’re different. But I knew that already. Your reputation is spreading.’

I ignore the compliment. ‘How can I help you?’

‘Joe Thomas.’

My mouth dries. My body freezes. The sounds around us fade.

‘What about him?’

My mind goes back to the conversation I had with Tony all those years ago. The panicky phone call I made after Joe Thomas had proudly admitted his guilt. ‘What do we do?’ I begged.

‘Nothing,’ Tony replied. ‘He’s free and that’s it.’ His lack of surprise was all too clear.

‘You knew he was guilty?’

‘Suspected it. But I wasn’t sure. Besides, that doesn’t matter.’

‘Yes it does.’

‘Look, Lily. When you’re older, you’ll realize that this is a game. One which we have to win even if we’re dealt a bad card. There wasn’t enough evidence against Joe Thomas. Besides, it would have jeopardized all those other cases on the back of it. Just get over it. Move on.’

And that is the real reason I’ve tried not to cross paths with Tony Gordon again. It isn’t just the double life he led and the consternation on poor little Carla’s face as she tried to work out why her mother’s Larry was really called Tony. It’s because I don’t want to be a lawyer like him. My principles are higher. Or they should’ve been.

But now, here we are. Face to face. ‘What about him?’ I say, glancing at my watch. Just ten minutes until we’re due in the courtroom.

‘He’s written to me. Wanted me to pass on a message.’

I think of all the unsigned birthday cards that I’ve received over the years. All sent to the office. All bearing the same handwriting in capital letters. All bearing foreign stamps from countries as far afield as Egypt. Including the latest one, which now lies in bits inside a Waterloo bin. At least, I presume it was a birthday card. My mind briefly flickers back to the low-key thirty-eighth birthday dinner I had last week with my husband. No fuss. No fanfare. Just a quiet celebration of beating the odds. Of staying married. But now a reminder of my failures stands right in front of me.

‘He needs to speak to you, Lily.’ Tony pushes a piece of paper into my hand. ‘Said it was urgent.’

Then he’s gone. His black coat flapping. No hat. He’s striding through the open-arched hallway before I have a chance to express my sympathies about his illness.

Meanwhile, I have my work cut out for me. An innocent lorry driver, whose life was ruined when a teenager cycled across the road in front of him without warning. One might expect the cyclist to be the victim. After all, we’re always reading about such cases. But that’s the challenge in law. Nothing is as it seems.

Right now, I have to get the poor man off. Have to maintain my record of more wins than anyone else in the office. It’s the only way to prove that I’m not such a bad person after all.

Then, against my better judgement, I stuff Joe Thomas’s number into my pocket and walk on.

26 Carla

Carla woke early in the morning to a series of shouts and a loud clattering. Flinching with cold as her bare feet made their way across the floorboards to the window, she could see men emptying bins into the lorries in the narrow street outside the hostel.

It felt comforting that rubbish collection could go on here too as well as in Italy. Made her feel slightly less homesick. Then, as she stretched out her arms – Mamma had long instilled the importance of exercise first thing to keep trim – one of the men looked up and whistled.

Ignoring him, Carla returned to bed and huddled down under the thin duvet (there wasn’t even a radiator in here!) before switching on her computer and clicking on the link she’d saved under ‘Favourites’: ‘Tony Gordon. Lincoln’s Inn.’

And then another article:

The Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn is one of four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar. It is recognized as one of the world’s most prestigious professional associations for lawyers. It is believed to be named after Henry de Lacy, 3rd Earl of Lincoln.

Carla had of course looked all this up back in Italy. But what she still hadn’t worked out, despite her assurances to Mamma that she would find Larry, was whether she could simply go to this place in the hope of surprising him. Or whether she should make an appointment, posing as a client.

As she pondered, yet another cockroach crawled out from under her bed. It stopped for a moment, as if pleading Do not kill me. I will make an appointment, Carla decided. That way, she would be certain of seeing him. However, she wouldn’t ring. She would turn up in person.

Getting out of bed, she slipped into the pink silk dressing gown which Nonna had bought her as a goodbye present, and carefully tiptoed around the cockroach. It wasn’t a matter of being soft, she told herself as she headed for the shared toilet downstairs. It was a question of being practical. She couldn’t kill every cockroach in the room.

But she could make Larry see what he had done.

Half an hour later, she was ready. A slim beige pencil skirt which showed off her figure but was also classic. Black skinny-knit jumper with a wide belt to accentuate her waist. Yesterday’s cream jacket. Red stiletto heels. A squirt of Chanel from the sample bottle she got at Duty Free (no one had been looking). A bag slung crosswise over her chest, because there were, apparently, as many thieves here as there were in Rome.

At the hostel reception desk was a pile of London Underground maps. Carefully side-stepping a young girl with a tattoo on her neck and slashed jeans, Carla helped herself. She stared at it, puzzled.

‘Where do yer want to go then?’ asked the girl.

‘Holborn,’ answered Carla primly.

‘Get the blue line then.’ A dirty finger jabbed the map. ‘Want to buy a cheap Oyster card?’

‘Please, what is that?’

There was laughter from behind her where another girl was hovering. They reminded Carla of the school in Clapham where everyone had been horrid to her.

‘You use it to get on buses and tubes. Just twenty quid. It’s a bargain.’

‘I have only euros.’

‘Then give me forty.’

Carla handed over the money and headed for King’s Cross station. She could just about remember the way from her journey last night. When she held the Oyster card against the barrier like everyone else, there was a loud bleeping.

‘You ain’t got no money on that, love,’ said a man in a neon jacket.

‘But someone sold it to me for forty euros!’

‘’Fraid you’ve been done then. Only get your Oysters from a proper station or online.’ He jerked a finger towards a machine and a long line of people.

Furious, Carla bought another. These English! Robbers! All of them.

Still, Lincoln’s Inn was even more beautiful than the pictures on the Internet. For a moment, Carla stood and marvelled at the tall buildings with their big sash windows and wide window ledges. Despite being in the middle of London, it felt like the countryside with those beautiful squares and neatly clipped hedges. That building over there with its domed roof reminded her of the Basilica in Florence, where she had gone once on a school trip.

To her relief, she found Larry’s chambers quite easily thanks to the directions she’d written down from Google.

‘May I help you?’ asked a woman at the desk.

‘I would like to make an appointment with Mr L- I mean Mr Tony Gordon.’

The girl gave her a questioning stare. ‘Are you a solicitor?’

‘Not exactly. I used to know Mr Gordon and would like to get in touch again.’

The stare grew cooler. ‘Then I suggest you email one of the clerks. He will pass on your message.’ She pushed across a compliments slip. ‘Here are the details.’

‘But I need to see Mr Gordon now. It’s important.’

‘I’m afraid it’s impossible. Now I am going to have to ask you to leave.’

The voice was no longer cool. It was angry and firm. Determined not to show her embarrassment, Carla walked out, her head high. Then she found a cafe with Wi-Fi and composed a brief message.

Dear Tony,

You might remember me from some years ago. I am in the UK now and have a message to pass on to you from my mother Francesca.

Kind regards,

Carla

That will do. Polite and to the point. Personally, Carla didn’t share her mother’s hopes that Larry, or rather Tony, might miss her. But with any luck, he might agree to see Carla. If nothing else, she might be able to extract some guilt money from him.

Now for the next two tasks on her list. Registration at the college, near a station called Goodge Street, was far more successful. Everyone was so friendly! Lectures would start tomorrow. Did she have the reading list that had been emailed out during the summer? Yes? Good. There was a freshers’ drinks party tonight. It would be a way to meet people.

But, Carla told herself as she headed for the Tube again, she had more important things to do.

27 Lily

I wait until after the innocent verdict before making the call. The lorry driver case was tight. The other side had produced film of the ‘victim’: a happy, laughing teenager on her bike. It had almost swayed the women on the jury, most of whom had children.

But not quite.

‘Thank you.’ The lorry driver’s wife flings her arms around me outside the courtroom. ‘I thought we were going to lose at one point.’

So did I, although I’d never admit it. Drugs. Drink. It’s usually one or the other that leads to the cells or death. That memory of the Highgate pub still haunts my mind. It’s why I don’t touch alcohol any more.

‘We’re going to go out now and celebrate,’ says the lorry driver’s wife, glancing up adoringly at her husband. ‘Aren’t we, love?’

But the lorry driver, like me, is looking across the marble-floored foyer at the middle-aged couple who are silently holding each other. The woman’s head is against her husband’s chest. As if sensing our gaze, she turns and gives me such a look that I doubt the very existence of my soul.

‘I’m sorry,’ I want to say. ‘I’m sorry for your loss. Most of all I’m sorry that your memory of your daughter has been tainted for ever. But justice has to be done.’

Then she walks up to me and I brace myself. This is an intelligent family. Much was made of this in court. The father is a professor. The mother spent her life bringing up her children. Luckily there are three more. But loss makes human beings into animals, as I have discovered.

The lorry driver’s wife gasps as an arc of spit hits me straight in the face. It’s directed not at the lorry driver but at me. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself,’ hisses the bereaved mother.

I wipe the spittle off my cheek with the handkerchief that I keep especially for this purpose. It’s not the first time this has happened. And it won’t be the last. The woman’s husband is taking her away now, casting me baleful looks.

‘I’m sorry,’ said the lorry driver. His eyes are wet.

I shrug. ‘It’s all right.’

But it’s not. And we both know it. Thanks to an anonymous tip-off (you’d be surprised how often this happens), I was able to name the dealer supplying drugs to the teenager who had ridden her bike into the lorry driver’s path. If it weren’t for that, we couldn’t have established that the cyclist was a regular user, which in turn contributed to her degree of culpability.

Justice has been done. It doesn’t always look like you’d expect. But there is always a price to be paid.

I walk down the steps and into the bracing wind outside. It’s another world out here, I remind myself as I cross the road towards the park, narrowly avoiding a cyclist without a helmet. A world where I can choose to bin Tony’s piece of paper with Joe Thomas’s number on it.

Or ring it.

We have to have closure. It’s a phrase I hear again and again from my clients. Even if the verdict is guilty, they need to get rid of this sword hanging over their heads. I thought I’d got rid of mine. But every time I receive one of those birthday cards I realize I can’t escape. And now I have a phone number.

If I don’t ring, I will always wonder what he wanted to say. If I do, I am pandering to him. A woman walking past me drops her purse. Loose change spills out of it and I watch her pick up a clutch of silver. Why not? I take a fifty-pence piece out of my bag and throw it in the air. Heads I don’t ring. Tails I do.

Swiftly I catch it before it hits the damp grass.

It’s tails.

I should go back to the office. But I need time to think. My conversation with Joe has unsettled me. So I head for the National Portrait Gallery. It always calms me down to see other faces bearing the same kinds of expressions that I see on my own at different times.

Emotions don’t change through the centuries. Fear. Excitement. Apprehension. Guilt. And, when I snuggle up to Ed at night, relief that somehow we’re all still together. A family unit. Marriage has its ups and downs, my mother has always said. It’s true. It’s all too easy to throw in the towel. But I’m not going to allow Joe Thomas to do that to me.

I’m staring at a picture of Thomas Cromwell when my mobile goes. ‘Sorry,’ I mouth to a disapproving couple wearing matching scarves.

Swiftly, I head for the foyer, where a tourist is questioning the price of the exhibition ticket. ‘Where I live, our museums are free,’ I hear her saying.

I fumble in my bag, but my mobile is right at the bottom and I don’t get it out in time.

Missed call.

Ed.

My mouth goes dry. My husband never rings during my working day unless there’s an emergency with Tom. We haven’t had one for a while. It’s about time for another. It’s how it works.

Fingers shaking, I call him back.

28 Carla

Carla had been expecting something grand. Not like the Royal Academy, of course, which she was looking forward to seeing. But something that was, well, significant. Yet this narrow building was wedged between a shoe shop and a newsagent. If you didn’t know what you were looking for, you might walk straight past. You even had to go down some narrow stone basement steps to find the entrance.

Then she stopped. Held her breath. All around her were walls. White walls. And on those walls was… her.

Carla, as she used to be.

The small Italian girl who always felt so different.

There was no mistaking her. Some of the paintings she recognized. But there were new ones too. Laughing. Frowning. Thinking. Dreaming. In big frames. Small frames. In bold strokes of red and raven black.

Oh my goodness! Silently, she gasped. There, in the corner, with a stick of charcoal in his hand, was Ed. Older than she’d remembered, with more lines on his forehead. He had glasses too, which she didn’t remember. But it was definitely him.

Sit still, Carla. Please. Think of something nice. Your new pink bike perhaps. Your friend at school. What is her name again? Maria! That’s right. His words came filtering back to her as she approached him.

‘Mr Macdonald?’

Reluctantly his head rose up to meet her gaze. She could see he was annoyed at being interrupted. His eyes hardened. Then they softened. He made to stand up but sat down again. ‘Carla?’ he said in a choked voice. ‘Little Carla? Is it really you?’

She’d been prepared for all kinds of reactions. But not this. Not this genuine look of pleasure. There was no shame. No embarrassment. No attempt to hide.

‘I wrote to you,’ she said, looking him straight in the eye. ‘But you didn’t reply.’

Those bushy eyebrows rose. ‘Wrote to me? When?’

‘Last year. And then I wrote again.’

‘You addressed it to the gallery?’

‘Yes – no, not this one.’ Carla felt a tremor of doubt. ‘I sent the first to the flat and the second to a different gallery from this. Where you had an exhibition.’

Ed ran a hand through his hair. ‘Ah. We moved a while ago. But the people who bought the flat from us are still very good at sending on our mail. Gallery post, mind you, can be a bit hit and miss with so many artists coming and going.’

Did she believe him? He sounded truthful enough. Carla looked up at this still rather handsome man with warm creases round his eyes. There was genuine care there. And admiration too. No doubt about it. An excited feeling rippled through her. This was the man she had idolized as a child. But now she was all grown up.

Perhaps there might be another way…

‘The letters were to tell you I was coming over. I have done my law degree in Italy. Now I am here to do a course in England, and thought it would be nice to look you up.’

‘Wonderful!’ Ed’s hands took both of hers. He was squeezing them tight. Surely for longer than was necessary. ‘I can’t tell you, Carla, how good it is to see you! Welcome. Welcome back!’

29 Lily

Ed’s number is engaged.

I’m really scared now. Stepping back so someone else can go in front of me in the queue, I try again.

‘Lily?’

Thank heavens. He’s answering. ‘What’s wrong?’ I blurt out.

‘Nothing!’ His voice is bubbly with excitement.

I’m filled with relief.

‘Are you busy?’ he asks.

It’s a strange question because he knows I’m always busy. The Portrait Gallery is a rare act of rebellion on my part. I should be in the office.

‘Actually, I’m taking an hour out after the case.’

‘You won?’

Nowadays, Ed takes a keen interest in my work.

I feel a flash of pride. ‘We did.’

‘Well done.’ He’s genuinely proud of me. ‘Can you come on down here then?’

‘To see you?’

‘I’ve got a surprise.’

‘A nice one?’

‘Definitely.’

I feel childishly excited. ‘I can spare an hour,’ I say, walking out of the doors and back into the street.

Ed’s new gallery is in an old basement. It has definite potential, he assured me, especially with that wonderful curved Victorian pillar in the middle.

Quite a lot of people came to the opening. The anonymous buyer (even Ed wasn’t told who it was, since it was all conducted through a dealer) had really helped to stir interest in his work. When clients started to ask me if I was related to Ed Macdonald the artist, I felt a burst of pride at telling them he was my husband. But now, after less than a year, this interest is fading. His acrylic style with garish colours and wide dramatic brushstrokes is not, apparently, to everyone’s taste.

The hurtful reviews have got to Ed, making him feel insecure again. The other night, he came home with three bottles of red. ‘I won’t drink them all at once,’ he said defensively. I said nothing. I know my husband has failures, but then so do I. Instead, we had a relaxed supper together, something we now frequently enjoy during the week, with no Tom screaming because someone has tainted his plate by adding a pea by mistake. (‘I told you. I don’t like green!’)

All Ed needs is another big sale for the sake of his self-esteem and to pay the new gallery bills. Maybe, I tell myself, edging down the narrow stone steps, that’s why he’s summoned me here. Perhaps another buyer has walked in!

As I enter the gallery, I see Ed’s head from the back. It gives me a warm feeling of contentment.

‘Lily!’ He swivels round, saying my name as though it is fresh in his mouth. As if I am an acquaintance he hasn’t seen for a long time instead of the wife he kissed goodbye this morning. ‘Guess who walked into the gallery an hour ago?’

As he speaks, a petite woman with a sleek black bob slides out from behind the pillar. Her hairstyle, apart from the colour, is almost identical to mine. But she’s young. Early twenties, at a guess. Big, wide, sunny smile with glossy bee-stung lips and a flash of fleshy gum. A wide smooth forehead. She’s stunning without being conventionally beautiful. Her face is the sort that makes you stare. I twist my silver bracelet – the one I always wear – with inexplicable nervousness.

‘Hello, Lily!’ she sings. There’s an unexpected kiss on both my cheeks. Then she stands back. I feel a cold slice inside as though a carving knife is paring my body in two. ‘You don’t remember me? It’s Carla.’

Carla? Little Carla who used to live in the same block of flats all those years ago, when Ed and I were first married? The shy at times but also precocious child with the beautiful mother who had been carrying on with Tony? Carla, alias The Italian Girl? Is it really possible that this is the confident young woman who stands before me now with glossy lips and an immaculate complexion, her sharp, cat-like eyes accentuated with just the right touch of eyeliner? Such poise!

It has taken me years to achieve a confidence like that.

But of course it’s Carla. She’s a mini-Francesca, minus the long curls. The spitting image of the single mother from number 7 all those years ago.

‘Where have you been?’ I manage to say. ‘How is your mother?’

This beautiful colt-like creature dips her chin and then tilts her head to one side as if considering the question. ‘Mamma, she is very well, thank you. She is living in Italy. We have been there for some time.’

Ed breaks in. ‘Carla’s been trying to get hold of us. She wrote to us.’

I breathe steadily, just as I do in court when I need to be careful. ‘Really?’ I say.

It’s not a lie. Just a question.

‘Twice,’ says Carla.

She is looking straight at me. Briefly I think back to that first letter with the Italian stamp, which was sent to our old address last year but forwarded to us by the current occupants.

My first instinct was to throw it away like all the other begging letters we received around that time. People assume, rightly or wrongly, that if an artist has one big success, he or she is rich. The reality is that even with the picture sale and Ed’s trust money and my salary, we are still not that well off. Our mortgages on both the gallery and the house are crippling. And of course we also have Tom’s expensive therapy and his unknown future to think of.

I want to help people like any other decent person. But if you give to one, where do you stop? Yet Carla was different. She was right. In a way we did owe our success to her.

I would talk to Ed, I decided. But a critic had just written yet another snide review, questioning why anyone would want to pay so much for a ‘brash acrylic work that was worthy of a Montmartre street artist’. My husband had been hurt. It was all I could do to assure Ed that this reviewer was wrong. Better to leave Carla’s letter, I decided, until things were calmer.

Then came the second one, sent to the gallery where Ed had been exhibiting temporarily before it had been forwarded to our home. Luckily, I happened to bump into the postman on the way to work. Recognizing the handwriting and stamp, I slipped it in my briefcase and opened it in the office. The tone was angrier this time. More demanding. It frightened me to be honest. I sensed Francesca’s hand behind it. If we gave them some money, they might ask for more.

So I put it away, pretending to myself that I would deal with it at ‘some point’. And then I conveniently forgot about it. It wasn’t the right thing to do. I can see that now. But if I had written back to Carla explaining our financial situation, she might not have believed it.

‘We were worried when you left so suddenly all those years ago,’ Ed is saying now. ‘Why didn’t you tell us you were going?’

His question takes me back to the last time I saw Carla. That awful row between Tony, Francesca and me. On top of that, I was trying to work out if Ed and I should stay together.

‘Yes,’ I say, gritting my teeth, ‘we were very worried about you.’ Then my eye falls on the painting behind her. It’s hard not to. There are paintings of Carla as a child all over the room.

‘What do you think of your pictures?’ I ask. Might as well play devil’s advocate, I tell myself. Try to draw Carla out. It would also make me look more innocent in the matter of those unanswered letters.

The young woman in front of me flushes. ‘They are lovely.’ Then she flushes again. ‘I do not mean that I am lovely, you understand -’

‘Oh, but you are,’ breaks in Ed. ‘Such a beautiful child. We both thought so, didn’t we, Lily?’

I nod. ‘Remember that portrait of you which he entered for an award all those years ago? It got third prize. And although it didn’t sell then, it was recently bought by a collector.’

I watch her intently. She had mentioned both the competition and the sale in her letters. So I knew that she knew about them. But now she gasps as if in surprise, placing fingers to her mouth. Both are exquisitely painted in matching rose. The nails are a perfect oval. Not one chip on the polish. ‘Fantastic,’ she coos.

Perhaps she’s embarrassed now about the demanding tone of that second letter that she thinks we haven’t received. I can understand that.

‘That’s why I was trying to find you,’ adds Ed eagerly.

Really? If so, that’s news to me. Sometimes Ed says things just to please people.

‘I got quite a lot of money,’ my husband babbles on. He’s getting excited, almost high. I know the signs. It means he is capable of behaving recklessly. I touch his arm, hoping to slow him down, but he continues. ‘It helped me get a gallery of my own!’

There’s a slight pause as my husband and I both think the same thing. That happens quite a lot nowadays. Maybe it’s the same for all couples who have been married for a long time. ‘We ought to thank you,’ I say, reluctantly accepting that this would indeed be the honourable thing to do, even though we can’t afford it.

‘We should, indeed,’ agrees Ed. He’s looking away from me, but I know his mind is going round. How much should he pay? What could we afford?

‘Where are you living?’ I ask, to buy time.

‘In a place called King’s Cross. In a hostel.’ She sighs. ‘There are cockroaches everywhere.’

Suddenly that confident woman is no longer there. I see a young girl who has just left her native country and is now finding her feet in a city that has probably changed a great deal. I stop wondering about how much we owe her and how her presence makes me feel nervous because it reminds me of the past. Once more, I want to help. Partly out of guilt.

‘You must come over for dinner.’

‘Yes.’ Ed is glowing with excitement. I know why. Already he is painting her in his head. It’s a great angle. I can see that. Italian Girl Grown Up. No more curls. A bob instead. A new look. Maybe pastels instead of acrylics. He’s been talking about changing style. It suddenly occurs to me that Carla’s reappearance in our lives could be exactly what my husband needs.

‘Come over tonight,’ Ed says.

No. Not so soon. We need time to talk. ‘Tonight isn’t so good,’ I say, reaching into my bag for a pen. ‘Give me your number and I’ll call you.’

Carla scribbles it down eagerly. ‘I start college soon, but I am sure I will have some free time.’ Then she stands up straight. ‘I have done a law degree in Italy and now I am going to take a transfer course and then qualify as a lawyer in England. Like you, Lily!’

Why is my chest tightening? Why do I feel as though this beautiful girl is creeping on to my territory? It’s my patch. Not hers.

‘It’s a very competitive world,’ I find myself saying. ‘Tough. Unforgiving. Are you sure about this?’

‘You were my inspiration!’ Her eyes are bright. ‘I always remember that famous boiler murder case you were working on when Ed was painting me. I studied it at university. What was the man’s name – Joe Thomas? “This man is innocent,” you kept saying. “I am going to make the rest of the world see that.” ’

Why do I feel this is a prepared speech? That there’s another reason for her coming here? Or is it me, being neurotic because the girl has mentioned the man I have tried so hard to forget?

I do my best not to think about my phone call earlier today.

‘Lily will be able to help you with your assignments,’ Ed bursts in. He’s like an excited child, keen to please. I understand why. He feels guilty. After all, he’s built a career on this girl.

‘We will be in touch to arrange dinner at our place.’ I press a card into her hand. ‘Meanwhile, here are our details.’

‘Take this too.’ My husband is pressing a twenty-pound note into her hand. ‘Get a taxi from the Tube station.’

‘Ed,’ I say, trying to stay calm. ‘Can you be back early tonight? There’s something we need to discuss.’

He pauses, his eye catching mine. Something we need to discuss. Something we need to talk about. Every time we have used that phrase in our life, it’s been to do with something big. Our marriage. The pregnancy test. Tom’s diagnosis. And now how much we should pay Carla.

‘Sure,’ he says uncertainly. ‘I’ll be there if you are.’ He laughs. ‘My wife’s really important now, you know. Practically lives in the office, she does. Keeps a duvet there.’

He hasn’t been sarcastic like this for ages. I don’t have a spare bed in the office, but I do often get back late. How can you not when you’re a partner?

‘There’s something else we haven’t told Carla,’ I add.

Ed frowns. ‘There is?’

That’s the other thing about being an artist. You can block yourself out. Hide.

‘We have a child. A boy.’ I falter as I often do when telling strangers I have a son. ‘He’s called Tom.’

‘Really?’ Carla’s eyes soften. ‘I can’t wait to meet him.’

30 Carla

Perhaps it was best that they hadn’t received her letters. It could, Carla told herself, make things easier, provided she played her cards right.

Now, as she made her way back to the hostel, all Carla could think about was the admiration in Ed’s face and the lovely warmth that flowed through her body because of it. The sight of crisp autumn leaves and the cold, early evening air that caught in her throat reminded Carla of the time she had first met Lily and Ed. In her childish eyes, they had seemed so grown up! Yet Lily had probably not been much older than she was now.

How her once-friend had changed! Carla had always remembered her as being very tall and plump. Her only asset had been that beautiful long blonde hair. ‘I would like to teach that English woman how to dress,’ Mamma was always saying. ‘You do not need money for style. It is a question of putting together the right things and then wearing them with pride.’

Well, someone, somewhere, must have taught Lily because she had style now. Carla had hardly recognized her when she had appeared in the gallery. She was much thinner and was wearing a beautifully cut jacket that resembled a Max Mara. The blonde bob looked even better in person than it had done in the picture. By framing Lily’s face, it accentuated her cheekbones. The older woman had become almost beautiful.

Ed may have changed too, but he still had that aura of kindness and that manner of speaking as if he knew exactly what you meant. You were also aware when talking to him that he was taking in your nose, your ears, your bone structure. It was what a real artist did. And how flattering that it was her portrait that had been bought by this unknown buyer!

Meanwhile, she had her first day in front of her. Law school! Carla’s heart quickened. She wanted to be good at this. She really did.

‘We will be in touch,’ Lily had promised, ‘to arrange dinner at our place.’

Perhaps by then she would have heard back from Larry.

‘Do not worry, Mamma,’ she told herself, nodding a thank you at the good-looking young man who had invited her to go through the main doors first. ‘I will make sure that justice is done.’

31 Lily

Ed is true to his word. He is not only back early from the gallery for our ‘little chat’, but he has also cooked supper. Our signature dish, we call it. Salmon en croute. It was the first meal we ate after my pregnancy test: the beginning of our new life together after its false start.

How long can you pretend for? How long will it be before someone comes from the past to bring it all back?

Carla. Joe.

Maybe that’s why I made such a supreme effort to be back early myself. ‘No more tonight,’ I told the eager young intern who was still poring over the papers I had given him. ‘We all need a break at times.’

‘But it’s only 7 p.m.!’

He might as well have said 4 p.m. Late nights aren’t just expected of you when you’re a lawyer; they’re one of many sandbags between you and the door marked ‘Exit’. In other words, long hours show you’re committed. They help protect you from the constant threat of being pushed out. Law can be a cut-throat business.

‘That smells good,’ I say to Ed. Why is it that you often end up complimenting someone you’re afraid of hurting? My husband produces the dish with a flourish, then places it carefully on the table. On the wall opposite, a picture of Tom looks down on us. He is serious. Like Daniel, he rarely smiles.

‘So what is it that you need to talk about? Something so urgent that we couldn’t afford to share our time with the girl who has made our money?’

‘She made your money. Not mine. I make my own.’

‘But don’t you see?’ Ed’s eyes are shining. ‘Carla has come back. If she allows me to paint her again, it will kick-start my career. The publicity will be great.’

Haven’t I already thought of that? Yet something doesn’t feel quite right. ‘Maybe,’ I begin. And then the phone rings.

‘You’d better get it,’ says Ed, tucking in. ‘It will be work again. Always is.’

Reluctantly I pick up the phone.

‘Darling?’

My heart freezes. I tried to ring Mum earlier, as I do every day. A quick call to see if everything is all right. A guilt call because my mother is dealing with a situation that I’m no good at. But there wasn’t any reply. Then work took over and I forgot. Yes, I know.

‘What’s happened?’

My mother’s voice is tight. ‘It’s Tom. He’s in trouble.’

What we want and what we need in life are two very different things.

But it takes death to put those two contenders into perspective.

Right now, there’s only one thing I really want.

To live.

32 Carla

October was almost halfway through already. She had waited for weeks now for Lily to call. Carla had begun to feel foolish and not a little annoyed. This was just like the letters. Clearly Lily and Ed were the kind of people who said one thing and did another. They had no intention of ‘thanking her’ as promised. They just wanted her to go away! Frankly, she expected this of Lily. But it was Ed with the kind eyes who had disappointed her.

If they thought this was over, though, they were mistaken. She would, Carla told herself as she stared at her law books in her cold hostel room (she’d got used to the cockroaches now), give them two more weeks and then turn up at the gallery again.

Just as disappointing was the email reply from Tony Gordon’s clerk.

Mr Gordon is not available at present. Your message will be passed on to him at the earliest possible opportunity.

In other words, he didn’t want to see her.

‘Go round to his house,’ Mamma had pleaded when Carla had told her in a rushed phone call. But Mamma couldn’t remember the name of the street, apart from the fact that it was ‘somewhere in a place called Islington’. Even Google hadn’t come up with his address.

Determined not to be beaten, she spent some hours walking round Islington one Saturday, hoping that something would trigger off a childhood memory from that terrible Christmas when Mamma had been hysterical because Larry couldn’t be with them. But all she could remember was a tall building with big windows. There were so many of them that it was like looking for a needle in a haystack, as the English said.

There was nothing for it but to plough her energies into her demanding studies. Everyone at college was so clever. Yet she had an advantage. She knew that. There was only one other Italian girl there, and she lacked the natural assets that Carla had. Beauty as well as brains. Everyone (the boys, that was) wanted to help her. She was asked out for coffee and dinner so many times she couldn’t count them.

Each time she turned down the invitation with a smile and the excuse that she needed to work instead. However, she would say with a slight turn of the head, it would be very kind if they could just explain something about the last assignment.

Then, one evening, when her hands were stiff with cold in her little room, the mobile rang.

Lily!

‘I’m sorry it’s taken so long to get in touch.’ The voice was uncertain. ‘The truth is that since we saw you, we’ve had some… some problems.’

There was a short silence during which Carla felt that Lily had more to say but was holding back. ‘You are not ill?’ she asked quickly.

‘No.’ There was a short laugh. ‘Not me.’

Carla felt a quickening of fear. ‘Not Ed?’

‘No. Not him either.’

That was good. Of the two, Carla definitely preferred Ed, with his appreciative eyes. Lily, Carla told herself, was not to be trusted. It was true that she had once idolized the woman who had taught her how to make Victoria sponges and looked after her when Mamma was ‘working’. But look how she had stepped in between Larry and Mamma. Then there was her job. Carla allowed herself a half-smile as she recalled how she’d thought Lily had committed murder herself because she’d seen the word on her files. But even so, it took a certain kind of person to defend someone who was accused of snuffing out someone else’s life. Carla shuddered. Criminal law wasn’t for her. Employment law, said her tutors, was the way forward. She had a knack for it, apparently.

Meanwhile, Lily was still wittering on about her son.

‘Tom… well, Tom got into trouble at school. But it’s all sorted now.’

‘That is good.’ Carla knew she should sound more interested, but the truth was that she wasn’t that fussed. Some of her friends back in Italy had had babies now, and maybe, one day, it would be something she’d like. But right now there were other more important matters on her mind.

‘I had to take some time off work,’ Lily continued. ‘But I am back now in London. Ed and I wondered if you would like to come over next week for supper.’

Ed and Lily’s home was beautiful, even though there was an empty crisp packet fluttering around on the pavement outside. Before walking up the steps, Carla stood and stared at the gracious, tall house with white bricks and late geraniums flowering on a balcony above. A rustle in the hedge running along the front of the house startled her. Just a bird. Calm down, she told herself. You’re only nervous because you’re finally here.

Tentatively she raised the silver knocker on the glossy black door, tucking the flowers she had brought under her arm in order to do so. When Ed opened it (‘Come in! Come in!’) she marvelled at the black and white tiles in the hall. Every room was like a page in a magazine. White everywhere. White and glass. Glass coffee tables. White walls. White counters in the kitchen.

They must have a great deal of money to afford all this. Yet it was almost as if Lily had banished colour.

‘Roses!’ Ed buried his face in the bunch which she’d bought, at half price, from a street flower seller about to shut up for the night. ‘What a wonderful smell. And such an amazing pink, like blushing cheeks. Now why don’t you sit here. Lily will be down in a minute.’

If it was her, Carla told herself, taking a seat at the glass table in the kitchen, she would put a rustic pine bench there and a scarlet rug there…

‘Welcome,’ said Lily, suddenly appearing through the door.

Carla airkissed her hostess’s cheeks, taking in her cream trousers and the stylish beige pumps on her feet. If only she had the money to dress like that instead of buying second-hand or relying on Mamma’s sewing skills! ‘Thank you for having me.’

‘Thank you for coming. Like I said on the phone, I’m only sorry it’s taken us a while. Ed? Is dinner ready now?’

‘Dinner’ was fish pie from a packet. At home, that would have been considered a disgrace. Meals had to be made from scratch; the process took hours. It was a mark of respect for the guests.

Meanwhile, try as she might to make small talk, the atmosphere was tight. ‘Your home,’ said Carla, in desperation, ‘is very minimalist.’ Since coming back, Carla had made a point of learning a new English word every day. This was one of them. She’d been waiting for an opportunity to use it.

Lily dug the serving spoon into the dish so the juices flooded over the edges. ‘It’s so that all my husband’s paintings will stand out.’

All? But there were only two that she could see.

‘I seem to have lost my creative mojo,’ said Ed drily, topping up his and Carla’s wine glasses but not Lily’s. She had sparkling water. ‘I’ve been trying all kinds of things but nothing works.’

Something had happened to this couple since she had last seen them in the gallery. They looked empty somehow. Someone had switched off a light inside their souls.

‘I don’t understand.’

Ed picked up his knife and fork. Carla followed suit. Lily, she noticed, didn’t even bother. It was as if the food in front of her wasn’t there.

‘I have run out of inspiration. It’s partly because of Tom. He hasn’t been… well.’

He stopped as Lily flashed him a warning look.

Aware the atmosphere was getting worse, Carla tried to choose her words carefully. ‘But he is better now?’

‘Better?’ Ed took another large slug of wine and laughed hoarsely. ‘Tom will never be better, and -’

‘Ed.’ Lily’s voice carved through the air. ‘We must not inflict our troubles on our guest. Now tell me, Carla. How is your course going?’

She braced herself to look directly at the woman opposite. ‘Very good, thank you.’

Somehow, Carla told herself, as she spoke lightly about the past, how she’d loved cooking with Lily as a child, and then described the various lectures she’d been to recently, she had to find a way to bring Larry – no, Tony – into the conversation.

As she finished talking, there was silence. Ed and Lily both seemed completely absorbed in the table in front of them. Fine, Carla thought, I’ll just launch straight in.

‘Actually,’ she said quickly, ‘I was wondering if you could tell me how I could find Mr Gordon. My mother, she has a message for him. I’ve emailed his clerk but received a reply to say he is not available at present.’

Lily visibly twitched.

Ed had almost finished half a bottle now. ‘You can say that again,’ he spluttered.

‘The reason he’s not available at present, Carla, is because Tony is very ill,’ said Lily slowly, pushing her plate to one side even though she had barely touched her food. ‘In fact, he’s in a hospice, not far from here.’

‘A hospice?’ Carla felt a catch in her throat. An excited catch that knew it ought to be shocked instead.

‘He has cancer. The poor man doesn’t have much time.’

‘Poor man?’ Ed snorted. ‘That’s not what you’ve said about him to me.’ Then he turned to Carla. ‘The two of them had some kind of falling out over a case. But my wife here can’t go into details because it’s confidential.’ He tapped the side of his nose knowingly. ‘That’s the law for you.’

Lily looked furious. ‘Don’t drink if you can’t control yourself,’ she said coldly.

‘It’s not me who can’t control myself.’ Ed was rising unsteadily to his feet.

‘That’s enough.’

They were arguing as if she wasn’t there! Carla felt another glimmer of excitement. If you wanted to get one step ahead in court, her new tutor had said, it was always better if your opposition was divided.

‘I’m sorry.’ Lily touched her arm as Ed stormed out of the room. ‘Things are difficult at the moment.’ Then she pressed an envelope into her hand. ‘This is a small thank you from us. It’s the award money that Ed won all those years ago, as well as a little extra.’ She spoke fast. Sharply. Without warmth. As if this was a pay-off rather than a proper present.

‘Thank you.’ Part of Carla wanted to throw it back. Their ‘gift’ made her feel dirty. Humiliated. It was clear Lily just wanted to get rid of her. ‘That’s very kind. But there’s just one more thing.’

Alarm flashed across Lily’s face. Her eyes grew stony. She thought Carla wanted extra money! The knowledge gave Carla power. Of course she did. But that would come later.

‘Could you please,’ continued Carla, brazening out the hostility in those eyes, ‘write down the name of Tony’s hospice?’

Lily’s face softened. ‘Of course.’ She reached for a pen. ‘Here it is. I will ring you soon, Carla. I’m so sorry about this. Like I said, we’ve had a few problems. Ed isn’t quite himself.’

Outside, Carla tipped open the envelope. A thousand pounds? If those two thought that was enough, they were very much mistaken.

33 Lily

‘I wasn’t sure that you’d come.’

We’re sitting outside an Italian restaurant just off Leicester Square. I’m still shaken after our dinner with Carla. Not to mention everything that’s been going on with Tom. After all, that’s partly the reason I’m here.

It’s unseasonably sunny for this time of year. I’m not wearing a coat, but I do have my sunglasses on. Red frames. They’re necessary protection against the low-burning orange circle in the sky, but they also let me observe my companion without allowing him to make that eye contact he was always so good at.

Joe Thomas, it has to be said, looks like any of the businessmen walking past. Respectable in that dark-blue suit. Clean-shaven. Tidy hair. Shiny, black, pointed shoes. And a tan.

‘What do you want?’ I’m keeping my tone deliberately level. Act normal, I tell myself. It’s why I suggested this place in full view of the world.

His fingers position the cutlery so that it is perfectly in line with the edge of the place mat. His nails are clean. Well kept. ‘That’s not very polite.’

‘Polite!’ I laugh. ‘What do you call perverting the course of justice then?’ I lower my voice, even though it’s quite low anyway. ‘You killed your girlfriend and then made me believe you were innocent.’

‘You wanted to believe I was innocent.’ My companion leans forward so his breath mingles with mine. ‘You thought I was like your brother.’

I sit back. It was a mistake to come here. I see this now. Yet I too have my questions to ask. ‘I don’t want you to send cards any more. How did you know when my birthday was?’

‘I looked it up. You can look almost anything up.’ Joe Thomas smiles. ‘You should know that. I wanted to remind you that I was still thinking of you. But it’s Tom I’m here about.’

I freeze. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I think you know already. It’s why you’re here. I would have come earlier, but I’ve been working abroad until recently. And when I came back, I found out you’d had a child.’

He leans across the table towards me again. ‘I need to know, Lily. Is he mine?’

My body goes cold. Numb. Underneath the table, my legs start to shake. Words are about to tumble out of my mouth, but I manage to pull them back and replace them with better ones. ‘Of course not. Don’t be so ridiculous. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Gripping the edge of the table, I stand up.

‘I’m talking about us.’ Joe’s voice is pleading. His former arrogance now carries a note of desperation. ‘Don’t go. I must have the truth.’

‘The truth?’ I laugh. ‘What do you know about truth? You’ve allowed your imagination to run riot, Mr Thomas.’ I stop myself. It’s not his fault he has ‘behavioural issues’, as we argued in court. But that doesn’t explain everything he’s done. ‘You were my client twelve years ago and I’ve lived to rue the day I helped you get off. It’s something I will never forgive myself for.’ Tears blind my eyes. ‘Poor Sarah…’

Joe is clutching my hand now. ‘I do have some feelings, you know. I made a mistake, and I’m sorry. But it helped others – all of those other victims.’

I pull my hand out of his. People are looking at us from the adjoining table. I throw down a twenty-pound note to cover our drinks and walk off, through the square.

‘It’s Tom. He’s in trouble.’ Even now, some weeks later, my mother’s taut voice, sprung with fear, haunts me. I hear it in my dreams. I hear it when I wake up. And I hear it when I’m meant to be concentrating in meetings, even though I know that that particular ‘Tom emergency’ has been sorted.

Until the next one.

Ed and I had rushed down to Devon of course. It was just after that shock encounter with Carla at the gallery. I left quick, sharp messages of instructions to my secretary and junior partners while Ed drove, his mouth set in that thin line which said, ‘For God’s sake, can’t you forget about work while we sort out our son.’

I know what he meant. I’ve told myself the same thing over and over again, especially when I see another woman with a son of Tom’s age walking past us in the streets or queuing up for Madame Tussauds.

But Tom would never stand like that in a line. He would be worried about whether our feet were in the ‘right’ position. He would be asking the woman behind us why she had a mole on her chin and how long it had been there and why she hadn’t had it removed. Children like Tom don’t always realize when they’re being rude.

It would cause an awkward explanation on my part and a stepping away on the part of the imaginary woman with the mole. Naturally it’s difficult having an almost-teenager who behaves like a toddler. But I can deal with that.

It’s the violence that’s not so easy. Take this scar on my forehead. It’s from when Tom once accidentally hit me with a saucepan. I hadn’t put the offending item back in its ‘proper’ place in the kitchen, so he charged past me to put it right. And that mark on Ed’s arm? That’s because Ed once tried to play football with his boy, but Tom’s poor spatial awareness skills (which can sometimes go with the label, apparently) made him frustrated.

So he bit Ed.

We’d been trying our best to ‘put strategies of structure in place to address challenging behaviour’ (according to one rather useful piece of online advice). But as he’d got older and bigger – even taller than me, despite his age! – he got worse. More violent. And now the time had come to do something about it. That much was clear when, after a five-hour dash to Devon that night, we had an emergency meeting at our son’s school the next morning.

‘He flew at his teacher with a pair of scissors.’

The head’s exhausted tone – usually more sympathetic – made me realize we’d reached the end of the line. Tom had been allowed to go to the local school, despite his special needs; partly because of our local connections (I had been there too, and Mum is on the board of governors), and partly because we’d argued that we wanted him to be in mainstream schooling. If he was with others ‘like him’, Ed and I had argued, Tom wouldn’t have any role models to help him improve.

‘We’ve tried, but we simply can’t cope with this behaviour any more.’ The head spoke as if Ed and I had picked up the scissors ourselves.

‘But she’s all right, yes?’ Ed was just about controlling himself.

‘That depends,’ said the head curtly, ‘on whether you count five stitches as being acceptable.’

‘Tom was hurt too,’ snapped Ed.

‘That was self-inflicted.’

I’m used to arbitrating between clients. Between clients and barristers too. But when it comes to my own family, my skills seem to fly out of the window. Stick to the facts, I told myself, just as I told my clients. Stick to the facts.

‘Can you tell us exactly what happened?’ I asked. ‘Mum told me there had been an argument in Geography.’

Those disapproving eyes swivelled back to me. ‘The children were asked to cut out maps. Tom was fussing about his outline. He said he needed more time to get it right. The teacher told him that his was perfectly acceptable and that they needed to finish before break-time. There was an argument, during which he picked up the scissors and nearly stabbed her. Luckily she stepped to one side and they went into the desk.’

‘Hang on. You said she needed stitches!’

‘She did.’ The head was regarding Ed as though he was no better than Tom. ‘She fell in her attempt to avoid the scissors and hit her head.’

‘He didn’t cut her then? It was an accident.’

‘That’s not the point.’ The head’s voice was rising. ‘It could have been fatal.’

‘So that explains it!’ My relief sang out. ‘It wasn’t because he wanted to hurt her. He was hurting inside because his outlines weren’t right. Don’t you see?’

There was a shake of the head. ‘No, Mrs Macdonald, I don’t.’

‘You know Tom needs to get everything right. It’s part of his condition.’

‘That’s as may be, but I won’t accept any kind of abuse towards my staff. You’re lucky we didn’t call the police.’ The head stood up, indicating the interview was at an end. ‘I’m sorry, but you must remember what the educational psychologist said the last time this happened.’

Briefly, I thought back to the day Tom had got too near a girl in the playground. (Problems with personal space again.) She’d pushed him away and he’d pushed her back. She’d fallen awkwardly and cracked her wrist. Full blame, rather unfairly in my view, had fallen on our son.

‘It’s another example of his behaviour.’ The head was sounding weary now. ‘We can’t keep Tom here any more. It’s time to consider a special school. One that can deal with his… his issues. In the meantime, Tom is suspended.’

Of course, Mum stepped in. She’d been through ‘challenging behaviour’ before with Daniel. This time she would get it right. ‘We’ll look after him at home until they sort something out,’ she insisted when we returned, drained and worried after the meeting.

‘Where is he now?’

My mother bit her lip. ‘Upstairs. He’s pushed something against the door so I can’t open it. But he’s talking, so I think he’s all right.’

A cold shaft of terror caught at my heart. I could see him climbing out of the window. Cutting his own wrist with scissors. Hanging from the ceiling…

Together Ed and I raced up the stairs. ‘Tom, it’s Mum. Are you all right?’

No answer.

‘Tom.’ Ed tried again. ‘We understand what happened at school. Just let us in.’

He could try all day, but Tom wouldn’t give in.

‘I don’t want to talk.’

Ed tried again. ‘Do you know that your teacher has had to have stitches?’

‘She didn’t have to,’ he retorted quickly. ‘She shouldn’t have fallen.’

Her fault for falling. My fault for upsetting Daniel at the end. Ed’s fault for not telling me about the trust. Joe’s fault for killing Sarah.

Who knows where blame really lies? It’s never as simple as it seems.

Desperately, Ed and I attempted to keep our lives together while sorting out Tom’s educational future at the same time. It wasn’t easy to find a school that could deal with Tom’s needs. But, once more, an online help group, along with the consultant, pointed us in the right direction. Some parents, we later found out, take ages to find ‘the right education package for children with autism spectrum disorders’. We were lucky.

There was a ‘good school’ (according to reviews) about an hour from my parents. It offered flexible boarding, which would take the strain off us all, yet also made us feel guilty. But something had to be done. So we both went down to visit it. There were children like Tom. But many were more challenging. One teacher was wiping faeces off the wall of a corridor as we passed. The smell clung to us, suffocating us in the knowledge that this was the world we were condemning him to.

‘How can we send him to a boarding school?’ wept Ed on the way back. The traffic on the snarled-up motorway appeared to reflect our own personal impasse.

‘You went to one.’

‘That was different.’

‘Yours was posh, you mean.’

‘If you like.’

‘We’re sending him to a boarding school because we can’t cope and because they have specialized help,’ I said, tapping my fingers on the wheel.

‘You sound so cold. Emotionless.’

It was the only way I could manage. Better than Ed’s method, which was to start drinking vodka as well as wine.

A few weeks later, I finally picked up the phone to Carla and apologized for not having returned her calls. ‘We’ve had a few problems,’ I said, and explained that Tom had got into trouble at school but that it was all sorted now.

We invited her round for dinner. I still felt tense. But it went better than I’d expected, apart from some awkward bits about Ed’s paintings and when my husband said too much about Tom. At least my husband didn’t let slip that we’ve sent our son to another school – one that’s used to dealing with ‘that kind of behaviour’ – and that Tom now refuses to speak to us on the phone.

Before that, the three of us had talked about the old days when Carla was a child and we were a newly married couple. It reminded me of our difficult start and, at one point, I reached under the table for Ed’s hand to squeeze it. I’m sorry, said my squeeze, that I’m on edge. It’s not just the case. It’s Joe Thomas too. But of course, Ed didn’t hear any of that because I didn’t have the guts to say it out loud.

Meanwhile, Carla chatted away about her studies. And we talked about poor Tony Gordon and where Carla could find him, because she wanted to visit to give a message from her mother. Really? What had happened to that unlikely pair after our awful row in the corridor? Had Francesca and Tony kept in touch? But I didn’t like to ask Carla. Besides, part of me still feels bad for having interfered at the time.

So slightly against my better judgement, I gave Tony’s contact details to our guest.

Why not? I reassured myself. Carla is a nice girl. How could she possibly harm a dying man?

34 Carla

November 2013

Carla had only been to a hospice once before. A friend of Nonna’s had been in one, just days before she died. Mamma had taken her to visit. It was disrespectful, she said, that her friend’s family couldn’t look after her at home themselves. But the daughter-in-law was English. What could you expect?

‘I am here to visit Tony Gordon,’ she said firmly to the woman on reception.

The woman glanced at a sheet of paper in front of her. ‘I’m afraid I can’t find you on the list.’

Carla summoned up one of her most charming smiles. ‘I am an old friend, visiting from Italy, and I do not have long. Please. I would be very grateful.’

The woman returned her smile. Smiles were catching, Carla knew. Mamma had taught her that many years ago. ‘Tony is resting at the moment, but you can go in for a few minutes. You might not get much sense out of him, mind you. One of our volunteers will show you the way.’

Gingerly, Carla walked down the corridor. As she passed open doors, she glanced in. A young woman was lying on her back, her mouth open, dozing noisily. And then the volunteer stopped. ‘Just in there,’ he said.

Was that really him? Larry with the shiny car? Larry who had been so tall and imposing?

Carla stared at the grey man lying on his back in the bed. There was no hat. No hair either. But there was a strange box-like thing attached to his throat. His eyes were closed, but as she approached they snapped open, then froze.

‘Larry,’ she said grimly.

‘This is Tony,’ whispered the young man behind her.

Carla whipped round. ‘Please leave us,’ she said firmly. ‘I need a private conversation.’

The young man nodded and closed the door.

Carla fixed her gaze on Larry again. His eyes were frozen, she realized, with fear. Good.

‘Yes, it’s me.’ Slowly she forced herself to touch the box on his throat. ‘You cannot talk, I hear. Throat cancer. That means you will have to listen.’

Her voice felt like it belonged to someone else. Someone cruel. A bully. Like the ones who had tormented her at school. ‘You promised a future to my mother, Larry. But you did not deliver. Do you know what that meant?’

His ill, milky eyes were staring up at her, scared. ‘It meant she had to go back to Italy, downcast and despised, because she had a child and no husband. Mamma wasted the best years of her life waiting for you to leave your wife. But you did not do that, did you? And why? Because you wanted to have your cake and eat it, as you English say.’

There was a small movement. So small that it was barely noticeable. The eyes were still rigidly fixed on her. Carla could almost smell his fear. But it didn’t give her the satisfaction she thought it would. Instead, she almost felt sorry for this curled-up, shrivelled shell of a man.

‘My mother has sent me here with a message.’ Her hands clenched inside her jacket pockets. ‘I am to tell you that she still loves you. That she would like to see you again, if you were to come to Italy. But I can see now that this is not possible.’

A silent tear began to roll down from Larry’s left eye. And then his right.

Carla swallowed hard. She had not been expecting this.

‘I just hope you regret your behaviour,’ she said quietly.

Then she turned on her heel and walked fast down the corridor. Past the dozing young woman. Past the lady at reception. And out of this hellhole as fast as she could possibly go.

Four nights later, her mobile rang.

Lily’s voice at the other end was quiet. ‘I thought you ought to know, Carla. Tony Gordon died last night. Did you manage to see him before he went?’

‘No.’ Carla began to tremble. What if they tried to blame her for upsetting him? ‘No. I didn’t.’

‘That’s a shame.’ Yet Carla could tell that Lily was relieved. In fact, she’d been surprised when Lily had given her his details so easily. ‘It’s sad really. Tony Gordon wasn’t a saint, but he had his troubles.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘His wife has had multiple sclerosis for years. It couldn’t have been easy for him. Ironic that she’s outlived him, really. Poor woman is in a wheelchair. It will be hard for her without him.’

Something faltered inside Carla. Larry had needed something his wife couldn’t offer. Laughter and company. Yet he couldn’t leave his wife. Not if she was an invalid. Had her mother known all this?

‘The funeral is next Wednesday, if you would like to come.’

35 Lily

‘Live each day as if it were your last.’

The words of the hymn reach out to me. It’s a salutary reminder that the past is only a second ago. The present merely exists for a brief second too, before being relegated to history.

Tony apparently chose the hymns himself.

I look around the church at the other mourners. From the outside, it’s a rather lovely grey building which rises with a calmness of its own next to the busy Aldgate street that runs past. I’ve walked by it a few times but never been inside before. Now I wish I had. It’s surprisingly peaceful, with a beautiful stained-glass window of the Virgin Mary to the right of me. I find myself praying for Tom, and for Daniel, and for Ed, and for me.

Somehow I never had Tony down as the churchgoing type. But according to the vicar’s eulogy, he went every Sunday. Was generous, too, to local charities. Especially one for multiple sclerosis.

Silently, we all watch the pale ash coffin pass by, carried by six men of varying ages. Friends? Colleagues?

Is it really possible that inside is the body of the keen-minded barrister I once admired so much? Who made such an impression on me when I was still so young and naive? The same man who had been seeing Carla’s mother on the quiet?

I’m reminded acutely of the latter when Tony’s widow greets us graciously at the reception afterwards. It is being held in the hall adjoining the church. She is sitting in her wheelchair, back straight and head held high like it’s a throne. ‘Thank you for coming,’ she says, as if welcoming me to a cocktail party. She has tiny features, I note. Her complexion is pale and translucent, the kind one might see in an ‘over sixty and still beautiful’ magazine feature. On her knees is a fuchsia silk shawl; the invitation had clearly said ‘No black’. I, myself, am wearing a dove-grey designer dress suit with wide white lapels.

A young woman is leaning over her protectively. I presume she is Tony’s daughter – there’s definitely something about the nose.

‘Go and look after our guests, darling, would you?’ Then Tony’s widow turns her face to mine.

‘I’m Lily Macdonald,’ I say. ‘I used to work with your husband.’

‘I know. He told me all about you.’ Her eyes go hard. She looks around. People are keeping a respectful distance. Then she leans towards me. ‘I am aware my husband had his indiscretions,’ she whispers. ‘He told me about that Italian woman on his deathbed. She wasn’t the first, you know. But he stayed with me. And that’s what counts. I’ll thank you to keep any gossip to yourself.’

I am shocked by her directness. It’s as if she has been waiting for a meeting with me so she can fire this warning shot.

‘Do you know, he did everything for me,’ she continues. She holds out her hands and I see that the fingers are tightly closed like claws. ‘When I could no longer cut up my food, he did it for me.’ She leans forward again. There’s a smile on her lips, but her eyes are icy. ‘He dressed me every morning. He ran my bath every night and helped me into it.’

I am taken back through time. To the visitors’ room and Joe Thomas, who liked to run Sarah’s bath. I remember thinking at the time that Tony Gordon wasn’t the sort to do the same for his wife.

How wrong can you be?

‘I understand,’ I say. And as the words come out of my mouth, I realize it’s true. Marriages go through all kinds of ups and downs. But you can make them work. Just look at Ed and me.

‘Thank you.’ Then her head nods and the daughter appears, as if silently summoned to the chair. Tony’s widow is off, mingling with other guests. Thanking them graciously. Wondering, perhaps, how many others know of her late husband’s hidden life. Yet, at the same time, believing utterly in her own version of Tony’s loyalty.

How can we deceive ourselves so easily?

I’m leaving the church when I bump into a tall man in a dark suit who’s hovering on the pavement. A cold chill passes through me. The brown-black eyes. His hair is shorter than last time. It’s cut in an almost military fashion.

‘What are you doing here?’ My voice is scratchy with fear.

‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

Joe Thomas’s voice bears a slightly rougher edge than the highly polished accents around us. ‘Tony and I were good friends.’

I make to move away from him, but the crowds are too thick. The whole world, it seems, has been to pay its respects. ‘He was your barrister. He got you off for something you should have stayed inside for. That was all.’

‘Please.’ He lays a hand on my arm. ‘Not so loud.’

I try to shake him off, but the hand is tightening around my arm. ‘How dare you,’ I splutter.

Joe is grinning. The same way he grinned after the case was over when we emerged from the court to the flash of cameras and journalists begging for quotes. ‘Dare is one of those words that can be taken two ways, isn’t it? You can have a brave kind of dare. Or an offensive sort of dare.’

Already I’ve had enough. ‘Stop playing word games with me.’

‘Just want to get a few points straight, that’s all. It’s for your benefit, Lily. I’m sure you don’t want that lot in there to know.’

‘Know what?’

We’re close to the edge of the pavement now. Traffic is rushing past. I want to run away. Hide.

‘I helped Tony a lot after my release. It was my way of saying thank you.’

‘I don’t understand.’

But I do. At least I am beginning to.

‘I gave Tony extra information for his cases.’ He taps the side of his nose. ‘It’s one of the reasons why he tried so hard to get me off. Told him I could help in the future, you see. And I did. Picked up quite a lot when I was inside. Turned out that some of those things were useful.’

‘What kinds of things?’

‘I can’t go into details, Lily, you must know that. And don’t go getting all high and mighty. You’ve benefited too.’

‘Me?’

‘Come on. What about the tip-off over the lorry driver?’

I go cold. We hadn’t been sure we were going to get the poor man off until that envelope arrived anonymously. No postmark. Just the name of the dealer who had supplied drugs to the teenager. Crucial evidence which helped me win. I told myself that anonymous tip-offs happened every now and then. It could be someone completely unrelated to my past.

‘How did you know what cases I was working on?’

He taps the side of his nose again. ‘Maybe I’ve been dating one of the secretaries.’

‘Which one?’

He seems to misinterpret my question for interest. ‘Does it matter?’ he shrugs. ‘She means nothing. It’s just a means to an end.’

‘But you’ve been abroad.’

‘Not all the time.’

I stare at Joe. ‘Why are you doing this?’

‘Because you got me off. So I want to help you too. Express my thanks. I’ve been keeping an eye on you. Heard you were having problems with that case, so I thought I’d try and give you a helping hand.’

‘How did you hear?’

‘I won’t say.’

Not ‘can’t’. But won’t.

‘And there’s Tom, too, of course,’ he continues. ‘If I’m helping you, it means I’m helping him as well.’

‘I don’t want your help.’ But even as I speak, I feel the same crawling sensation from the past. That pull – that magnetic pull towards a man I despise, yet at the same time feel inexplicably drawn to.

‘I think you do.’ His face is so close that we are almost touching. ‘Admit it. We have something between us, Lily.’

I can smell his breath on mine. I can smell his skin. It reeks of danger, but I can’t move.

‘I need to know, Lily.’ His mouth is hovering over mine. ‘How is our son?’

Our son?

‘I’ve already told you,’ I say, pulling away. ‘He’s not yours.’

Then I’m off. Walking as fast as I can in my heels. Down the street. Past the supermarket and the cinema where ordinary lives are being lived. Putting as much distance between Joe Thomas and me as possible. Before I do something stupid.

Again.

36 Carla

OBITUARIES

Barrister Tony Gordon passed away on 22 November after a long brave fight. Loyal and doting father and husband.

Darling Mamma,

There is something I have to tell you.

No, that wasn’t right.

Dearest Mamma,

I need to tell you that I found Larry…

No. That might raise her hopes.

Dearest Mamma,

I have some news that you might find distressing.

At least that might warn her gently.

Tony Gordon – whom we knew as Larry – has died. I went to see him before he passed away and gave him your message. He was not worthy of you, Mamma. God has made him pay through an early death. Now we can put him out of our lives.

Tucking the obituary clip from the newspaper inside the envelope and sealing it hastily, Carla dropped it into the post box on the way to the church.

‘The funeral is next Wednesday if you would like to come,’ Lily had said when she’d called.

‘Thank you, but no,’ she’d replied, and she’d meant it. But at the last moment, her lecture on tort had been cancelled. There was just time to get to the service and back for her next tutorial. It had seemed almost like fate.

As Carla stood at the back of the church (there weren’t any seats left), the priest’s words boomed out around them on the microphone.

‘Wonderful family man… respected pillar of the community… unwavering in his fight for justice…’

What a hypocrite! To think that all she’d have to do was run through these crowds, jump up into the pulpit and tell the congregation all about Tony.

‘Makes you sick, doesn’t it?’ said a tall man, squeezing in next to her. He had very short hair and a clipped way of speaking. ‘If only they really knew.’

Carla started with surprise. But although he appeared to be talking to her, his eyes were fixed on a figure further forward in the congregation. A woman wearing a beautifully cut suit that set off her blonde hair and slim figure perfectly.

Lily! Did this man know her? Or was she merely a symbol of everything that he clearly despised?

‘What do you mean?’ she whispered.

Those dark eyes now turned their focus to her. ‘I think you understand perfectly.’

He was speaking as if they were old acquaintances.

‘But -’ she began, mystified.

‘Shh,’ hissed someone.

And before she could say any more, the man with the short haircut slipped out of the church door behind them, as silently as he had come in.

‘What are you doing for Christmas, Carla?’

It was the phrase on everyone’s lips, from the auburn-haired boy with the floppy fringe who had started following her around at law school, to Lily when Carla – frustrated at not having heard from her old ‘friend’ since the call about Tony Gordon’s funeral – had called to check on her postcode ‘so I can send you and Ed a Christmas card’. With any luck, it would prompt another invitation.

‘What am I doing for Christmas?’ she repeated for effect. ‘I was hoping to go back to Italy, but my mother is visiting a widowed aunt in Naples and says it would be better if I stayed here.’

Carla didn’t have to fake the note of sadness in her voice. Indeed, she had felt a pain in her chest when Mamma had written to outline her plans. Never before had they spent Christmas apart! Her mother’s loopy writing made her feel homesick. She so desperately wanted to feel Mamma’s soft cheek against hers. To speak her own language every day. To eat Nonna’s bread which she baked herself. Not only that but she was broke! Studying abroad was so expensive and the small allowance from her grandfather was running out. If it hadn’t been for Lily and Ed’s £ 1,000, she wouldn’t have been able to pay the hostel fees or even eat. What would happen when she’d got through their money?

‘Then you must come with us to my parents’ home in Devon.’

Yes! Yet there had been something in Lily’s tone which made Carla feel that the invitation was slightly reluctant, made out of politeness. Ed, she was sure, would have been warmer. She’d noticed last time that out of the two, he had seemed the friendlier.

‘There’s just one thing,’ Lily added. ‘Tom, our son. He’s… different, as I said before. We never quite know how he’s going to behave in front of strangers. So be prepared.’

Different? Carla understood ‘different’. Had she not felt different for most of her life at school in England, even when she had tried so hard to be the same?

And now here she was, on a train heading out of London along with lots of other passengers, who were, unusually for English people, chattering away. Asking her where she was going for Christmas, and didn’t she think the lights in Oxford Street were beautiful?

In her bag, she had some small presents. An embroidered purse for Lily, an artist’s notebook for Ed and a plane kit for Tom. All clever buys from a charity shop in King’s Cross. She was particularly pleased with the plane kit. It had been hard finding a present for a boy. Besides, she couldn’t remember exactly how old he was. Still, even if he didn’t like it, it was a gesture. Meanwhile, Carla sat back in her seat and watched the green fields roll past. ‘We are by the sea,’ Lily had said. ‘You will love it.’

‘You must ask them for more money,’ Mamma had reminded her in another letter which had arrived just before she left.

But that would be so awkward, thought Carla as she opened her law books and began to study, despite the rocking motion of the train. How was she to just come out with it? You’ll think of something, sang the train as it rocked along. You’ll think of something…

‘But why can’t it fly?’ demanded the tall, skinny boy, waving his arms around in frustration.

‘I’ve told you, Tom. It’s only a model.’

‘But the picture on the box shows it in the air.’

‘That’s to make it look exciting,’ Ed groaned.

‘Then they shouldn’t show it like that, should they? We ought to report them to the Advertising Standards Authority.’

Carla was impressed. ‘You have a point, Tom! You’ll have to be a lawyer like your mum.’

‘Heaven forbid.’ Ed grimaced. ‘One in the family is more than enough. Sorry, Carla, no offence intended.’

She flashed him a smile. ‘None taken.’

Up until Tom’s outburst, her present of a model plane set had been a great success. The boy had assembled it in ten minutes flat, even though it was much more complicated than she’d realized. But it was afterwards that was difficult. All these questions! Questions that could not be answered. It was exhausting for them all, including Lily’s parents, who had been kindness itself to her.

When she’d arrived at this beautiful house, Carla had been astounded. She’d thought the place in London was lovely, but this was extraordinary, with its huge sash windows, a hall that was big enough for a whole family to live in, and a large airy conservatory facing out over an expansive lawn! Just the kind of house she would love to own.

‘My grandparents used to live here,’ Lily had explained.

They must have been very rich, thought Carla, to have afforded such a palace by the sea. It stood high on the cliff overlooking the water; the view from her bedroom was staggering. Below twinkled the lights from the town, just as the lights would be twinkling in the Florentine hills right now. But Carla had forced herself to bite back the homesickness and concentrate instead on the tall Christmas tree in the hall – what a wonderful smell of pine! – with the presents at the bottom. There was even a small pile with her own name on it.

The drawing room, as Lily’s mother called it, was tastefully furnished with a sage-green carpet and old mahogany wood hinting of lavender polish. There were pictures hanging on the walls; not Ed’s, but older ones, showing scenes of fields and setting suns.

‘Copies,’ Ed had said dismissively when she’d admired them, although he’d spoken in a low voice so no one else had heard.

There were photographs too. Everywhere. On the mantelpiece. On the side tables. Pictures of Lily as a child and also pictures of a boy who was a little taller than she was. ‘That’s Daniel,’ Lily’s mother had said in a bright voice.

Daniel? Dimly, Carla remembered a conversation she’d had with Lily about her brother, all those years ago when she’d first lived in England.

I don’t want to talk about him.

Wasn’t that what she’d said?

‘Is he coming here for the holiday?’ Carla had started to ask, but her question was drowned in confusion because Tom had suddenly started ripping open his presents, even though they hadn’t been to Midnight Mass yet.

And now there was all this fuss about why the model plane couldn’t fly. It had become heated, Carla noticed. Tom was getting increasingly upset, tugging at his own hair and pulling out strands. Lily was really edgy, although she’d been like that since she’d picked Carla up from the station. She didn’t remember Lily being so irritable when she used to know her. Lily’s mother, who looked just like her daughter, with the same height and hair colour, was apologizing profusely.

Different, Lily had said. Tom, our son… he’s different. When people said that, they usually meant they were embarrassed by the difference. What they didn’t consider was how it affected that person.

The only thing that would help was to make him feel good about himself. Reassure him. And since no one else was doing that – Lily constantly had her nose in files – the task clearly fell to Carla. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘Leonardo da Vinci got his models to fly.’

Who is Leonardo da Vinci? she expected Tom to ask. But his face had begun to clear. ‘The artist? The man who drew Christ like a clock?’

‘Exactly.’ That was the way she had seen the picture as a child too. A Jesus-like figure, spread-eagled at quarter to three. ‘He designed one of the early aeroplanes. Did you know that?’

Tom shook his head. ‘I haven’t got that far. I’ve only just got the book out of the library…’

‘I didn’t know you were studying Leonardo at school, darling,’ said Lily, emerging unexpectedly from the study. Her expression reminded her of Mamma’s all those years ago when she was trying to help her understand her maths homework.

‘I’m not. I just liked the picture on the cover.’ He frowned. ‘If Leonardo could make his models fly, why can’t I?’

‘It’s a different kind of model.’ Carla was kneeling down next to him now. ‘Tell you what, in the morning we’ll see if we can make our own design.’

Tom frowned again. ‘How?’

‘We can use paper.’

‘That’s not strong enough for us to fly in.’

We’re not going to get in it, Carla almost said. It’s just a model. But already she could see that Tom didn’t reason like any of the children she’d known in Italy.

‘Then I will teach you Italian instead,’ she said suddenly.

‘Italian?’ Tom’s face brightened. ‘I would like that. Then I could tell the man at the pizza place that I don’t like tomatoes. He will listen to me if I speak his language. I’m teaching myself Chinese as well, you know. I bought a book on it.’

‘How fantastic!’

‘Thank you,’ said Ed as they made their way into the dining room with its big oak table, gleaming silver cutlery, red cloth napkins, cut-glass wine goblets and a circle of holly in the middle for decoration. ‘It’s kind of you to put yourself out.’

A warm glow spread through her, and she gave him her best smile.

‘I enjoy being with Tom,’ she replied, allowing Ed to pull out a chair for her. ‘I understand how he feels.’

‘How?’ Ed was watching her. Instinctively, she could feel his mind sketching her.

‘Because I felt different as a child too and I know what it’s like.’

His eyes were still on her. ‘I love it when the passion crosses your face like that.’ His fingers were fiddling with his cutlery now, as though he wished they were charcoal sticks. ‘I wonder, would you mind if…’

‘If you painted me again?’

His face jerked as if he’d woken up suddenly after dozing off. ‘Exactly.’

She flushed with excitement. Of course she didn’t mind. ‘I’d be honoured.’

He grasped her hands. His felt hot and big. ‘Thank you.’

From the corner of her eye she saw Lily watching.

‘Who’s for a walk along the beach tomorrow before Christmas lunch?’ asked Lily’s father from the other end of the table.

‘Me. ME!’ Tom was leaping out of his seat. ‘Me and Carla.’ Then his face creased with anxiety. ‘But I can’t make sandcastles. I don’t like the feel of wet sand.’

Poor child! ‘I’m not keen on wet sand either,’ she said. ‘It makes you mucky, doesn’t it?’

Tom nodded – so hard she feared he might hurt his head. ‘Exactly.’

Carla glanced at Lily’s face. Carla knew that look. It meant she felt hurt. Shut out. Carla should be pleased. Yet part of her actually felt rather sorry for the woman.

That night, she couldn’t sleep. If only she could ring Mamma to wish her a happy Christmas, but the aunt didn’t have a phone apparently, and Nonno considered mobiles to be unnecessary.

Restlessly, Carla got out of bed and wandered towards the window. The moon was sitting on the line between sky and sea as if balancing on a bar. Perhaps she would go for a walk. Pulling on her coat, she tiptoed along the landing. Lights were out apart from a low line under the door of Ed and Lily’s room. What was that? Unable to stop herself, Carla paused to listen.

They were rowing.

‘You should have given Carla money for Christmas,’ Ed was saying angrily.

‘How exactly? It would have made us even more overdrawn.’

‘A thousand wasn’t enough and you know it.’

‘Get real! It’s more than she deserves. Her letters were so pushy…’

Carla almost let out a gasp but managed to stop herself in time.

‘So she did write?’ Ed’s voice rose with indignation. ‘You said you hadn’t received anything. Why didn’t you tell me?’

Lily was pleading. ‘Because you were in no fit state. And because, as I keep trying to say, we can’t afford it. Tom is our priority. Perhaps you should sell some more paintings.’

‘How can I when you’ve dried up all my inspiration?’

‘Ed! That’s not fair!’

She heard a tinkling of broken glass followed by Ed’s angry voice: ‘Now look what you made me do.’

Carla shrank back into the darkness as Lily came flying out of the door, thankfully in the opposite direction. Swiftly, she slunk back to her room, shaking. So her first instincts had been right. Lily had received the letters. She had lied. As for being overdrawn, she didn’t believe it. Not with a house like that.

If she’d had any qualms before, there were none now.

37 Lily

What a relief to be back! London. Work. It may be that strange, half-asleep time between Christmas and New Year, but for us, there is always work to do. Finally I can relax.

I was edgy all the while I was in Devon. Abrupt with everyone, including our guest. I was aware of it before Ed pointed out that I was like a cat on a hot tin roof every time the phone rang or someone knocked at the door. I’m still kicking myself for letting slip to Ed about Carla’s letters, which resulted in one of the worst rows we’ve ever had.

Hardly surprising that I let the cat out of the bag. My mind was still whirling after that encounter with Joe Thomas at Tony’s funeral.

There I’d been, all those years since his case, basking in the glory of being a criminal lawyer with a ninety-five per cent success rate. But it was all down to the help I’d received from an unknown criminal.

A man who was considered innocent by the rest of the world. Because of me.

Yet what’s really had me jumping at shadows this holiday are Joe’s continued allegations about Tom. I kept expecting my old client to ring or, even worse, just walk in through the door and insist (rightly or wrongly) that Tom is his child. After all, he knows where my parents live.

No wonder I was edgy. On the verge of hysteria, more like. Time and time again, I almost told my husband but managed to stop myself. He wouldn’t understand. No one could. If my poor mother didn’t have enough on her plate, I might even have confided in her.

But one look at her worn face – exhausted with looking after my son who should be our responsibility – stopped me. This was one I had to sort out for myself.

In a way, it was a relief having Carla there. A stranger in the midst of a tense, wobbly family makes everyone behave themselves at a time of year when the whole world is meant to be happy. In fact, that’s why I’d invited her.

Ed had jumped at the idea and I knew why.

Hadn’t I realized at our reunion in the gallery that she could save us? Ed needed to paint her. It would revive his career. Then, at Christmas, I watched him from across the table as he thanked her. ‘I didn’t even have to suggest it,’ he’d said excitedly later on. ‘She brought up the idea herself. We’re going to arrange a sitting in January. Don’t you see, Lily? This could be the start of a new phase in my life!’

He was so buoyed up that we almost forgot to argue about Tom. And work. Of course I’d had to check my emails (‘Yes, Mum. Even during the break’), but that was par for the course. And there were a few sticky moments when Carla kept asking about Daniel.

‘Why don’t you just tell her he’s dead?’ Ed finally demanded.

I wanted to scream at him then. Couldn’t he understand? Daniel was mine. He was none of Carla’s business.

And then there’d been that hideous row about Carla’s begging letters, where Ed accused me of killing his inspiration.

‘Did you have a good Christmas?’ asks my secretary as I settle into my desk.

‘Yes, thanks,’ I answer automatically.

Then I glance at the sparkling diamond on her left hand. ‘Do I gather that congratulations are in order?’

She nods excitedly. ‘I couldn’t believe it. He put the ring in the Christmas pudding! I almost swallowed it when -’

And that’s when the phone goes. It’s a woman. A frantic mother. Her son has been arrested for drink-driving. He’s in the cells right now. Can we help?

Thank goodness for work. It shuts everything out. It seals the gaps where the gas is seeping through. It helps me to forget that Mum is, right now, helping Tom to prepare for his first week back at school, where he will go to bed every night without my bedtime kiss or Mum’s.

‘Oh, and one more thing,’ says my secretary. ‘It was in the in-tray when I arrived.’

A photograph. It’s in an envelope bearing just my name and the word PRIVATE in handwritten capitals.

The picture clearly shows a junction without any road marks.

The night porter, who is just finishing his shift, confirms my worst fears. A man with a short haircut gave him the envelope last night.

Slowly, I rip the photograph into little bits and then hand them to my secretary. ‘For the confidential waste bin,’ I say.

‘You don’t need the information then?’

‘No.’

From now on, I win cases on my own.

38 Carla

Not long after Boxing Day, Carla got up to find that Lily had already gone back to work on the 6.05 a.m. train. ‘A client needs her attention,’ Ed had muttered.

After Lily’s departure, everyone seemed so much more relaxed. No more snide comments. No more, ‘Please, Tom. Just sit still for a moment, can’t you?’

Yet even without Lily’s prickly presence, Carla still felt there was something wrong in the Devon house. Lily’s mother had been particularly nice to her, but in a way that suggested there was something to hide. She felt sure it was to do with Daniel, the son no one wanted to talk about.

Perhaps they were estranged? Carla considered her own home in Italy, where many of the neighbours continued to snub her for her illegitimate status, even though her mother’s ‘disgrace’ had happened so long ago.

Carla spent her last day in Devon walking with Ed and Tom along the beach – all part of vital preparation for the next move. Actually, it was good fun! She paid particular attention to Tom, teaching him some Italian phrases, and noted with pleasure that he seemed to like her already. He was a quick learner too, even though he had to hit his knee with his left hand every time he got a phrase right. ‘One of his rituals,’ Ed whispered, as if he knew she’d understand.

Carla had also been careful to endear herself to Lily’s parents. ‘Tom’s at a special school during the week, you know,’ his grandfather said to her just before she left for the station. ‘We all find it very difficult. You, though, seem to have the knack.’

‘Come back again,’ Lily’s mother said, pressing her cheek against hers on one side. Such an odd English tradition not to do the second cheek! ‘You are good for us.’

When the time came to leave for the station, Carla didn’t want to go. On the train she was buzzing. She and Ed had arranged to meet to discuss the sitting. ‘I can’t wait,’ he’d said, squeezing her hand as she’d left.

The hostel had seemed even colder and lonelier when she returned. Despite knowing many of the girls by sight, she hadn’t made any friends. They weren’t her type with those ugly tattoos and nose rings. As if sensing the same, no one had asked her to join in the hostel New Year’s Eve party. Not that she had wanted to go. Instead, she had huddled up under the duvet and swotted up on some new precedents.

She’d rung Mamma earlier. It was a big expense, but Carla needed to hear her voice. The line had been faint though. ‘I love you, cara mia,’ she had just about made out.

‘I love you too, Mamma.’

Now, lying back on the narrow bed, Carla lit up a cigarette and exhaled deeply as she took stock. It was already January! Yet she still hadn’t achieved what she had hoped to by now. Something needed to happen to move things along.

As she fine-tuned her next step, loud music began to vibrate through her ears. The girl in the room next to hers always had it on so loud! How could she possibly think with that racket? Maybe she’d go and have a shower to get some peace. Grabbing her sponge bag and dressing gown, Carla locked her door and stomped off down the corridor. She’d only been there five minutes or so when there was a hammering on the door.

‘Fire! Fire! Quick. Get out!’

I can still smell.

They say it’s the last thing to go.

So all is not lost.

Not yet.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that something is burning.

Even worse, the red stiletto shoe is no longer there.

39 Lily

It’s New Year’s Day. Ed and I are spending a quiet evening in. Somehow neither of us could muster up the energy to go to the lunch party we were asked to by one of the partners. It wouldn’t look good, but there are times, I tell myself, when you have to put family first.

The table is covered with sketches. Presumably, they’re from the last couple of days Ed spent in Devon. Carla laughing. Carla bending over Tom. Carla widening her eyes. Carla in thought, her hands round the stem of a wine glass. All that is missing is the subject herself, in the flesh.

The phone rings. ‘Can you get that, please?’ I call out.

A pan on the stove is boiling over. I turn it down. The green beans look slushy. I turn to Ed, who is, I now realize, clearly trying to calm someone down. My mother. Tom must have done something. Again.

‘How awful,’ he’s now saying.

My heart tightens. I knew it. We shouldn’t have left. I should give up work and…

‘You poor thing.’

Ed doesn’t usually call my mother ‘poor thing’. I hover by the phone, wondering what is going on.

‘But of course you’re right to ring. You must stay with us. Wait there. I will come and fetch you. What is the address again?’

My husband grabs his jacket. ‘It’s Carla. There’s been a fire at the hostel. She’s outside in the street right now in her dressing gown.’

‘Is she hurt?’

‘No, thank heavens. Just scared.’

‘I’ll go if you like.’

‘It’s OK.’ He’s already at the door. ‘Maybe you can make up Tom’s bed.’

Of course, it’s the right thing to do.

When Carla arrives, her beautiful olive face is drawn. She is shivering in a pretty pink dressing gown and her hands are gripped together so tightly that her knuckles are white. ‘It was so frightening. We had to run down the emergency staircase outside. I thought I would fall…’

News of the fire had been briefly on LBC. No one, apparently, had been hurt. Meanwhile, the cause of the fire would be investigated.

Ed hands her a tumbler of whisky. ‘Take this. It will help a bit.’

Any excuse to have one yourself, I almost say.

‘Sit down. Please.’ I remember my manners. ‘You’re safe now.’

‘But I have nothing, no clothes,’ sobs Carla, cradling the whisky with those elegant hands. ‘And my books are gone too.’

‘They can all be replaced,’ I say soothingly, taking her hands. Although I had enough opportunity to examine her at Christmas, I am reminded right now that she really is very beautiful. Those dark, almond-shaped eyes and thick black eyebrows would look masculine on a pale Englishwoman, but only make her look even more gorgeous, even in her distress.

Perhaps having Carla to stay will be a good thing. Ed and I will no longer be able to argue with someone else here. Our guest will be a buffer – just as she was as a little girl.

‘It will be all right,’ I say.

Carla lifts up her downcast face. For a second, I see the distraught look of the little girl I found outside her mother’s flat with the big bruise on her face. ‘It is so kind of you to give me a home. Thank you.’

A sudden shiver goes through me.

It’s only temporary, I want to say. But that would sound churlish.

And I tell myself that this strange beat of premonition is nothing. Nothing at all. Haven’t I just told myself that she will be good for us?

Besides, it is Joe Thomas I need to worry about.

‘Don’t take it so badly,’ says one of my partners when I return from court a few weeks later.

But I do, I think. If I had used that photograph which Joe Thomas had sent me, I might have been able to prove that there hadn’t been any road marks on the day that my client had failed to stop at the T-junction. There were road marks there now, of course, but that’s the name of the game. He’d have been done on the drink-driving, but his sentence might not have been so heavy if I could have proved that those ‘Give Way’ lines hadn’t been there at the time.

But road marks are allowed to fade. Accidents happen. And then miraculously the council lorry turns up and paints those lines in. Ask any lawyer. The problem is that you can’t always get photographic evidence to prove it.

So much for me being able to sort out cases on my own. Maybe that’s why I’m not surprised when a two-line note arrives the following day.

You could have won if you’d used my photograph. How is Tom?

I sit and stare at it for some time before picking up the phone.

‘Do you have time for a drink?’

Ross sounds both pleased and surprised at the same time. ‘Love to.’

We meet at one of my favourite Italian bistros off Covent Garden. I say ‘favourite’, but in truth my life doesn’t include much time for fun. I’m one of those people who, when asked to write down hobbies, struggles a bit. When you are a lawyer, there’s little time to do anything else. I do go for a run most mornings, before work. But I see that as part of getting dressed.

‘What’s up?’ Ross asks.

I look at our old friend across the table in his tweed jacket and jeans. A man of opposites, that’s Ross. He’d started out as Ed’s friend but soon became just as much mine – especially when it came to giving guidance about my husband, who, as Ross often said, was a complete idiot at times. An idiot whom we both loved.

Sometimes I wonder if Ross is gay. After all, he’s never been married. Never had a girlfriend as far as I know. I try not to pry.

‘I’ve got a problem,’ I say. My hands twist with anxiety under the table. For longer than I can remember, I’ve been wanting to confide in someone about Joe and the ‘helpful information’ he keeps sending me. But now the time has come when if I don’t share it with someone else, I’m going to burst. Naturally, there are certain bits I need to omit.

‘Wow,’ says Ross when I finish telling the story. ‘You poor thing. What an impossible position to be in.’

I want him to tell me that it will be all right. That there’s something I can do to stop all of this.

‘For what it’s worth,’ he adds, ‘I think you did the right thing, tearing up that photo.’

‘Really?’

‘Absolutely.’ He sounds firmer now. ‘You can do this on your own, Lily. You’ve been doing it on your own for years. Yes, this man might have helped you now and then. But don’t let that suck away your confidence. You’re a good lawyer.’

I want to tell him about the other thing. But I can’t. Instead, my mind goes back to the pub in Highgate. The time when Joe took my hand. That charge of electricity. That attraction which should never have been there. The guilt afterwards because I had drunk just a bit too much to be responsible for my actions.

The real reason for my vow not to drink again.

‘You won’t tell Ed? Or anyone else?’

I’m panicking now. Terrified in case Ross’s allegiances are divided. Of course I’m talking about the anonymous tip-offs. I can’t tell anyone about the Heath.

‘Promise.’ He glances at his watch. ‘Afraid I’ve got to go back now.’

That’s the other thing about Ross. When I first met him, he was an actuary. It had been his knowledge of figures, remember, that had helped me to crack Joe Thomas’s code games. But after Tom was born and we asked Ross to be godfather, he changed jobs. Said that our experience had made him see life differently. Now he heads a big fundraising company that helps charities. He’s a good man, is Ross.

By the time I get home after another late night in the office, Ed and Carla have eaten. They’re sitting at the table, Ed’s sketchbook in front of him.

‘I am sorry,’ says Carla apologetically. ‘I wanted to wait but…’

‘It’s my fault.’ Ed is smiling at me. Grinning in a way I haven’t seen him do for years. And I know why.

‘Your meal is in the oven, darling.’

He hasn’t called me ‘darling’ for a long time.

‘It should still be edible. Now, Carla, I want you to put your head slightly to one side. Chin down a bit. Eyes to the left. Perfect.’

Ed is happy because he is painting Carla again. Her idea, he keeps reminding me, as if he is flattered.

Frankly, I’m relieved. It will give me space to figure out what to do about Joe.

40 Carla

February 2014

Carla woke, as she had done now every morning for the last month, in her pretty, cosy bedroom overlooking the back garden. It was so much nicer here than in the hostel! Despite what Lily had said about being overdrawn, she must be earning a lot of money for them to afford a place like this. And it wasn’t even rented. They actually owned it – although Ed was always referring to the ‘outrageous mortgage payments’.

That was one of the main topics of the arguments she would hear between Ed and Lily through the wall that divided her bedroom from theirs. ‘You’re just pissed off because I don’t earn as much as you’ was one of his favourite phrases.

‘When are you going to get rid of that chip on your shoulder, Ed?’ That was Lily’s.

When she’d simply been a dinner guest, Carla had noticed the odd tense remark and jibe. But now she was living here, it was like picking her way across enemy lines. The smallest thing would make either of them tetchy – especially Lily at the moment. ‘Please put the milk back in the fridge,’ she had snapped at Carla the other evening. ‘Otherwise it will go off like it did last week.’

Ed had rolled his eyes to make her feel better. ‘Don’t worry – she’s working on a big case,’ he’d explained after Lily had stomped back to her study. He took off his glasses as if they were suddenly annoying him. ‘She lost the last one, so it’s essential for her to win this one.’

He had said the word ‘essential’ in a slightly mocking tone. Then he put his glasses back on and picked up his brush again. ‘Can you put your hands round that cup of coffee and stare into the distance? As though you’re thinking hard about something. Perfect!’

That wasn’t difficult. The inquiry into the hostel fire was about to take place. Everyone who had been staying there had been sent an official form asking if they had been smoking in their bedrooms on that night.

Of course, she’d ticked the box that said ‘No’.

‘Would you like a coffee after lectures?’

It was the boy with the floppy hair who kept asking her out to dinner. His auburn eyelashes were unnaturally long for a boy, and his manner of holding himself was uncertain for one so tall and good-looking. It was as though he didn’t realize how attractive he was; not just in terms of looks, but in his exquisite manners and the way he listened. Really listened.

Most boys here were loud and arrogant, fond of the sound of their own voice. Rupert was different.

Perhaps it was time to make an exception.

‘I’d love one,’ she replied, looking up from her book. ‘Thanks.’

‘Shh,’ hissed someone from the other side of the library, and they smiled at each other in complicity.

‘What did you get for your last essay?’ he asked over a skinny latte in the students’ union cafe.

‘Seventy-five per cent,’ she answered proudly.

His eyes widened. ‘Fantastic.’

‘What about you?’

He groaned. ‘Don’t ask. Actually, maybe you could help me with this awful essay on contracts! We could talk it through over dinner.’

‘What dinner?’

‘Come on, Carla. I’ve asked you enough times. I won’t bite. Promise!’

He took her to a small Italian restaurant off Soho Square. She’d expected him to falter over the order in the way that the English did when speaking her language. But instead, his accent was flawless.

‘You are familiar with my country?’ she asked as the waiter walked away.

He shrugged, pleased. ‘My parents believed it was essential that we spoke both French and Italian fluently. We were always being packed off abroad during the holidays to improve ourselves. Frankly, I think it was to give them some peace, even though we were away at school during term time.’

Just like poor Tom. Somehow, Carla found herself telling this good-looking, intelligent boy about Tom and Lily and Ed.

‘You live with Ed Macdonald? The painter?’

‘Yes. Do you know him?’

‘Isn’t he the artist who did The Italian Girl? The one which sold for all that money to some anonymous buyer?’

She flushed. ‘You know of that too?’

‘I love art. So does my mother. All my life, she’s been dragging me off to some exhibition…’ His eyes widened. ‘Don’t tell me that the model was… it was you, wasn’t it?’

She nodded, embarrassed and yet flattered too.

‘I’d love to meet him one day.’ Her companion was getting quite flustered. ‘But only if it’s not too much trouble.’

‘I’ll do what I can,’ she promised.

Carla let a few weeks go by, not wanting to bother her hosts. Ed was too busy with her portrait – it seemed to take up all his time, even when she wasn’t there to sit for him. And Lily was working so late that sometimes Carla heard her come in long after she had gone to bed. (There was usually a murmur of voices along with the sound of Ed’s disapproval.)

But eventually she summoned up courage to talk to her hostess, who was surprisingly enthusiastic.

‘Lily wondered if you’d like to come to dinner one night next week,’ said Carla as they sat over their lattes in what had become their favourite coffee shop.

Rupert’s face shone. ‘I’d love that. Thanks.’

No. The pleasure was all hers. Rupert could be just what she needed.

When Carla got back that day, there was a letter waiting for her on the hall table. It was a copy of the report on the formal fire investigation. The hostel had sent it to all former inhabitants. The cause of the fire, it informed her, was probably a cigarette. However, it had been impossible to pinpoint the culprit due to the extent of the damage and the fact that so many inhabitants had admitted to smoking in their rooms.

That was lucky.

Even better, her travel insurance would now pay out for her clothes and books. (She’d exaggerated the value slightly – the company could afford it.)

The letter also informed her that the hostel would remain closed until further notice.

Things were definitely looking up.

‘He’s just a friend,’ Carla had told Lily, shyly. ‘Someone who’s been kind to me at law school.’ But from the minute that Carla walked through the door with Rupert at her side, she sensed Ed’s hostility.

‘So you’re the Rupert that our Carla has been talking about?’

Carla flushed at the way Ed had accentuated the ‘you’re’. And the ‘talking about’ suggested she was keen rather than the other way round. What would Rupert think? Suddenly, Carla began to have reservations about the evening.

‘That’s good to hear, sir,’ said Rupert, shaking Ed’s hand with a sideways glance at Lily.

Thankfully, Lily (who’d been quite distant recently) seemed to pick up on Carla’s distress. Smoothly, she changed the subject, but all through dinner Ed was difficult. It wasn’t just that he was particularly tetchy when it came to his wife. (‘We’re lucky to have the pleasure of Lily’s company, you know. She’s usually working at this time.’) But he also made snide comments about Rupert and his old school. ‘One of my cousins went there when he flunked Eton.’

Ed didn’t like their guest, she was beginning to realize. Poor Rupert. He could see that too.

Afterwards, they went downstairs to the basement to see Ed’s paintings. ‘Carla tells me that you appreciate paintings.’ Ed crossed his arms.

‘I do, sir. These are wonderful.’

‘They’re crap.’ Ed glanced dismissively at the pictures of old women, young women, the florist, the tobacconist, a mother in the park. ‘None have done anything. The only thing that worked was my painting of our lovely Carla here.’

Ouch! Ed was squeezing her shoulder so hard that it hurt. He stank of wine: at dinner, he’d got through an entire bottle on his own. She knew Lily had noticed too.

‘But now I am painting her again. Has she told you that?’

Ed’s face was close to Rupert’s. Part of her felt triumphant. Yet she was also crawling with embarrassment.

‘No, sir. She hasn’t told me.’

‘So you aren’t privy to everything that goes on in our Carla’s pretty head then.’

‘That’s enough, Ed.’ Lily was next to him now, taking his arm. ‘Time to call it a day, don’t you think?’

‘Nonsense. I expect you’d like to see the painting, wouldn’t you, young man?’

Rupert was as red as she was now. ‘Only if it’s not too much trouble, sir.’

‘Well, it is. And you know why? Because I never show my paintings to anyone until they’re ready. Never.’

And with that, Ed stomped up the stairs and left them alone in the basement.

‘I am so sorry.’ Lily shook her head. ‘He’s tired and this is a big time in his career at the moment. He’s hoping for a break with his new portrait of Carla. It’s in pastels this time. Quite a new departure for him.’

‘I understand.’ Rupert appeared to compose himself, showing those beautiful manners. ‘Artistic temperament and all that. Thank you so much for a lovely evening.’

But it hadn’t been lovely and they all knew that. That night, Carla listened as Ed and Lily had one of their biggest rows yet.

‘Why were you so rude? Almost as if you were jealous of him for being head-over-heels with Carla.’

‘Rubbish. I just didn’t like some pup looking at my paintings and making patronizing comments.’

‘He wasn’t. He was being entirely polite.’

‘I know what he was being. Anyway, what would you care? You’re never here.’

‘Maybe it’s time for Carla to leave. There are other hostels she could stay at. I don’t know why you asked her to stay on. It was meant to be temporary.’

‘So now you want to throw out my model just when I’ve got my inspiration back? It’s like you want me to fail.’

It’s happening, Carla told herself, hugging her knees in bed.

Yet in the morning, it was as though the argument had never taken place. ‘Would you like to come down to Devon this weekend with us?’ asked Lily.

Carla shook her head. ‘I’ll stay here if you don’t mind.’

Ed looked disappointed. ‘Really? Tom will be sad not to see you. He might not say so. But I just know it.’

So will I, said his eyes.

Good.

‘I’m afraid I need to work on my next assignment.’

‘Sure.’ Ed sounded put out. ‘When I’m back, Carla, I’d appreciate some more of your sitting time for the portrait.’

She flushed. ‘Of course.’

41 Lily

Weeks and then months are growing along with the portrait. Easter shoots past with its nodding yellow daffodils. Early summer roses have already, in our little patch of ground at the back, come into bloom. And so too has Carla.

I watch our ‘lodger’ take form on Ed’s canvas with increasing amazement and respect. My husband’s hand, which had been so unsteady over the last few years, partly due to lack of confidence – and sometimes, let’s be honest, due to drink – has taken on a sureness of its own.

Carla’s beautiful almond-shaped eyes within that elfin face follow me whenever I glance at the easel. She is there now all the time. A living fixture in the studio that faces the garden at the back of the house, where there is more light. A living fixture too in our house, where she takes my coat when I come in from work and announces that dinner is almost ready.

And she’s exciting a great deal of interest.

‘You are painting the same Italian girl again?’ asked a journalist who came round to interview us for an ‘at home’, a gig that Ed’s agent had somehow arranged.

I’d been standing by the canvas which Ed had, quite purposefully, left out rather than putting it away as he usually did with a work in progress. ‘Yes,’ my husband said in a casual way, which of course I could see right through. ‘Carla – the little girl whom my wife and I used to look after when we were first married – has come back into our lives. She’s in her early twenties now – training to be a lawyer, actually – and has been kind enough to allow me to paint her again.’

Word spread like wildfire when the article came out. The phone began to ring. Of course, it isn’t just that the art world (and the media) see this as a good story – a subject who has grown up. It’s that my husband’s painting is amazing. Carla looks as though she could step out of the canvas any minute. Her sleek haircut – so different from those childhood curls – declares that this is a woman of style. Her lips look like they are about to speak.

Here I am. Back again.

And sometimes worse. Why are you such a bad wife? Stop being horrible to Tom.

Yes. That’s right. For the last few weeks, I’ve had a growing feeling that she doesn’t like me, despite the careful way she takes my coat and cooks dinner every evening (at her own suggestion). I can tell she disapproves that Tom doesn’t live with us full time. ‘Don’t you miss him when you leave him on Sunday nights?’ she has remarked on more than one occasion.

‘Very much. But he has special needs which his school is better at providing for than we are.’ She wasn’t the only person who asked that question. Only a parent of a child like ours can understand the excruciating agony of not being able to cope and wanting to do the right thing.

Ed never says anything to back me up, as though he agrees with Carla. Which, of course, he does. Even though Tom is flourishing at his weekly boarding school, and even though there have been no more incidents of assaulting teachers, my husband doesn’t like the idea of his son being in what he calls ‘a military dorm’ during the week.

Yet it’s not like that. I’ve seen the cosy room with its comfy beds and teddy bears proudly displayed. (One of his room-mates won’t go anywhere without his, even though he’s nearly thirteen. He’s obsessed with them and has them lined up along the wall. If anyone touches them, he has a full-blown melt-down.) My husband’s reaction, I know, is because of his own time at school, when all he wanted was to be at home.

Carla’s disapproval is ironic, given how much I am doing for her. ‘Carla needs a training contract now her course is almost over,’ Ed announces one night at dinner. ‘I said you’d be able to help.’

We’re eating an Italian dish, a delicious mixture of white beans and salad which, if I threw it together, would taste like mush. Carla’s hand has transformed it into something different entirely. You’d be able to help? I might be one of the partners, but it is still presumptuous of my husband to assume that I can pull strings like that when I have a stack of emails from other hopeful students. ‘We’ve had lots of applications,’ I begin. ‘But I’ll see what I can do.’

It won’t be easy, because my own record at work has not been so good recently. So far this year, I’ve lost over a third of my cases. These include the ones I argued myself and also those where I used a barrister. It’s tempting to blame the latter but it wouldn’t be true. If I don’t give counsel the right information or enough details about the case, he or she can’t strut their stuff in court.

I tell myself that my poor performance has nothing to do with the anonymous tips I’ve received in the post and ignored. I try not to even look at them, but I can’t help checking to see if they’re from him. How would I know? Because they’re always accompanied by a final line: How is Tom?

Useful as these tips might be, I force myself to put them into the shredder, telling myself that I can do without Joe Thomas’s help. I don’t even want to think about how hard he must be working to get these pieces of ‘evidence’. But I do wonder how he has got them. Which secretary is he dating? Or maybe he was lying. Perhaps he’s getting his information somewhere else. Either way, the idea that Joe is watching me from somewhere makes my skin crawl.

So when Ed invites Carla to Devon for the weekend, and she turns him down, I can’t help but feel a wave of relief. A chance to be on our own. For me to get Ed onside again.

42 Carla

May 2014

‘What are you doing at the weekend?’ Rupert asked.

‘Working.’

Ever since the embarrassing dinner at Ed and Lily’s, she’d been avoiding her college friend. But here he was, waiting for her outside the lecture hall.

‘All weekend?’

She looked up at him. ‘All weekend.’

‘That’s a shame.’ He fell into step with her. ‘Your friends were… unusual.’

‘Lily can be a bit tetchy but she isn’t too bad. I’m afraid Ed was rude. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be.’ Gently he touched her arm as they rounded a corner. ‘Like I said, it’s his artistic temperament. To be honest though… well, I thought you were trying to keep out of my way. So I thought I’d just take the bull by the horns, as it were, and hang around for you, to check everything is all right with us.’

Carla couldn’t help being flattered. But she also felt the need to make things clear. ‘Of course it is. You’re a very good friend.’

‘ “Friend”?’ He was looking at her quizzically, as if hoping for more. ‘Then may I take you out to dinner over the weekend?’

It was tempting. But wasn’t life complicated enough as it was? ‘Sorry but I’ve got two essays to do. Ed and Lily are away until Sunday night, so I was planning on some quiet time.’

Carla was as good as her word. She spent the entire Saturday poring over her books. Yet on Sunday lunchtime there was a knock at the front door. Lily and Ed hadn’t told her they were expecting anyone. Maybe it was one of those cold callers or a neighbour perhaps.

But Rupert was standing on the step. ‘I was just passing.’ He handed her a bunch of flowers, prettily wrapped with an artful straw bow. Freesias. One of her favourites. It was incredible how such a powerful fragrance could come from such small blooms. ‘That’s very kind.’

‘How about a walk? Come on, it’ll be good for your brain to have a break.’

‘Well…’ It was a beautiful day. Why not? ‘Just to the park and back.’

It was surprisingly good to have the company. There were lots of other couples out too. Laughing. Holding hands. With a strange feeling in her chest, Carla realized she’d never gone for a walk in the park with a man she liked before.

‘I love being with you, Carla.’ Rupert’s hand reached out for hers.

No.

Deftly she put her hand in her pocket. ‘I like being with you too, Rupert.’ There was a brief pause while she counted to five. ‘But as I said before, I like you as a friend.’

Either he didn’t notice the rebuff or else he chose not to. ‘You’re different from the others, Carla. You’re focused. As though you have a purpose. Most of the other girls I know just want to have fun.’

Carla thought fleetingly of the flightier female students who were always chasing Rupert and others like him. ‘I don’t have time for fun.’

‘Really?’ There was definite disappointment in his voice.

Carla shrugged as they wandered back out of the park, towards Ed and Lily’s house. ‘My mother, she relies on me. It is up to me to make money for us so we can live the lives we should have done.’

‘Wow. That’s amazing. I like that.’

‘In fact, I must return now. Or I will be behind with my work.’

‘Surely you have time to make me a cup of tea first?’

‘I’m not sure…’

‘Come on.’ His eyes twinkled. ‘It’s what friends do.’

They were on Ed and Lily’s steps now: smart black and white steps leading up to the black front door. It seemed rude not to agree.

Inviting Rupert to take a seat, Carla swiftly cleared away her books to make room at the table in the huge kitchen which acted as a casual sitting room too. The sofa, she noticed with irritation, was a mess of cushions and blankets.

‘What do you think of…’ she started to say.

But suddenly Rupert moved towards her and boldly, but so very gently, began to trace the outline of her lips with his forefinger. ‘You’re beautiful, Carla,’ he murmured. ‘Do you know that?’

He drew her towards him.

For a minute, she was tempted. Rupert was so good-looking. So charming. Such a gentleman. But she must not allow him to distract her. Just as she was about to step away, there was the sound of the key in the lock.

It was Ed! Horrified, she watched him take in the rumpled sofa and Rupert stepping quickly away from her. His face was blotched with anger. ‘So this is why you didn’t want to come to Devon, is it? So you could use our home as a love nest? How dare you? Just as well I got back early.’

Carla’s body went hot and cold and hot again. ‘No. You’ve got it wrong.’

But Ed’s voice overrode hers as he turned to Rupert. ‘Get out. NOW.’

Stunned, Carla watched Rupert leave. He should have stayed, she told herself. Stood up for himself. ‘How dare YOU?’ she yelled, quivering with anger. ‘I was doing nothing wrong. And now you have embarrassed me in front of my friend.’

He would tell her to leave now, she told herself. She’d have nowhere to live. No hope of getting what she wanted.

Yet instead, he crumbled, falling down to the ground at her feet. ‘I’m sorry, Carla. I really am. But it’s been a hell of a weekend. You should have been there. You could have calmed Tom down. He was awful. Do you know what his current obsession is? Some computer game which keeps him up all night so he barely sleeps. When we tried to take it away from him, he went stark raving mad. We argued about it. Lily’s mother wanted to let him have his way. She’s so scared he’ll end up like Daniel…’

‘Daniel? What happened to him?’

‘Daniel’s gone.’ Ed made a wild dismissive gesture with his hands. ‘You wouldn’t think it from the way that family talks about him. Daniel’s dead!’

‘I don’t understand.’

Ed caught her by the hand. His grip was tight. ‘Daniel was Lily’s adopted brother. He was very disturbed – had been since childhood. Poor bugger.’

Now it was her turn to hold his hand as the horrific words came spilling out. The argument Lily had had with her brother. The stables. The way they found him. Ed was not sure of the exact details (‘Lily can’t talk about it’). But one thing was clear. Whatever Lily had said, it had made her brother take his own life.

‘It’s like there’s always this thing between us. She’s never let me in.’ Ed collapsed in sobs on the sofa.

How terrible! And poor Ed. It wasn’t fair that he should have to suffer for his wife’s guilt. Lily treated him so badly. She didn’t even look after him properly. What kind of woman didn’t have dinner ready for her husband? Or went to bed long after he did? Mamma had taught her the importance of these things, no matter how outdated they might seem.

Yet why should she be surprised? Lily was a lawyer. Clinical and cold. Used to setting murderers and rapists free.

Somehow she managed to calm poor Ed. A friendly arm on his shoulder. Poured him a drink (just a touch of hot water with the whisky). And then, even though his hand was still shaking, she persuaded him to start painting.

Thank you, Rupert, she said silently, as she sat in front of Ed. (‘Nose to the left a bit, please, Carla.’) With any luck everything was going to work out after all.

43 Lily

Despite my recent court losses, and my own reservations, the other partners agreed to my ‘favour’ and Carla duly started work with me in the middle of July. ‘You’ve got a bright girl there,’ said one of my colleagues by the end of the week. ‘She might look stunning but she’s on the ball.’

He spoke as though looks were a disadvantage, which in a way they are. If you’re more than averagely attractive, especially in a profession like law, people don’t always take you seriously. I’m aware that I will never be considered beautiful, even though I take pleasure in the fact that I have grown into my skin. Perhaps that’s a good thing.

But Carla turns heads wherever she goes. And not just because of her face or because she is doing well at my firm. Ed’s portrait of her is finally finished. After one of our weekends in Devon, for once without Carla, everything seemed to fall into place. We’d argued, and he’d left early, but sometimes I think our difficulties spur him on. When I returned, he was working on the hardest part – the eyes.

Now the painting has been accepted for a big London show in the autumn and the national press has got wind of it.

Suddenly, Carla’s everywhere. In women’s magazines. In the Times art pages. And in the cocktail party invitations we begin to receive. Of course, everyone wants to know the story. How we came across her again. Or rather how she came across us. When I open one magazine, I find that Carla has managed to tell the story with barely a reference to me. It’s as though it was Ed who offered her a home after the hostel fire. Ed who is her mentor rather than me. Ed who says how wonderful she is with our son, Tom, who is in a ‘special school’, far away in Devon. She doesn’t refer to the fact that he lives with my parents.

How dare she?

‘You have no right to mention Tom,’ I say to Carla, trying to control my voice.

We’re on our way to work. Walking briskly. It reminds me of the mornings when I used to see her at the bus stop with her mother.

‘He is part of our private life,’ I continue, still hot with rage after spotting the offending article in one of the lobby magazines.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says but in a tone that suggests anything but. Her chin juts out. It seems more angular than usual. Almost pointy like a cat’s. ‘But it is true, is it not?’

‘He is,’ I say, struggling to remain composed, ‘in the best place for him.’

She shrugs. ‘In Italy, we keep our family close, whatever the circumstances. It is better that way I think.’

‘You are living in the UK now,’ I splutter, almost unable to believe her audacity. We’re going into the office building now. I can say no more. But later that day, I receive a note from one of the other partners.

Luckily this has not yet gone out to the client. One of the trainees spotted the mistake, highlighted below. Please amend.

I’ve made a mistake in drafting a document about a company fraud. It isn’t big. But big enough. Yet the worse thing is that the trainee, according to the initials on the correction, is our Italian ‘guest’.

Later that night, Ed turns on me. ‘Why were you so horrid to Carla about Tom?’

A cold feeling crawls over me. I feel like the school prefect, reprimanded by a teacher for snitching on a girl caught smoking in the loo. Why should I be blamed for something she’s done? ‘Because Carla shouldn’t have mentioned Tom or the fact that he’s at a special school. He’s private.’

‘Clearly, our son is to be categorized as “Not to be opened”. Are you embarrassed of him?’

This isn’t fair. ‘You know that’s not true. Do you think you could work if Tom was here all the time? Do you think you could concentrate if he was in the studio demanding to know why paint is called paint? Or giving you every statistic imaginable on Monet or John Singer Sargent?’

Ed sits up and turns on the bedroom light. His eyes are sad. I know that my words sound selfish and I hate myself for it. But it is horrifyingly easy for the resentment to bubble up every now and then, to burst through the carefully painted veneer of outward sainthood. I know he thinks it too sometimes – it’s simply easier to put the blame on me.

‘I just can’t help feeling,’ says Ed slowly, mirroring the thoughts in my head, ‘that when you have a child like Tom, you have a duty to do the right thing. That’s all.’

Then he switches off the light, leaving me to thrash around all night. Wondering. Telling myself that separating our lives like strands of unruly silk is better than being with my son. And why? Because I practically followed Daniel round for years, trying to protect him from himself. But I cracked. I said things I shouldn’t have done. Did things I shouldn’t have. And that’s what finally tipped my brother over the edge.

If I’m not with Tom full time, he stands a chance of making it. My constant presence won’t help him.

It might kill him, instead.

Trying to work at home one night, so many thoughts colliding in my head that I am getting little done, I make a call.

‘Lily!’ Ross’s deep, rich voice immediately makes me feel calmer. Assured. As though everything is going to be all right, after all.

‘I thought you were out tonight.’ He sounds surprised.

‘No, why?’

‘Must have got it wrong. I thought Ed said you were going to that gallery opening with him.’

‘He asked me but I had too much to do. Besides, it’s Carla they want. You know. The painter and his subject. The Italian girl.’ I don’t even bother hiding my irritation.

Carla looked gorgeous tonight when she left with my husband. Her bob was sleek and her make-up immaculate. No one would have guessed that she’d been slaving away over her books until half an hour beforehand.

Ed looked good too. It wasn’t just because of his new blue-striped shirt. It was the way he now carries himself. The buoyancy in his face. Success suits him. It always did. My husband, I now realize, is one of those men who needs to do well. If only for the sake of everyone around him. The whisky level hasn’t gone down for a while. He’s even being particularly nice to me. My husband deserves this, I tell myself, as I say goodbye to Ross after arranging a dinner in a few weeks’ time. Let him enjoy it.

August 2014

Three weeks later, I am working late again in the office. Ed is at another cocktail party. Carla is still at home. This morning, she failed to come into the office with me. ‘I don’t feel well,’ she said, curled up like a kitten on her bed.

It’s nearly ten o’clock – everyone else has gone home – when the phone rings on my desk. I know it’s Joe before he says a word. I can sense it. Feel it down the line.

‘Lily. No. Don’t put the phone down. Just go.’

The hairs on my arm are standing up. ‘Go where?’

He names a hotel near the Strand.

Is this another tip-off for some case which I must ignore?

‘It’s to do with your husband. I’ve been watching him.’ His voice rises urgently. ‘Just trying to look after you. Like I always do. Just go. Now.’

I replace the receiver, trembling. Slipping on my coat, I tell myself, as I bid goodnight to the security guard, that I am going straight home. That I’m not visiting this hotel to see what I should or shouldn’t see.

Ed wouldn’t do this. Ed wouldn’t do this. The words pound over and over in my mind. But then I think of his ups and downs. The way he has blown hot and cold throughout our marriage. Our rushed marriage, all for the sake of an inheritance he’d never told me about. A marriage we have stayed in because of Tom. But we’ve made it work. Haven’t we?

As I get out of the taxi, I see a figure. No, it’s a couple. She has her head on his shoulder. The girl has short hair that gleams in the lamplight. The man is tall with a slight stoop to his shoulders. The kind that comes from bending over an easel for hours on end.

I run towards them. They stop in the street, under the lamp. He lowers his head to kiss the girl. And then he looks up.

‘Lily?’ says my husband, open-mouthed. Then, as though he can’t believe it, he says it again. ‘Lily?’

There’s a flash of light. As if a picture has been taken.

A press card is being waved in front of me. ‘Mrs Macdonald. Would you like to comment on the rumours that your husband is having an affair?’

The burning smell has died down now.

That’s something. But there’s a taste of unease in the air.

Have I missed my last chance?

What is she up to?

What is she planning next?

44 Carla

Of course, the publicity for the new painting had played its part in bringing them together. The ‘fairy-tale story’, as one paper put it, about the artist and his sitter. ‘The Italian Girl Grown Up’. The magazine articles. Ed’s arm around her shoulder for the camera. The brush against her cheek – so close to her mouth! – after a particularly glittery cocktail party. Carla didn’t even have to try.

But nothing more physical had happened until the night when Lily was working late in the office (again!), and she was posing for yet another picture in the sitting room, the window open to an unusually hot night. Carla had purposefully worn no make-up, knowing he preferred her like that. She could feel the warm air making tiny beads of sweat break out on her lip. ‘A little to the left… Now to the right.’

Suddenly Ed moved away from his easel and walked towards her. He got down on his knees and gently, very gently, moved a tendril of hair from her forehead. ‘You’re the most beautiful creature I have ever seen.’ Then he kissed her. And she let him.

For a minute, Carla had a glimpse of the man on the plane. The one she’d dismissed on the grounds of his wedding ring. Hadn’t she always told herself that she’d never get hurt like Mamma had been?

But as Carla allowed herself to be laid down on the soft sitting-room carpet, she couldn’t help thinking how much she’d love to have a famous artist for a boyfriend. A place of her own. Her own money. (She would of course share this with Mamma.) A standing which would impress even the neighbours at home, who would have to be kind to Mamma now, especially as Ed’s work was soon to be exhibited in Rome.

After that, they made love whenever and wherever they could. Hotels were best, Ed said. More private.

Yet he seemed to get more satisfaction than she. Ed was not the lover Carla had imagined he would be. Naturally, she’d had some experience. At university, finally free from Nonno’s rules, she would flirt with boys who were likely to take her to dinner. Sometimes she would let it go further. A new dress perhaps in return for a weekend in Sorrento. Always, she took precautions. Not just with her body but her mind. ‘I wish to concentrate on my studies – not fall in love,’ she had told them all. But the truth was that she didn’t want to get into trouble like Mamma had done. It was the financial stability of marriage she wanted. Not the role of a mistress.

And yet here she was, being just that.

‘I’m going to leave Lily,’ Ed always promised. ‘I simply need the right time to tell her. This is more for me than just sex.’

I can help with that, Carla told herself.

One day, a few weeks after they’d started to sleep together, Carla made a call from the hotel room to the twenty-four-hour hotline of a celebrity gossip magazine while Ed was in the shower. The woman at the other end was very interested in what she had to say. Carla spoke quickly. Then she put down the phone, without giving her name.

And shortly after that, Lily found them.

It was strange. Despite everything coming together, Carla didn’t feel the expected satisfaction of revenge.

Instead, she felt cheap. Dirty.

Lily’s face was white under the street lamp. Her glaring eyes belonged to a wild animal. Carla was scared. Ed saw that. He put his arm around her protectively, even though she could feel his body shaking too. ‘We love each other,’ he kept saying to Lily. ‘We want to be with each other for ever.’

‘We couldn’t help it,’ Carla stammered.

Lily snarled. Yes! Snarled. ‘Of course you could.’ Then she began to weep, which was worse. ‘I’ve helped you so much. Is this how you repay me?’

‘Repay?’ Carla’s voice rose into the night air and a passer-by turned to look. ‘You were the one who should have repaid me. I heard you in Devon telling Ed that you ignored my letters from Italy.’

‘I -’

‘Don’t deny it. Don’t try any of those lawyer lies on me, because I know them all myself.’ She was sweating now with indignation. ‘If you hadn’t told Larry to leave my mother alone, we would have been all right.’

Lily’s laugh was brittle. ‘Is that what you really think, you silly little girl?’

‘I’m not -’

‘Listen to me.’

For a minute, it looked as though Lily was going to grab her by the neck. ‘If Tony could deceive his wife, don’t you think he could have deceived you and your mother as well?’

Carla had a flashback to the woman in the car with the bright lipstick.

‘I did you both a favour. Trust me. Just like you’ve done me a favour – both of you.’ Then she swung round to face Ed. ‘If it hadn’t been for Tom, I’d have left you years ago. Take this child,’ she gesticulated towards Carla, ‘and go.’

Then she swivelled round to face Carla again. ‘You’ll soon find out what he’s like. And if you think you’re going to get any money out of this, you’re mistaken.’

Ed’s hand tightened on hers. They were as strong as the waves of fear that were tightening her chest. ‘I’ve heard enough of this. Come on, Carla. We’re going.’

‘No.’ Lily’s voice was stronger than she had ever heard it. ‘I’m the one who’s going. Do you think I really want to go back to that house, knowing that you two have probably been at it like rabbits when I’ve been working? Besides, it will only have to be sold now anyway. Here.’ She tossed the keys at Carla. ‘Take my set too. I’ll be in touch about my things. Just get out of my sight. Both of you.’

Hang on, Carla wanted to say. This isn’t how I thought it would be. But Ed had gripped her hand so tightly that it almost hurt. Then he hailed a taxi and they went home. ‘Where will Lily go?’ she asked as they opened the front door to be greeted by Lily’s belongings everywhere: her white coat hanging on the hook in the hall; her heels neatly positioned by the door.

‘She’ll be all right,’ said Ed, drawing her to him. ‘She’s tougher than she looks. Look how she had us followed.’

‘Really?’ Carla tried to sound innocent.

‘How else do you think she found us?’

But Carla could not sleep for worrying. Supposing Lily did something stupid like jumping off a bridge, like some poor man had done only a week ago? What do you care? Mamma might have said. Yet for some reason, she did. For the first time, Carla wondered if Lily had been right when she said she’d done them a favour in pushing Larry away. Then there had been that final throwaway line. If you think you’re going to get any money out of this, you’re mistaken.

All night, Carla tossed and turned. When she woke in the morning, to find Ed’s head on her chest like a child in need of comfort, Carla felt another flash of misgiving. Then he woke, smiled and stretched out in the wide bed as the sun streamed in through the cream shutters.

‘Isn’t this amazing?’ he said, tracing her breast with his forefinger. ‘We were meant for each other. And now we’ll be together for ever.’

Wasn’t that what she’d wanted? But all she could think of were those grey hairs on his chest, that little bald spot in the middle of his hair, and the tears on Lily’s face from the night before.

The headlines came swiftly:

PAINTER LEAVES WIFE FOR SEXY ITALIAN SITTER

ARTIST BLOTS CANVAS FOR ITALIAN GIRL GROWN UP

‘I’m definitely keeping the house,’ Ed told her a few days later. ‘I’m going to borrow some money so I can buy Lily out. She’s going to leave London and set up a practice in Devon near Tom. It’s the best thing for everyone.’

‘But will we have enough to live on?’

He held her in his arms. ‘Don’t worry about that.’

She took a deep breath. ‘I’m broke, Ed.’

‘Don’t worry.’ He kissed the top of her head. ‘I will look after you now.’

‘But I don’t have any cash.’

Then he reached into his back pocket and peeled off some notes. ‘Is that enough?’

Her heart filled with relief. ‘Thank you.’

Of course, she banked most of it and sent a transfer straight to Mamma.

For a few weeks, Carla’s doubts began to fade. There was something rather flattering about living with a famous painter. They went to nice restaurants. Waiters bobbed obsequiously. They were the couple of the moment. Everyone knew them.

She didn’t have to worry about paying rent or bills. Edward – she liked to give him his full name at times – bought her lovely clothes. So Lily had been lying about the money! She even managed to stay working in the London office – they could hardly sack her, it would be against the law. And thankfully Lily was no longer there.

Some people of course were cool to begin with. ‘Memories are short,’ Ed reassured her. And he was right. Within a couple of months or so, the coldness began to thaw, especially when one of the partners left his wife for his secretary and everyone had something else to talk about.

As for Ed, he couldn’t have been more attentive. Sometimes too much so. One day, in the post, she received a handwritten note in ink with beautiful sloping writing from Rupert.

Glad to see you are doing so well.

‘Who is that from?’ asked Ed, reading the note over her shoulder.

‘Just a friend from law school.’

‘That kid who came here?’

Uncomfortable memories of Ed finding her and Rupert in the house came back to her.

‘Yes.’

Ed said nothing. But later that night when she put something in the bin, Carla found Rupert’s note torn into tiny bits. ‘Why did you do that?’ she asked him. But instead of replying, he kissed her deeply, and then began to make love to her with a passion that he had not shown for some time.

The shredded note was worth it, Carla told herself, as she lay gasping on the sheets. It was like it had been at the beginning, when Ed was still just enough out of her grasp for him to be exciting. And she suspected he felt the same.

There was nothing like unavailability for attraction. For the first time in ages, she thought of that pencil case. The one she’d stolen from another child. How she had wanted it! But then, when she’d had it, the craze had turned to something else instead. What was wrong with her, she wondered as she felt her way to the bathroom in the dark so as not to disturb Ed, that she always needed something more?

45 Lily

November 2014

‘I can’t eat it now.’ Tom glares at me with fury in his eyes. ‘You’ve moved the cutlery. Look!’

He points angrily at the fork which I have edged a couple of inches to the left to make room for an extra setting. I’ve been looking after Tom for long enough now to remember not to do that, but every now and then something slips and I forget. The results can be spectacular. Like now.

CRASH.

Mum and I jump, grabbing each other’s arms. It’s not just the cutlery which has flown off the table. It’s the plate next to it and a rather nice crystal wine glass which belonged to a wedding-gift set from all those years ago.

After Ed and I split and began dividing our possessions (which was nothing compared with the division in my own heart), I couldn’t help thinking how ironic it was that wedding presents could long outlast the marriage itself.

To my horror, I feel tears pricking my eyes. Tears which I usually ban on the grounds that they do no good. Besides, who wants an unfaithful husband? Good-quality wine glasses are far more useful.

‘Why did you do that?’ I shout, ignoring the warning look in Mum’s eyes. Don’t question Tom. Definitely don’t argue with him. You won’t win. During the divorce – a ‘quickie’, which had come through with indecent haste – Ed had claimed it was ‘useless’ arguing with a lawyer. People like me, apparently, never listen to others; they always have their own answers at the ready.

Maybe that’s where Tom gets it from. His ability to see his own point of view and no one else’s.

‘You touched my knife,’ he states factually, squinting through his new thick-framed black glasses. ‘I’ve told you before. I don’t like that.’

Bending down, I sweep up the pieces of broken glass. ‘You’re acting like a three-year-old,’ I mutter.

‘Shh,’ soothes Mum.

Normally I don’t make a fuss. Since coming back to look after Tom, I decided it was the best way. But every now and then, I snap. Something usually acts as a trigger. Today I suspect it’s the extra place setting at the table. A reminder of the life that ended on the night I saw Ed and Carla kissing outside the hotel off the Strand. Even now, I shudder if someone casually mentions the word ‘hotel’. It’s like a trigger point, shooting me back, churning my guts, making me retch like I did back then on to the pavement, in a mixture of betrayal and disbelief.

Strangely, after those first few raw moments, there was no anger. There still isn’t. It would be easier if there were. Mum says it’s because I still haven’t worked through my feelings yet. Maybe she’s right. But if so, when am I going to? It’s been months now since Ed and I split. Yet it still feels as raw as if it had happened yesterday.

I had spent the night at a professional organization which I belong to (the University Women’s Club, which had, by chance, a bedroom available) and called in sick the next day. There was no way I could face Carla, and I didn’t put it past her to prance into the office as though nothing had happened.

Then my mobile had rung.

Ed. Ed?

‘We need to talk,’ he said. Kindly. Without the defensive tone of the previous night. Was it because he was alone?

‘Is Carla there?’

‘No.’

So he could talk! Freely. Hope ballooned up into my throat. Ed wanted me back. Of course he did! We had a child together. A child who wasn’t like most other children. Perhaps now, in the sobering light of day, Ed realized we needed to stick together for Tom’s sake.

I didn’t have my spare set of keys on me, it struck me, as I reached the door. Instead, I had to ring the bell, feeling like a stranger on my own doorstep. Ed greeted me with a glass of whisky in his hand. It wasn’t even ten o’clock.

I launched straight in. ‘Look, I’m hurt about Carla. But I’m prepared to forgive you for Tom’s sake. Can’t we start again?’

Then, rather desperately, I added, ‘We’ve done it before.’

Ed patted my hand as though I was a little girl. ‘Come on, Lily. It’s understandable that you’re scared.’ As he spoke, there was a gleam in his eye. He looked like a kid himself, one who had been caught with his hand in the sweet jar but didn’t care. He was on a high, no doubt helped by the drink. Something I’d seen time and time again during our marriage. Before long it would be followed by a plunge of mood.

You see? I know him far better than Carla. How will she cope?

‘You’re young enough to start again, Lily. You make a great deal more money than me and…’

‘How can you talk about money!’ I stood up and strode into the kitchen towards one of his paintings. It was a picture of the hotel we stayed at during our honeymoon. A picture he’d once helped me to copy, to show how colours could be mixed to achieve that subtle combination of blue merging into green. I can still remember his arm guiding mine, his touch thrilling mine. ‘Not bad,’ he had said, admiring my efforts. And to show willing, he had actually put it on the wall. Next to his.

‘We need to talk about the practicalities,’ he continued. ‘I suggest that I keep the house and buy you out.’

‘How?’

Ed was always hopeless when it came to money.

‘I’ve got an exhibition coming up. Remember? You could find somewhere in town and then we can each take it in turns to go down to Devon and visit Tom at weekends…’

‘You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you?’ I said, appalled. ‘You and that Italian bitch.’

Ed’s face darkened. ‘Don’t call her that. You haven’t shown me any affection for years. All you care about is your work.’

That wasn’t fair. It’s true that I was exhausted at night after work, but isn’t everyone? And when I had made overtures on Sunday mornings, Ed always rolled away, declaring his back was stiff or that we would wake Carla, on the other side of the wall. How could I have been so stupid?

Once more, memories of a younger Carla came back to me. The little girl who had asked me to lie for her about that pencil case. The child whose mother was really seeing ‘Larry’ instead of working.

Like mother, like daughter.

‘What are you doing?’ yelled Ed.

I hardly knew myself. Later, I vaguely recall running at the kitchen wall, towards the pair of paintings of our honeymoon hotel. Picking up his, I threw it on the floor. Jumped on it. Then, pushing my way past Ed, I flew out of the house, weeping my way along the street.

The following day, I received a letter – hand-delivered at work – starting divorce proceedings on the grounds of my ‘unreasonable behaviour’.

But there’s something else. Something I’m only now allowing myself to think. If I’m honest, Ed and I weren’t right for ages. But I couldn’t leave him because of Tom. Is it possible that, unintentionally, I had ignored the signs of affection between our lodger and my husband? Had I, unconsciously, wanted something to happen between them to give me a justified get-out card from my marriage?

So maybe the ‘unreasonable’ wasn’t so unreasonable after all.

46 Carla

Every other weekend, for some months now, Carla and Ed had gone down to Devon to see Tom. At first she had been nervous. What if the boy refused to talk to her? She genuinely felt something for him: an understanding between two people who had never fitted in. But when Ed had picked him up from the house – they’d decided it was better if she stayed in the car while he did this – he had come running up to her all gangly-legged and toothy with excitement. ‘Carla,’ he had said, nodding. ‘You are here.’

She wouldn’t allow herself to think of Lily, who must be waiting inside. A mother forced to give up her son to another woman for the day. Lily deserved it, Carla told herself. She had neglected Tom so that she could follow her career. She had neglected her husband too. It was the only way Carla could cope with that little nagging voice in her head. The voice that had been reflected in the letter from her mother.

‘I hope you know what you are doing, my sweet,’ her mother had written. ‘Looking back, I regret the pain I caused Larry’s wife. Be very careful.’

And then, one Saturday morning when she and Ed had been lying in bed, came the note through the door. Luckily she had got there before him.

YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS .

That was all.

Clearly it referred to breaking up Ed and Lily’s marriage.

The writing was in spidery capital letters. Who had sent it? Lily? Yet somehow Carla knew it wasn’t her style. Someone at work then? Even though most were friendlier now, there were still some who talked about their former colleague with affection. How she’d set up a new branch (with flexible hours apparently), focusing on cases where parents had children with special needs. How ‘she deserved to do well’. This last bit had been said by Lily’s old secretary with a meaningful look towards Carla.

Was it possible one of them had sent the note? Once more, she read it to herself.

YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS .

Part of Carla wanted to show Ed so he could banish her fears. Tell her it was all right. But what if it stirred his conscience? Made him feel guiltier than he did already? There were times when she often found him looking at pictures of Tom with a wistful gaze. And he was always in a difficult mood after their weekend visits. Did he regret leaving his son for her, Carla? Was it possible that he might leave her and return to Lily?

Such humiliation! She couldn’t end up like Mamma.

So instead of telling Ed about the note, she ripped it into little pieces. And just to make sure he didn’t find it like he’d found Rupert’s, she dropped the pieces of paper into the rubbish bin down the street.

For a few weeks after that, she felt nervous, looking over her shoulder every time she went to the office, out-staring the secretary. But nothing happened.

At home, Ed’s infatuation with her made him clinging and controlling. ‘Where have you been?’ he demanded one night when she came back late after sorting out an urgent land contract. ‘I tried to ring you but there was no answer.’

‘I had it switched off so I could concentrate.’

But when she came out of the shower that night, she found him stuffing her mobile quickly back into her bag as if he’d been checking it.

‘I’m not hiding anything from you,’ she said, annoyed.

‘Of course you’re not, darling.’ He draped an arm around her. ‘I just thought I heard it hum. Look, you’ve got a text.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Your work again.’

That stifling feeling increased.

Then an important client cancelled a commission for a portrait of his wife. ‘Apparently she disapproves of the press publicity over us,’ said Ed, shrugging. ‘Never mind. Commissions come and go. The important thing is that I’ve got you. You know, I never felt I really had Lily. She was always thinking of Daniel or Tom or her career.’

Meanwhile, bottles of wine were disappearing from the cellar at an alarming rate. ‘I took them into the gallery,’ said Ed when she questioned him about it. But later in the week, she found the bottles at the bottom of the recycling bin at the back of the house.

Carla, still on a high from having briefed a barrister about a case that looked as though it was almost in the bag, began to feel a stirring of frustration. Was this how Lily had felt?

Then, one Sunday when Ed was out sketching (again), she did a great tidy-up, partly to expunge Lily’s lingering presence in the house. Ed’s study was sacrosanct: no one went into it. But when she peered inside, she could see the desk was overflowing with bits of paper. Cobwebs fluttered in the corners. Dirty mugs were on every surface. Just a quick bit of rearranging wouldn’t go amiss.

Underneath the half-finished sketches, she found a pile of unopened post.

Some had ‘Urgent’ stamped on the envelope. Others, ‘Open Immediately’.

So she did.

Aghast, Carla sank on to Ed’s chair. He owed thousands on his credit card. The mortgage hadn’t been paid for two months. There was a letter giving them three more months, ‘following your request’.

But after that, the money would have to be paid.

‘It will be all right,’ Ed said when she confronted him as soon as he got back. ‘It’s just a question of cash flow. I’ve got the new exhibition coming up. My agent is very optimistic. I’ll sell more than enough to keep us going.’

Then he looked at her disappointedly as though she’d been in the wrong. ‘Please don’t go into my study again. It’s not as though I’ve got anything to hide.’

The next day, she found the letters had gone.

The exhibition opening almost distracted Carla from the doubts that were building up. It was such fun to be photographed on Ed’s arm! He looked so handsome dressed in his tuxedo. ‘Shall I refer to you as Mr Macdonald’s companion?’ asked one of the journalists.

Ed, hovering at her shoulder, had stepped in. ‘Put fiancée, would you?’

Carla started. They hadn’t even discussed marriage! But Ed was speaking as though it had all been arranged.

‘Why did you say that?’ she asked as they walked home.

Ed’s handgrip tightened. ‘I thought you’d be pleased.’

‘I am.’

But inside, she really wasn’t sure. Instead, Carla thought back to the night when he’d first made love to her. She’d adored his impulsiveness then. But now it felt as though she was being treated like the child she’d been when Ed had first known her. He was making all the decisions. Huge ones which she should have a say in too. Did she really want to get married? It no longer seemed so important.

The following night, when she was working late at the office, Ed rang. ‘Have you seen the Telegraph?’ he demanded tersely.

Carla felt a quickening of apprehension. ‘No.’

‘Then get one.’

There was a copy in reception for clients. Swiftly Carla skimmed through until she reached the arts pages. Dear Lord.

NEW EXHIBITION DISAPPOINTS

ART LOVERS

Artist Edward Macdonald fails to live up to expectations…

‘Sorry,’ she said to one of the partners. ‘I’ve got to leave.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘You’ve finished the briefing?’

‘Not quite. But I’ve got an emergency.’

‘We’ll have another if you don’t have everything ready first thing in the morning.’

‘I will.’

When she got home, Ed was slumped on the sofa.

‘It will be all right,’ she said, bending down to kiss him on the forehead.

‘Will it? We’ll have to sell the gallery. I just can’t afford to keep it going any more.’

Never had she seen a man cry before.

‘I’m sure…’

Then his arms opened and he pulled her towards him. His breath stank of whisky and his mouth was wet as he pushed her down on the sofa. ‘Don’t, Ed, don’t. It’s not safe.’ But he continued to kiss her, and it seemed easier to let him than carry on protesting.

The following week, she received a letter from Mamma.

Cara mia,

You will not believe what has happened! Larry has left me a little money. I have only just found out – his widow fought against it but the judge ruled I should have it. My Larry changed his will at the end, apparently. It shows what a good man he was, don’t you think?…

So her visit had achieved something after all.

Yet Carla felt physically sick. Yes, her mother would be financially secure now, judging from the amount mentioned. No wonder the widow had challenged it. But where did that leave her, Carla? Had she put herself into this awful position with Ed for nothing?

Perhaps it was time to get out.

47 Lily

February 2015

‘He’s nearly here, he’s nearly here!’

Tom is pacing up and down, patting his hands on his knees as if playing the drum. This is another habit associated with his condition. The action, according to the experts, soothes the person concerned. Even if it plays havoc with everyone else’s nerves.

‘There’s his car, Mum. There’s his car!’

Ross always has this effect on him. If there was one thing that Ed and I got right, I tell myself, it was choosing his friend as godfather.

Ross was gratifyingly shocked when Ed walked out on me for Carla and then demanded the house. ‘As for “unreasonable behaviour”, that’s ridiculous,’ he said when I’d gone round the following day, my face a mess, barely able to stop crying.

I’d shrugged, looking round at Ross’s place. The washing-machine door was off, lying on the side of the kitchen counter as if waiting for someone to call the repair man. The kitchen sink was stacked with several days’ worth of crockery and there was a pile of newspapers on the floor by the bin. Half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s sat on the side. Yet Ross himself was always impeccably turned out in a sharp suit and dapper tie. It occurred to me then, as it occurs to me frequently, that one never really knows a person properly. Especially ourselves. Every human is a melting pot of contradictions.

‘What grounds does he cite for this unreasonable behaviour?’ continued Ross.

‘Always working late. Not taking holidays. That sort of thing.’ I gave a short laugh. ‘Unreasonable behaviour can mean anything nowadays. I had a client who got a divorce because her husband dug up her vegetable garden without asking her permission first.’

My fingers gripped the side of Ross’s cream worktop. Imagine if Ed’s lawyers knew the truth… No, I tell myself. Don’t go there.

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Ross. He was coming closer now. For a minute, I thought he might be going to give me a cuddle. Until then, we’d only exchanged brief ‘kiss greetings’ on the cheek. It felt odd. So I stepped backwards.

‘I don’t know.’ All I could think of was the geometric pattern on the terracotta floor. Since last night, small details seemed big. Maybe it was the mind’s way of coping.

‘I’ve got an idea.’ Ross was walking towards the window now and looking outside. His flat was in Holloway; the view wasn’t as pleasant as from our home in Notting Hill. An ‘our’ that would soon be a ‘their’.

‘Get out of London. Make a fresh start. Set up your own practice in Devon so you can be on hand for Tom. I seem to remember that you and Ed talked about this before.’

I winced at my husband’s name. ‘It’s a big step. What if my clients don’t come with me?’

Ross’s face conceded this was a possibility. ‘Suppose you suggest to the firm that you set up an offshoot in the south-west? Then they might encourage you to take some of their cases.’

I hesitated. Leave London? Go back to the place that I swore I’d never live in again after Daniel? Yet it did make sense. It would put distance between That Woman and myself. And, more importantly, it would take the pressure off my parents. Tom might be at school during the week. But I couldn’t expect them to carry on for ever at weekends.

So that’s what happened. Even now, as I wash up Tom’s special knife and fork and place them back on the table under his watchful eye, I wonder how we coped in those first few weeks. The firm had been very understanding: true to Ross’s suggestion, they were quite amenable to the idea of setting up a south-west branch. It helped too having my parents there, happy to welcome us to their home. Although it was weird coming back to my old room with its dusty maroon and royal blue Pony Club rosettes in the desk drawer. ‘Just until I find my own place,’ I said.

Yet once there, it seemed easier to stay; be cocooned by my parents. Protected. Hoping that Joe Thomas would now leave me alone in peace.

No one, I told myself, must know the truth.

The door knocker breaks into my reverie now as I stir the soup. Butternut squash. Soothing. Comforting. Devon in the winter months is much darker and colder than London, but I am slowly growing used to it again. There’s something about the determined way in which the tides go back and forth with reassuring regularity; it’s like a comforting grandfather clock.

I’ve always loved the sea. Tom loves it too. When he’s home at weekends, we spend hours walking up and down the beach, looking for driftwood. Mum has got him a dog too. A small schnauzer. The ones that look like old men with beards. Tom spends hours talking to Sammy. Like Daniel used to with Merlin.

Sometimes I find myself doing the same.

‘He’s here, he’s here,’ crows Tom, now dancing around. He never makes this much fuss about his father coming down, I say to myself as I walk across the hall. Then again, I try to make myself scarce when Ed pays his weekend visits. Since the decree nisi, our ‘meetings’ are more of a quick nod at the front door before Ed takes Tom out for the day.

I can only imagine what those outings must be like; it’s awkward enough for a single father to entertain his children outside the home environment. With a child like Tom, it would be even more of a challenge. How does Carla cope? I wondered. Hopefully not very well. Despite that engagement gossip piece in a tabloid that one of the partners had awkwardly shown me, there had been no announcement of a wedding date.

I am relieved about that, although annoyed with myself at the same time for such a reaction. It means, surely, that Ed isn’t certain. Carla, I am convinced, would jump at the chance to have a gold ring on her finger.

‘Forget him,’ Ross is always saying. ‘You’re far too good for him.’

I know he’s just being nice. But I appreciate it. Ross has become important in our new lives. Tom always loves his visits, not least because he usually arrives bearing enough gifts to suggest it’s Christmas, whatever the month. My parents enjoy his company too. ‘I can’t understand why that man has never got married,’ Mum keeps saying.

‘Hi!’ He’s beaming now on the doorstep, staggering under the weight of flowers and boxes. ‘How are my favourite friends?’

Tom frowned. ‘How can you have favourite in the plural? If you like one person best, it has to be in the singular. You can’t have more than one person as favourite because then they wouldn’t be your favourite, would they?’

It’s the type of pedantic question with a certain logic that I am tired of, however intelligent it is. But Ross merely grins. He makes as if to rub Tom’s hair, like a godfather might do to his godson, but then stops, clearly remembering that Tom hates his scalp being touched.

‘Great point.’

Mum appears beaming behind me. She’s taken off her apron and frowns at me, indicating I should have done the same. ‘Come on in. You must be starving after that drive. Supper’s almost ready.’

Ross gives Tom a wink. ‘Don’t tell anyone, but I stopped off for a burger on the way down. But I’m still hungry.’

Tom giggles. The conversation is a ritual, one they have every time. It’s a narrative that soothes me as well as my son. Indeed, it does the same to my parents. It helps to bring a normality to the house that is rarely there when it’s just the three of us, all trying to rescue Tom from himself, desperately making sure that what happened to Daniel will never happen to him. It’s the unspoken fear. The challenge that haunts us all.

No one, unless they have a child like this, can understand. I remember once, when Tom was younger, talking to a woman in a supermarket queue. Her son – about ten with gangly limbs flying everywhere – was in a wheelchair. People made way for her. They were sympathetic when he reached out to knock the tins flying from the conveyor belt.

Although I would never wish Tom to be in a wheelchair, I can’t help thinking that at least it would mean others would be understanding. When my son misbehaves in public – jumping on a wine glass in a pizzeria to see how many fragments he could ‘make’ is one recent example – I receive stares that say, Why can’t you control your teenager? Or even, That kid should be locked up. It makes my blood boil.

My research warns me that as Asperger’s kids get bigger and less ‘cute’, their melt-downs and challenging behaviour can turn others against them. The other day, there was a newspaper story about a cafe owner throwing an autistic-spectrum teenager out of his shop because the kid kicked up a fuss when given coffee with milk instead of without. The teen in question fell awkwardly on the pavement and broke his arm.

I would personally kill anyone if they hurt my son.

After dinner, Ross and I go for a walk with the dog. It’s another ritual. Sometimes Tom begs to come too, but it makes me fearful. The rocks on the edge of the beach are so high; it’s hard to check in the moonlight when he’s scampering on ahead that he’s not going to climb one and then fall. Tonight, to my relief, Tom announces that he’s tired. He’ll have a shower in the morning – he hates baths – and if his special Man United towel isn’t ready, we’ll all know about it. Bit by bit, I have got used to these ‘rules’, which are set in stone.

Difficult as he is, however, I find myself thinking that I am blessed in a manner that not everyone would understand. I might not have a conventional child. But my son will never be boring. He has a constantly enquiring mind. He looks at life in a way that others don’t. ‘Did you know that the average person produces enough saliva to fill two swimming pools during their life?’ he asked me the other day.

‘How are you managing?’ Ross now says as we walk under the overhanging cliff, gazing out at the lights flickering from boats on the horizon. It could be another world. One in which we live normal lives.

‘We’re fine, thanks. Tom’s school, touch wood, seems to be happy with him, and I’m building up quite a decent client base. I’ve also taken up spinning at the gym to give myself “me-time”, like you suggested.’

He nods. ‘Good.’

Something’s up. I can feel it. ‘What about you? How is work?’

‘OK, although to be honest, I feel there has to be more to life.’

‘I know what you mean.’

We stroll on, past a plump seagull pecking at a discarded bag of crisps. Past, too, a couple arm in arm who give us a meaningful nod. They think we’re like them, I tell myself. It makes me feel like a fraud; one who needs to put Ross at his ease so he doesn’t think I have any feelings in that direction.

‘I really appreciate the interest you show in Tom,’ I begin.

‘It’s not just Tom I care for.’

I hold my breath.

‘I’m worried about you, Lily.’

He takes my arm and I feel a slow warmth down my spine. At times, I tell myself that I’ve learned to live without Ed. Sometimes he seems like another life away. Sometimes he seems like yesterday. On those days, I want him here. Next to me.

‘There’s no need,’ I say. ‘I’m fine. I’ve moved on.’

My words are so clearly a lie that even the sea doesn’t believe me. It lashes angrily against the rocks. Liar. Liar.

‘There’s something I’ve got to tell you,’ says Ross.

As he speaks, a plume of spray leaps up. We run ahead – him pulling me – but it catches us anyway. I’m not one of those women who look good with wet hair.

Ross takes my hand and strokes it, like a parent trying to soothe a child.

‘Ed and Carla have set a wedding date.’

Did he really say that? Or was that the sea again? Shh. Shhhh, it’s saying now. Like a soothing lullaby.

‘I’m sorry?’

Ross’s face is looking down at me. How stupid of me. His expression is one of pity, not admiration.

‘Ed is getting married. To Carla.’

Ed. Carla. Marriage. Not just an engagement which can be broken at whim.

So she’s got him. Just like she gets everything she’s ever wanted.

‘That’s not all.’

I begin to shiver from the cold and the wet and the anticipation.

‘She’s pregnant, Lily. Carla’s expecting a child.’

In a weird way, Ross’s news is a relief. Just as it was when I found Ed and Carla outside the hotel. The shock haunts me still. Yet at least it was living proof that I hadn’t just imagined Ed’s behaviour towards me.

And now Ross’s early warning of a definite wedding date – soon to be heralded in the gossip pages – tidies things up. Shows me that there is no chance of Ed and I ever being reconciled, even if I wanted to be. Which I don’t.

That’s the other odd thing about a long marriage ending, at least for me. However bad it was, there were also good patches. And it’s those that I tend to remember. Don’t ask me why. I don’t dwell on the rows when Ed was moody or drunk. Or how he used to hate it because I earned far more than he did, and how he’d throw strops when I was home late from work.

No. I think of the moments in between when we’d lie on the sofa as we watched our favourite weekly drama. Or how we’d take long walks by the sea with our little boy, pausing to point out a particular shell or a crab scuttling under a rock.

The thing that really breaks my heart is that Ed now does these things with Her. I remember reading an article once about a woman whose ex-husband had married someone else. Two things had struck me. First, she’d been unable to say the other woman’s name, only referring to her as ‘Her’. ‘It’s because it sticks in my throat,’ she’d explained. ‘Makes her feel too real.’

I can see that.

The second was that this woman had been unable to comprehend how there was now another out there, bearing the same surname and sharing the same habits with the same man the first wife had once known intimately.

And that’s exactly how I feel. There’s something really odd about your husband having another wife. Carla will soon be Carla Macdonald. We will both be Mrs Macdonald. She will be my husband’s wife, because – even though Ed is technically no longer my husband – you can never really wipe away a marriage. A piece of paper is not a rubber or a bottle of Tippex. It can legally negate the ‘contract’ between two parties, as a lawyer might put it. But it cannot expunge the memories, the traditions, the patterns that spring up between a couple, no matter how good or bad the state of their relationship.

It hurts. Yes, it hurts to know that they too are building up traditions and patterns of their own. For all I know, she entwines her legs around Ed’s when they watch that new series on television that everyone is talking about. They now go for long walks along the sea with my son while I hide myself away at home, telling myself that it’s good for Tom to see ‘Daddy’. The thought of another woman playing ‘Mummy’ sickens me to the core. Tom is so gullible at times, quite capable of transferring his affection. After one of their recent visits, he talked incessantly about her hair. ‘Why isn’t yours as shiny as Carla’s?’ he asked me. ‘Why isn’t everyone’s hair like hers? What makes hair?’

The first question had run into thousands of others, like it always did with Tom. But I was still stuck on the first one. I don’t want to think about Carla’s hair or anything else about her.

But this – this hurts more than anything. A child of their own. A child who will be ‘normal’, no doubt. A child who won’t need watching twenty-four/seven in case he hurts himself, or worse. A child who won’t impose the same awful pressures on a marriage.

It isn’t fair.

After Ross’s revelation, I suddenly begin to feel the anger I should have felt – according to all the divorce self-help books – some time ago. Ed is the one who did wrong. Yet he’s come out top here. He’s found someone else. He gets to see the good bits of Tom, who is always hyper with excitement after his visits, which often means I have to change the sheets the following morning. (A new development. My research said it can be common in Asperger’s children, although it normally ‘dies out’ during adolescence. We can only hope.)

Nor does Ed have any of the problems that still haunt me.

Like Joe Thomas.

June

Months pass. For a while after moving down to Devon, I was on tenterhooks in case he contacted me. I even had to warn Mum, telling her I had a former client who had stalked me in the past and mustn’t be allowed in the house at any cost if he happened to turn up.

Not surprisingly, she was worried. ‘But why can’t you tell the police?’ she asked, her voice laced with worry. ‘Surely they can do something about it?’

It was on the tip of my tongue to confess everything. But that wouldn’t have been fair. My parents had enough on their plate with the unexpected arrival of their daughter. ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’ I said. ‘But actually there’s not a lot they can do.’

That was true. I’d once had a client whose ex-boyfriend had stalked her. The only way we’d managed to get the police to take it seriously was to get him followed by a private detective to show that he was doing the same to other women too. Even then, he only received a caution. The law makes some very odd decisions at times.

Frankly, I’m just relieved that Joe hasn’t tried to get hold of us here. The thought of poor Merlin still makes me feel sick. Still sends shudders through me. If Joe could organize that, what else is he capable of?

Meanwhile, I am banishing my fears with work. Work, work, work. It’s the only way I can get some peace, the only way to shut out the shrapnel of Ed’s engagement and the stress of Tom.

When I first came down, I was worried I wouldn’t have enough clients and that after a while, the partners would decide it wasn’t worth subsidizing a satellite office. But within a couple of weeks, some parents from Tom’s school approached me. They were convinced that their son’s epilepsy had been caused by dirty water from an old well which had got into the water system. It so happened that I knew a specialist who said this was not beyond the realms of possibility. It went to court and we won damages – not a lot but enough to prove that some children’s special conditions are not just ‘one of those things’, but could have been prevented.

Then a father from Tom’s school asked me to look into some hospital notes which had vanished soon after his son’s birth. There had been problems, he explained. The cord had been wound tightly round his son’s neck during delivery and the consultant hadn’t been available. We never found the notes (they would, no doubt, have been shredded long ago). But we did find that the same pattern had occurred a couple of times now, all when a certain consultant had been on duty. That resulted in a class action, with other parents being given compensation as well as my client.

‘You’re building up quite a name for yourself, Lily,’ emailed my first boss, who had now retired. (We still keep in touch by email.) ‘Well done.’

How is Carla doing? I want to ask. Will she continue to work for you when she has the baby? But I don’t have the courage to raise the subject.

Then, one morning, as I am jogging along the front before work, I hear someone running behind me.

This isn’t unusual. There are quite a lot of us 6 a.m. joggers and we all know each other. There’s even a baggy-eyed mother who runs along with her stroller.

But intuitively, I know these steps are different. They match my speed. They slow when I slow. They speed up when I do.

‘Lily,’ says the voice behind me. A voice I know all too well. ‘Please stop, Lily. I’m not going to hurt you.’

48 Carla

June 2015

Carla looked down at her body in the soapy water. Her fourth bath in four days. But there was nothing else to do in the evening. And besides, it meant she could close the door and be alone for a while.

Since finding out she was pregnant, Ed had not allowed her to lift a finger at home. It was bad enough, he said, that she still insisted on going out to work. She should rest instead. They would manage somehow, despite those demands from the bank. He loved her. He would look after her.

The old Carla would have loved the attention. But life with Ed was not what she’d imagined. It wasn’t just his depression over unsold paintings or bank demands. Or even the drinking. Or Tom’s behaviour on their custody weekends, which upset Ed and affected them too, especially when she suggested that if Tom was ‘punished’ more often, he would improve. Nor was it the latest threatening note, which she had hidden from Ed.

WATCH YOUR BACK .

No. It was the wedding ring on her finger that really got Carla down. If it was not for the baby, she would not have agreed. Ed’s ‘care’ had become too controlling. But now she was trapped by her own pregnancy. How could she allow her child to grow up without a father as she had? No child of hers was going to be ‘different’. Look where it had got her.

So a wedding it had been. A small one, at her insistence. Just them and two witnesses off the street. The ceremony, she’d stipulated, had to be here, in the UK, in a register office. If they’d done it in Italy, the sharp-eyed matrons would certainly have spotted the small bump that had already started to appear.

‘So old-fashioned,’ Ed had said, kissing the top of her head as though she was the child he had first known. Sometimes, Carla wondered if Ed wished she was that little girl still so he could control her completely.

‘I think it’s sweet,’ one of the girls at the antenatal class had said when Carla had confided that her new husband would not let her do anything in the house. What Carla stopped herself from saying was that he wouldn’t even allow her to her put out his empties. Ed now drank far more than he would admit. It had led to a spectacular argument at an art critic’s party, right in front of everyone. Later, of course, he’d apologized profusely.

‘I am doing it for two,’ he had joked, putting his hand over Carla’s own glass when she had reached for the bottle herself. ‘No, you mustn’t. I don’t care what the latest report is. These so-called medical experts change their minds all the time. Far better to play safe and avoid alcohol altogether during pregnancy.’

Then he had stroked her stomach. ‘You’re carrying my child,’ he said in a reverent tone. ‘I promise to look after you. Not long now, my darling.’

Six weeks. Yet each day seemed to pass so slowly. How uncomfortable she felt! How heavy. Carla could not even bear to look at herself in the mirror, even though Ed told her, with the smell of whisky on his breath, that she was beautiful. Nor could she bear the touch of his hand on her stomach so he could feel the baby move like some monster inside her.

Soaping her breasts (so huge and the nipples so dark that they were scarcely recognizable), Carla allowed her mind to wander back to when she’d bumped into Rupert soon after the wedding. ‘How are you?’ he had asked.

They were in court at the time. She was there to support the barrister. (It was, ironically, a case involving a man who had got drunk at an office party and been sacked for making inappropriate advances to his boss. Rupert was on the other side.)

She found it hard to concentrate on her argument, constantly looking over to where her old friend was sitting. He appeared to be looking at her too. During the break, they sought each other out. ‘I am…’ she began. And then stopped. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I am married to a near-bankrupt drinker. A man whose child I am expecting.’

Rupert’s eyes widened. ‘I heard you had married Ed,’ he said quietly. ‘But I didn’t know about the other developments. I think we need a coffee once the case is over.’

Carla hadn’t meant to be so open. But it all came spilling out. Ed’s controlling ways, which could be interpreted as simply caring. The constant worry about money. (At the bank’s insistence, the house was finally going on the market, but they hadn’t had many viewers.) The uncomfortable feeling about living in another woman’s home.

‘In the end, Lily left almost everything, even her clothes. It’s as though she was trying to tell me that I couldn’t replace her.’

And then the note which had arrived out of the blue, threatening her for hurting Lily.

Rupert was clearly shocked. ‘What did the police say?’

‘I haven’t told them.’

‘Why not?’

Her eyes welled up again. ‘Because then Ed would make a fuss and not allow me back to the office. He would keep me at home, shut up like a bird, in case someone hurt me.’

Rupert took her hand. ‘This is terrible, Carla. You can’t live like this.’

‘I know.’ She stared down at the now visible bump in her stomach. ‘But what can I do?’

‘All kinds of things. You could go -’

‘No.’ She had interrupted him fiercely. ‘I cannot leave. I cannot be like my mamma. I will not allow this child to grow up without a father as I did.’

Rupert dropped her hand. Don’t, she wanted to cry. Don’t.

Then he reached into his inside jacket pocket and handed over a card. ‘This is my private mobile number. I’ve changed it since we last knew each other. Ring me. Any time. I will always be there for you. My fiancée would like to meet you too.’

‘Your fiancée?’

Rupert blushed. ‘Katie and I got engaged last month. It was a bit sudden, but we’re very happy.’

So that holding of hands and the flush on his face… Carla had got it all wrong. Rupert really was just being a friend. Nothing more.

That had been several weeks ago now. Carla kept the card close to her. Often she thought about ringing the number. But every time she did, a sentence came into her head. My fiancée would like to meet you.

Carla shivered. She had had enough of stealing other people’s things. This intolerable situation was her cross to bear for snatching Lily’s husband.

‘Carla?’ There was a persistent knocking on the bathroom door. ‘Darling? Are you all right in there?’

‘I am fine,’ she said. Then she turned on the taps so she couldn’t hear his reply, and lowered herself down so that her head was under water, allowing herself to think clearly without Ed’s voice hammering through the door.

49 Lily

I pause. Grip the railings on the front. Try to steady myself by looking out over the sea and watching the light of a boat moored there. Bobbing on the surface of the water against the apricot sunrise.

Then I turn round.

Joe Thomas doesn’t look like a former prisoner. He seems much older than he did at our last meeting, but it suits him. Gives him a certain gravity. He’s grown a moustache, although his hair is still short.

But one thing hasn’t changed. Those eyes. Those black-brown eyes which are focused right on me.

‘We need to talk.’

A chill passes through my bones.

‘I’ve got nothing to say to you.’

He reaches towards me. For a minute, I think he’s going to grab my arms. I step back. One of my nodding-acquaintance jogger friends goes past.

Joe waits a few seconds. ‘I need to tell you something. Please.’

He is actually begging. Momentarily, I am swayed. ‘Not here.’

Uncertainly, I lead him across the road to a group of tables and chairs outside a cafe with an OPEN AT 9AM! sign. We sit opposite each other, away from the promenade and the occasional runner. ‘What is it?’ I say curtly.

His eyes are boring into mine. As though they are trying to suck me into him.

‘You don’t have to worry about Carla.’

At first, his words are so unexpected that it takes me a second to absorb them. When I do, I am both scared and – I have to admit this – excited.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Your ex and Carla won’t last.’

My mouth is dry. ‘How do you know?’

‘Just do.’

He moves his chair closer to the table. Without looking down, I can feel our legs are almost but not quite touching. A man goes past, his dog sniffing a stray chip left in the road then running on. To its owner, we might be any pair of runners sitting down, catching our breath, admiring the view. Or maybe we could be a pair of tourists staying at one of the hotels on the front, taking a stroll before breakfast.

‘I know it can’t be easy,’ says Joe. ‘Your husband has married someone else. And now they’re having a baby.’

‘So what? I’ve moved on now.’

Those eyes are peeling away my pretence. ‘Are you sure?’

No. Of course I’m not sure. I want Carla to have never existed. I want the old me to have told her mother that I’m very sorry but we couldn’t possibly look after her child at weekends.

But that’s not me. At the heart of things, I need to help people. To make up for not being able to help my own brother. For having failed him. For having failed myself.

‘Is that why you’re here?’ I ask. ‘To see how I am?’

‘Partly.’ Little beads of perspiration are breaking out on his forehead. I can feel the same thing happening on my back.

I wait like a mouse waiting to be pounced on. Knowing what is to come.

‘I want a paternity test, Lily. I didn’t believe you last time when you said he wasn’t mine, and I don’t believe you now. I’ve been watching you, Lily, like I’ve always been watching you and everyone you mix with, since I got out of prison.’

This is ridiculous. How? Where? ‘Is this one of your lies again?’ I say sharply.

He laughs. ‘Even introduced myself to Carla at Tony’s funeral.’

‘I don’t believe you. She wasn’t there.’

Another laugh. ‘Then you couldn’t have been looking very closely.’

He draws his chair nearer. I edge back.

‘I’m not far away, Lily, when you pick up Tom from school on Friday nights. Or when you take him for walks along the beach, with Ross.’ His mouth tightens.

My heart leaps into my throat. Surely he wouldn’t…

‘And just how have you been spying like this without us noticing?’ I snap. Fear is making me angry.

‘Spying?’ He seems to consider the word. ‘I’m no James Bond, but I was inside, wasn’t I? You learn things there. I even paid one of my contacts to do a check on you when I was thinking of hiring you. I wanted to see if you were up to the job.’

There’s a flash from the past. That feeling, when I was newly married, of being followed on the way back from the bus stop. My shock when Joe had known I’d just got married.

Could it be true?

Or is this just the dreams of a fantasist? But then how do I explain his knowing so much about me? About Tom. About Ross.

‘Tom looks like I did as a kid, Lily.’ Joe’s face is twisted with pain. It’s one of the few times I’ve seen him express emotion. ‘I’ve seen him. He does the same things. He doesn’t like it when things aren’t ordered. I know he’s mine. I’ve given you time because of your marriage break-up. But I deserve to know. Don’t you think?’

I’d see his point of view if I wasn’t so scared of him. If he wasn’t a killer.

A pair of joggers run past on the other side of the road, holding hands. I see them every day. Mr and Mrs Newly-Wed, I call them to myself. Joe observes me watching them.

‘Are you lonely, Lily?’

This change of tack throws me. Maybe that’s the whole point. My eyes suddenly blur. Of course I’m lonely. It’s so unfair that Ed, the guilty party, has found happiness whereas I am destined to be alone. Who would want to take on a child like Tom?

‘You don’t have to be on your own, you know.’ Joe’s hands suddenly take mine. They are warm. Firm.

‘I’ve always loved you, Lily. In my own way.’

The raw loneliness inside me screams in my ears. I’d like to say I don’t know what I’m doing. But I do.

I lean towards him. Let his hands pull me towards him. Let him lower his lips to my neck. Feel his breath against me, sending heat straight to my groin.

A jogger appears in the far distance by the lifeboat station. I jerk back. Joe’s eyes snap open. I leap to my feet, appalled by what I have just done. As I do so, a key falls out of my pocket. It’s one I always carry, even though I no longer have use for it. The spare key to my old house with Ed. If you are attacked, I once learned at a self-defence course, you should jab someone in the eye to give you time to run. A key is always good, the instructor said, or else a finger. It’s a piece of advice that has stayed with me, whether in London or running along the seafront in the early morning.

Joe bends down to pick it up.

This is a murderer before me. A man who should have been convicted of killing his girlfriend. Yet this polite picking-up-the-key gesture suggests courtesy. And that’s the nub of it. Of course Joe is bad. But he also has shades of not-so-bad.

I like to think I am good. But – there’s no getting away from it – I have also done wrong. Not just a wrong that affects me. But one that touches Ed too. And, more importantly, Tom.

And as I run back across the road towards the front, the sea now washing smoothly against the pebbles, I finally allow my mind to go back to that evening after the case.

Forget the pain in my chest, making it hard to breathe.

It’s nothing, compared with the agony of waiting.

My body is tense. Stiff with apprehension.

I can hear her now. She’s coming.

50 Carla

The pains started the following day, when Carla was in the office, going through her post. There was always something, thank goodness. A letter, a contract, a phone call, a meeting with counsel. Anything to block out the image of Ed waiting for her at home, his eye on the clock, his hand on the bottle.

‘Got another one here,’ announced Lily’s old secretary, popping her head round the door. ‘Just been delivered by hand.’ Carla’s heart quickened, although there was no need. Many letters were hand-delivered. Couriers were nothing out of the ordinary. Yet she could see as she took the envelope that her name hadn’t been typed, but written by hand in spidery capital letters. She opened it.

YOU AND YOUR CHILD WILL PAY .

Carla felt the baby launch another kick, far bigger this time. ‘Who dropped this off?’ she heard herself say in a strangled voice.

The woman had made it clear that she didn’t care for Lily’s successor. ‘A motorbike courier. Didn’t say which company he was with.’ Flouncing off, she left the door wide open.

Getting up to shut it, Carla suddenly felt a trickle of water running down her legs.

How embarrassing! She had wet herself. Was this what her body had come to? Stuffing the letter in her bag, she scuttled past a partner in the corridor and dived into the Ladies. To her horror, the same secretary was there, drying her hands.

The woman gasped. ‘Have your waters broken?’

Of course, she knew that waters breaking was a sign of labour. But the teacher of her antenatal class had described it as more of a flood than a trickle.

‘This happened to me too with my second,’ said the woman. Her tone was grudgingly kind. ‘Sit down while I call the ambulance.’

Carla felt as though the walls were coming towards her. ‘But it’s too early. I’m not due for another six weeks.’

‘Even more need to get you into hospital.’ The woman was already on her mobile. ‘Ambulance, please. Urgent.’ Then she turned round to Carla. ‘Shall I call Ed? I’ve still got his number in Lily’s old address book.’

Lily… Ed… Would they never go away! Was she destined to be trapped for ever in this marriage of three?

‘I am sorry,’ she called out as the ambulance sped its way through the streets.

‘No need to apologize, love,’ said the voice next to her. ‘It’s our job.’

It’s not you I’m apologizing to, she tried to say. It’s the baby who’s coming into this terrible mess we’ve created. Go back. Go back to where you came from so you are safe. But strange pains had started in her belly. Wave after wave of pain, each one beginning almost as soon as its predecessor had finished.

‘We need to slow her down,’ said another voice (female this time).

The urgent yet calm tone reminded Carla of the time she had been taken into hospital as a child. You could have died, the doctor had told her strictly at the time, as if she and not her mother were responsible for failing to react to her symptoms fast enough. Maybe she was dying now. Perhaps that would be best. What kind of life would the baby have with parents who were already fighting before it was born?

‘Carla, can you hear me?’ The first voice was hovering over her. ‘We’re just going to give you a little injection to try and keep baby inside for a bit longer. All right?’

And then it went black.

51 Lily

‘Let’s go for a walk,’ Joe said after we’d won the appeal, all those years ago. Such innocent words.

We began to stroll across the Heath, breathing in the cool night air after the tension of the court.

‘Do you remember,’ he said, his eyes straight ahead, ‘when our hands touched in the prison?’

How could I forget? He had made it seem that the advance was all mine, rather than the other way round.

‘You know,’ he continued, without waiting for an answer, ‘there are very few people in this world whom I can bear to touch. I’ve always been like that, even as a child.’

And then I found his hand – strong and firm – taking mine as we continued to walk into the dark, leaving the pub lit up behind us.

Of course, I should have withdrawn it. Made my excuses and gone home, right there and then. But I was on a high after our victory. And a low because of Ed. I had to face it. My new husband wasn’t interested in me. He and Davina had been much better suited. It was her he should have married. Not me.

There was something else too. There are very few people in this world whom Joe could bear to touch. That’s what he said. Yet I was clearly one of them. And I was flattered. Why not? This was a man whom I believed had been wrongfully imprisoned. A man who was to be pitied and also admired – not least because he had decided not to press for financial compensation. Nothing, he had told the court, would bring back his ‘poor’ girlfriend, Sarah Evans. All he wanted was justice. And his freedom.

‘You’re crying,’ Joe said when I found my hand squeezing his in return.

And that was when I had told him. Told him everything about my marriage. Let down my guard. I’d like to say it was because I don’t normally drink a double on an empty stomach. I’d like to say it was because of the flush of success at winning my first big case. But the truth is that Joe was someone I could talk to.

As I had discovered, prison can do that to you. It creates a common bond. The very act of being in a place where most people fear to be makes you feel different. It creates some unlikely pairings. The fraudster and his rapist cell mate. The teacher and the murderer. The solicitor and her client.

And of course there was also that one thing that you can’t impose rules or laws upon. That physical energy which sizzled between us. An electricity I’d first felt in the visitors’ room below that HOPE poster. Something that should never exist between prisoner and lawyer. Except Joe was no longer a prisoner. He was a free man.

We were both free to do what we pleased.

I can’t even say it was rape, although I did try to resist for a few seconds. All I knew was that suddenly I was lost. I didn’t even try to pretend to myself it was love, because it was far better. Why? Because love is too fragile and can be broken too easily. Lust is more robust. Immediately gratifying. Hadn’t my past taught me that all too well?

As Joe pushed me roughly to the ground and unbuttoned my blouse, I remembered how ‘wrong’ and ‘lust’ could give you an inexplicable million-volt charge that was like nothing else. So strong that it made you melt and burn at the same time. It’s an exhilarating feeling when someone gives you permission to break all rules – especially when that person is yourself. Finally I felt free.

‘Quick,’ said Joe, soon after we’d finished. ‘Someone’s coming.’

I scrambled to my feet.

Only then, when I saw the disgusted look on the face of the approaching dog walker, did I feel the shame I should have felt before. Shame that might have saved me from this situation had I felt it sooner.

‘Go away,’ I said, my fingers trembling over my buttons. ‘Go away and never come back.’

Then I ran. Ran across the Heath, aware that I must have looked a mess. Ran down pavements and into the Tube, pressing myself against other sweaty bodies, conscious that I was smelling of ‘wrong’. Desperate to get back home for a shower. A long, hot shower to wash Joe Thomas away.

‘We must celebrate!’ Ed said when I got in. ‘Open a bottle.’ His face tightened. ‘Then we can have that talk you’ve been promising.’

The very sight of my husband’s face had filled me with such guilt that I insisted on going out for that bottle, just to get away.

Then there was the argument with Tony and Francesca outside in the corridor. That’s why I was so hard on him. Of course I felt sorry for Tony’s poor wife. But I lashed out at Tony because I recognized my own frailties in him. I despised him just as I despised myself.

The following night when I couldn’t put off that talk with Ed any more, I sat in the bathroom and tried to decide whether to leave him or not.

If I opened on a page with an odd number, I’d leave.

If it was even, I’d stay.

Page seventy-three.

Odd.

The page showed a picture of a happy family sitting round the table. The picture and the print swam before my eyes. Sunday suppers. Normal life. The kind that my parents and I should have had. The kind that Ed and I could still have if we stopped lying.

I don’t have to take the odd number fate has given me. Just as Daniel often rejected the heads. ‘You know deep down what you want, before the coin comes down,’ he used to say. ‘That’s why it’s such a great way to make a decision.’

And I knew, deep down, that despite Ed’s behaviour and mine, I still loved my husband. Joe had been lust. I shouldn’t have let myself go so far. Ed was my chance to turn my life around.

Yet sometimes you have to do something wrong before you can make things right.

That’s what I had to do now, today, just in case Joe’s tiny seed was already growing inside me.

So I came out of that bathroom and took Ed’s hand, leading him to our bed.

The following month I found I was pregnant. With a child that might belong to either man.

52 Carla

‘Carla? Can you hear me?’

It only seemed like a few minutes since someone in the ambulance had asked her the same question. But this was a different voice. This was Ed’s.

Carla’s first thought was that he had discovered the note with the spidery writing. She had put it in her bag, hadn’t she? But he might have gone through it. Ed had done that before on the pretext of ‘looking for change’.

‘It’s all right, Carla. I’m here now. And we’ve got a beautiful baby girl.’

A girl? Please no. If she had a girl it meant she might make the same mistakes that she and Mamma had. It would never end.

‘She’s very tiny, Carla. Just a few pounds. But they say she should be completely fine.’

How was this possible? She couldn’t even remember giving birth. Ed was lying.

He’d done it before to Lily. So why not to her?

His face was coming into view. He was bending over her. Kissing her cheek. His touch made her skin crawl. ‘You gave us all a terrible fright, darling.’

‘It wasn’t my fault,’ she managed to say.

There was an edge to his voice. ‘I could have lost you both.’

‘What happened?’ she murmured.

‘Baby decided to come early.’ This voice was different. Carla tried to turn round to see where it was coming from, but everything hurt. ‘Just as well for us that she did. Turned out you had a low-lying placenta, dear, so we had to give you an emergency Caesarean. Caused quite a stir, you did! Would you like to see your baby, now?’

What baby? Carla couldn’t see one. She couldn’t hear one either. She knew it. Something had gone horribly wrong.

‘Intensive Care is just round the corner, dear.’ A nurse in green uniform came into focus now. ‘Legs still a bit wobbly, are they? Let’s ease you into this wheelchair, shall we? That’s the way.’

‘Is it healthy?’ asked Carla faintly.

‘She,’ said Ed firmly, ‘is a fighter.’ But she saw the look he gave the nurse. It spelled fear.

‘Here we are, dear.’

That was a baby? Carla stared at the incubator. A little rat lay inside. Its skin was so pale and translucent that it reminded her of a dead baby bird she had once found outside the old flat when they had lived near Lily and Ed. (‘Leave it alone,’ Mamma had squealed, before walking her briskly on to the bus stop.)

This ‘thing’ was not much bigger than the width of Ed’s hand. Wires were sprouting out of it. Its eyes were closed. A mask was covering the rest of its face, if that’s what you could call it.

‘She’s on oxygen at the moment, dear,’ said the nurse gently. ‘Hopefully she’ll be able to breathe for herself in the next few weeks.’

Weeks?

‘I’m afraid you won’t be able to pick her up for some time, but you can talk to her.’

‘Babies can hear when you do that,’ butted in Ed. He sounded so knowledgeable, but at the same time smugly aware that he was the expert compared with her. ‘We used to talk to Tom all the time.’

‘But how can it hear if it’s so ill?’

‘You’d be surprised, dear. You can go home in a few days – the surgeon did a nice clean job, although you’ll need to rest and not lift anything heavy. You can visit baby every afternoon and evening.’ There was a little sigh. ‘We used to have a special place for parents to stay over, but I’m afraid that went with the cuts.’

Scarcely hearing, Carla continued to stare at the rat. Its puffed-up little stomach was rising and falling with a strange steady regularity. The rest of it could hardly be seen with the mask and wires. This was her punishment! This was what she got for taking another woman’s husband. And now she was going to be truly trapped – far more than before. How could she go back to work? Ed had already been against that idea, but it would be impossible if her child was sick.

Furiously, she turned on Ed. ‘Why did you get me pregnant?’

‘There, there,’ said the nurse, patting her shoulder. ‘You’d be surprised how many of my ladies say that. But you’ll change your mind when you get to know baby better.’

Ed was staring at her with a shocked look on his face. ‘Come on, Carla. You’ve got to be strong for our little girl.’

But this thing didn’t look like a girl – or a human being for that matter. ‘I don’t want to see it,’ she said, hearing her own voice rise in hysteria. ‘Take it away. I want my mother. Why isn’t she here? Get me the phone. Now. I need to speak to her.’

‘Carla -’

‘No! Stop being so controlling. Give me your mobile.’

Ed and the nurse were exchanging looks. What was going on?

‘Carla, darling, listen.’ He put his arm around her. ‘I didn’t want to tell you until you felt stronger. But your grandmother rang when you were in labour. I am afraid your mother has been ill.’

Carla stiffened. ‘How ill?’

‘She’s been treated for cancer for some time now. Your mother didn’t stay with an aunt that Christmas. She was actually in hospital. In fact she’s been in and out since then too.’

Her mouth went dry. ‘But she is better now? She is coming over to see her granddaughter?’

Ed tried to hold her but she pushed him away. ‘Tell me. TELL ME.’

His eyes were wet with tears. So too were the nurse’s.

‘Your mother died, Carla. Just after you gave birth. I’m so sorry.’

53 Lily

Back on the seafront I race away from Joe, seagulls screaming overhead. It’s only then that I realize something so obvious that I wonder why I haven’t thought of it before. If I can prove that Tom isn’t Ed’s child, I can surely stop him from having access. He doesn’t need to know who the real father is.

And, more importantly, I can prevent my husband’s wife from doing the same.

One small way to claw back some of my life. To take my child for my own.

But if Joe’s DNA matches, then my child would have a murderer for a father.

In the distance, a small boat bobs up and down on the waves.

That’s when another idea comes to me. Far better than the last.

54 Carla

Mamma had taken her last breath without her by her side? ‘But I never said goodbye,’ she sobbed down the phone to Nonna.

Her grandmother was weeping too. ‘She didn’t want to upset you.’ In the background, she could hear deep howls of male grief.

Nonno. He cared after all?

It transpired that they had all hidden it from her. Only now did the signs add up. Mamma’s gaunt appearance before she had left. (The cancer had just been diagnosed.) Her frail voice over the phone. Her later insistence that letters were better than expensive phone calls. Her promise that she would come over to England when the baby was born but at the moment she was ‘busy’.

And now, on top of the grief, she had to cope with this scrap. This thing.

You’ll feel different when you’re able to hold her. That’s what Ed and the nurses kept saying. But when they finally placed the rat in her arms, there was a high-pitched electronic sound. ‘It’s all right, dear,’ the nurse said. ‘It just means baby isn’t ready to come off the oxygen yet.’

It was all so scary. How could she possibly take it home if it couldn’t breathe on its own?

‘These things take time,’ said the young doctor briskly.

‘I keep telling her that,’ butted in Ed as though he were medically qualified himself.

Once more, Carla felt like a child who got everything wrong every time she opened her mouth. If only Mamma were here to help. She would know what to do.

Sometimes Carla thought they had taken her real baby away. The rat didn’t look anything like her or Ed. Even worse, they had been told that premature babies often had some ‘developmental issues’ which might not, according to the consultant, be apparent until later. How was she going to manage with the uncertainty?

Five weeks later, when Carla was paying another of her reluctant daily visits (prompted by Ed), she found a crowd of people around the incubator. This was not uncommon. Medical students were constantly being brought in to admire the smallest baby that had been born this year in the hospital. But an alarm was ringing – a different sound from the one before – and the screen next to the incubator was bleeping madly.

‘We’ve been trying to get hold of you,’ babbled a nurse. ‘But your husband and you both have your phones off. Have you thought of a name?’

Everyone had been asking her that ever since the rat had been born. But Carla had turned down all Ed’s suggestions during pregnancy, as if in denial of being pregnant at all. Now this thing was here, she still didn’t want to name it. That would mean acknowledging that it was here to stay.

‘You might like to have her baptized,’ said the nurse tensely. She was holding a form. ‘It says here that you are Catholic. The priest is here if you would like to talk to him.’

‘I don’t understand…’

‘My dear.’ A stout young man with a white clerical collar grasped both her hands as though they were intimate friends. ‘The nurse is trying to tell you that your daughter has taken a turn for the worse. Shall we ensure that she is prepared for the eternal life that is waiting for her?’

The rat was going to die? Wouldn’t that be the answer to all her problems? So why did she feel a sickening sense of dismay rising up through her?

‘It can’t.’

‘My dear, God’s plans aren’t always what we expect.’

‘Would you like to hold her, dear?’

No. She might drop it.

One of the doctors nodded to the nurse. The rat with all its wires was placed in her arms. A pair of small beady eyes stared up at her. A strangely long, almost aristocratic nose. And then Carla saw it. A tiny red hair on an otherwise bald scalp. ‘Poppy,’ she whispered. ‘She’s called Poppy. Poppy Francesca.’

Miraculously, Poppy ‘turned the corner’ as they put it, during the night.

‘You should have consulted me before you named her,’ Ed said when he finally turned up, his breath reeking of whisky.

‘I would have if you’d been there,’ she retorted, without taking her eyes off her daughter, who was now back in the incubator.

‘I was selling a painting actually.’

‘Never mind,’ said the nurse. ‘If you ask me, Poppy got what she needed. A cuddle from her mummy. Of course the doctors would say it was their skills that sorted out those lungs of hers. But there’s a lot to be said for love. For what it’s worth, I think her name is wonderful. We haven’t had a Poppy in a long time.’

‘I suppose it is rather distinctive,’ added Ed grudgingly. ‘Funny how the colour skips a generation, isn’t it? My grandfather was auburn, you know.’

Incredibly, in the following month, Poppy went from strength to strength. But as she did so, that flash of love Carla had experienced during that drama – yes, love! – waned. In its place was fear. No, Carla wanted to say, when they talked about Poppy being ‘nearly ready’ to come home. How would she cope on her own with a baby as fragile as this?

‘I know it’s hard for you, but we’ll be fine,’ Ed said as he cradled their daughter against his chest. It was all right for him. He knew what to do with a baby. But she was hopeless. And with Mamma gone, it felt as though half of her was missing. She should never have left her to come to this country.

‘Just the baby blues,’ said the health visitor when she came to visit and found Carla in floods of tears. ‘It’s very natural, especially after a tricky birth. Do let us know, though, if it continues.’

Natural? It was a complete and utter mess. On the one hand, Carla was terrified of leaving her daughter alone in case she stopped breathing. Yet if she did – what a horrible thought! – she would be free from this terrible, overwhelming responsibility.

If only she could get some sleep, she might be all right. But Poppy ‘catnapped’ rather than slept for the two or three hours that the baby books described. Every time Carla managed to close her eyes, Poppy was yelling again. It was like being on a twenty-four-hour flight without any refuelling stops. Day after day. Week after week.

‘She needs to gain more weight,’ said the health visitor. ‘Maybe a top-up bottle would help.’

So her own milk wasn’t enough? Once more, Carla could see in Ed’s face that she was a failure. Poppy’s startlingly blue eyes followed her everywhere as a double reproach.

‘Have you taken her to Mothers and Babies yet?’ asked the health visitor on another occasion.

Luckily Ed was in the gallery that time. ‘Yes,’ she lied.

But the truth was that Carla was too scared Poppy might catch something from one of the other babies at the group (there were so many awful germs out there!).

Had Mamma felt like this? If only she could ask her…

Meanwhile, she and Ed were about to lose their home. The bank was running out of patience. They would repossess next month if it wasn’t sold. That’s what the letters to Ed said. The ones he hid from her but which she’d learned to sniff out.

But she didn’t want to risk another row. When Ed got into a mood, he scared her, particularly now he was drinking even more than before. His eyes would go red and his body would shake as if it wasn’t his own. He even started talking about getting full-time custody of Tom (‘I’ve been talking to Lily about it’).

‘I couldn’t cope,’ she’d protested.

‘Have some sympathy, Carla. He’s my son and I want him with us.’

Where had the old Ed gone? Yet he was softness itself when it came to calming Poppy, whose lungs now worked full time, day and night.

‘Get some rest,’ Ed would say in a way that suggested it pleased him that Poppy responded to him and not her.

But Carla couldn’t sleep. Instead she tossed and turned and thought about what might have happened if she and Mamma had never had the misfortune to live next to Lily and Ed.

It sometimes takes time to bond with a baby. That was another sentence from one of those baby books which lined the shelves from when Tom had been born. But every time Carla picked up this tiny scrap to latch it on to her breast (the only thing that would soothe her), she felt a terrible, overwhelming sense of panic.

Her initial terror that this child would die had now been replaced by another worry. In the panic of premature labour, she had forgotten temporarily that last note with the spidery writing.

YOU AND YOUR CHILD WILL PAY .

When she had got home from the hospital, Carla found, to her relief, that it was still in her handbag, suggesting that no one else had found it.

‘It will be our secret,’ Carla told the child as it tore into her nipples, making them bleed. ‘You must say nothing.’

As for the letter writer, she was convinced that the spiky writing belonged to a woman. Someone who was on Lily’s side. One of her friends who wanted to get revenge on Lily’s behalf. Her old secretary, perhaps, who had pretended to be kind when her waters had broken. She must trust no one.

‘I am worried about you,’ Ed kept saying. ‘You’re not eating properly. Poppy won’t have enough milk.’

That could be another way for them to die, then. They could both perish from malnutrition. Then they could join Mamma in heaven.

‘She keeps dreaming about a letter,’ she overheard Ed tell the health visitor who’d been called out to check up on her. She always listened outside the door when they thought she’d gone back to bed.

‘Giving birth is a traumatic event, you know,’ came the crisp reply. ‘She’s entitled to a few nightmares.’

Nightmares? They had no idea of the turmoil churning round and round in her head. Another plan was needed. But what? There was no way out. Just an endless blackness ahead that swallowed her up, threatening to suffocate her. A woman in the paper the other day had suffocated her baby. She’d got ten years. It would have been more if she hadn’t had postnatal depression. But Carla didn’t have that. Ed said it was a myth. Lily had been fine when she had had Tom. When you had a baby you just had to accept that life had changed and get on with it.

This meant doing things his way.

‘I’ve cooked us a chicken.’ Ed took her by the elbow and steered her towards the table. ‘It will do you good. Come on, Carla. You know this is your favourite.’

Eat? How could she eat?

He poured another glass of wine.

‘Haven’t you had enough?’ she snapped.

‘What are you going to do about it then? Hit me again, like you did in front of Tom that time?’

‘I didn’t hit you.’ Carla wished he’d stop going on about it. She’d only reached out to stop him from opening another bottle, at the same time as he’d turned towards her. God knows one of them needed to be sane while they looked after Lily’s son.

‘I’m going to have another bloody drink, if only to celebrate my birthday. That’s right. You’d forgotten, hadn’t you?’

No wonder he was cross. But Poppy took up all her time. She couldn’t remember everything!

She went to the sink, pulling on her washing-up gloves, shaking with fear and rage. (‘Always look after your hands,’ Mamma used to say.)

‘Don’t wash up those pans before we’ve eaten. I’ve told you. I’ll do it myself later.’

She ran the hot water, furiously squirting washing-up liquid into the bowl.

Her heart fell at the sound of the doorbell. The man next door again? He had already complained about the rows.

‘You.’

Surely Ed wouldn’t speak that rudely to their neighbour?

‘Rupert!’ Carla felt her face flushing as she turned round to face him.

‘Forgive me for just calling in, but I found myself in the area.’

He held out a beautifully wrapped present: silver paper with curly ribbons.

Carla began to sweat with fear and excitement and terror and hope: all mixed up in an impossible way.

‘May I look at her? It’s a little girl, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Ed crisply. ‘But actually we’re about to eat so -’

‘She’s just here,’ cut in Carla.

Holy mother of God. Her husband was staring at Rupert’s red hair. Surely he wouldn’t be thinking…

Rupert’s face softened. ‘Isn’t she lovely? I hadn’t realized how small they are. Is -’

‘I said we’re about to eat.’

How rude of Ed! Flustered, Carla tried to peel off her washing-up gloves but they wouldn’t come.

‘Would you like to stay too?’ The invitation tumbled out of her mouth. Please, she wanted to say. Please. I need you. When you’ve gone, Ed will say something. There’ll be another row…

‘I think,’ said Rupert with a glance at Ed’s dark face, ‘I should go. Katie – my fiancée – will be waiting for me.’

So she was still around. All her hopes, all her desperate, crazy ideas that she’d had when Rupert had rung the bell, came crashing down.

‘Fiancée?’ scoffed Ed, barely waiting for the door to close on their visitor. ‘I’ll bet. How many times has that kid been round here?’

His voice made Poppy stir in her carrycot at the far end of the kitchen. (Ed would not let her out of their sight.)

‘What do you mean?’

Ed’s face was close now. ‘I saw you blush when he came in. I saw how you tried to speak normally.’ Spit was flying out of his mouth. ‘He has the same colour hair as our daughter. If she is our daughter.’

‘Don’t be so ridiculous. You know your grandfather had red hair. You yourself have commented on how it often skips a generation.’

He had her wrists now, squeezing them hard. ‘How very convenient! But we both know what your morals are like.’

Struggling, she spat back, ‘And what about yours? You didn’t mind leaving your wife for me, did you?’

‘And you didn’t mind tempting me away from her.’

What happened next? What happened next? How many times was she to be asked that in the next few days, the next few weeks, the next few months.

All Carla knew was this. It was sudden.

All she cared to remember was this.

There was a scream. Poppy from the carrycot. Another scream. Her own as Ed began to shake her by the shoulders.

The carving knife.

The green-handled carving knife. Another possession which Lily had left behind.

A terrible, body-shaking groan.

Blood.

And then running. Running across the park with all those thoughts racing up and down and side to side.

I hate him. I hate him.

Mamma! Where are you?

If only they could start all over again.

55 Lily

October 2015

‘A man has been found stabbed to death in his West London home. It is thought that…’

Then Tom’s shout drowns out the radio. ‘You’ve got to do it first, Mum! I’ve told you before.’

How stupid of me. I know perfectly well that Tom needs me to buckle up my seat belt before he does his. Precisely four seconds before him, actually. He times it with his watch. It’s another of his rituals. One which, on a normal day, is surely not too difficult to follow.

But for some reason I am feeling wobbly today. Perhaps I’m still tired after being in London yesterday. Perhaps it’s the impending meeting with Tom’s headmistress about the recent ‘incident’. Perhaps it’s because I’ve got a particularly tricky appointment with an NHS official this afternoon, concerning another set of lost notes following the birth of an oxygen-deprived child. Or perhaps it’s because I am infuriated by Ed’s latest declaration that he wants full-time custody of our son.

I start the engine, telling myself that there are plenty of men who live in that part of London. Stabbings happen every day. There is no reason – none at all – why it should be someone I know. But my skin has begun to form goose pimples of its own accord. At the T-junction, I take a left and then stop – over the line – just in time to allow a motorbike, which is surely going too fast, to go before me.

‘That motorcyclist could have died if you hadn’t stopped,’ comments Tom in a matter-of-fact tone.

Thanks.

‘He could have been left with only part of his brain, like Stephen,’ he continues. ‘Did you know that your skin weighs twice as much as your brain?’

He’s probably right. Tom usually is. But it’s Stephen I’m thinking of: the boy who has just joined Tom’s class. His pram had been hit by a lorry when he was just under a year old. The driver had been having a heart attack at the time. No one could blame him. Not even Stephen, who is quite happy in his own world. Not even his parents, who are devout Christians and claim it is their ‘challenge’ in life. It puts the rest of us to shame.

Including Ed. How on earth does he think he can ask for sole custody? He can barely make his father/son weekends, often cancelling at the last minute. It’s happened more and more since Carla had the baby. She hasn’t been well, apparently.

‘Look out,’ says Tom sharply, at the same time as the lorry on the other side of the road hoots loudly.

What’s happening to me? I’m not just driving badly. It’s not just the wet autumn leaves that made me skid just then. I’m completely losing concentration. But when your husband’s wife has just had a child, it does things to you. Until then, Ed and I had shared something (or rather someone) that neither of us had done with anyone else. It had created a bond which couldn’t be broken. But now he’ll be lying next to Carla, his arm around her. They will be looking at their baby – a girl, Ross tells me – with the kind of awe that Ed and I had when we first gazed at Tom. Ed will be telling her, as he told me, that she has been so brave. And he will be promising, as he did me, that he will be the best father he can possibly be.

At night, he would get up when the baby cried out. (Ed always insisted on that, bringing Tom back to bed with us so I could feed him, propped up against the pillows.) He would – I can see it so clearly! – feed his new baby daughter with milk which Carla has expressed into a bottle for night-time convenience. And he would be drawing them, sketching furiously as they slept, his charcoal sweeping over the page with love and tenderness.

It’s so unfair. I’ve always yearned for a daughter to dress up, take shopping, share confidences with. But Ed didn’t want us to have more children after Tom’s diagnosis.

Concentrate. We’re nearly at the school. Tom, who has been pretty cool up until now considering the trouble he’s in, appears distressed. I can always tell from the way he pulls out hairs from his arm. I selected one of them for the DNA test, some time ago.

I pull into the car park and face him. My son. My boy. My special boy, whom I would defend to my last breath. ‘We’ve been through this before, Tom,’ I say, looking him straight in the eyes and speaking slowly and calmly like the consultant advised. ‘We have to explain to your headmistress exactly why you hit Stephen.’

Tom’s face is set. Rebellious. Unrepentant. ‘I told you. He kicked my gym shoes out of line.’

‘But he didn’t mean to.’

‘I don’t care. He still did it. No one is allowed to touch my things.’

Don’t I know it. It means I have to buy lots of spares for when the originals are inevitably at some point rejected. Spare shoes. Spare jumpers. Spare hairbrushes.

I lean across to switch off the radio. Please God, I pray. Don’t let them give Tom another warning. My finger hovers over the ‘off’ button on the radio, but something makes me pause. It’s been half an hour since the last news announcement. In a minute, it will be time for another.

‘A man has been found stabbed to death in West London,’ says the presenter again, almost chirpily. ‘A woman has been arrested in connection with the murder.’

It’s at this moment that my phone rings.

‘You can’t get that.’ Tom taps his watch. ‘We’re already thirty seconds late.’

Caller Unknown.

I normally get this on the few occasions that Ed (or occasionally Carla) has rung to make arrangements about Tom’s weekends. Ed started withholding his number when calling me some months ago, perhaps because I’d sometimes ignored his calls. If it’s urgent, I tell myself, Ed – or whoever else it is – will ring again. Then I gather my notes, even though I’ve already primed myself, and walk across the playground with my son, who has got hold of my phone and is fiddling with it. At any other time I’d try to get it off him. But I’m too focused on the imminent meeting.

‘Thank you for coming,’ says the head.

Her face is kind, but she’s rather frumpy-looking. One of those women, I observe as I watch Tom positioning his chair so it’s in a straight line with mine, who wear knee-length woolly dresses with flat ankle boots. She claims to be an expert in Asperger syndrome, but at times I have the feeling she doesn’t get Tom because she addresses him with emotion-driven questions. Not a great idea, as I’ve found out to my cost.

‘I’d like to launch straight in, if that’s all right,’ she begins. ‘Tom, perhaps you’d like to tell me again why you hit Stephen even though we don’t tolerate violence in this school.’

Tom stares at her as if she’s stupid. ‘I’ve already explained. He kicked my gym shoes out of line.’

Did I say Tom doesn’t do emotion? Yet his eyes are welling up and his neck is going blotchy. Moving things in Tom’s book is against the law. His law. Tom’s Law, which only he understands.

The head is taking notes. I do the same. Our pens are competing. My son versus this woman who dresses so badly.

‘But that doesn’t excuse hitting someone.’

‘Carla hit Dad the other week. He wanted another drink and she was telling him not to.’

There’s a silence. Our pens stop moving at the same time.

‘Who is Carla?’ asks the head in a dangerously neutral voice.

‘My husband’s wife,’ I hear myself say.

The head raises her eyebrows. They need plucking, I notice. They’re grey and bushy.

‘I mean, my ex-husband’s wife,’ I add. It still feels odd to say it. How can someone else be Ed’s wife? How is it possible that Carla can be wearing his ring? Sharing a bed is one thing. But marriage? To the child who used to live next door?

The head’s voice is deceptively gentle. ‘Do you find it difficult, Tom, now your father is married to someone else?’

I rise to my feet, my hand on my son’s shoulder. ‘I’m not sure you should be asking questions like this. Not without an educational psychologist.’

Her eyes are locking with mine. I can see that behind the frumpy skirt and the boots there is a will of steel. I should have seen that before. Was I not frumpy once?

Suddenly a dog barks. At first I don’t twig. But then I remember Tom fiddling with my phone in the playground. He must have changed the ringtone. Again. This time it sounds like a Baskerville hound.

Ross.

The head’s eyes are disapproving. Tom is tipping his chair in deep anxiety.

‘Sorry,’ I say, fumbling to switch it off. But somehow I press the speakerphone button instead.

‘Lily?’

‘May I ring you back?’ I make an apologetic face at the head and turn it off speakerphone. ‘I’m in a meeting.’

‘Not really.’

My mouth goes dry. Something’s happened. I know it.

‘I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news.’

‘Tell me,’ I want to say. But the words won’t come out. The head is staring. Tom’s chair is about to fall.

‘It’s Ed. There’s no easy way of saying this, I’m afraid. He’s dead. He’s been murdered.’

‘Dead?’ I repeat out loud.

Tom’s chair is back on the ground but his right index finger is digging round his teeth. It’s a sign of stress.

‘Murdered?’ I whisper.

‘Yes.’

A trickle of wee is running down my leg. Not in the headmistress’s study! It seems, ridiculously, more important than this terrible news.

Then the radio announcement comes back to me. The one in the car when Tom and I were parking.

A man has been found stabbed to death in his West London home…

No. NO. People on the radio bear no relation to people in real life. Victims of crashes on the motorway or stabbings in Stockwell, they all belong to other families. Not to mine. Not my husband who isn’t my husband any more.

‘Carla has been arrested.’ Ross sounds like he can’t believe it either.

And then the radio announcement continues in my head. A woman has been arrested in connection with the murder.

Tom is tugging at my sleeve now. ‘Why is your face funny, Mum?’

‘In a minute, Tom.’

Cupping the phone, I turn away from the head and my son. ‘She… she did it?’ I whisper, my words falling out around themselves.

I can sense Ross nodding. See him now standing there. Trying to hold himself together.

‘She’s in a police cell. But that’s not all.’

What? I want to say. What else can possibly have happened that compares with this?

‘Carla wants to see you, Lily.’

There’s a strange sound.

As though someone has just sat on the floor, heaving a big sigh.

If I didn’t know her better, I’d think it was a ‘giving up’ kind of sigh.

Listen, I try to say. Maybe we can sort this out together.

But my words won’t come out.

I don’t have enough breath to speak.

What if I’m dead by the time they find me?

Will they work out what really happened?

56 Carla

No comment.

That’s what you told your clients to say when they were arrested. It was one of the few parts of criminal law that had stuck.

‘No comment,’ she repeated. It was becoming a refrain. A tune that accompanied the pulse that was beating on both sides of her head.

‘Tell me what happened,’ said a voice. It was a woman’s voice, coming from a dark-blue suit sitting opposite her at the desk. But she must not look at her. If she did, she might say something she should not.

Breathe deeply.

No comment.

Inside her head, the events of the last few hours rolled over and over again like a film repeated in quick succession.

Rupert’s visit.

Ed yelling.

A knife.

Blood.

Poppy yelling.

Ed groaning.

A face.

A man’s face.

Then running.

The sudden realization that she’d left Poppy behind.

Mamma’s voice in her head.

Telling her to get rid of the gloves.

A hand on hers.

A firm hand.

Sirens.

Handcuffs.

People staring.

The shame of the police car.

No comment.

Stairs going down.

A mattress.

Morning.

A desk.

Sharp voice on the other side.

No comment.

Relief.

Someone who might believe her side of the story.

Only then did she lift her face, staring at the woman in front of her across the desk. She had a mole in the middle of her right cheek. It stood out like a third eye.

Carla addressed herself to that. Find someone’s weak points. The bits that made them different. It was what they had done to her at school. So it was only fair that she did the same to others. It was how you won.

‘It’s my right to see a solicitor,’ Carla said firmly to the mole. ‘Here’s the number. They’ll find her.’

‘Her?’ said the voice.

‘Lily Macdonald.’

The dark-blue suit looks down at the paperwork on the desk.

‘Same surname as yours?’

Carla nodded. ‘Yes. Same surname.’ And then, as if someone else was moving her lips, she added, ‘My husband’s wife. The first one.’

57 Lily

‘Sugar? Sellotape? Sharp implements? Chewing gum?’

What happened to the crisps? Maybe chewing gum has been used as bribes here instead. Or perhaps it can be employed for other purposes. It’s been a while since I’ve visited a client in a police cell. Since leaving London, my work has revolved around parents like me. Families whose lives have been torn apart by trying to provide for children who aren’t like others. Those who don’t get what they’re entitled to from the system. Not only babies who are damaged at birth and whose hospital notes then ‘disappear’. But children like Tom whose loved ones have to fight to make sure they go to the right school and who, in the meantime, struggle for support.

Cases involving murder or theft or bankruptcy or money laundering – all of which I dealt with at the London practice – now seem a long way back in my memory.

But here I am. Showing proof of identity to the policewoman at the desk. Still not sure why I am here. Why I’m not at home with Tom (the head has given him a week off school in view of ‘the circumstances’). Why I’ve left Mum to console him (although Tom has been remarkably matter of fact, asking questions like, ‘What will happen to Dad’s brain now he is dead?’). Why I’m in a police station.

About to see my husband’s wife.

A great deal has happened since that night in London when I found Carla and my husband outside the hotel. The divorce. Ross’s news that Carla was expecting. Their daughter’s birth. Ed’s death. It sounds so unreal that I have to repeat it again.

The timescale is neat. Agonizingly so. Almost as if the whole thing had been planned with one of those clever little fertility charts. Birth. Death. Two opposites which have more in common than we realize. Both are beginnings. Both are ends. Both are miracles which we cannot fully explain.

And that is, I suddenly understand, exactly why I am here. I’m not here because of Carla’s demand. (She’d actually called Ross after I hadn’t picked up. Presumably she’d been the ‘Caller Unknown’.) No. I’m here because I want to look her in the eye. Want to ask why she did it. Want to tell her that she’s ruined three lives. That she’s a bitch. A bitch who had her eye on my husband from the minute she saw him. A child with the heart of an evil adult.

Yes, I wanted Ed to be punished, but I never meant this. Murder. I grieve for that sandy-haired man who took me by the hand at the party all those years ago. I can’t believe he is dead. Or that it took his death to show me that I still – dammit – love him, even though I don’t know why.

There was a woman at my old office who came in red-eyed one morning. ‘Her ex-husband has died,’ one of the secretaries had whispered. Back then I couldn’t understand why she was so upset. But now I do. The fact that you no longer have a right to grieve for someone you once shared your life with makes the pain even worse.

We go down a flight of stairs. Stone stairs that make my high heels ring out. When I first started making police station visits, cells were no more than a stained mattress on the ground; a window slatted across with iron bars; and – if you were lucky – a plastic cup of water.

This cell has a window without bars. A water cooler. Sitting on the bed, swinging her legs and looking for all the world like a bored model waiting her turn to go on the catwalk, is Carla. I say ‘model’, yet her hair is matted. Her usually glossy lips are pale, devoid of lipstick. She smells of sweat.

Even so, she still has a certain something. A style which rises above her squalid surroundings. A presence which suggests she has far better things to do than be here.

‘I didn’t do it.’ Her voice is low. Husky. Challenging.

‘Thank you for coming, Lily,’ I say, as if I’m reminding a sulky teenager of her manners. ‘Thank you for driving all the way up from Devon to see the woman who murdered your husband.’

She tilts her face at a certain angle, again reminding me of a difficult adolescent. ‘I’ve told you.’ Her eyes are on mine. There isn’t a blink. Her voice is calm. More confident than it was a second ago. ‘There’s been a mistake. I didn’t do it.’

I laugh out loud. She sounds for all the world like the child I first knew. The little Italian girl with the big brown eyes and innocent smile. Mamma is at work. The pencil case belongs to me.

Lies. All lies.

My anger bubbles up, spitting itself out of my mouth. ‘Surely you don’t really expect me to believe that?’

She shrugs, as if I’ve suggested she’s taken the wrong turning on a road. ‘It’s true.’

‘Then who did do it?’

Another shrug, followed by an examination of each one of her nails as she speaks. ‘How should I know? I think I saw someone – a man.’

A prickle of unease runs through me. Is this one of her stories again?

I sit forward on the edge of my chair. ‘Carla, my husband is dead. Tom is distraught because his father has been murdered.’

Then she looks up with that same cool, cat-like stare. ‘You’re wrong.’

A beat of hope springs up inside. Ed isn’t dead? Someone, somewhere, has got it all wrong?

‘He’s not your husband any more. He’s mine.’

I make a ‘pah’ noise. ‘I was married to him for fifteen years. We’ve brought up a child together.’

For a minute, I stop, remembering the paternity test. I squash the guilt back into its box. Then I continue. ‘You were a plaything. A nothing. You were with him for the blink of an eye. That’s no marriage.’

‘It is in the eyes of the law. And you’re forgetting something. We have a child.’ Her fists clench by her side. ‘They’ve sent my daughter to foster-parents. I need you to help me get her back.’

I try to bury a small stirring of sympathy. ‘A baby,’ I spit. ‘You’d only just started. You haven’t had to go through what I have. Haven’t had to give up everything to look after a demanding child while Ed -’

‘Ha!’ Carla breaks in furiously. ‘Don’t be so self-righteous. I’ve paid my dues too. Ed wasn’t an easy man to live with. The drinking, the lies, the mood swings, the jealousy, the so-called artistic temperament…’

So he was the same to her too? I feel a shot of pleasure. Yet when it comes from her mouth, I find myself wanting to defend him. He was under pressure… he felt everything too deeply… Why is it that I seem to remember the best side of my ex-husband instead of the bad bits? Yet I am forced to agree that he had his defects.

‘He was so controlling,’ shudders Carla. ‘And he was a bastard to you.’

This isn’t a word I care for, but I find myself nodding. Then I stop. Time to be professional. ‘Controlling?’ I repeat. ‘Is that why you killed him?’

She leans forward now. Her hands are clenched into two small balls. I can smell her breath. Minty. Fearful.

‘Someone was there. I told you. I saw a man.’

‘Well, that’s convenient. What exactly did this man look like?’

‘Can’t remember.’

She sits back now, supported by the wall, crossing her legs on the bed. Cool. Too cool. ‘I shouldn’t be here. I’m in shock. By the way, do you have a hairbrush on you?’

A hairbrush? Seriously?

‘I shouldn’t be here either,’ I say, getting to my feet. It’s true. I should be at the hospital, in the morgue. Identifying my husband instead of allowing Ross to do it.

‘No. Please. Stay.’

Her hand reaches out and catches mine. It’s cold. Stone cold. I try to pull it back, but it is clutching mine, continental style, as if we have just met at a dinner party and discovered we have a mutual friend.

‘I need you, Lily. I want you to be my lawyer.’

‘Are you insane? Why should I help you? You stole my husband.’

‘Exactly. But if you defend me, it’s a message to the rest of the world that even the woman I wronged believes I didn’t kill Ed. The barrister that you pick will trust you. And you’re a good person. You have a reputation for saving the underdog.’

Her eyes flicker. ‘And that’s what I am now.’ Gone is the confident young woman. The latchkey kid is back.

But I’m still getting my head round all this. ‘Let’s say you are telling the truth. What’s in it for me? Why should I help the woman that destroyed my family?’

‘Because you lost all those defence cases before you moved out of London.’ Grown-up Carla now steps in. ‘You might be doing all right with negligence cases. But this is a chance to prove you can do it again with a murder.’

She looks at me like she knows she’s hit a nerve.

‘Please, Lily. Do it for Poppy if you can’t do it for me.’

‘Who?’

‘My child. Our child.’

I hadn’t known her name. Deliberately. I’d asked Ross not to tell me. It made her less real.

‘If I go to prison, I’ll lose my daughter.’ Carla’s eyes fill with tears. ‘I… I didn’t feel well for a time. I wasn’t… I wasn’t a great mother. But now my own mother is dead.’

I hadn’t known that. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I murmur. ‘How?’

‘Cancer.’

Carla lifts her big brown eyes to mine. ‘I miss her so much! I can’t let Poppy miss me like that. Please, Lily. You’re a mother. Help me.’

‘Maybe,’ I say, feeling an almost pleasurable harshness coming out of my mouth, ‘foster care is the best place for her.’

Her eyes bore into mine. ‘You don’t mean that, Lily. I know you don’t.’

Damn her. She’s right. This is a baby we’re talking about. A baby who will be screaming with anguish because she can’t smell her mother. Children, however old they are, need their parents. How would Tom cope if I wasn’t around?

‘But I’m not sure I believe that you’re innocent.’

‘You have to.’ Carla’s hands are tightening even more firmly round my wrist. She’s a small girl again. I am the older woman. Too old to be a sister. Too young to be a mother. Yet we have so much in common. It’s as if her life is inextricably bound to mine and, however hard I try to shake her off, she’s always there. An evil shadow? Or a child who’s been misunderstood?

I run my hands through my hair. ‘How do you know I wouldn’t put up a poor defence? To make sure you’re convicted to get back at you.’

Her eyes are trusting. ‘Because you’re too moral for that. And because you’re also ambitious. Think about it, Lily. You could go down in history as the lawyer who helped acquit your husband’s new wife.’

It bears, I must say, a certain ring to it. And yet there are numerous holes in this argument, so many flaws in the defence. I also don’t care for the fact that Carla keeps using my name. It’s a legal technique to get a client onside. And she knows it.

‘There’s still the small matter of who murdered Ed if you didn’t do it.’

Even as I say the words, they don’t feel true. My husband – because that’s how I still see him – can’t really be gone. He’ll be at home. My old home. Sketching. Breathing.

Carla’s grip is strong for one so small. I’m still trying to shrug it off, but she’s determined, it seems, to hang on to me as if I am a lifebelt. ‘Ed was up to his eyes in debt. I don’t think the money was always borrowed from official places. Maybe someone wanted it back. Surely the police could find out. And I saw that man at the door. Someone must have seen something.’

She seems so certain. My legs begin to shake as if someone else is rocking them.

‘There’s something else too. I’ve been receiving anonymous notes.’ Carla’s eyes are locked on mine. ‘They implied something bad would happen to me and Poppy because of what I’d done to you.’

I go hot, then cold.

‘Have you kept them?’

‘Only the last. Then I tore it up, like the others, because I was scared Ed might go mad. But I’d recognize the handwriting again.’

Handwriting?

A paralysing chill crawls down the length of my body, eating it up, inch by inch.

‘You can’t afford me.’ I’m clutching at straws now. ‘I can’t do it for free. My firm will need to charge you.’

Those eyes now glint. She can tell she’s winning me over. Suddenly I know what she’s going to say before she says it. ‘Ed’s sketches! The ones he gave me as a child. They’re worth something now. I will sell them to prove my innocence!’

It tastes, I have to admit, of the most delicious irony.

58 Carla

Of course, Carla told herself, she hadn’t meant all that stuff about needing Poppy and getting her back. That was just to get Lily onside.

For the first time in months, she was finally feeling more like her old self. With Ed gone, she was no longer a child who did everything wrong. She no longer had Poppy’s screams ringing in her ears day and night: a painful reminder, as if she needed one, that if it hadn’t been for getting pregnant, she would still be free. Without the child, she was sleeping better, although her dreams were still punctuated by Mamma. Sometimes she would sit bolt upright in the night, convinced her mother was still alive. Then she would remember. If only, she sobbed, hot tears streaming down her face, she could have been with Mamma at the end.

Meanwhile, she had to convince the judge that she was innocent.

It wasn’t easy being a defendant instead of a lawyer, Carla soon realized through this haze of grief. If only she understood more about what was going on. If only she’d specialized in criminal law, not employment.

Now, as Lily prepared for the bail hearing – to determine whether she had to wait in prison until her case was tried – Carla attempted to remember the murder cases she’d covered at college.

‘Surely all I have to do is plead “Not Guilty”,’ she protested to Lily in the police cell.

‘It’s not as simple as that.’ Lily glanced at her notes. ‘The judge will look at the evidence – like the front and back doors, which don’t look as though they’ve been forced – and then decide if you pose a risk.’

‘A risk?’ she pouted. ‘Who am I going to hurt?’

‘That’s the point, Carla. The judge doesn’t know you from Adam. For all he knows, you’re a husband-killer. It’s unusual to get bail for a murder charge. But not impossible.’

Lily was getting frustrated. Carla could see that. Better not push it, she told herself. She’d been amazed, frankly, when Lily had agreed to take her on. And she was lucky – or so Lily told her – that the bail hearing was happening so fast.

When she saw the judge, he would surely see she was no murderer. Lily had brought in some shampoo and a hairdryer; a hairbrush too, although it was one of those thin wand designs instead of her usual paddle brush. Lily had also lent her a dull brown calf-length skirt, even though Carla had specifically described the one she’d wanted from her own wardrobe. ‘This one is more demure,’ Lily had told her brusquely. ‘It all makes a difference.’

She had been trying. Carla had to concede that. What was it that had swayed her? The ‘Ed was a bastard’ bit? The baby bit? Or the argument that taking on her case would help Lily’s career?

Maybe some of each.

It would have been easier, though, if Lily had been nicer to her instead of being all brusque and cold. Cold… Ed’s body would be cold now. It didn’t seem possible. None of this seemed possible. Any minute now, she’d wake up at home. Not the ‘home’ that had once belonged to Lily and Ed. But real home.

Italy home.

Sunshine streaming in through the shutters; the sounds of children walking past on the way to school; the old man from next door grumbling about the tourists; and Mamma. Beautiful Mamma, calling her in that sing-song voice. ‘Carla! Carla!’

‘Carla Giuliana Macdonald. Do you plead guilty or not guilty?’

Were they really in front of the judge already? Carla looked around the courtroom. It was so easy to travel in your head. So easy to blank everything out.

They were all looking at her now. Far away. And then close. Out and then in. The room was swaying. The handrail in front of her in the defence box was slippery from the sweat on her hands. There was a loud ringing in her ears. ‘Not guilty,’ she managed.

And then the room danced backwards and forwards as if someone was stretching it out and in again, like the concertina the old man used to play in the square by the fountain back home…

The first thing Carla saw when she opened her eyes was Lily. Lily in a smart navy suit that could have been black unless you were looking closely.

‘Well done,’ Lily said.

It was difficult to know if she was being sarcastic or not.

Carla looked around to give herself time. They weren’t in a police cell. Or the court. They were in a room that looked a bit like an office.

‘You managed to get the judge’s sympathy with that rather dramatic faint. Luckily for you, your grandfather put up the bail.’

Nonno? Carla began to sweat again. ‘He knows of this?’

‘The news is all over the place. The press is having a field day. They’re outside the court right now. Waiting for us, cameras at the ready.’

Lily’s eyes were bright. Glazed like an animal’s, although Carla could not work out if she was in search of prey or being hunted herself. The thought made her uneasy. ‘ “Ménage à trois in the courtroom,” they’re calling it. Someone’s got wind of the fact that we shared a husband.’ There was a hoarse laugh. ‘I’d like to say it was at different times, but there was some overlap, wasn’t there?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Did you say something?’ Lily was standing over her like a teacher. ‘I didn’t quite catch that. Would you mind saying that again?’

‘I said I’m sorry.’

Lily put her head to one side. ‘And you really think that a simple apology wipes the slate clean; that it atones for the wreckage of my marriage and the effect on my son?’

‘It wasn’t easy being married to Ed.’

‘If you go on like that, you’ll make everyone think you did kill Ed – including me.’ Lily’s tone was sharp, but Carla could tell she’d hit a nerve. It was a start. Slow but sure. Employment law had taught her that. Begin by befriending the other side. Especially if it was really your own side…

‘Right. Let’s get going, shall we? Look straight ahead when we go out and don’t, whatever you do, say anything to anyone. Ready?’

Lily strode ahead confidently as they followed the police officer out of the courtroom, across the lobby and into the street. At first Carla thought the sun was strong. But then, when she put down her hand, she could see the flashes. Cameras. A sea of faces. Voices calling out.

‘Carla, is it true that your solicitor used to be married to your husband?’

‘Carla, who do you think killed your husband if you didn’t?’

‘Lily, why have you taken on your ex-husband’s wife? Have you always been friends?’

Carla started as Lily grabbed her arm. Firmly. Painfully. ‘In the car. Now.’

Somehow they made their way through, down the steps and into the silver car waiting at the bottom.

‘You’ve got it all organized,’ Carla said with grudging admiration. Lily was in the front, her face turned to the side, looking out at the sea of people. Then she seemed to freeze.

‘What?’ Carla asked.

Lily went pink. ‘Nothing.’ Then she turned round so her back was facing Carla.

Lily had seen something, Carla told herself. Or someone. Who? She tried to look herself, but the car had moved on, swiftly gliding through the traffic leaving London.

It would be best, Lily told her as they drove, if she came to stay with her in Devon. It would be quieter there, away from the crowds. They could work on the case together. They could, if she wanted, even apply to have Poppy living with them.

‘You would do that for me? Have Ed’s child living with us?’

Carla’s heart sank. Poppy with her blue, all-seeing eyes was the last person she needed. She might make her mind go all strange again.

‘Why not? It’s not her fault.’

Lily had it all worked out.

Little did she know.

59 Lily

I have to admit that Carla’s fears are not unfounded. It would be easy to take on my husband’s wife’s case and put up such an obviously weak defence that she would go down.

But that’s not the way to do it.

‘Let me make this perfectly clear,’ I say to her as we sit in my parents’ sitting room overlooking the sea. She’s curled up in my chair, the pink velvet one that I’ve always sat in since childhood. Yet it suits Carla perfectly. You’d think, to look at her, that she’s on holiday. Stretching back in the sunlight which pours through the picture windows, acting as though she is a guest instead of the client I’ve taken in – much to my mother’s surprise – while preparing for the case.

‘You need to tell me everything,’ I continue. ‘No holding back. In return, I will do my best to defend you.’

Her eyes narrow. ‘How do I know that? Supposing you really want me to lose?’

‘If you’re worried about that, why did you ask me to represent you?’

‘I told you. Because you knew what Ed was like and because people trust you.’

Ed. Once more, his name gives me a pang. Why is it possible to care for someone who had hurt you so badly?

‘And I’m telling you, Carla, that if I take a case on, I put everything into it.’ I pause, staring out across the sea. There’s a stream of yachts like a row of bobbing ducks. The sailing club always goes out on a Saturday afternoon. Tom loves to watch, although he asks persistent questions about why the boats can float on the water and why fish live beneath. He’s down there on the front, right now, with Mum. Poppy too, in the old Silver Cross pram that Mum’s dug out. In fact, she’s one of the reasons I’m doing this.

I don’t want to like Ed’s child. I really don’t. But from the minute I saw her with her cute red hair and my husband’s stubby fingers, I felt something tug at me. This was the daughter we should have had together. This was the child that might have come along if we hadn’t had our hands full with Tom.

It helps that Poppy bears little resemblance to her mother. Odd, too, that the child screams every time Carla picks her up. And that Carla winces every time she holds her daughter.

‘Of course I’ll tell you everything.’ Carla’s voice cuts into my thoughts. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’

Sometimes it’s hard to know if this woman is as bright as everyone seems to think she is.

‘Because most people are hiding something,’ I snap.

‘I wouldn’t.’ Her eyes meet mine in a deadlock. ‘I’m telling you the truth.’

I’m telling you the truth. Wasn’t that what Joe Thomas had said when I’d first met him? Joe, who’d been in the crowd outside the court. Watching me.

My eyes go back to the sea. In the distance, I can see the cliffs. They’re red. Angry. Large chunks of them have been falling into the sea in the last few years. People have been losing their back gardens.

Far worse to lose a husband. It doesn’t matter that Ed was married to this woman after me. I was his first wife. I came first.

‘I once had a client who lied to me.’ I make a half laugh. ‘Others have probably done the same, but I know this one did because he told me after the case. It was an appeal. He’d already served a few years in prison, but I got him off. And then he told me that he had done it after all.’

Carla is staring at me. ‘Did he go back to prison?’

I shake my head. ‘He should have done. But I couldn’t do anything because of double jeopardy. He couldn’t be re-tried for the same offence.’

The phone rings. It’s the barrister I’ve been waiting to hear from. I’ve decided to act as his junior counsel rather than be totally in charge. As I told Carla, not all judges are keen on solicitors defending murder trials, despite the Higher Rights qualification. Closed shop and all that.

We speak briefly and then I put the phone down, turning to Carla. ‘Looks like we’ve got to get a move on. The case has been brought forward. You’re obviously a high priority to the powers that be. We’ve got just over two months to prepare.’

‘I trust you, Lily. You can do it. You were always the best in the practice.’ Carla stretches out, artfully crossing one slim leg over the other as though flaunting her body in front of me. The same legs that would have wrapped themselves round my husband’s.

‘Why have you brought her here?’ my mother keeps asking. ‘I don’t understand.’

Of course, it’s not just because of Poppy with her gummy smile. It’s because I want to make Carla suffer. I want her to live in a house surrounded by photographs of Ed and me. Photographs that I once stored and have now re-hung.

I want her to live with her husband’s ex-wife: to hear me talk about times when she wasn’t there. I want her to feel my parents’ disapproving glares.

But most of all, I want her to know what it’s like to live with Tom, whose life changed for ever when she stole his father.

And it’s working. I can see that in Carla’s eyes. For as much as I’d like to believe that ‘the Italian girl grown up’ is bad through and through, I suspect that she’s capable of feeling as much guilt as you and me.

60 Carla

April 2016

‘So tell me, Carla. What exactly do you remember from the night that Ed Macdonald was murdered?’

Carla knew this off pat. Hadn’t she and Lily gone over it again and again in the library for weeks on end, while Lily’s mother cared for Poppy?

She would much rather be there right now than in court. The prosecution barrister, who had just asked her this question, was staring at her with icy disdain. The journalists outside had, she was certain, already branded her as guilty. Glancing up at the gallery, she spotted a woman with long dark curls. Mamma! she nearly called out.

But then the woman turned and Carla could see that it was not her after all. ‘You often get complete strangers coming in to see a case,’ Lily had told her. ‘They are simply curious.’

Strangely, it had been Lily’s mother (‘Call me Jeannie’) who had helped her through her grief during her stay in Devon. ‘I know what it is to have experienced loss,’ she had said after her initially cool welcome. ‘But you must remember that you are a mother yourself now. Us mothers have to be strong.’

Thanks to Jeannie, Carla had also learned that the noise of the vacuum cleaner could sometimes stop Poppy’s terrible crying (amazing!) and that babies were much tougher than she had thought. ‘You’re only nervous about picking her up because she was so small and poorly at the beginning,’ Jeannie had said. ‘But Poppy’s really thriving now, isn’t she? What a lovely smile!’

Tom had helped too. This big lumbering stepson of hers, who asked strange questions and did odd things, was mesmerized by Poppy. At first she’d been scared he might hurt her, but then his clumsy attempts at spooning mouthfuls of mush into her mouth, Poppy giggling all the time, made Carla realize that babies really were hardier than they looked.

They’d all shown her such kindness: incredible really, considering she had stolen Lily’s husband. ‘They felt Ed should have behaved more responsibly,’ Lily had said curtly one day.

Now Carla took another look at the gallery. She’d never been introduced to Ed’s family. ‘We don’t have much to do with each other any more,’ he had once said. But perhaps he was embarrassed about leaving his wife and son. Either way, she had no idea whether they were here or not. Maybe they were the ones at the front who were staring at her.

Holding herself even straighter, Carla turned away. But inside she was frozen with fear. Who would look after Poppy if she went to prison? Nonno and Nonna were too old. They were too frail to even come to the hearing. ‘We both love you very much,’ her grandmother had written. ‘Your grandfather may not show it because he is proud. But we know you cannot have committed this terrible crime. You will be set free.’

Would she? For the first time, Carla began to wonder if she had made the right choice in hiring Lily. It had felt clever at the time, but now she was here, in the dock, the doubts were crowding in. Lily had once had a reputation for being one of the best. But she was out of practice. And what about the barrister she’d chosen? Lily was constantly passing notes to him, indicating that he hadn’t always said something he should have done, or had omitted something else. She would have liked Lily to be the lead barrister, but it was better, Lily had told her, that she acted as junior counsel. The very fact that she was handling her case at all had caused a flurry of interest in both the press and the court. Even the judge had questioned it at the beginning of the proceedings. ‘I believe you are representing your husband’s second wife,’ he had said. ‘Couldn’t this be construed as a conflict of interest?’

Lily had warned her this might happen. And she had clearly been ready for the question. ‘Not at all, My Lord. My client specifically asked me to represent her. She felt we shared common ground.’

There had been a ripple of laughter through the gallery at this. But it wasn’t funny. It was true.

Back to the prosecution’s question. What did she remember from the night Ed was murdered?

‘I’ve already said in my statement.’

There was a frown from Lily’s direction. ‘Always be respectful,’ she had said. ‘Be prepared to go over and over the facts.’

Carla gathered herself. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that I am so tired.’

She flashed a smile – one of her best – at a young man in the jury who had been eyeing her up since the trial began. He was on her side. ‘Dress soberly,’ Lily had said. But she’d been unable to bring herself to wear the awful outfit that had been presented to her. Instead, she had insisted on wearing a chic jacket and her favourite figure-hugging black skirt. It was attracting, she could tell, a lot of attention.

‘Is it possible to sit down while I am giving evidence?’

The judge gave a brief nod. Thank goodness he was a man. She stood more chance of getting him onside too, providing she played her cards right.

‘Ed and I were at home together. He was drunk again.’ Her eyes closed. ‘He began yelling at me. Insisting that our baby wasn’t his…’ Her eyes brimmed with tears.

‘And was he the father of your child?’

Carla’s chin jerked up. ‘Of course. I loved my husband. I would never have been unfaithful to him. I will take a DNA test, if you like, to prove it.’

The prosecutor was walking up and down. ‘But is it not true that on the night of the murder, your former boyfriend Rupert Harris paid you a visit at home? Were you thinking of leaving your husband for him?’

Carla was so shocked that for a minute she couldn’t speak. Her own barrister seemed taken aback too. He was a young man who kept looking at his notes as if nervous of forgetting something. But according to Lily, he was ‘just right for the job’.

‘No,’ she finally managed to say. ‘Rupert was just a friend from college. Besides, I knew he had just got engaged.’

The horrid prosecution barrister raised his eyebrows as if to indicate that he doubted whether this would put her off. ‘Please tell us what happened next, Mrs Macdonald.’

She glanced at the jury. There was a woman with a pinched face sitting next to the sympathetic-looking young man. Carla addressed herself to her. ‘Ed was shouting at me. He began to shake my shoulders. His fingers were hurting me. I was so scared…’ She paused and pressed her hand to her chest. ‘I pushed him away, but he fell against the wall. He was drunk. He couldn’t balance properly. His head began to bleed and I felt terrible. So I tried to stem the blood with a cloth. But he pushed me away again. His eyes were blazing with anger.’ She paused again. They had to believe her. They had to.

‘Then… then he picked up the carving knife, the one he’d just used to carve the chicken.’

She clutched at her throat, as if he was brandishing it in front of her right now. ‘I thought he was going to kill me.’

The court was deathly quiet.

‘Then I heard the door open…’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Per certo.’

‘In English please, Mrs Macdonald.’

‘Sorry. I am certain.’

Carla wet her lips. This was the tricky bit, Lily had warned. The part that the jury might not be sympathetic to. ‘I ran out to the hallway. There was a man standing there. I didn’t know what was happening, I thought he wanted to hurt me too. I was so scared.’ A sob escaped through her lips. ‘Then I panicked and ran.’

The prosecutor’s face was impassive. Blank. ‘Can you describe this man?’

‘I’ll try.’ Carla’s voice trembled. ‘He was quite tall with dark hair and brown eyes – I can’t remember much more, I wish I could!’

‘So do we all, Mrs Macdonald.’

What Carla didn’t say – Lily had advised her not to, as she said it would muddy the waters – was that the more she thought about it, the more she felt that she remembered him from somewhere.

‘Did you take your baby with you when you made this desperate run?’

That wasn’t fair. He knew she hadn’t.

‘No,’ whispered Carla, and collapsed into sobs.

There were disapproving murmurings among the jury.

This wasn’t good. Somehow she had to make them understand what she had gone through. Forcing herself, Carla lifted her tear-stained face. ‘I had postnatal depression after my baby was born. I told my barrister that.’ A large sob escaped her mouth. ‘And my mother died in Italy of cancer on the very day I gave birth. I didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye. I know I shouldn’t have run off and left Poppy behind. But I just wasn’t thinking straight…’

Carla had her head in her hands, although her fingers were open wide enough for her to look at the jury. Instead of disdain or disbelief, the woman with the pinched face was weeping quietly into a tissue. Was it possible that she had had similar troubles?

Carefully, she started speaking again through her tears. ‘It was wet and cold. I wanted to go back for my baby, but I thought I heard footsteps behind me in the park. So I ran into a pub for help. Someone called the police, but they arrested me! For his murder…’ Great sobs were coming out of her mouth now. Hysterical huge gulps. There were murmurs of sympathy from the jury. Someone handed her a glass of water. Her legs gave way.

‘I think,’ said the judge softly, ‘we should take a break here.’

She had done well, the barrister had told her, his face looking flushed with excitement. Very well. The jury looked as though they were on her side. Mind you, you could never tell.

‘Does he know what he’s doing?’ she asked Lily later.

‘Carla, what have I said before? You’ve got to trust me.’

The trial went on and on. ‘Six days,’ Lily had predicted. Right now it was on its tenth.

The worst, after her own testimony, had been when Rupert was called. ‘Yes, I did care for Carla once upon a time,’ he had told the court. ‘But now I am happily married. My wife was my fiancée when I called in with a present for Carla and Ed’s new baby. I was surprised by the tense atmosphere. Ed had clearly been drinking and didn’t make me feel welcome. So I left after a few minutes.’ He spoke rapidly, flashing nervous glances up at a girl with blonde hair in the gallery. Instinctively, Carla knew that he was torn. He couldn’t be too nice about her, in case his wife thought he really had been having an affair with her. She was thankful when he finally left the stand, shooting her an apologetic look.

An expert witness had then pointed out that the small amount of blood on Carla’s clothes did not prove that she had hurt Ed. That it was more likely to have been from the head injury that her husband had sustained in falling when she’d pushed him away in self-defence – a fact backed up by the autopsy findings. Nor were there any fingerprints on the knife, apart from Ed’s.

Carla’s head began to whirl. So many people, saying so many things, as if they knew her! An expert on bereavement. Another on postnatal depression and the link with the strain of a premature birth. Both were used by the prosecution to claim Carla might have behaved unpredictably. Her defence cross-examined them, claiming this would be why her memories were so unclear. Her barrister, who thankfully seemed to grow in confidence as the days passed, called an art dealer who spoke about Ed’s ‘reputation for being up and down’. A medical report on his drinking. A statement from the bank about his debts. Photographs of the terrible gash on Ed’s body. The carving knife.

She felt numb. As though all this was happening to someone else.

Now finally they had finished. As they sat waiting for the verdict in a room nearby, Lily was very quiet. The barrister had gone outside to make a phone call.

How was it possible that her entire future could be decided by a pack of strangers? Carla’s knee began to jerk up and down. She was back at school again. In Coventry. Carla Spagoletti.

‘The jury’s back.’ It was the barrister, his face taut. ‘That was quick. We’re being called in.’

61 Lily

I’ve lost count now of the verdicts I have waited for. Sometimes I think it’s like waiting for the result of a pregnancy test. Or a DNA test.

You tell yourself that you have done your best, and you hope that it all goes in your favour. But you also warn yourself that this might not happen. You try to prepare yourself, argue that it isn’t the end of the world if the result isn’t what you want. Yet at the same time, you know that’s not true.

A lost case means you’ve let yourself down. And, more importantly, others too.

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have been too keen on this barrister. He was too young. Too inexperienced. But as I told Carla, some juries are put off by an all-guns-blazing, confident, strutting QC. My man endeared himself to me when he had said we needed to go softly. ‘Our defence is that there is only circumstantial evidence,’ he’d pointed out, flushing madly – he was one of those types, like me, who blushes easily. ‘Nothing firm. No witnesses seeing Carla do anything other than run through the park. No incriminating fingerprints on the knife. She saw an intruder at the door.’

‘But there’s no proof of this,’ I butted in.

The barrister went pink. ‘Carla is a beautiful woman. I wouldn’t mind betting that the men on the jury will believe her. That at least would give us a fifty-fifty chance.’

Of course, that was when I should have told him about the envelope I’d received soon after Carla’s arrest. The one with the familiar spidery writing which, the office night porter told me, had been handed in very early one morning.

The one I had told myself I should not open.

Naturally I knew what the envelope contained. A tip-off. Hadn’t Joe already told me in a phone call that morning? ‘I want to help you, Lily.’

I’d nearly put the phone down there and then. ‘I told you, Joe. Don’t contact me again. I did what you wanted – had the paternity test done – and now it’s over. There’s nothing left between us.’

‘I don’t believe you. You lied to me.’ His voice was deep, sending tremors through me. ‘You’re just scared. I get that. I really do. I can tell from your voice that you haven’t looked inside that envelope I sent you. It will help you in the case. Open it. Fast. For old times’ sake.’

Old times’ sake? He spoke as though we had a past. Which of course we did. A past that no one must know about. A past he can always hold over me. Can you imagine the headlines? THE SOLICITOR AND THE BATH KILLER. Let’s not even go there. It would destroy my career. Not to mention my family. And Joe knows it.

‘Tom isn’t yours, Joe.’

‘And I told you I don’t believe you, Lily. I love you.’

I wanted to be sick. A murderer was in love with me? I slammed down the phone. Made sure the envelope was hidden in a drawer. I should have torn it up there and then. But it’s sitting there. My insurance. My plan B.

But right now I’m waiting. Waiting to hear what the jury is about to say. Carla is shaking. (I can say her name without a pang now.) Her terror gives me pleasure. There is nothing she can do now. No one she can bribe. No one she can sleep with to get her own way.

She can’t even blame me. No one could deny that I have done my best legally, hand on heart, to get her off. I even took her into my home to coach her for the defence. (Although she flagrantly went against my instructions to wear something suitable.) Together we have succeeded in blackening Ed’s name so that everyone thinks the man I married was a drunk and a philanderer. You see? I am not as good as I look.

The whole court is taut. Waiting.

‘Do you have a verdict?’

The foreman’s mouth is opening. My palms are sweating. I swear I can feel Ed by my side tugging at my sleeve. When I turn, I realize I’ve snagged my navy silk jacket on the bench.

‘Not guilty.’

I don’t believe it.

Walls shake around me. There are gasps. Screams from the gallery. A baby cries. Poppy? The daughter I never had. Carla is collapsing. It might of course be for show. A policeman is helping her to her feet. The barrister shoots me a smug ‘We did it’ look. People are congratulating me. One of the detectives is speaking urgently to a colleague. I feel a twinge of misgiving. They’ll be on the hunt for the real killer now. But up in the gallery I see someone else.

A tall man. Clean-shaven. Short hair. Boldly staring down at me. Wearing a moss-green tweed jacket with a light-beige suede collar, turned upwards. And then he disappears.

The phone rings the moment I get back into the office.

‘Why didn’t you use my evidence?’ Joe Thomas’s voice is gravelly with disappointment.

I open the drawer and take out the envelope. It is still sealed. How many times had I thought about opening it? It would have made my job easier. I knew that. Joe has never got things wrong before. As he’s pointed out on many an occasion, I wouldn’t have got this far in my career without his help.

‘It’s my insurance,’ I say.

‘Insurance? I don’t get it.’

‘In case the verdict wasn’t what I hoped for.’ As I speak, I think about Carla and how she barely thanked me after the trial. How her chin tilted upwards as if being acquitted was no more than her right. How she was swallowed up in the hysterical press of journalists, each wanting her story, each wanting to pay her more than the others.

‘You can’t use it now,’ he adds reproachfully. ‘The trial is over. The police will already be looking for someone else to pin Ed’s murder on.’

I wince. Even now, I can’t believe my former husband has gone. I miss him. My mind keeps going back to the better bits of our marriage. Curling up on the sofa together. Holding Tom as a baby. Celebrating when Ed’s painting was bought by an anonymous buyer.

Then my memory returns to that early morning jog on the seafront when Joe asked for a paternity test. I had felt particularly vulnerable at that time. Angry towards Ed for having his cake and eating it. Jealous of Carla for seeing my son on their access weekends. Lonely. Scared. Confused about still feeling drawn to Joe.

And for the first time since it happened, I allow myself to think about the key. The one that I was carrying, as always, for self-defence. The key that fell out of my pocket. The one that Joe picked up.

And didn’t give back.

‘It’s the spare from the house,’ I said bitterly at the time. ‘My old home that Carla has now taken along with my husband and my son, who seems to think she’s wonderful.’

‘I could teach her a lesson,’ Joe said quietly.

I felt a tremor of fear – and yes, of excitement too. ‘I wouldn’t want her hurt. Or him.’

‘Just scared, perhaps.’

‘Maybe,’ I find myself saying.

That’s when I ran over the road, towards the sea, stunned by my own actions. Had I really just allowed myself to break the law? In one brief crazy moment, I’d just given a criminal carte blanche to break into the house where Ed and Carla lived. A criminal who would do anything for me.

Aiding and abetting, they call it.

I raced back to the cafe table, panting madly. But Joe had disappeared.

As time went by and nothing happened, I felt safer. The longer I heard nothing from Joe, the more it felt safe to put the DNA test out of my head. Maybe he’d decided not to do anything after all. Maybe they’d changed the locks. But then came the shocking news of Ed’s murder. When Ross called me at Tom’s school, I initially presumed Carla was guilty, as did the rest of the world.

But then she told me about the door opening and a man standing there. And the notes.

That’s why I took her on as a client. I needed to make sure that she went down, because if she didn’t, the police might track down the real murderer.

Joe.

He’d tell them I’d given him the key.

I would get sent to prison.

I’d lose Tom.

It was unthinkable.

I would do anything. Anything for my son. Suddenly I had to work out the toughest defence strategy of my life. How to make Carla lose without making it look as though I hadn’t tried.

Put up such a poor defence that she would go down?

But that wasn’t the way to do it.

Wasn’t that what I’d told myself when Carla had first asked me to take on the case? And it was true. I had to be far more subtle than that. I needed to use reverse psychology.

Why hadn’t I taken on the case myself without any help? Not because a judge might not like a solicitor in charge, as I told Carla, but because they’d trust me more if I brought in someone else. Besides, the judges know me, know my style – if I’d put up a weak defence, they’d have instantly known and accused me of conflict of interest.

My husband’s wife.

Far cleverer to choose a young, nervous barrister who would get it wrong for me. I told Carla that a jury didn’t always like a confident, strutting QC. That is sometimes true. But not always. Yet – just my luck – they did indeed warm to my fumbling, gauche brief, and that in turn made him grow in confidence. By then it was too late to lose.

I also suspected that if I insisted on her wearing ‘dull’ clothes, Carla wouldn’t be able to do it because she’s so vain. I was right. But this backfired in my face too. It was clear from the look on the jurors’ faces – both men and women – that they admired her style.

Why didn’t they see Carla as I did? A manipulative child who had grown into a manipulative, husband-stealing adult.

‘You shouldn’t have done it,’ I now say down the line to Joe. My voice is cracked with disbelief. Shock. Self-recrimination.

Joe’s voice, in contrast, is cool. ‘I got the impression you didn’t care for Ed any more.’

‘You said you’d frighten Carla.’ I’m whispering now. ‘Not kill my husband.’

‘Ex-husband,’ corrects Joe. ‘And who says that I did kill him? Open the envelope. Go on.’

My hands do what my mind tells them not to do.

Inside is a sealed plastic bag.

Inside that is a pair of gloves. Washing-up gloves.

Blue. Small. They have blood on them. Blood and earth.

I gasp.

‘Now do you get it?’ says Joe.

I can’t believe it. ‘Carla did it after all?’

‘Who else?’ He sounds smug. Pleased.

‘How did you get them?’

‘I’d been sniffing around their place for a while, checking it out.’

‘What were you going to do?’ I whispered.

‘Wasn’t sure. Never am until these things happen.’

These things?

A picture of poor Sarah flashes into my head.

‘I was there that evening. Some young bloke came out. Looked upset, he did. I listened at the door and heard one hell of an argument going on. Reckoned it might provide the distraction I needed. So I went in.’

With my key. With my key!

‘There she was, in front of me, wearing a pair of washing-up gloves covered in blood. Almost as shocked to see me as I was to see her. I ran out after her. I watched her toss the gloves into some shrubbery opposite the house. Rather than carry on chasing her, I picked up the gloves so you could use them, for evidence. Except that you didn’t.’

No, I hadn’t. I’d wanted to do this on my own, without the help of a criminal.

‘So what’s next?’ Joe’s voice forces me back to practicalities. ‘The trial’s over, Lily. Your client’s won. But we both know that she’s guilty. And now the police will be looking for someone else. Me.’

‘Will you tell them about us?’ My voice comes out as a whimper.

‘That depends.’ His voice is steady. Threatening. ‘Not if you tell me what the paternity test really said.’

‘I did tell you. You’re not the father.’

‘And I don’t believe you.’ His voice hardens. ‘I want another one done, Lily. Or else…’

His voice trails away. But the implication is clear.

‘Are you blackmailing me?’

‘You could call it that.’

I put the phone down, my hand shaking. Joe isn’t just a murderer. He’s desperate. Dangerous.

And he’s not the only one.

What should I do now? Then I feel something inside one of the gloves.

It’s a key. One that I definitely recognize.

If I was in my right mind, I’d go straight to the police and hand over the gloves.

But instead I’m going to pay a visit.

To my husband’s wife.

62 Carla

Carla was packing. Fast. Furiously. Not the red stilettos. She’d wear them instead. Her favourite perfume too, for luck. First she’d go to the hotel, for that exclusive interview she’d promised to the newspaper. The advance would go towards her new future.

She was free. Free!

It was all working out. Far better than she could have thought. Poor naive Lily. Convinced that the rest of the world was good if only she could make it so. Carla almost felt sorry for her. Then again, she deserved it.

Lily needed to learn a lesson.

The jury had believed her. She had played her part well. Yet there were elements which had indeed been true. Ed, drunk with wine and jealousy, grabbing the knife. Her, pushing him away. Him, falling against the wall and hitting his head. Blood. Then getting up and coming at her again. Her, grabbing the knife in self-defence and lashing out. The knife in Ed’s thigh. It had just stayed there, sticking out of the flesh with its green handle.

Then she was running. Throwing the gloves in the bushes as she went.

If only she could have confessed in court. Self-defence. For that’s what it had been. But people knew they had argued – look how Ed had spoken to her at the last party in front of everyone. Suppose the law had not believed her? Far better to talk about the intruder. The other thing that had been true. The man at the door, whom she had rushed past.

Thank you for being there, whoever you were, she thought. It meant we could blame you for all the blood. All the horror.

Too much to think of.

The only way to cope was to blank it out. Tell herself it had happened as she’d said in court. Get on with her life. She would go to the States with Poppy. Rebuild their lives away from prying Italian and English eyes. Give up law too. She had had more than enough of that.

‘You.’

Carla jumped. ‘Lily? How did you get in?’

Lily tossed a key up and down in the palm of her hand as though teasing her. ‘I still had the spare. It was my house once. Remember? Before you stole it and my husband from me. You should have changed the locks, Carla. You and Ed.’

Carla began to shake. ‘You still had the key?’ she repeated.

Lily smiled. ‘That’s right. I gave it to a friend. He’s the man you saw at the door. He saw you throw away your bloody gloves. And he kept them for evidence.’

‘You’re lying!’

‘No.’ Lily’s voice was cool. Scarily assured. ‘I’m not.’

Lily

I hold the gloves up now in their plastic bag. ‘See? When they are analysed, the DNA will show Ed’s blood. Much more of it than was on your clothes. And they have earth on them too, from where you tried to hide them. Looks suspicious, doesn’t it?’

‘You can’t do that.’ Carla is laughing. ‘You can’t use them. The trial is over.’

‘You don’t really keep up with criminal law, do you, Carla? Employment is your speciality, I seem to remember. Well, the law has been changed. Some years ago, in fact. Way after the case I told you about – on purpose, by the way. Double jeopardy doesn’t always apply now, especially when there’s new evidence. Like fresh DNA. All I have to do is hand these gloves over to the police. Then you will be tried again. And this time you will go down for life.’

She’s still smirking. ‘If you’re so sure, why haven’t you gone to the police?’

I’m already beginning to think I’ve made a mistake there. ‘Because I wanted to see you face to face first. To tell you what I really think of you.’ My eyes are wet. ‘Poor Ed. He didn’t deserve to be murdered. You’re going to pay for this, Carla, if it’s the last thing I do…’

That’s when she runs at me, her eyes blazing like an animal’s. Her push is much stronger than her frame might suggest. I push her back. Then I wobble. Lose my balance. Trip over the spindle-backed mahogany kitchen chair that I once bought at auction. It’s yet one more thing that Carla has taken from me.

I put up my hands to protect myself, the key and gloves flying into the air.

Flash of metal.

Thunder in my ears.

‘This is the five o’clock news.’

The radio, chirping merrily from the pine dresser laden with photographs (holidays, graduation, wedding); a pretty blue and pink plate; and a quarter bottle of Jack Daniel’s, partially hidden by a birthday card.

The pain, when it comes, is so acute that it can’t be real.

A quick succession of questions race through my head. What will happen to Tom when I am gone? Who will understand him? How will Mum and Dad cope with another child gone?

Above me, on the wall, is a picture of a small white house in Italy with purple bougainvillea climbing up it. A honeymoon memento. The one that Ed helped me to paint.

And here I still am, an hour later, slumped against the wall. My limbs completely numb. Bleeding and waiting. The blood is still streaming from my head, from where I hit the wall. My chest is throbbing. Am I having a heart attack? My silver honeymoon bracelet, which – despite any reasoning – I still wear every day, is cutting into my wrist because of the way I have fallen. And my ankle, which had been throbbing quietly, is now agony.

Still, at least the smell of smoke is getting fainter. It had been rubbery. Rather like a tyre burning. The gloves?

If Carla has destroyed them, there will be no evidence.

And if Joe tells the truth about the key, I might go down instead.

Carla

That last push from Lily had sent her reeling against the kitchen counter. A saucer had fallen off the side, smashing on the floor. She hadn’t been hurt. Just stunned by the push. But not badly enough to stop her pushing Lily back. There had been a hollow crack as Lily had crashed against the wall.

Vaguely Carla remembered staggering over to the sink and trying to get rid of the gloves. Incriminating evidence. How often had she read that phrase in files at work? Essential to get rid of.

They wouldn’t burn properly, so she’d chopped them up into little bits and flushed them down the toilet. Then she’d slumped in the hall, below one of Ed’s rough charcoal studies for the original Italian Girl.

It seemed a fitting place to stop. Her body might not be injured. But her mind seemed to have had enough.

From where she was lying, Carla could hear Lily groaning. Who would have guessed how much blood could gush from the head?

If it wasn’t for the fact that her legs didn’t feel like her own, Carla might have got up to help Lily. She’d had time to think now after that initial shock of seeing those bloody gloves. Strangely, she didn’t hate the woman for trying to turn her in. In fact, if she’d been in her position, she might have done exactly the same.

All her life she’d wanted things that had belonged to other people. The caterpillar pencil case. Nicer clothes. A father. Even her mother had belonged to Larry when she was a child. And, of course, Ed. Until she’d finally got him and saw what he was really like.

She hadn’t, Carla reminded herself, meant to hurt Ed. All she’d been doing was trying to defend herself. Such a fright when the knife had gone into his thigh. How easily the blade had slipped in! Made her feel sick right now to think about it.

I deserve to be caught, Carla told herself. It’s gone too far. Then her eye rested on a photograph of Ed and Tom on the bookcase near her. Father and son had their arms around each other, grinning out of the frame.

Poppy.

How would her daughter manage without her? Mothers needed to protect their children. Now she could see why Mamma had pretended that Carla’s father was dead in the early days. And why, later, she had hidden her cancer. Now she, Carla, couldn’t let Poppy suffer by having a mother in prison. As a child, Carla had thought it was bad enough having a mother with a strange accent who was always at work. But this was going to be far worse. Poppy would be Different with a capital D from the others in her class when she went to school. No doubt about that.

She had to force her shocked body to get up and leave, if only for Poppy’s sake. Reality began to kick in. She’d hung around long enough now. It was time to take a few things. Ed’s grandmother’s ring might fetch a bit and see them through a few weeks.

There was a moan.

She didn’t, Carla told herself, really want Lily to die, especially now she’d got rid of the gloves. All she’d done was push her, although that crack had sounded bad. Yet she couldn’t help her, either. It would compromise her own safety. Maybe when she got out of the house, she could go to a phone box and make an anonymous call to say that a woman was hurt.

‘Lily?’

Footsteps. Someone was coming towards her, through the front door. With a shock, Carla realized Lily must have left it open.

‘Where is my Lily? What have you done to her?’

Carla stared up as fear caught in her throat. It was him! The man who had broken in through the door that night. Something about those black eyes stirred a more distant memory. That stranger at Tony’s funeral!

He ran past her now. Towards Lily. ‘It’s all right, my darling. I’m here.’ She couldn’t hear Lily’s reply.

But she could hear his footsteps coming back now. Could see the glint of metal in his hands.

Carla felt strangely calm.

‘You hurt her!’ he was screaming. ‘You hurt Lily!’

The last thing she could remember hearing was the rush of wind as the blade came down to meet her.

63 Lily

It took me a long time to get better.

Not so much physically but mentally.

It still seems impossible that any of it happened.

When you realize you’re not dying after all, you feel an initial gust of euphoria. ‘You were so lucky,’ everyone kept saying. ‘Someone must’ve been looking after you’ was another favourite phrase.

And you believe it. You honestly do. You look out through the hospital window and see people walking, ambulances arriving, patients in wheelchairs, others on sticks, heads bowed, others laughing with relief. And you know that this is the real world. The one where lives are saved, instead of the one outside where the bad people try to take lives away.

Then, when you’re out in that real world again, that’s when the doubts come crowding back in. That’s when you start to think. If I hadn’t married Ed… if my boss hadn’t put me in charge of Joe’s appeal when I was too young and inexperienced… if I hadn’t allowed my feelings to take over… if we hadn’t met Carla and her mother… if I hadn’t had that drink with Joe in Highgate… if I hadn’t dropped my key… if I hadn’t defended Carla… if I hadn’t opened that envelope…

‘You mustn’t think about the ifs,’ says Ross. He’s been one of my regular visitors at home back in Devon, where I’ve been since they discharged me. There will always be a scar on the side of my head from my fall against the wall, although it might not show so much when my hair has grown back. My cracked ribs (hence the agonizing pain in my chest) have mended now. But my wrist is still playing up, and I no longer wear the honeymoon bracelet which was caught between me and the wall when I fell over. My ankle, which cracked as I went down, is ‘coming along’.

‘Ifs will drive you mad,’ he continues. ‘You did your best, Lily. You really did. And if you made a few mistakes along the way, well, that’s life.’

Mum comes into the room with a tray of coffee for our visitor and hears the end of the last sentence. She catches my eye and then looks away. But it’s too late. I know what she’s thinking. If I’m really going to heal, I have to tell the truth. The very last part of my story. The bit I never told my husband, or the grief counsellor the hospital encouraged me to see.

Ross is a good friend. I owe it to him. And, maybe more importantly, I owe it to myself.

I was eleven when my parents took on Daniel. It wasn’t the first time they’d brought children into the house. Remember that little brother and sister who Dad kept saying I was going to have? Only later did I find out that Mum had had one miscarriage after another. So my parents turned to fostering to give me ‘company’.

Of course, it was brilliant of them to do it. But it didn’t feel like that at the time.

Some of the kids were all right. Others weren’t. There were times when I’d come back from school to find Mum playing with a three-year-old. I’d want to talk to her about my day, but she would be too busy. The social worker would be coming to do a check. Or she had to take the child to the doctor because he or she had a wheezy chest.

I wouldn’t have minded except that they weren’t real brothers and sisters. They took my parents away from me. And they made me feel different. My friends at school thought it was weird that my socially aware parents took in one kid after another, looking after them for anything from a few days to a year before they’d go away and others would replace them.

Eventually, my parents got the message. ‘You’re going to have a full-time brother,’ my father announced one morning. I remember it well. We were eating boiled eggs at the time, in our home in London. A trim, neat, semi-detached house with pebble-dash. Nothing bigger, even though my mother’s family were quite well off, because that didn’t suit my parents’ socialist principles. ‘He’s had a rough start to life,’ my mother said. ‘Poor little thing had parents who were… well, who did bad things. So sometimes he behaves badly too. He’s been in and out of foster homes, but now we’re going to adopt him. Give him a proper home.’ She gave me a comforting hug. ‘And you can help too, Lily, by being a kind big sister. You must look after him with us.’

And then Daniel arrived.

He was a year younger than me but looked older with his tall, lanky stance and a wild mass of tousled black hair. With hindsight, my parents could have thought it through more carefully. But they wanted to make a difference – to take the child no one else would. Later I found out that Daniel’s mother had been a prostitute, addicted to heroin, although he used to claim she was a trapeze artist in a circus. (He was good at embroidering facts to make them more exciting.) His father was in prison for a drug-induced double killing. (Daniel never spoke of him.)

From the minute he arrived, Daniel began to push the boundaries. No, he wouldn’t go to school. No, he wouldn’t come home when he’d promised. No, he hadn’t stolen money from Mum’s purse. Didn’t we trust him?

In fact, there was only one person whom Daniel trusted.

‘You,’ says Ross quietly. I glance out of the window on to the lawn where Tom is playing croquet with my father. He throws his mallet in the air with joy when he gets the ball through the hoop, just as Daniel used to. He stamps his foot on the ground when he misses a shot. At times, the similarities are extraordinary, even though there is no blood link.

Nature or nurture? I often wonder.

‘Yes,’ I say softly. ‘Daniel trusted me. For some reason, he latched on to me. Adored me. But I let him down.’

Ross’s hand is holding mine. Firmly. Comfortingly. Non-judgementally. I think of how Ross helped me through Ed’s betrayals. And I know that just as Daniel trusted me, so I can trust Ross. I won’t just tell him the half-version of Daniel’s death that I told Joe at the pub. Or the version I gave Ed where I left out a vital scene.

I will tell Ross the whole truth.

It was the other girls at school that started it. They all fancied my adopted brother. He was so good-looking: so tall, with that mop of hair and slightly lopsided, endearing smile. How he made everyone laugh! Daniel specialized in playing the classroom fool. He would answer back. Make fun of the teachers. Get into trouble. The more he got told off, the worse he became. He started stealing other kids’ money and then swearing blind it wasn’t him.

When Mum’s dad died, she inherited the house in Devon. It would be a fresh start for my brother, my parents said when I kicked up a fuss about leaving my old school. And it was. Daniel and I loved our new home. Such a novelty to live by the sea!

I pause for a moment and look out of the window again at the waves, lashing against the rocks on the far side of the bay.

My parents did everything they could to make Daniel happy. They got him Merlin and took on a rescue dog at the same time. They ignored bad behaviour because they believed in ‘positive praise’. They bought him the new jacket he wanted when I’d not been allowed a fluffy blue jumper I’d had my eye on. (He needed it and I didn’t, apparently.)

‘I was chosen by them,’ Daniel would announce proudly at times.

But during his blacker moments, the mask would slip. ‘I don’t want to be different, Lily,’ he’d say. ‘I want to be like you. Like everyone else.’

Daniel wasn’t the only one to be confused. Sometimes I was jealous of the attention that my parents piled on him. At other times, I was overwhelmed with love for my new brother, grateful that I finally had the company I had craved. But every now and then, something would occur which made me wonder what would have happened if they’d chosen someone else.

Of course, Daniel still got into trouble, just like he had in London. It was the same old things. Lying about homework. Lying about where he’d been. I’d cover up for him. It was what a sister did. Once a shopkeeper ran out after us, claiming that Daniel had stolen a bag of sweets.

‘He wouldn’t do that,’ I insisted.

But when we were allowed to leave, Daniel took the packet out of his sock.

I went back to the shop, explaining that there had been a misunderstanding. And Daniel swore never to do it again. ‘I promise. I promise.’

His childhood – and mine – were peppered with similar incidents.

Later, when he’d just turned fifteen, a local girl claimed he’d slept with her. It was all over school.

‘It’s not true,’ he laughed when I asked him about it. ‘Why would I want to do that? She’s a slut. Anyway, there’s only one girl I want.’

‘Who?’ I asked teasingly.

His face closed down as if someone had drawn a curtain across it. ‘Not saying.’

But then, one day, I got my first date.

I stop, my cheeks flushing.

It was one of the boys from the local school. All my friends had been asked out by now. But they were prettier than me. Slimmer.

My mother was excited for me. ‘What are you going to wear?’

Daniel was furious. He wouldn’t talk to me. And when I finally came downstairs, after spending ages getting ready, my brother informed me that the boy had called to say he couldn’t make it. Later, I found out that Daniel had stood outside the front door, waiting for him, and then lied. Told him that I didn’t want to go out after all.

Ross gently interrupts. ‘Didn’t you wonder if…’ His voice tails off.

‘No. I know it sounds silly, but I just thought it was Daniel being difficult again. Causing trouble the way he always did.’ I take a deep breath. ‘But then his arm started to “accidentally” brush mine. We had these long conversations, late at night. And one evening, when we went down to the stables to feed Merlin, he kissed me.’

I close my eyes. Even now I can remember that kiss. It was like no other. Never, ever, have I been kissed like that. The knowledge that it was wrong only added to the excitement. That’s right, I wanted him to. Deep down, I realized I’d always wanted him to do this. That I’d been jealous of that other girl he was said to have slept with. But when I finally drew away, I was overcome with shame.

‘It’s all right,’ Daniel said, his breath heavy and his voice thick. ‘We’re not related. We can do what we want.’

But it wasn’t all right. And we knew it. Before long, the kissing grew more adventurous. Even as I speak, I can still recall the illicit thrill.

Mum began to notice something. ‘I might have got this wrong,’ she said, her cheeks burning. ‘But do be careful, won’t you? Daniel might not be your blood brother. But don’t forget he’s your adopted brother.’

I was mortified. Sickened by myself. So I did what a lot of people do when they are accused of something. I threw it back. ‘How can you think such filthy thoughts?’ I yelled.

Mum went beetroot, but she held her ground. ‘Are you sure you’re telling me the truth about Daniel?’

‘Of course I’m sure. How can you be so disgusting?’

Her words scared me. By then I had turned eighteen. Daniel was seventeen. We hadn’t ‘done it’, as my school friends called it. But we were close. Perilously close.

At times, my love for Daniel was so overwhelming that I could barely breathe when I sat opposite him at breakfast. Yet at other times, I could barely stand to be in the same room as him. Both feelings that I was to have later, towards Joe.

And that’s the nub of it, you see. Because of Daniel, I was unable to feel attracted to a man unless it was wrong. That’s why I was so drawn to Joe. And that’s why my honeymoon had been a disaster. Why I always found it difficult with Ed.

‘Then,’ I continue falteringly, ‘the same boy from school asked me out again. (I’d explained there’d been a misunderstanding over the previous date.) This time, I wouldn’t let Daniel stop me. It was my way to break free.’

I close my eyes again, shutting out my bedroom with its posters on the wall; the desk with my homework littered over it; my brother with his furious eyes as he took in the clingy top I had put on for the date. A glittery silver one (which I’d saved up for) that showed my curves…

‘You don’t have to tell me,’ says Ross, sensing my distress.

‘I need to.’

So I make myself describe how Daniel went mad. How jealous he was of this boy. How he said I’d never be able to stop doing what he and I had been doing. How he called me terrible names.

Whore.

Slut.

Fatty.

That no one else would ever want me.

And how I then said those fateful words.

I wish you had never been born.

Daniel went very quiet then. Just stared at me for what seemed like ages and then left the room. Dabbing on foundation to cover my tears, I flew down the stairs.

I stop. Compose myself before I continue with the final part of the story.

On my way out, Mum caught me. ‘You look nice,’ she said, casting an eye over my top. ‘But you’ll need your coat. It’s cold outside.’

I’d been so desperate to leave that I’d forgotten. Now I grabbed it from the rack.

Her voice quivered. ‘Are you going out with Daniel?’

‘No.’ I spat the word at her, flushing hotly as though I was telling a lie. ‘I’m meeting someone else.’

Her colour was as high as mine. ‘Promise?’ she said.

‘Of course I promise. Daniel’s… he’s somewhere else.’

This is the difficult bit. The bit which is so hard to say that the words choke my throat. But I have to. I’ve reached the end of the road. If I don’t do it now, I will never be able to do it.

Ross is holding my hand. I take a deep breath.

‘When I came back – early as it happens, as the date hadn’t been a great success – Mum was hysterical. They’d found a note from Daniel. It just said, Gone. Did I know anything? Had he run away? That’s when it came to me. He’d have gone to our place. Our special place.’

Ross squeezes my hand as the words stream out of my heart.

‘He was hanging in his red jacket from the stable rafters with Merlin nuzzling his feet. And do you know what was on the frozen ground?’

Ross shakes his head.

‘My doll. My old doll. The one I used to carry everywhere with me. Amelia. He must have gone back to the house to get it from my room and write the note. And I know why. Amelia would have made him feel I was with him at the end…’

As I speak, I get a glimpse of Carla as a child, questioning me about my doll in the taxi when I’d taken her home from the hospital. ‘Do you still have her?’ she’d asked.

‘No,’ I’d told her. It was true.

I’d asked them to put her in Daniel’s coffin.

Grief at allowing myself to remember is now overwhelming me. It chokes my throat. Makes my breath come out in small, desperate gasps. I see my father. Sobbing. Unable to believe what his eyes showed him all too clearly. I see my mother, clasping her arms around her body and rocking back and forth on the ground, repeating the same phrase over and over: There’s got to be a mistake…

I turn to Ross. ‘Don’t you see? It was my fault. If I hadn’t gone out with that boy from school, Daniel wouldn’t have killed himself. That’s why I never allowed myself to date anyone else. Not until the millennium when my father told me it was time to move on.’

‘When you met Ed,’ says Ross quietly.

‘Exactly. That’s why I became a lawyer too. Not just to put the world to rights. But to put myself to rights. I wanted to make sure I never made a mistake again.’

I stop.

‘And then,’ prompted Ross softly.

‘Then I met Joe Thomas.’

64 Lily

Dear Lily,

I am truly sorry for everything. I did things I should not have done. And I did not do things that they said I did. Either way, I am paying for them…

That’s right, there’s a postscript to this story.

No one knows how Carla survived. The extent of Joe Thomas’s wrath was horrific. One member of the jury had to be carried out when she saw the photographs.

One thing is sure. The Italian Girl will never look the same. Gone is the beautiful skin. Instead, it is a mass of scars. One eye will never open again. The mouth droops slightly on one side. Only the glossy dark hair remains.

Life is a long time. Especially when beauty is no longer on your side.

CRIME OF PASSION

EX-CON AND HIS LAWYER IN MURDER PUZZLE

ARTIST’S WIDOW EMBROILED IN KILLER SCANDAL

The headlines went on for days. There had to be two trials, of course. One for Joe. And one for Carla.

Luckily for her, Carla found a new white knight. Her real father. A man who had had nothing to do with Carla previously because he had a family of his own. But when his children left home and he got divorced, he hired an investigator to trace his daughter. By that point she was in Italy. He decided not to take it any further then, but he was sentimental enough to buy the portrait which his man had cleverly discovered in a small London gallery. The Italian Girl, it was called. But the accompanying paperwork had named the sitter.

Carla Cavoletti.

For a time, the portrait sufficed. But then, when he read about Carla’s first trial and heard about Francesca’s death, his conscience finally kicked in. He put up the bail money. Forced Carla’s grandfather to keep it a secret, to say it was his money.

Then, after she was convicted for assaulting me and for Ed’s murder, he had the guts to step in openly. To reveal himself. The papers had another field day.

ITALIAN GIRL’S FATHER PROMISES TO CARE FOR GRANDDAUGHTER

Glad as I was for Poppy with her little gummy smile, being looked after by family while her mother serves her time, I try not to think about any of this as I go about my daily life.

I’ve had enough of the law now. My new family counselling practice has boomed. Tom is years ahead with his mathematical skills, apparently, but still has toddler tantrums if his shoes are moved from their proper place. I have to remind myself that, according to the experts, I ought to use the word ‘melt-down’ rather than tantrum, because the latter denotes a certain wilfulness. I also have to remind myself that Tom honestly can’t help it.

But Alice, his new school friend, has helped. We all like Alice. She has similar issues to my son. She understands him. Perhaps one day they’ll be more than friends.

Meanwhile, there’s Mum and Dad, who are getting older and talking about selling the house. And Ross, of course. Ross, who has become a regular visitor to the house. Never imposing. Never pushing. But often there. Even after my confession.

Like today, when he brought me the letter from Carla. I take a deep breath and read the rest of it.

… I am writing to say that I am to get married again as soon as Rupert’s divorce is through. The wedding will be in prison, but it does not matter. Rupert does not mind that my face is different. He loves Poppy as if she was his own. (She is not.) My solicitor says that Life does not always mean Life.

Please forgive me.

I hope you can find it in your heart to wish me happiness.

Yours,

Carla.

I put down the letter on the grass. It flaps in the wind and then blows away. I make no attempt to chase after it. It means nothing. Carla always was a good liar. Yet there’s something still nagging at me. Something isn’t quite right…

‘Chewing gum, Sellotape, scissors, sharp implements?’

I’m back in prison. A different one from the last. And I’m not wearing my lawyer hat. I’m a visitor.

‘Hands up, please.’

I’m being searched. Swiftly but thoroughly.

Now a dog is walking past with his handler. He pays no attention to me but sits silently next to the girl behind. She is led away. Apparently that’s how sniffer dogs work. They don’t bark or growl. They simply sit.

‘Why are you here?’

I’m sitting when Joe Thomas comes in. He’s thinner. And somehow he looks shorter. He is looking at me stonily. I should be scared. But I’m not. There are plenty of people around us.

‘I want to know exactly what happened.’

He sits back in his chair, tipping it, and laughs. ‘I told you. Told everyone at the trial.’

I allow my mind to go back. To the time when Carla was convicted of assaulting me and murdering Ed. To the trial a few days later, when Joe was sent down for his assault on Carla. And for being an accessory to Ed’s murder.

Unbelievable, isn’t it?

But that’s what happened. Joe stood up in court, at Carla’s trial, and said that he had met her at Tony’s funeral (another mourner had come forward to confirm they’d been talking) and that they’d stayed in touch. Later, he swore that Carla, aware of his criminal background, had hired him as a hit man, promising payment when Ed’s life insurance came through. They’d agreed that he would come round on a certain evening. But when he had got there, she had been in a terrible state – and he had soon seen why. Carla had already stabbed Ed herself. In the thigh. Then she’d run, leaving him, Joe, to take the blame.

Carla vehemently denied this. Instinctively I felt it didn’t ring true either. I didn’t really see Carla as the type to hire a hit man.

But the prosecuting barrister was good. Very good. The persistent questioning finally made Carla break down and admit that, yes, she had plunged the knife into Ed. He’d picked it up first, she had sobbed. She thought he was going to hurt her out of jealousy over Rupert. It was self-defence. But she definitely hadn’t hired Joe as a hit man. That bit was a lie.

It didn’t wash with the new jury. The lies she’d already told made certain of that.

I’d been terrified that Joe would implicate me. But as soon as he said that about Carla hiring him, I knew he was doing it to protect me. I suppose the key should have been another clue. The one he posted back to me, inside Carla’s washing-up gloves. At the time, I thought he was encouraging me to take my revenge.

Now I wonder if he was giving me a ‘get out of jail free’ card.

Joe explained his presence at Carla’s house by saying he went there to demand his money. And that he’d found Carla hurting me.

But I know differently, of course. He’d come back because of me. Joe must have suspected I would go to see Carla after opening the envelope with the washing-up gloves inside. He wanted to make sure I was all right.

I’m painfully aware that if he’d told the truth about any of this, I’d be in prison too.

But that’s the problem with lies. As I said at the beginning, they start small. And then they multiply. Over and over again. So that the white lies become as black as the real thing. Yet his lie has saved me.

Amazingly the jury believed Joe. It helped that, on the night of Ed’s murder, there wasn’t any sign of a forced entry. So it made sense that Carla had let him in voluntarily.

Life, he got, for conspiring to murder Ed and for his assault on Carla. The same as Carla got for murdering Ed. The same as Joe should have got for poor Sarah Evans.

You could say it was justice. But I’m not so sure. That’s why I’m here.

‘I know you weren’t telling the truth. I want to know what really happened.’

He grins. Like we’re playing a game, just as we had at the beginning when he made me work out the boiler figures.

‘Touch me.’ His voice is so low that I barely hear it. Then he says it again. ‘Touch me and then I’ll tell you.’

I glance around. The officers with their folded arms. Women talking urgently to their partners opposite. Couples not talking.

‘I can’t.’

‘Look.’ He’s staring straight at me. ‘Look to your right.’

So I do. The woman next to me has her foot up, in between her partner’s legs.

‘I won’t do that.’ I’m flushing. Hot.

‘Then I won’t tell you.’

This is blackmail. Just as he’d tried to blackmail me over the DNA and the key.

I look again. The officer nearest me is making her way to the offending table. She’s not looking at us.

‘Quickly,’ he says.

My heart starts to speed up just as it had on the seafront when Joe took my key. A wave of desire starts to seep through the lower part of my body, even though I try to crush it.

Then the stables flash into my mind. Daniel with his limp neck. Amelia, my doll, lying on the ground below my brother. And Merlin with a puzzled expression on his all-knowing, dear old face. Killed by Sarah Evans’s murderer – or as good as – in an attempt to scare me.

It’s a wake-up call. A distinct prod back to sanity.

‘No,’ I say firmly, my feet still on the ground. ‘No. I won’t. I’m through with all these games, Joe. They’re over.’

A brief look of disappointment shoots across his face, followed by an ‘if that’s the way you want it’ shrug.

He makes as if to stand, and then appears to change his mind.

‘OK. You’re lucky. I’m feeling generous today. I’ll still give you a clue.’

‘I told you.’ I almost thump the table. ‘No more games.’

‘But this one, Lily, is in your interest. It will give you peace. Trust me.’ His smile chills me to my bones. ‘Watch my finger. Carefully.’

He is tracing a number on the table top. There’s an 0. And then a 5. And then, I think, a 6.

‘I don’t get it.’ Tears are pricking my eyes. I feel sick. Visiting time is almost over. I thought I might get closure coming here, but I haven’t. Instead I’m trying to get sense out of a madman.

‘Look again.’

0. Definitely.

5. Or so it seems.

6.

056.

‘Five minutes,’ barks the officer behind me.

Joe darts his eyes towards the clock. Is that a clue?

Try, I tell myself. Think about this puzzle like your son does. See it from another angle.

‘I don’t know,’ I sob. ‘I don’t know.’

Other inmates are beginning to look. Joe sees it too.

He’s speaking. Slowly. Quietly. Like a parent soothing a child.

‘Then I’ll tell you. It means nothing. Sometimes we see clues in things that are not there. The simple truth, Lily, is that you’re a good person, deep down. But you were weak that night. Hurt. Scared. That’s why you let me take the key. I knew that if I did something terrible using it, you’d never be able to forgive yourself. Well, now you can. So I meant it when I said that I didn’t have to use the key. That’s why I posted it back to you.’

There’s a glimmer of hope inside me. ‘Honestly?’

I realize for the first time that I don’t really know this man. I never did. Yes, he may look similar to Daniel. Speak like him. But he isn’t Daniel. He’s a killer. And a liar.

He grins. ‘It’s true – Carla opened the door before I could use your key. She was clearly making a run for it.’

‘So it wasn’t my fault that Ed was murdered?’

He shakes his head.

‘But why say you were hired as a hit man?’

Another grin. ‘I knew I would get convicted for my assault on Carla, so I figured I might as well try to take her down with me.’

‘But it meant you got a longer sentence,’ I whisper.

‘Yeah. Well.’ He shrugs. Joe looks embarrassed. ‘Let’s just call it my penultimate act of love for the woman I could never have.’

‘Penultimate?’ I whisper.

‘Yes. And this is the final one.’ He leans closer. ‘Carla was convicted for killing Ed because she plunged the knife into him. Wasn’t she?’

I nod.

‘But the knife was found on the ground.’

I think back to the questions in court when this very point had been raised. Yes, Carla had said at last. She had knifed Ed. She couldn’t remember what had happened next. It was all such a muddle…

‘When I went round that night, Lily, the knife was still sticking in Ed’s leg.’ Joe is speaking very slowly. Very deliberately. ‘The silly woman had just left it there. You’re not meant to pull a knife out without the right medical knowledge. Did you know that? It can cause far more damage.’

I can hardly breathe.

‘I went back. After I saw Carla drop the gloves I returned to your house. I needed to find out if there was anything that could incriminate me. I waited outside behind a hedge for a few minutes, but no one seemed to have noticed the door being ajar. That’s the great thing about those big houses. They’re set back from the street. Perfect targets for burglars.’

He says this so flippantly, I can barely disguise a shudder.

‘I went in. Couldn’t resist a look at him. Then I realized he was still breathing. I kept thinking about how much he had hurt you. So I did it. I yanked out the knife. Blood shot out. He made this weird gurgling noise…’

I look away, choked with distress.

‘Then I scarpered. Later, I burnt my clothes and gloves – I’d brought my own of course. And waited for the police to track me down.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘I couldn’t believe it when she was arrested. And then I heard you were defending her. For a while I thought you were playing the system. Trying to make her look innocent but using that bumbling brief to discredit the case and make sure she got convicted. I sent you Carla’s gloves to help you. But because, as it turns out, you didn’t use them, she got off.’

‘So you really killed Ed,’ I say slowly.

‘You could say that all three of us did.’ His black eyes are trained on me firmly and squarely.

I wince again.

Joe is stretching out his hands to me now. I hesitate. Then I allow the tip of my finger to touch his. Just briefly. Much as I might try to fight it, Joe and I will always be bound together because of our shared history. He may have been in prison when we first met while I was on the outside – just dipping my toes into this new, scary world of double-locked doors, long corridors and prison guards. But because I was trying to get him out of there, it had felt like us against the rest of the world.

Add our one stupid tryst on the Heath, Tom’s birth, Ed’s murder, Carla’s conviction. You can see why the lines between right and wrong have become so blurred.

‘I love you,’ he says with those black eyes focused firmly on mine. ‘I love you because you understand me.’

Daniel used to say the same.

But look what happened.

‘I can’t…’ I begin.

‘I know.’ Joe’s grip tightens on my hand.

I tug it away.

‘You’ve more strength than you realize, Lily.’ Joe seems almost amused. Then his face saddens. ‘Take care of my boy.’

I think of Tom’s wonderful drawings. The way he only has to look at something for it to appear on paper. It’s a new skill. One that I didn’t know he possessed until a new art teacher, fresh from college, appeared at his school. It’s amazing what a difference a supportive teacher can make. Someone who really understands a child with (and without) Asperger syndrome.

Gifts like that are usually inherited. Or so the teacher says.

Joe is still looking at me. ‘I’ve been thinking about it. I don’t want another DNA test. I need to pretend that Tom is mine. It will help me to keep going. And don’t worry about me. It’s only right that I should be back here in prison.’

‘Time!’

Joe drops my hand. I feel a quick sense of loss, followed by an overwhelming wave of freedom.

Then Joe’s voice changes. ‘Don’t come back, Lily.’ He’s looking at me as if memorizing every part of my face. ‘Don’t come and visit me again. It wouldn’t be fair. On either of us. But have a great life.’

Those black eyes lock with mine for one last time. ‘You deserve it.’