The Wrong Mother

5

Tuesday, 7 August 2007

Corn Mill House has all the grandeur, character and atmosphere that my flat lacks. I can’t decide if it’s beautiful or forbidding. It looks a little like the home of a witch, made of pale grey ginger-bread, the kind one might stumble across in a forest clearing in the early morning mist or evening twilight.

Some of the small panes of glass in the leaded windows have cracks in them. The building is large, arts and crafts style, and looks from the outside as if it hasn’t been touched since the early 1900s. It makes me think of an old jewel that needs dusting. Whoever built it cared enough to position it perfectly, at the top of one steep side of Blantyre Moor. From where I’m standing I can see right across the Culver Valley. The house must once have been opulent. Now it looks as if it’s hiding its face in the greenery that grows all around it and up its walls, remembering better days.

My mind fills with images of winding staircases, secret passages that lead to hidden rooms. What a perfect house for a child to grow up in… The thought twists to a halt in my head as I remember that Lucy Bretherick won’t grow up. I can’t think about Lucy being dead without shivering with dread at the thought of something terrible happening to Zoe or Jake, so I push my thoughts back to Geraldine. Did she love this house or hate it?

Just walk up the drive and ring the bell.

It sounds like a bad idea. I went over and over it in my mind as I drove here, and I couldn’t think of one reason why it was the right thing to do, but that made no difference. I knew I had to do it. That’s still the way I feel, standing here at the bottom of the uneven lane, staring at Corn Mill House. I have to speak to Mark Bretherick, or the man I saw on the news. I have to do it because it’s the next thing; I don’t care that it isn’t sensible. Esther’s always accusing me of being prim, but I think deep down I’m more of a risk-taker than she is. Sensible is just a costume I wear most of the time because it suits the life I’ve ended up with.

I walk towards the house, crunching pebbles beneath my feet. It rained last night, and there are snail-shells all over the pink and white stones. I keep telling myself that after I’ve done this, after I’ve followed my mad impulse and come out on the other side of whatever’s about to happen to me, things will be clearer-I’ll have less to fear.

I left my car on the top road, safely far away and out of sight. I can lie about my name, but not my number plate. As I press the doorbell, I try to think about what I’m going to say, but my mind keeps switching off. Part of me doesn’t believe this is real. The grimy tiles of Corn Mill House’s porch floor swim in front of my eyes like the bottom of a kaleidoscope, a shifting mosaic of blue, maroon, mustard, black and white.

He might not be in. He might be at work. No, not so soon afterwards.

But he isn’t at home. I press the bell again, harder. If nobody opens the door, I have no idea what I’ll do. Wait for him to come back? He’s bound to be staying with relatives…

No. He will be in. He’s there. He’s coming to the door now. Maybe the man I met at Seddon Hall was right: maybe I am selfish, because at this moment I firmly believe Mark Bretherick is about to open the door purely because I want and need him to.

Nothing happens. I take a few steps back, away from the porch, and look around me at the garden that slopes down and out of sight on all three sides of the house apart from the one that has the road above it. The word ‘garden’ is inadequate as a description; these are grounds.

He’s not here because he isn’t Mark Bretherick, he’s lying, and this is not his home.

Something touches my shoulder. I lose my footing as I turn, see a blurred face, hear a horrible crunch beneath my feet. It’s him, the man I saw on television last night. And I’ve trodden on a snail, cracked its shell.

‘Sorry, I’ve… I’ve crushed one of your snails,’ I say. ‘Well, not yours, but you know what I mean.’ I assumed the right words would come to me when I needed them; more fool me.

I look up at him. He’s wearing gardening gloves that are covered in mud and holding a red-handled trowel in one hand. It looks odd with his blue shirt, which is the stiff-collared sort most men would save for work. There are sweat stains under the arms, and his jeans are brown at the knees, probably from kneeling in earth. He is standing close to me and it’s an effort not to wrinkle my nose; he smells stale, as if he hasn’t washed for days. His hair looks almost wet with grease.

I am about to start to explain why I’m here when I notice the way he’s staring at me. As if there’s no way he’s going to take his eyes off me in case I disappear. He can’t believe I’m standing in front of him… A dizzy, nauseous feeling spreads through me as I realise the harm I might be doing to this man. How could I not have anticipated his reaction? I didn’t even think about it. What’s wrong with my brain?

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘This must be a shock for you. I know I look a lot like your wife. I was shocked too, when I saw on the news… when I heard what had happened. That’s why I’m here, kind of. I hope… oh, God, I feel awful now.’

‘Did you know Geraldine?’ His voice shakes. He moves closer, his eyes taking me apart. I know one thing straight away: I am not at all afraid of him. If anyone’s frightened, it’s him. ‘Why… why do you look so much like her? Are you…?’

‘I’m nothing to do with her. I didn’t know her at all. I happen to look like her, that’s all. And actually, that’s not why I’m here. I don’t know why I said that.’

‘You look so like her. So like her.’

I am certain that this man is looking at my face for the first time. He hasn’t a clue who I am. Which means he hasn’t been following me in a red Alfa Romeo; he didn’t push me in front of a bus yesterday.

‘Are you okay?’ he asks eventually. He has dropped the trowel on the drive and taken off his gloves. I didn’t even notice.

I realise I’ve been standing like a statue, saying nothing. ‘What’s your name?’ I ask him. ‘It said on the news your name was Mark Bretherick.’

‘What do you mean, “it said on the news”?’

‘So you are Mark Bretherick?’

‘Yes.’ His eyes are glued to me. This is what a person in a trance would look like.

What am I supposed to say next? That I don’t believe him? I want him to prove it? ‘Can I come in? I need to talk to you about something and it’s complicated.’

‘You look so like Geraldine,’ he says again. ‘It’s unbelievable.’ He makes no move towards the house.

Five seconds pass. Six, seven, eight. If I don’t take the initiative, he might stand here studying my face until day turns to night.

‘What happened to you?’ He points at the cuts on my cheek.

‘We need to go inside,’ I say. ‘Come on. Give me your key.’ It’s odd, but I don’t feel presumptuous, or even awkward any more. For now, he is aware of nothing but my face.

He searches his pockets, still staring at me. It’s a relief when finally he hands me the key and I can turn away from him.

I unlock the front door and walk into a large, dark room, nearly as tall as it is wide, with polished wooden floorboards and wood-panelled walls. An elaborate design of blue stucco covers the ceiling, makes me think of a stately home. There are two big windows, both largely uncovered by whatever plant is growing up the walls outside, and the front door is wide open, yet the room seems as dark as if it were underground. The low-hanging chandelier light is on but seems to make no difference. It’s as if the dark walls and floor are sucking up the light.

In front of me is a log-burning stove that’s been lit and is blazing, even though it’s August. Still, the hall is cool. Side by side in the middle of the room, directly in front of the stove, are two matching chairs that look like antiques: slim, armless, S-shaped to follow the curve of a person’s back, upholstered in a cream, silky fabric. To my right, a staircase protrudes into the hall, with solid wooden banisters on both sides. Eight steep steps lead to a small square landing, after which further steps lead off to the left and to the right. One of the windows is a bay with a window-seat, a half-hexagon that has a faded burgundy velvet cushion going all the way round it. Against the wall behind me there is a large fish-tank and a chaise-longue.

Mark Bretherick-how else can I think of him?-walks past me and sits in one of the two chairs in front of the fire. ‘The lounge is full of bin-bags,’ he says.

I lower myself into the chair next to his. He’s not looking at me any more. He’s staring at the glowing coals and logs through the stove door. I’m still chilly, even now that I can feel the warmth on my face. I look at the window nearest to me and see a drop of water on the stone beneath the glass, like a single tear trickling into the room.

‘Cold,’ he says. ‘The old ruin. This room’s always freezing.’

‘It’s cooler today than it was yesterday,’ I say. ‘Yesterday it was sweltering.’ I fill the air between us with pointless words to make the occasion of our meeting appear less bizarre.

‘That was Geraldine’s nickname for it-the old ruin. We did our bedroom and the bathrooms when we first bought it, but nothing else. Everything else could wait, Geraldine said.’

‘It’s a beautiful house.’

‘Plenty of time, she said. Thirty thousand pounds each bathroom cost me. Geraldine thought they were the most important rooms in the house. I had to take her word for it. I was never in the house.’

‘What do you mean?’

He turns to face me. ‘I almost can’t stand the sight of you,’ he says.

‘I’m sorry.’

He shakes his head. Every time he moves, the hard, sharp smell of dirt wafts towards me. ‘That’s where I found their bodies. Did you know that?’

‘Where?’

‘In the baths upstairs. Geraldine was in one and Lucy was in the other. You didn’t know that?’

‘No. All I know is what I saw on the news last night.’

‘Do you know what GHB is?’

‘You mean GBH? Grievous bodily harm?’

His mouth laughs, though his eyes are remote, empty. ‘You hear about things like this, things that are so far… beyond… and you wonder how people can carry on living after they happen. How can they be hungry or thirsty? How can they tie their shoe-laces or comb their hair?’

‘I know. I’ve thought that.’

‘When you rang the bell I was sorting out the flowerbeds.’

I am sitting beside him, but I am light years away from his grief. I can feel it like an iron barrier between us.

He looks at me again. ‘Wait here. I want to show you something. ’ He springs out of his chair. It’s enough to make me leap up too. Unpredictable; I don’t like unpredictable. I know I wouldn’t be able to stand it if he showed me anything to do with Geraldine or Lucy’s deaths. What if he’s gone up to one of the bathrooms? What’s he going to have in his hands when he returns? I picture a knife, a gun, an empty pill bottle.

I don’t know how Geraldine killed her daughter or herself. It’s a question I don’t think I can bring myself to ask.

I run my hands through my hair. What the hell am I doing here? What am I hoping to achieve? It can’t be helping him to have me here. I should open the door and run.

My phone rings and I jump. I answer it quickly, to stop its mundane trill from polluting the mournful silence. Too late, I realise I could have switched it off; that would have had the same effect. It’s Owen Mellish from work. ‘Naughty girl,’ he says. ‘Where’ve you disappeared to?’

‘I can’t talk now,’ I tell him. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘Not for me. But I thought I should let you know that Madam Snoot’s phoned twice since you left the office. She wasn’t pleased to hear you’d decided to take the day off. I told her you’d probably gone shopping.’

‘I’ll ring her. Thanks for letting me know.’ I cut him off before he has a chance to enrage me further. I can hear ominous creaks above my head. I don’t know if I’ve got time to phone Natasha Prentice-Nash before Mark Bretherick reappears, or whether I can do it without him hearing me, but I’m not sure I can stay here unless I do something ordinary. I need to take my mind off the man upstairs and his dead family, the souvenirs he might be about to show me.

I stand as far away from the stairs as I can, highlight Natasha’s name on my phone’s screen and press the call button. She answers after two rings and says her name, putting her heart and soul into the vowel sounds as she always does. ‘It’s Sally,’ I whisper.

‘Sally! At last. We’ve got a bit of a problem, I’m afraid. The Consorzio gang have arrived.’

‘Oh. Okay.’

‘Well, it isn’t okay, really. There’s been some kind of misunderstanding at their end about the documentary.’

‘Don’t tell me it’s off.’ I close my eyes, wishing I could say, ‘Actually, I’m not Sally Thorning. I’m someone who’s standing in for her, but I’ve only taken over the easy parts of her life.’

‘I spoke to the producer today,’ says Natasha. ‘She’s still keen.’

‘Great. So…’ I feel painfully self-conscious. There’s a door to my left. As quietly as possible I open it and slip through to an even larger room. It’s a lounge, though nothing like the one in my flat. ‘Lounge’ is too casual a word to describe it-drawing room would suit it better. Like the hall, it’s dark and wood-panelled and could almost be an elegantly proportioned cave that has been refurbished for the gentry, the temporary bolt-hole of a king in hiding. I don’t have time to notice much else about the room before my eyes are drawn to the black bin-bags. There must be at least a dozen, in a heap on the Persian carpet in front of the fireplace.

‘Vittorio seems to think he and Salvo are both being interviewed, but Salvo says you and he agreed he’d be interviewed alone,’ Natasha is saying. ‘He’s accusing us of messing him around.’

I sigh. ‘Him and Vittorio together-that’s always been the plan. Salvo doesn’t like it, but he’s known about it for ages.’

‘Could you ring and butter him up, then? Tell him how important he is? You know the sort of thing he wants to hear.’

I’d rather tell him how intensely irritating he is. I tell Natasha I’ll do my best to pacify him and she dismisses me with a curt ‘Ciao.’ I switch off my phone and put it in my bag, then open the door and lean out into the hall. There is no sign of Mark, no sound coming from upstairs. What will I do if he doesn’t come back soon? How long will I wait before going to check that he’s all right? Or leaving? It seems unlikely that I will do either.

I walk towards the pile of bin-bags that look so out of place on the elaborately patterned rug. I pull open the one nearest to me, taking care not to rustle the plastic any more than I have to. Apart from a pair of small pink Wellington boots on top, it’s full of women’s clothes. Geraldine’s: lots of black trousers-velvet, suede, corduroy, no jeans-and cashmere jumpers in all colours. Did she collect cashmere? I look in another bag and find dozens of bottles, tubes and sprays, and about twenty paperback books, mostly with pastel-coloured covers-peach, lemon yellow, mint green. Beneath these there is something with a hard edge, something that swings into my ankle as I move the plastic sack, making me grunt through clenched teeth.

I look over my shoulder to check I’m safe, then reach to the bottom of the bag and pull out two chunky wooden frames. Photographs of Geraldine and Lucy. Quickly, I hold them at a distance, not ready for the shock of seeing them so close to me. Geraldine is smiling, standing with her head tilted to one side. She’s wearing a white scoop-neck T-shirt, a black gypsy skirt, silver sandals with straps round the ankles and black sunglasses on her head like a head-band. She’s got the arms of a silver-grey sweater tied round her waist. There’s a cherry blossom tree behind her and a squat, flat-topped building, painted blue, with white blinds at the windows. She’s leaning against a red brick wall.

I bring the picture closer, staring, feeling my heartbeat in my ears. My arms are shaking. I know that place, that stubby blue building. I’ve seen it. I’m pretty sure I’ve stood where Geraldine is standing in this photograph, but I can’t remember when. The last thing I wanted to discover was another connection between Geraldine and me. But what is it? Where is it? My mind races round in circles, but gets nowhere.

The picture of Lucy, which I can look at only briefly, has the same background. Lucy is sitting on the brick wall, wearing a dark green pinafore dress and a green and white striped shirt, white ankle socks and black shoes, her two thick plaits sticking out on either side of her head. She’s waving at the camera. At whoever was holding the camera…

Her father. The words pierce me like a cold needle. The man upstairs, whoever he is, is throwing away photographs of his wife and daughter. Of Mark Bretherick’s wife and daughter. Jesus Christ. And I allowed myself to feel safe around him, in his house.

I don’t stop to think. I yank the bag’s yellow drawstring and close it, without replacing the photographs. I’m taking them with me. I run to the door, out into the hall, and freeze, nearly dropping the pictures. He’s there, back in his chair in front of the stove. His head bent, gazing down at his lap. Has he forgotten I’m here? I stare in horror at the photographs in my hand, hanging in the air between us. If he turned now, he’d see them. Please don’t turn.

I unzip my handbag and stuff them in, pulling out my phone. ‘Sorry,’ I say, waving it in the air, a cartoon gesture. ‘My mobile rang and… I thought I’d take it in there. I didn’t want to… you know.’ I can’t do this. I can’t stand here with photographs of Geraldine and Lucy in my handbag and talk to him as if nothing’s changed.

My fingers tug at the zip but my bag won’t close. I hold it so that it hangs behind my body. If he looked closely he would see the edges of the frames poking out, but he hasn’t even glanced in my direction. There’s a pile of A4 paper on his lap. White, with print on it. That’s what he’s looking at. ‘I want you to read something,’ he says.

‘I have to go.’

‘Geraldine kept a diary. I knew nothing about it until after she was dead. I need you to read it.’

I baulk at the word ‘need’. In his chair, with his long legs crossed at the ankles and those pages on his knee, he looks harmless once again. Frail. Like a daddy-long-legs that you could brush with your hand and it would fall to the ground.

‘You haven’t asked me what I want.’ I inject what I hope is a reasonable amount of suspicion into my voice. ‘Why I’m here.’

His eyes slide to the floor. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Bad manners. Bad host.’

‘Last year, I met a man who told me his name was Mark Bretherick. He claimed to live here, in Corn Mill House, and to have a wife called Geraldine and a daughter called Lucy. He told me he had his own company, Spilling Magnetic Refrigeration…’

‘That’s my company.’ A whisper. His eyes are sharper and brighter suddenly as he turns to face me. ‘Who… who was he? What do you mean, he told you? He pretended to be me? Where did you meet him? When?’

I take a deep breath and tell him an edited version of the story, describing the man I met at Seddon Hall in as much detail as I can. I leave out the sex because it’s not relevant. Just something bad and wrong I needed to do so that I could come home and be good again.

Mark Bretherick listens carefully as I speak, shaking his head every so often. Not in mystification; almost as though I’m confirming something, something he’s suspected for a while. He has someone in mind. A name. Hope mixed with fear starts to stir inside me. There’s no getting away from it now; he’s going to tell me something I’ll wish I didn’t know. Something that led to a woman and a little girl being killed.

I finish my story. He turns quickly away from me, rubbing his chin with his thumb. Nothing. Silence. I can’t stand this. ‘You know who he is, don’t you? You know him.’

He shakes his head.

‘But you’ve thought of something. What is it?’

‘Do the police know?’

‘No. Who is he? I know you know.’

‘I don’t.’

He’s lying. He looks like Nick does when he’s bought a new bike that costs a thousand pounds and he’s pretending it only cost five hundred. I want to scream at him to tell me the truth but I know that would only make him even more unwilling to talk. ‘Is there anyone you can think of who envies you, who might have had a thing about Geraldine? Someone who might have wanted to pretend to be you?’

He passes the bundle of paper across to me. ‘Read this,’ he says. ‘Then you’ll know as much as I do.’

When I look up eventually, once I’ve read each of the nine diary entries twice and taken in as much as I can, there is a mug of black tea on a slatted wooden table by the side of my chair. I didn’t notice him bringing either. He paces in front of me, up and down, up and down. I struggle not to let my revulsion show; this woman was his wife.

‘What do you think?’ he says. ‘Is that the diary of someone who would kill her daughter and herself?’

I reach for my drink, nearly ask for milk but decide not to. I take a gulp that scalds my mouth and throat. The mug is covered in writing: ‘SCES ’04, The International Conference on Strongly Correlated Electron Systems, July 26-30 2004, Universität Karlsruhe (TH) Germany ’.

‘It’s not the Geraldine I knew, the person who wrote all that. But then she says, doesn’t she? She’s got that part covered. “Whatever I feel inside, I do the opposite.” ’

‘She didn’t write it every day,’ I say. ‘From the dates, I mean. It’s only nine days in total. Maybe she only wrote it when she felt really down, and on other days she didn’t feel like that at all. She might have been happy most of the time.’

His anger surprises me. He knocks the drink from my hand, sending it flying across the hall, spraying tea everywhere. I watch the mug’s arc through the air, watch it fall on to the window seat as he yells, ‘Stop treating me like I’m mentally impaired! ’ I duck, making a hard shell of my body to fend off an attack, but he is already kneeling beside me, apologising. ‘Oh, my God, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, are you okay? Christ, you could have got third-degree burns!’

‘I’m all right. Honestly. Fine.’ I hear the tremor in my voice and wonder why I’m rushing to reassure him. ‘It went on the floor, not on me.’

‘I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say. God knows what you must think of me now.’

I feel dizzy, trapped. ‘I didn’t mean to make you angry,’ I tell him. ‘I was trying to find something positive to say. The diary’s horrible. You obviously know it is, and I didn’t want to make you feel worse.’

‘You couldn’t.’ His eyes seem to issue a challenge.

‘Okay, then.’ I hope I’m not about to break my own personal stupidity record. ‘Yes, I think this is the diary of someone who might kill her daughter. No, I don’t think it’s the diary of someone who would kill herself.’

He watches me closely. ‘Go on.’

‘The writer… the voice throughout seems to be screaming self-preservation at all costs. If I had to guess what sort of woman wrote it, I’d say-look, this is going to sound awful.’

‘Say it.’

‘Narcissistic, spoilt, superior-her way of doing things is better than everyone else’s…’ I bite my lip. ‘Sorry. I’m not very tactful.’ A ruthless ego, I add silently. Someone who starts to see other people as worthless and expendable as soon as they become obstacles to her getting her way.

‘It’s all right,’ says Mark Bretherick. ‘You’re telling me the truth. As you see it.’ For the first time, I hear a trace of anger in his voice.

‘Some of what she’s written is exactly what I’d expect,’ I say. ‘Being a parent can be massively frustrating.’

‘Geraldine never had a break from it. She was a full-time mum. She never said she wanted a break.’

‘Everybody wants a break. Look, if I had to look after my kids full-time, I’d need strong tranquillisers to get me through every day. I can understand her exhaustion and her need to have some time and space for herself, but… locking a child in a dark room and letting her scream for hours, pulling the door shut so she can’t get out, and that stuff about having to make her suffer in order to feel protective and loving towards her; it’s sick.’

‘Why didn’t she ask me to hire help? We could have afforded a nanny-we could have afforded two nannies! Geraldine didn’t have to do any of it if she didn’t want to. She told me she wanted to. I thought she was enjoying it.’

I look away from the anger and pain in his eyes. I can’t give him an answer. If I’d been Geraldine, married to a rich company director and living in a mansion, I’d have ordered my husband to stock up on a full team of servants the instant I emerged from the maternity ward. ‘Some people are better than others at asking for what they need,’ I tell him. ‘Women are often very bad at it.’

He turns away from me as if he’s lost interest. ‘If he can pretend to be me, he can pretend to be her,’ he says, blowing on his cupped hands. ‘Geraldine wasn’t narcissistic-the very opposite.’

‘You think someone else wrote the diary? But… you’d have known if it wasn’t Geraldine’s handwriting, wouldn’t you?’

‘Does that black print look like handwriting to you?’ he snaps.

‘No. But I assumed-’

‘Sorry.’ He looks disgusted, mortified to find himself having to apologise again so soon after the last time. ‘The diary was found on Geraldine’s computer. No handwritten version.’

There’s a sour taste in my mouth. ‘Who is William Markes?’ I ask. ‘The man she said might ruin her life?’

‘Good question.’

‘What? You don’t know?’

He barks out a laugh without smiling. ‘As things stand, you know more about him than I do.’

My breath catches in my throat. ‘You mean…?’

‘Ever since I first read that diary, I’ve had a name in my head with no one to attach it to: William Markes. Then out of the blue you turn up. You’re Geraldine’s double, physically, and you tell me you met a man who pretended to be me. But we know he wasn’t. So at the moment we’ve got no name to attach to the man you met in the hotel.’ He shrugs. ‘I’m a scientist. If I put those two facts together…’

‘You come to the conclusion that the man I met last year was William Markes.’

Sometimes, convenience has the appearance of logic: you link two things because you can, not because you must. I’m also a scientist. What if the two unknowns are unrelated? What if the man at Seddon Hall lied because he was breaking the rules for a week and wanted to cover himself, not because he’s a psychopath capable of murder?

If William Markes, whoever he is, faked Geraldine’s diary after killing her, why did he include his own name? Some kind of complicated urge to confess? Being a scientist and not a psychologist, I have no idea if that’s plausible.

‘You need to tell the police. They’ve given up looking for William Markes. If they hear what you’ve just told me…’

I am on my feet. ‘I’ve got to go,’ I say, pulling my bag out from where I left it behind the chair. I wrap my arms around it so that he doesn’t see the frame edges. ‘Sorry, I… I’ve got to pick up my kids from nursery at lunchtime today, and I’ve got some shopping to do first.’ A lie. Tuesday and Thursday are Nick’s days, the days when bags go astray and bills and party invitations vanish into thin air.

I have never, not once, collected Zoe and Jake at lunchtime. Their gruelling nursery regime is one of the many things I feel guilty about.

‘Wait.’ Mark follows me across the hall. ‘What hotel was it? Where?’

I pull open the front door, feel more real as the fresh air hits my face. It’s sunny outside, only a few feet from where I am now, but still the light looks far away. ‘I don’t remember the name of the hotel.’

‘Yes, you do.’ He looks sad. ‘You will tell the police, won’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Everything? The name of the hotel?’

I nod, my heart tightening with the deception. I can’t.

‘Will you come back?’ he asks. ‘Please?’

‘Why?’

‘I want to talk to you again. You’re the only person who’s read the diary apart from me and the police.’

‘All right.’ At this point I will say anything I have to if it means I can leave. He smiles. There is a hardness in his eyes: not pleasure but determination.

I have no intention of ever returning to Corn Mill House.

I drive to Rawndesley, feeling shell-shocked from my encounter with Mark, needing to forget everything to do with him, with what’s happened. In the Save Venice Foundation’s office, I spend several hours trying and failing to sort out the mess that Salvo, Vittorio and the TV producer have, between them, created. Natasha Prentice-Nash doesn’t comment on my bruised face, nor does she thank me for coming in on a Tuesday or apologise for landing something on me that shouldn’t be part of my job purely because I’m the only person in the office with basic social skills. By five o’clock I can’t stand it any more, so I head for home.

There’s no one there when I get back. Looking up through the car window, I see that our lounge curtains are open. Normally at this time they’re closed, with the warm glow of the lamp behind them so that Zoe and Jake can watch whatever CBeebies has to offer without sunlight interfering with the picture.

I climb out of the car, dragging my handbag after me, and look up and down the street for Nick’s car. It’s not there. Even so, I shout out my family’s names as I let myself into the flat. I look at my watch: quarter to six. Maybe the children are still at nursery. Nick might have left work late. Not that he’s ever done that in all the years I’ve known him. It must be nice, I’ve often thought, to have a job like that.

A horrible possibility occurs to me. What if Nick’s forgotten he’s supposed to be picking up Zoe and Jake? No, he’d still be back by now. He’s never later than five thirty. All I want is to come home to my normal messy, noisy house, two boisterous children and a husband holding out a glass of wine. So where are they?

I run upstairs to the kitchen. My stomach twists with worry when I see there’s no note on the table. Nick always leaves a note; I’ve finally managed to drum it into him that I worry if I don’t know where he is. At first he said things like, ‘What’s there to worry about? I mean, I’m obviously somewhere, aren’t I?’ Zoe and Jake are obviously somewhere too; the problem is that it’s not at all obvious to me where that somewhere is, and that’s not good enough.

Where could they be?

As I turn to leave the room, to search all our other rooms and each of our many carpeted steps for the note Nick had bloody well better have left, I see a flash of colour at the edge of my vision. The work-surface on both sides of the sink is covered in pools of bright red, some small, some bigger. There are red smears all over the kitchen wall. Blood. Oh, no. No, please…

On the floor, light reflects off small pieces of something on the lino. Broken glass.

I leap up the stairs three at a time to get to the lounge. I grab the phone and am about to ring the police when I notice a scrap of paper on top of the television: ‘Gone to Mum and Dad’s for tea,’ Nick has written on it. ‘Back eight-ish. Was going to make spag puttanesca for kids’ tea, but smashed passata jar-will clear up later!’ I’ve pressed the nine button twice before the significance of Nick’s words reaches my brain. I throw the phone on to the sofa and run back to the kitchen, where I start to laugh like a maniac. Passata. Of course. All over the room. The police had a lucky escape; I would have been their most hysterical caller of the day.

I sit down at the table and cry for what seems like a long time, but I don’t care. I’ll cry for as long as I damn well want. In between sobs, I shout at myself for being a self-indulgent fool.

After a while I calm down and pour myself a glass of wine. I haven’t got the energy to clear up the mess. The soul-shaking terror has gone, but I can still feel the hole it blasted through me. Mark Bretherick must have felt the same, except for him the nightmare didn’t end. Instead, it became his life. Panic can’t last indefinitely. It must eventually have stopped, leaving only the horror-cold, without the distraction of frenzy, stretching on and on.

I shudder. The idea is unbearable. Thank God I don’t know what it feels like. Thank God nothing worse has happened to Zoe and Jake than Nick’s mum’s atrocious cooking.

I retrieve my handbag from the hall, pull out the two framed photographs and take them up to the lounge, stopping off at the kitchen to collect my wine on the way. Now that I know Nick and the children are safe, I’m relieved to be alone. I sit on the sofa and lay the photos out beside me. That low red brick wall, the cherry blossom tree, the stunted blue building with the white blinds… I know I’ve seen these things before, but where? A spark flares in my memory: I hear myself saying, ‘It’s a bit odd that they’ve painted the outside blue, isn’t it? It’s not exactly in keeping with the surroundings.’ Who was I speaking to? My mind cranks slowly into action, blunt and fuzzy after two days with no respite and almost no food, two days of fielding one shock after another.

‘It’s owned by BT. I think it’s a telephone exchange. I don’t mind the blue. At least it’s not grey.’ Nick. Nick said that. Suddenly, full knowledge floods in: it’s the owl sanctuary at Silsford Castle. The blue BT building is behind it, across a small field. We’ve been to the sanctuary twice with the children, once when Jake was a tiny baby and then again about three months ago. Our second visit was more controversial. Zoe wanted to adopt an owl and so did Jake, and they both cried for ten minutes when I said they would have to share. They demanded one each. Eventually Nick had a brainwave and explained solemnly that owls, like children, were better off with two parents. Zoe and Jake saw the logic of this: they had a mum and a dad, so it was only proper that Oscar the Tawny should too.

I pick up the photograph of Lucy Bretherick. The wall she’s sitting on is about twenty metres from Oscar’s cage. If that. I wrap my arms tightly round my body, trying to squeeze out the fear that’s starting to gnaw at me. I don’t know what any of this means. All I know is that the Brethericks seem to be coming closer all the time.

I run down the six steps to Nick’s and my bedroom, throw open the doors of my wardrobe and pull things off the top shelf until I see the black, unironed lump I’m looking for-a T-shirt with a doodle of an owl printed on it, in white. And underneath, in white cursive-style letters, ‘The Owl Sanctuary at Silsford Castle ’. Nothing ambiguous about that. Anyone who saw me wearing this T-shirt would know I’d been there.

This is what I was wearing when I caught the train to York on my way to Seddon Hall. It’s what I always wear if it’s summer and I’m travelling; it’s the only T-shirt I’ve got that’s not too smart to waste on a journey or too scruffy to leave the house.

I need to find out if the photographs of Geraldine and Lucy were taken before I went to Seddon Hall or after.

Brilliant, Sally. How are you going to do that, exactly? Ring Mark Bretherick and ask for more details about the pictures you stole from his house?

I run back to the lounge, pick up one of the wooden frames and start to dismantle it. Some people write dates on the back of their photos-that’s my only hope. Even as I’m prising open the little metal clasps, injuring my fingertips, I’m wondering why it matters. So what if these pictures were taken before the second of June last year? My brain is jammed; I can’t explain to myself why it’s important.

Finally, the back of the frame comes loose. I throw it on the floor, and find myself looking at a blank white rectangle. There’s no date on the back of the picture. Of course there isn’t. Geraldine Bretherick was a mother. I don’t have time to put my photographs in frames or albums any more, let alone label them with dates for posterity-they live in a box in my wardrobe. Sorting out that box has been one of my New Year’s resolutions two years running. Maybe it’ll be a case of third time lucky.

I’m about to reassemble the frame when I notice something at the bottom of the picture’s white flip-side: a very faint line going all the way across. I work the long nail of my middle finger-the only nail I haven’t yet lost on the household-chore battlefield-into the corner of the frame to dislodge the photograph.

Two pictures fall out on to the carpet. My muscles tense when I see the second one. It was tucked behind the photograph of Geraldine and is almost an exact replica. A woman is standing by the red brick wall, in front of the cherry tree and the telephone exchange. She’s dressed in faded blue jeans and a cream shirt. Unlike Geraldine, she isn’t smiling. There’s a lot that’s different. This woman has a square face with small, blunt features that make me think of twists in flesh-coloured Plasticine. She’s less attractive than Geraldine. Her hair is dark but short, unevenly cut in a deliberate way, longer on one side than the other-a fashion statement. She’s wearing high-heeled leather boots, a brown leather jacket and deep red lipstick. Her arms hang at her sides; she looks as if she’s been posed.

I stare and stare. Then I pick up the framed picture of Lucy and very slowly start to undo the clasps on the back. Crazy. Of course there won’t be.

There is.

Another replica: a young girl, about Lucy’s age, also sitting on the wall. Like Lucy, she’s waving. A girl with thin, mousy brown hair, the sort of brown that is indistinguishable from a dull grey. She’s so skinny that her knee joints look like painful swellings in her stick-like legs. And her clothes… no, they can’t be…

I gasp when I hear someone in the flat, feet running up stairs, a stampede. More than one person, definitely. I’m panicking, wondering where I’m going to hide the pictures, the open frames, and how I’m going to explain myself, when I realise it can’t be Nick and the children; I didn’t hear the front door and there are no eager voices. I rub the back of my neck, trying to smooth out the knots of tense muscle that feel like ganglia at the top of my spine. Get a grip, Sally. This happens at least twice a day, and I should know better than to let it freak me out. The sound is coming from our unique feature, our blockage. It must be somebody who lives above us going up the main stairs, the ones that both are and aren’t in the middle of our flat.

The skinny girl in the photograph is wearing Lucy Bretherick’s clothes. Same shirt, same dress. Even the same socks and shoes. Identical, right down to the lacy frill at the top of each sock.

My head throbs. This is too much. I sweep the pictures off the sofa on to the carpet and press my hand over my mouth. I have to eat something or I’ll be sick.

The phone rings. I pick it up, manage no more than a grunt.

‘Did you switch your mobile off?’ a furious voice demands.

‘Esther. Sorry,’ I say limply. I must have forgotten to switch my phone back on when I left Corn Mill House.

‘It’s lucky I never listen to you, isn’t it? If I’d followed your instructions, I’d have phoned the police and made a complete tit of myself. What happened to calling me back within two hours?’

‘I’ll ring you back,’ I tell her, and slam down the phone.

‘So, you want to know what I think about everything apart from the infidelity bit. Right?’

I shovel more sauceless spaghetti into my mouth and make a sound that I hope answers Esther’s question. It took me fifteen minutes to tell her everything, then another ten to get her to swear on her life that she wouldn’t tell anyone, no matter what.

‘Funny, the infidelity is what I want to talk about most.’

‘Esther-’

‘What the hell were you playing at? That could have been it, Sal-your marriage over, your happy home wrecked, and for what? A few fucks with a man you hardly know? Your children’s lives ruined-’

‘I’m going,’ I warn her.

‘Okay, okay. We’ll discuss it another time, but we will discuss it.’

‘If you say so.’ I know Esther’s point of view is the correct one. It’s also easy, conventional, and it bores me rigid. ‘Didn’t I always say you’re more sensible than me?’ I try to make light of my newly confessed sin. ‘Proof if proof be needed.’

‘It’s not a joke, Sal. I’m actually shocked.’

Good. ‘Do you have anything to say about the rest of what I’ve told you? Or should I leave you in peace to consolidate your moral outrage?’

There’s a pause. Then she says, ‘Could the woman and girl in the photos be William Markes’ wife and daughter?’

Her words make me feel numb and wobbly, as if I’ve stepped off a roller-coaster in the dark. ‘Why?’

‘I don’t know.’ I listen as Esther chews her fingernails. ‘I just wondered if… I’m thinking of one family-the Markeses-trying to pass themselves off as another. I don’t know. I need two weeks on a desert island to think about it.’

‘Mark Bretherick doesn’t think his wife wrote the diary.’

‘Yeah. You said.’ She sighs. ‘Sal, isn’t it obvious? You and I can’t work it out in a phone call. You need to go to the police.’

‘The photos weren’t necessarily hidden,’ I say, stalling. ‘Haven’t you ever put a new picture in a frame and been too lazy to take out the old one? So you put the new one next to the glass and leave the old one behind it?’

‘No,’ Esther says flatly. ‘And especially not if one of the photos is of another girl wearing my child’s clothes. You’re sure they’re the same? Not just similar?’

‘All I know is they’re both wearing a dark green dress, a green and white striped blouse with a round-edged collar-’

‘Hang on. The dress is short-sleeved? If there’s a blouse underneath? ’

‘Yeah, it’s like a sort of tunic.’

‘It sounds like a school uniform,’ says Esther. ‘What colour shoes and socks? Black? Navy?’

‘Black shoes, white socks,’ I say breathlessly.

‘Hardly a casual Saturday-at-the-owl-sanctuary sort of outfit. Not that I’m an expert,’ Esther adds with distaste.

I put down my bowl of pasta, retrieve the pictures from the floor and look at them again. She’s right. What’s wrong with me? Of course it’s a uniform; it’s the green dress that put me off-it’s nowhere near as shapeless and institutional as most school tunics. Its short sleeves are fluted, the neck is shaped, and it’s got a belt with a pretty silver buckle. A uniform. It makes perfect sense. Every school in the county, like every parent in the county, takes its children on trips to Silsford Castle ’s owl sanctuary.

‘Sally? Hello?’

‘I’m here. You’re right. I don’t know how I missed it.’

‘You should still phone the police.’

‘I can’t. Nick’d find out about last year. He’d leave me. I’m not risking it.’ Please don’t say it. Please.

Esther says it. ‘You should have thought about that before you shagged another man. For a week.’ As if only a day’s worth of infidelity would have been less reprehensible. ‘This isn’t just about you, Sally.’

‘Do you think I don’t fucking know that?’

‘Then call the police! Today you were followed, yesterday someone pushed you under a bus. Do you still think it was Pam Senior?’

‘I don’t know. I keep changing my mind. One minute it seems so crazy and the next… She was so keen to help after it happened. It made me suspicious. Ten minutes earlier she’d made it pretty clear she hated me.’

‘Oh, come on,’ Esther says scornfully. ‘There’s no mystery there. She’s dim, isn’t she? She sounds it, from everything you’ve told me about her. A dim person would always instantly forgive an enemy who’d nearly died.’

‘Would they?’

‘Yes. Sentiment would triumph over reason. “She nearly died, so I have to like her now”-that’s what Pam will have thought. Bright people continue to hate those who deserve to be hated, irrespective of contingencies.’ Esther’s voice is full of pride, and I know she’s thinking about her boss, the Imbecile. I listen to her loud exhalations as she tries to calm down. She hates not being in charge. ‘Look, Nick wouldn’t necessarily find out,’ she says. ‘It’s well known that the police protect adulterous witnesses.’ She talks over my snorts of derision. ‘It’s true! Most of them are at it themselves. Cops are real shaggers-everyone knows that. They won’t even disapprove. All they’re interested in is getting the facts so they can do their job. If you tell them everything you know, they’ll do their best not to involve Nick.’

‘You have no way of knowing that,’ I say, and put the phone down before she can argue with me. I wait for her to ring me back but she doesn’t. My punishment.

All they’re interested in is getting the facts. What was the Alfa Romeo’s registration? I knew it this morning. I memorised it.

I’ve forgotten. In the hours between then and now, it has slipped out of my mind. Idiot, idiot, idiot.

I pick up the four photographs, take them downstairs and put them in my handbag. Then I go back to the lounge and throw the two wooden frames into the wastepaper basket. The chances of Nick noticing or asking about them are zero; for once I’m glad I haven’t got a husband who’s observant and on the ball.

I think about the police. Real shaggers. How observant can they be if they didn’t find the two hidden photographs? Assuming they were hidden. Surely the house was searched after Geraldine and Lucy died. Why didn’t anybody find those pictures?

I know what school Lucy Bretherick went to: St Swithun’s, a private Montessori primary in North Spilling. Mark… the man at Seddon Hall told me. I’d heard of Montessori, knew it was a kind of educational ethos, but I wasn’t sure what exactly it entailed, and didn’t ask because he clearly assumed that as a fellow middle-class parent I knew all about it.

I don’t, but I plan to find out as much as I can-about the school, about both girls whose photographs are in my bag, and their families. Tomorrow morning, as soon as I’ve dropped Zoe and Jake off at nursery, I’m going to St Swithun’s.

Police Exhibit Ref: VN8723

Case Ref: VN87

OIC: Sergeant Samuel Kombothekra

GERALDINE BRETHERICK’S DIARY, EXTRACT 3 OF 9 (taken from hard disk of Toshiba laptop computer at Corn Mill House, Castle Park, Spilling, RY29 0LE)

23 April 2006, 2 a.m.

Tonight, Michelle babysat while Mark and I went out for dinner. I didn’t have to negotiate about bedtime, how many stories, brushing teeth. I didn’t have to turn on the night light or leave the door open at exactly the right angle. All that was Michelle’s responsibility, and she was paid handsomely for it.

‘Mark’s taking me to the Bay Tree, the best restaurant in town,’ I told Mum on the phone earlier. ‘He thinks I’m stressed and need a treat to cheer me up.’ There was a touch of defiance in my voice, I’m sure, and after I’d delivered my news I sat back and waited to see if Mum would agree or disagree.

She asked her usual question, ‘Who’s looking after Lucy?’, her voice full of concern.

‘Michelle,’ I said. She always does, on the rare occasions that Mark and I aren’t too shattered to venture out at night. Mum knows this but still asks every time, to check I’m not going to say, ‘Oh, Michelle’s busy tonight, but don’t worry, I found a tramp on the street earlier-he’s agreed to do it for a bottle of methylated spirits and we won’t even have to give him a lift home afterwards.’

‘You won’t be back late, will you?’ Mum asked.

‘Probably, yes,’ I said. ‘Since we’re unlikely to set off till after eight thirty. Why? What does it matter what time we get back?’ Every time Mark and I dare to go out for the evening alone, I think of that poem I learned at school: on a dark night, full of inflamed desires-oh, lucky chance!-I slipped out without being noticed, all being then quiet in my house.

Mum said, ‘I just thought… Lucy’s a bit funny at night at the moment, isn’t she? This whole scared-of-monsters thing. Will she be okay if she wakes up and there’s only Michelle there?’

‘If you mean would she prefer to have me dancing attendance on her in the small hours, yes, she probably would. If you mean will she survive the night, yes, she probably will.’

Mum made a clucking noise. ‘Poor little thing!’ she said. ‘Mark and I could always just have a starter and a glass of tap water each and be back here by nine thirty,’ I said-another test for her to fail.

‘Do come back as soon as you can, won’t you?’ she said.

‘Mark thinks I need a break,’ I said loudly, thinking: This is absurd. If I took a half-hearted overdose, everyone would be quick to say it was ‘a cry for help’. But when I actually cry for help in the more literal sense, my own mother can’t hear me. ‘Do you think I need a break, Mum?’ For over thirty years I was the person who mattered most to her; now I’m just the gatekeeper to her precious granddaughter.

‘Well…’ She started spluttering and making throat-clearing noises, anything to avoid answering. What she thinks is that I shouldn’t even be aware of my own needs now that I’m a mother.

I didn’t enjoy the meal, as it turned out. Not because of Mum. I never do enjoy my breaks, long or short, from Lucy. I look forward to them intensely, but as soon as they begin, I can feel them starting to end. I feel the temporariness of my freedom, and find it hard to concentrate on anything other than the sensation of it trickling away. Proper freedom is the kind you can keep. If you have to buy it (from Michelle), and are only granted it by someone else’s kind permission (school, Michelle), then it’s worthless.

When I’m not with Lucy, it’s almost worse than when I am. Especially at the end of a period away from her, when ‘crunch time’ is approaching. I dread the moment when I first see her, when she sees me, in case it’s worse than ever before. Sometimes it’s fine, and then the dread goes away. I sit next to Lucy on the sofa and we hold hands and watch TV, or we read a book together, and I say to myself, ‘Look, this is fine. You’re doing fine. What’s there to be so terrified of?’ But other times it isn’t fine and I run round the house like a slave pursued by the master’s whip, trying to find the toy or game or hairclip that will pacify her. Mark says I set too high a standard for myself, wanting her to be happy all the time. ‘No one is happy all the time,’ he says. ‘If she cries, she cries. Sometimes you should try just saying, “Tough,” and seeing what happens.’

He doesn’t understand at all. I don’t want to see what happens. I want to know what’s going to happen in advance. This is why I can’t relax in Lucy’s presence, because there seems to be no law of cause and effect in operation. I do my absolute best every single moment that I’m with her, and sometimes it works and everything is fine, and other times it’s a disaster-I put on her favourite DVD and she shrieks because it’s the wrong episode of Charlie and Lola. Or I suggest that we read her favourite book and she spits at me that she doesn’t like that book any more.

When I do succeed in pleasing her, I sit beside her with a tense smile plastered to my face, trying not to do anything that might bring about a change of mood. I love Lucy too much-I can’t extricate my own mood from hers, and this offends my independent spirit. I can barely express how much I resent her when she puts the itchy hook of her discontent into my mind. That one tiny action is enough to shatter my good mood. I look at her face, contorted in dissatisfaction, and I think, I can’t separate myself from this person. I can’t forget about her. She’s got me, for ever. And then I think about how much she takes from me every day in terms of energy and effort and even my essence, even the bit of me that makes me who I am-she takes all that, without appreciating it, every minute of every day, and despite all this she chooses to make things even worse for me by whining when she’s got nothing to be unhappy about. That’s when I’m aware of the danger.

I’ve never really done anything. The only objectively bad thing I’ve done is drive away from Lucy once, when she was three. It was a Saturday morning and we’d been to the library. I didn’t particularly want to go. I’d have preferred to go for a sauna or a manicure-something for me. But Lucy was bored and needed an activity, so I silenced the voice in my mind that was shouting, ‘Somebody please shoot me in the head, I can’t bear any more of this tedium!’ and took my daughter to the library. We spent over an hour looking at children’s books, reading, choosing. Lucy had a brilliant time, and I even started to relax and enjoy it a bit (though I was constantly aware that people who didn’t have children were spending their Saturday mornings in ways that were far superior). The problem arose when I said it was time to go home. ‘Oh, Mummy, no!’ Lucy protested. ‘Can’t we stay for a bit longer? Please?’

At moments like this-and there are many when you’ve got children, at least one a day and usually more-I feel like a political leader wrestling with a terrible dilemma. Do I appease and hope to be treated leniently? That never works. Appease a despot and he will only oppress you even more, knowing he can get away with it. Do I steel myself for a fight, knowing that whether I win or lose there will be terrible devastation on all sides?

I knew Lucy would get hungry very soon so I stood firm and said, no, we needed to go home and have lunch. I promised to bring her to the library again the following weekend. She screamed as if I’d proposed to gouge out her eyeballs, and refused to get into the car. When I tried to pick her up, she fought me, kicking and punching with all her might. I stayed calm and told her that if she didn’t cooperate and get into the car, I would go home without her. She paid no attention. She shrieked, ‘I’m not happy about you, Mummy, you’re making me very cross!’ So I got into the car and drove away, alone.

I can’t describe how exciting it was. Inside my head I was cheering, ‘You did it! You did it! Hooray! You finally stood up to her!’ I drove slowly, so that I could see Lucy’s face in the rear-view mirror. Her angry screams stopped abruptly, and I watched the expression on her face turn from blank shock to panic. She didn’t move, didn’t run towards the car, but she threw her arms out in front of her, opening and closing the fingers of both hands, as if by doing that she could grasp me and pull me back. I could see her mouth moving, and lip-read the word ‘Mummy!’, repeated several times. Never in a million years would she have expected me to drive away without her.

I probably should have stopped the car at that point, while she could still see me, but I was full of exhilaration and, just for a few seconds, I wanted to believe that it could last for ever. So I drove quickly round the block. I pulled up outside the library again about half a minute later. Lucy was sitting cross-legged on the floor, howling. A woman was trying to comfort her and find out what had happened, where her mother was. I got out of the car, bundled Lucy up, saying ‘Thank you very much!’ to the puzzled woman, and we drove back home. ‘Lucy,’ I said calmly. ‘If you’re naughty and don’t do what Mummy says, and if you make life difficult for Mummy, that’s the kind of thing that will happen. Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ she sobbed.

I hate the sound of her crying, so I said, ‘Lucy, stop crying right this minute, or I’ll stop the car and make you get out again, and next time I won’t come back for you.’

She stopped crying instantly.

‘That’s better,’ I said. ‘Now, if you’re good and make life easy for Mummy, then Mummy will be happy and we’ll all have a nice time. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, Mummy,’ she said solemnly.

I felt a mixture of triumph and guilt. I knew I’d done something bad, but I also knew that I couldn’t help it. It’s hard enough behaving well when the people around you also are, when whoever you’re with is leading by example. Sometimes you think, I want to do a bad, selfish thing now, but I can’t because everyone else is being so infuriatingly decent. But when you’re trapped in an explosive situation with someone who is determined to break all records for appalling behaviour, how, dear Gart, do you maintain your composure and do the right thing?

It isn’t only Lucy who sets me off. I’ve often had to sit on my hands, so tempted have I been to whack a friend’s child round the head. Like Oonagh O’Hara, who only has to whinge or stamp her foot to set both her parents off with their, ‘Sweetie! Come for a cuddle!’ nonsense. Gart, how I would love to punch Oonagh in the face. If I could do it once, I think I’d be happy for ever.