Her Perfect Family(48)

He no longer had to try to look sober to hang on to a job, so he didn’t bother. My mother switched to full-time work, taking on the night shifts for better pay. She also signed up with an agency for extra weekend shifts and so was hardly home. She explained all this to me, sitting on my bed before she left for work, whispering that the ‘difficult time’ was temporary and she hoped with all her heart that she could be home more very soon. That things would improve when Dad got a new job.

He, meantime, became very argumentative and very bitter. He started to rant at the news on the telly. Rant at the news in the newspapers. Rant at anything and everything; and I started to see him drunk. A lot. They started to argue in the kitchen in the early evening when she was getting ready for work. I would be up on my bed, eyes wide and my hands over my ears, no idea what I was supposed to do.

And that’s when the battle and the humiliation over my packed lunches began.

Mum didn’t have time to make my lunch and Dad insisted it was his job. She was obviously wary and said that she would find time but it became like a red rag to a bull. An issue of pride. Don’t you trust me? Are you saying I can’t make a packed lunch for my daughter? Is that what you’re saying?

Hot lunches were expensive and Mum made me a cooked meal before she left for her night shift so a dangerous new routine was agreed. Dad was supposed to make my lunchbox before he went to bed. I think I was around eight so maybe I should have been more independent and stepped up to make them myself. But I didn’t.

My lunchbox became like this fuse. This ticking bomb.

The trouble started with small things. I would get to school and find that Dad had put something odd in. A lime instead of an apple. A can of sardines. People would laugh and I pretended it was a joke. That he did it deliberately to make me laugh.

I started to check my packed lunch in the playground. If there was anything too weird, I’d chuck the whole contents in a bin. But I got caught and the teacher got the wrong end of the stick; started to worry I had some kind of eating disorder.

I then tried making my own sandwiches but Dad got really loud. Has your mother been talking to you? Move out the way. I . . . make . . . your lunch.

I see now that it was never about the wretched sandwiches or the lunch, but something else entirely . . .

And then we had the huge meltdown over the tea-bag sandwiches. The final straw. The day I got it all wrong; blew it. And Dad took it out on Mum and everything in my world went all the wrong colours. Angry colours. That’s it. I remember sitting up in my pink room with its pink bedspread and seeing only angry colours flashing around the walls as I heard the noises from the kitchen. Things smashing. Glass and pots and all manner of things.

I went down, in my rabbit slippers, and stood in the doorway. I was going to tell them that I would do my own lunch. I was sorry to cause this horrible argument . . .

But my mother was crouched by the bin, all ready for work in her nurse’s uniform. She was holding up her hands to try to protect herself but I could see blood on the side of her face. And this terrible rage on my father’s face.

Go to your room, Rachel. Go to your room now . . .

I don’t let myself even look at this picture in my head very often. What’s the point? It happened. It’s over. I got it wrong. I told my mum about the tea-bag sandwiches, you see. I caused the horrible argument and I made the bad thing happen. I am only thinking of it all now because I am having precisely the same feeling. Of dread. Of fear. Of confusion. The booming in my head and the palpitations in my chest. I suppose it’s the reason I just don’t feel that I can bear this . . . or handle this.

Looking at the photograph that Ed has sent me, I know that we’re all in very, very big trouble. It’s her. Sure – she’s very much younger but Laura is so distinctively tall and has such striking hair. That pre-Raphaelite Titian hair. How could it not be her?

The woman who was watching me on the drive. The woman who was stalking me outside the hairdresser’s and the woman who told me, so weirdly – he’s not who he says he is – was Laura. No mistake.

She’s here. I don’t know why. And I don’t know what she’s capable of.

All I know is that I need to wait for DI Sanders and my husband to get here. I’m going to have to come clean about the PI. And I feel all over again like that girl in the rabbit slippers who’s hearing her whole world crashing around downstairs. With flashes of dark and horrible colours blocking all the sunlight from the room.





CHAPTER 32


THE PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR


Matthew Hill’s dribbling honey on his toast when his mobile goes. He’s feeling good. More relaxed today. Amelie’s counselling is going better than they dared hope. Sally’s just back from dropping her at nursery – just the morning session for now to see how it goes. Baby steps.

It’s a week since the shooting, he’s not due at work until late morning and is hungry. His mobile’s on the work surface alongside the coffee machine and so he moves across the kitchen.

‘Leave it. Have your breakfast.’ Sally tilts her head to the side as she tosses her car keys on to the worktop. ‘Surely Mel can wait five minutes for you to have your breakfast.’

‘How do you know it’s Mel?’ He glances at the screen.

It’s Mel.

‘Sorry. Gotta take this.’ He grins. Sally rolls her eyes as he clamps the mobile to his ear, marching through the French doors to their patio, toast in hand.