Her Perfect Family(87)

‘How’s the arm doing?’

‘Surgeon’s happy. Should be right as rain. Back on the golf course in no time. I’m just wearing this to milk it.’

His wife smiles and holds out her hand. ‘He doesn’t even play golf. But he is milking it.’

‘You must be Sally. I’m pleased to meet you.’ I beam, worrying quietly what she really thinks of it all. Of me. Of us.

‘You too, Mrs Hartley.’ Her smile reaches her eyes and I’m relieved.

‘Rachel, please.’

I hold on to her hand and squeeze it. I’ve always felt it was my fault. Matthew getting shot. Wish I could find the right words. ‘We owe your husband so much. I’m really so very sorry. About the injury.’

She doesn’t answer but holds the smile and squeezes my hand in return. And I realise that I cannot imagine what it’s really like. To live the way he does. The way they do.

‘Good job she nagged me to wear the vest, eh?’ Matthew’s winking. The story in the paper said the bulletproof vest was a last-minute thing. It was in his boot after he loaned it to a colleague. He only put it on after talking to Sally on the phone. Without it? Best not to think . . .

‘You see. You should always listen to your wife,’ I say, and we all laugh.

‘Where’s the baby?’ The little girl looks disappointed, casting her eye around the church. ‘There’s no baby.’

‘Comfort break. Number twos.’ I grimace, lowering my voice.

‘Oh dear.’ Sally’s now grinning. ‘Remember that all too well. She’s having a nappy change, Amelie.’

‘Yuck!’

‘I’m sparing the dress.’ I lift up the folds of silk to illustrate as Amelie asks if she can light a candle and Sally nods, leading her to the side of the church where a black, wrought-iron stand of candles is casting dancing opals on the stained-glass window above.

‘Seriously. Is the arm going to be OK, Matthew?’

‘It is.’

‘I’m so sorry. What I did. I should have left it to you. I just—’ I’m thinking of that moment of madness. Diving at Amanda.

‘Please. We’ve been through this, Rachel. It was Amanda’s fault – all of it. Not yours. You were very brave.’

‘Was I?’ I close my eyes to the picture that still haunts my dreams the most. Matthew on the floor – shot and bleeding. And then Amanda – the gun to her own head, her eyes darting to Gemma then meeting mine one last time. You did this. You all did this. And then the horrible boom of the second shot, Amanda’s body thrown backwards with the force.

And for the first time in that sad little cubicle, with all the blood and the mayhem as police rushed in, everyone shouting – man down, man down – I was glad of Gemma’s coma. Don’t wake up, Gemma. Don’t wake up just yet.

‘How’s Gemma doing?’

It was ten more days before she opened her eyes. And at last kept them open.

‘Amazing. You’ll see in a minute. Actually, I’d better go. Give her a hand.’

‘Of course.’

I put my hand on his good arm. And for a minute I just keep it there, eyes closed once more.



Matthew and I last talked at Amanda’s inquest. Ed didn’t want me to go but I had no choice – a witness summons – and, in any case, I wanted to try to understand the mania. Why on earth Amanda would do that to Gemma.

While we waited for the coroner, Matthew told me about Laura’s transfer back to Canada. Some appeal deal brokered by her mother. Laura will have to stay under supervision but in a special unit, not jail. Turns out she was sending messages to Gemma as well as stalking me. She found Ed on a website through his work. Said in court that she needed to warn Gemma and me too that the man ‘posing as Ed’ was an imposter. He’s not who he says he is.

She sent the note to Matthew via his daughter after reading about his work on the case. Checked his background online and got it into her head that he might be the one to finally listen to her. You have to help me find my husband. No one will believe me.

The sad thing is she went back to Wells Cathedral, genuinely hoping to find the ‘real’ Ed there again. For their anniversary.

And then the inquest.

It was held in a dark, wood-panelled room in a town hall and wasn’t at all what I expected. Deep down, I suppose what I needed and wanted was a day in court for Gemma. A reckoning.

But that’s not what I got; not what an inquest is. Both Matthew and DI Sanders tried to prepare me but I didn’t truly understand until I was sitting in the room. I remember this horrible wave of realisation as the coroner explained his remit; that his job was not to rule on Amanda’s crimes but on her death. Only why and how she died.

I sat there and the cruelty of it finally hit me. I wasn’t there, in that dark and horrible room, as the mother of the victim. I was there as the last person to see Amanda alive.

We did at least get more of the story. The police found a nursery set up at her house. A cot with a mobile in place. A nursing chair in the corner. Elephant curtains at the window.

There were diaries too – a huge stack. Mad and angry scribblings filling page after page. Turns out Amanda had an affair with Sam when she first started at the university in her thirties. She fell pregnant but had a termination which she later deeply regretted. Sam said it was ‘the wrong time’. That his wife was fragile. Not Lily; this was his first wife.