Let Me Lie(86)

‘Drop it?’ Mark stops short, and I walk into the pram handle. ‘Anna, we can’t drop it. It’s serious.’

‘The note said no police. If we drop it, they’ll stop.’

‘You don’t know that.’

I do. I take my arm from Mark’s and begin walking again, pushing the pram away from him. He runs to catch up.

‘Please, Mark. I just want to forget about it. Start the New Year off on a positive note.’ Mark is a big believer in fresh starts. New chapters. Clean pages. Perhaps all counsellors are.

‘For the record, I think it’s the wrong thing to do—’

‘I want to move on from what happened to my parents. For Ella’s sake.’ I look down at her, as much to hide my face as to reinforce my point, feeling guilty for using her as emotional collateral.

He nods. ‘I’ll tell them we’re dropping it.’

‘Thank you.’ My relief, at least, is genuine. I stop again, this time to kiss him.

‘You’re crying.’

I wipe my eyes. ‘It’s all a bit much, I think. Christmas, New Year, the police …’ Mum. I get as close to the truth as I dare. ‘I’m really going to miss Angela.’

‘Did you spend much time together when you were younger? You never talk about her; I didn’t realise you knew her that well.’

The lump in my throat hardens, and my chin wobbles as I try my hardest to stop myself from sobbing. ‘That’s the thing about family,’ I manage. ‘Even if you’ve never met before, you feel as though you’ve always been together.’

Mark puts one arm around me, and we walk slowly back to Oak View, where twinkly lights around the porch mark the start of New Year’s Eve, and the beginning of the end of this terrible, wonderful, extraordinary year.

Mum’s in the garden. I slide open the glass door and she jumps, panic on her face until she sees that it’s me. She’s not wearing a coat, and her lips are tinged with blue.

‘You’ll catch your death,’ I say, with a wry smile she doesn’t return.

‘I was saying goodbye to the roses.’

‘I’ll look after them, I promise.’

‘And make sure you put in an objection to—’

‘Mum.’

She stops, mid-sentence. Her shoulders sag.

‘It’s time to go.’

Inside, Mark’s opened a bottle of champagne.

‘An early New Year.’

We clink glasses and I fight back tears. Mum holds Ella, and they look so alike I try to fix the moment in my memory, but it hurts so much. If this is what it’s like to lose someone slowly, I would pray for a sudden death every time. A sharp break to my heart, instead of the slow splintering I feel right now in my chest, like cracks crazing across a frozen lake.

Mark makes a speech. About family, and re-connecting; about New Years and new starts – this last with a wink in my direction. I try to catch Mum’s eye, but she’s listening intently.

‘I hope the year brings health, wealth and happiness to us all.’ He raises his glass. ‘A very happy New Year to you, Angela; to my beautiful Ella; and to Anna, who I am hopeful might this year say yes.’

I smile fiercely. He will ask me tonight. At midnight, perhaps, when my mother is on a train to heaven knows where, and I’m grieving on my own. He will ask me, and I will say yes.

And then I smell something. An acrid burning, like melting plastic, teasing my nostrils and catching the back of my throat.

‘Is there something in the oven?’

Mark is a second behind, but quick to catch up. He moves swiftly to the door and into the hall.

‘Jesus!’

Mum and I follow. The smell in the hall is even worse, and below the ceiling hangs a mushroom of black smoke. Mark is stamping on the doormat – black fragments of burned paper fly out from beneath his feet.

‘Oh my God! Mark!’ I scream, even though it’s obvious that whatever flames there were have been extinguished, the cloud of smoke already dissipating.

‘It’s okay. It’s okay.’ Mark’s trying to stay in control, but his voice is a notch higher than normal, and he’s still stamping on the doormat. It’s the rubber surround I could smell, I realise. Whatever was put through the letterbox has disappeared; would probably have burned itself out even without Mark’s input. Paper kindling designed to frighten us.

I point to the front door. Sweat trickles down the small of my back.

Someone has written on the outside of the stained-glass panels on the upper section of the door. I see the block capitals, distorted by the different thicknesses of glass.

Mark opens the door. The letters are written in thick black marker pen.

FOUND YOU.





FIFTY-ONE


MURRAY


It was dark before they hit the motorway. Murray had made one phone call after another once they’d left the bedsit, and when it was obvious he wasn’t going to be free to drive any time soon, he had handed the keys to Sarah.

‘I’m not insured.’

‘You’ll be covered under mine.’ Murray mentally crossed his fingers and hoped he was right.

‘I can’t remember the last time I drove.’

‘It’s like riding a bike.’