My Husband's Wife(120)

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.