When You Are Mine(117)

Tony is driving the Range Rover. He’s wearing his best suit with a carnation in the jacket pocket, but still looks more like a pallbearer than an usher.

‘The place is looking good,’ he says as he stows my bags. ‘Your stepmother knows how to throw a party.’

‘She was born to it,’ I say.

‘Your in-laws arrived last night.’ He means Henry’s parents. ‘They seem very nice.’

‘You mean uptight?’

He gives me a sideways glance and matches my smile.

We’re about to pull away when someone knocks on the glass. I turn to see Lydia Croker, who looks embarrassed at intruding. I lower the window. She apologises profusely and speaks too quickly. I’m amazed at how different she looks from when I met her. Lighter. Less troubled.

‘I should have called,’ she says. ‘And then I saw the news.’ She glances at Tony, who has a wonderful way of appearing to be busy and deaf at the same time. Lydia begins again. ‘I wanted to thank you for recovering Imogen’s ring.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘The sapphire ring.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

She reaches into the side pocket of her dress and retrieves a small square ring box covered in velvet. She hands it to me. The hinged lid pivots and the sapphire catches the light.

‘How?’

‘It arrived in the post,’ she says. ‘I was sure it was you.’

‘No.’

She grows flustered. ‘Who else … ?’

‘Did it come with a note?’

‘No, but I still have the envelope.’

Searching in her handbag, she produces a small, padded postbag with no return address. It is postmarked 23 August. Darren Goodall was dead by then. His house was a crime scene.

Henry emerges from inside. His hair is still damp from the shower and he’s carrying his suit jacket over his arm.

‘Are you getting married?’ asks Lydia, having noticed my make-up and the boxed wedding dress.

‘A month later than planned, but today’s the day.’

‘Isn’t it considered bad luck to see the bride before the wedding?’

‘Oh, we’re past that,’ I smile. ‘He’s going to pick up his best man from school.’

‘How old is his best man?’

‘Almost seven.’

Mrs Ainsley waves from her doorstep, wishing me luck. She’s holding a new dog, Rumpole, a pug with a frying-pan face, that she adopted from Battersea Dogs Home. I drove her to pick him up.

‘You have to go,’ says Lydia. ‘Thank you again.’

‘I didn’t do anything.’

‘You listened. And you knew the woman who finally gave us justice.’ She’s talking about Tempe. ‘Do you think she sent me the ring?’

‘Maybe,’ I say, allowing a gentle lie to hide a darker truth.





67


Alison Goodall is waiting at the school gates to pick up Nathan. Chloe is buckled into a stroller, chewing a biscuit that is breaking up in her fist, leaving sodden lumps on her dress. Alison’s freckles are showing on her nose and she’s wearing make-up.

‘You’re back in the house,’ I say. She turns. Surprised to see me. Anxious for a moment.

‘We moved in last week, but I’m putting it up for sale. Too many bad memories.’

‘How have you been?’

‘Good. Better.’

She looks away nervously, as though scared that I might see something in her eyes. Some secrets are too big for a single person to hide. It takes a family to keep them; it takes blood and history and sacrifice.

I picture this woman a month ago. Downtrodden. Subjugated. Broken. A human punching bag married to a man who belittled and demeaned her, who slowly eroded her self-esteem, using fear and abuse to control her actions and her thoughts. A woman trapped in a loveless, violent marriage, who could not afford to leave and could not afford to stay.

Day after day, she must have dreamed of being free of him, until an idea took hold; a thought that wouldn’t go away. She escaped from him but didn’t run far because he had her on a leash; and he was certain that she’d come crawling back to him like a kicked dog.

He was right. She did come back. She turned up late one night and begged for forgiveness. She took him to bed. She handcuffed his wrist to the bedhead. She set him on fire. She watched him die.

She had an alibi. Her little boy was sick. Her mother and father confirmed her movements. She was home all night, nursing Nathan, sleeping next to him.

The breeze has freshened, raising goosebumps on Alison’s bare arms where there used to be bruises.

‘I was wrong about you,’ I say. ‘I thought you were a mouse, but you learned how to roar.’

‘No, I’m the same person – boring, uninteresting, uninspiring.’ She smiles shyly. ‘Darren spent years telling me so. He didn’t love me – he didn’t even like me – but he wouldn’t let me go.’

She glances at Chloe and makes a clucking sound as she brushes soggy biscuit crumbs from the toddler’s lap.

‘I don’t want you to think I had it all planned,’ she says. ‘When I went back to the house, he took me to bed. I could smell another woman on the sheets. Even as he was telling me how much he loved me, and how he wanted us to try again, I knew that he’d already been unfaithful.’