Her One Mistake
Heidi Perks
For Bethany and Joseph.
Dream big and believe in yourselves.
NOW
My name is Charlotte Reynolds.” I lean forward to speak into the microphone, though I’m not sure why. It just feels imperative that I at least get my name across clearly. Reaching out for the glass in front of me, I grip it between my fingertips, pushing it slowly in counterclockwise circles, watching the water inside ripple.
The clock on the otherwise bare white wall flashes 9:16 p.m. in bright red lights. My children should be in bed by now. Tom said he would stay the night and sleep in the spare room. “Don’t worry,” he told me when I called him earlier. “I won’t go anywhere until you’re home.” That isn’t what I’m worrying about, but I didn’t say as much.
Home feels so far away from this airless, whitewashed room with its three chairs and desk and the microphone balanced on one end of it, and I wonder how long I’ll be here. How long can they keep me before they decide what comes next? Ever since the school fair two weeks ago I’ve dreaded leaving my children. I’d do anything to be tucking them into bed right now so I can breathe in their familiar smells, read them that one more story they always beg for.
“They’re not holding you, are they?” Tom had asked me on the phone.
“No, they just want to ask me a few questions.” I brushed off the fact I was in a police station as if it were nothing. I didn’t tell Tom the detective had asked if I’d wanted someone to be with me, that I’d refused and had told her as breezily as I could that I didn’t need anyone as I’d happily tell her what I knew.
My fingers begin to tingle and I pull them away from the glass to hide them under the table, squeezing them tightly, willing the blood to rush back into them.
“So, Charlotte,” the detective starts in a slow drawl. She asked me if she can use my first name but hasn’t offered me the privilege in return. I know her name is Susanne because she said as much for the recording, but I expect she knows I won’t call her that. Not when she introduced herself as Detective Rawlings to reinforce who is in control.
My breath sticks tightly in my throat as I wait for her to ask what I was doing there tonight. In many ways, the truth would be the easy option. I wonder if I told her, if she’d let me leave now so I can go home to my children.
The detective is interrupted by a knock on the door, and she looks up as a police officer pokes her head into the room. “Captain Hayes is on his way from Dorset,” the officer says. “ETA three hours.”
Rawlings nods her thanks and the door closes again. Hayes is the Senior Investigating Officer of what has become the Alice Hodder case. He’s been a constant fixture in my life for the last two weeks, and I wonder if they’ll keep me here until he arrives because I assume he will want to speak to me. The thought that I could be cooped up inside this room for another three hours makes the walls close in tighter. I don’t remember ever feeling claustrophobic, but right now the sense of being trapped makes me feel light-headed, and my eyes flicker as they try to adjust again.
“Are you okay?” Detective Rawlings asks. Her words sound rough. They give the impression it would annoy her if I weren’t. She has dyed blond hair scraped back into a tight bun, which shows the black of her roots. She looks young, no more than thirty, and has plastered too much bright red lipstick onto her very full lips.
I hold a hand against my mouth and hope the nausea passes. I nod and reach for the glass of water to take a sip. “Yes,” I say. “Thank you, I’ll be okay. I just feel a little sick.”
Detective Rawlings purses her red lips and sits back in her chair. She’s in no rush.
“So,” she begins again, and asks her first question, but it isn’t the one I was expecting. “Let’s start by you telling me what happened thirteen days ago. The day of the fair.”
CHARLOTTE’S STORY
BEFORE
CHARLOTTE
At exactly ten o’clock on Saturday morning the doorbell rang, and I knew it would be Harriet because she was never a minute late. I emerged from the bathroom, still in my pajamas, as the bell sounded a second time. Flicking back the curtains to be sure it was her, I saw Harriet hovering on the doorstep, her arm tightly gripped around her daughter’s shoulders. Her head was hung low as she spoke to Alice. The little girl beside her nodded as she turned and nestled her head into her mother’s waist.
My own children’s screams erupted from downstairs. The two girls’ voices battled to be heard over one another. Evie was now drowning out Molly with a constant, piercing whine, and as I fled down the stairs, I could just make out Molly crying at her younger sister to shut up.
“Will you both stop shouting!” I yelled as I reached the bottom. My eldest, Jack, sat oblivious in the playroom, earphones on, zoned into a game on the iPad that I wished Tom had never bought him. How I sometimes envied Jack’s ability to shut himself in his own world. I picked Evie off the floor, wiping a hand across her damp face and rubbing at the marmalade smeared upward from both corners of her mouth. “You look like the Joker.”
Evie stared back at me. At three she was still suffering from the terrible twos. She had at least thankfully stopped bawling and was now kicking one foot against the other. “Come on, let’s play nicely for Alice’s sake,” I said as I opened the door.