The Lies We Told(22)
During the hours that followed I scarcely took my eyes off my daughter, my heart clenched with panic as I waited to find out what she’d do. But the strange thing was she seemed entirely unaffected by what she’d heard. Maybe she hadn’t understood, I told myself desperately. But I went over and over what I’d said in the kitchen, and knew there was no way our conversation could have been misconstrued. How could it? The things she’d overheard were dreadful, horrifying; surely she would have been traumatized to discover what she did.
That night when I tucked her up in bed I lingered for a while on the pretext of tidying her room. I remembered how excited we’d been when we first moved to the house, how we’d looked forward to making our little girl’s room perfect for her. Glancing around now – at the walls we’d painted a cheerful yellow, the string of fairy lights draped over her mantelpiece, the large dolls house Doug had built, at all the other little touches we’d spent ages picking out for her but that had always been met with total indifference, I tried to find the words to begin. ‘Hannah,’ I said. ‘Darling?’
She looked at me and waited. At seven years old, she was small for her age still, yet she seemed in that moment to have changed, her face a touch less babyish than it was before; one of those moments you have with children, those startling flashes of realization that they are growing up and away from you right under your nose, that time passes so very quickly. Her hair fanned out across the white pillow, her watchful eyes were fixed on mine.
I made myself take a deep breath, my mouth horribly dry. ‘What you heard in the kitchen earlier, sweetheart, it must have sounded so crazy, so silly,’ I began, my smile so forced it hurt my face, my voice shrill. ‘We were just playing a silly game, that’s all! That was Mummy’s friend and we were pretending we were in a film or something!’ Hannah continued to watch me silently. I licked my lips. ‘The thing is, darling, it needs to be a secret. What you heard, what you heard Mummy and her friend saying, the game you overheard, you mustn’t mention it to anyone. Do you see? You mustn’t mention it to anyone at all, not even Daddy. Do you promise?’
Hannah blinked, her face without expression as she considered me. And then she turned over and closed her eyes, leaving me to stare silently down at her, cold with fear.
10
London, 2017
As Clara walked to the police station a memory came to her of a year or so before, when she had fallen and badly twisted her ankle. Fearing that she’d fractured it, Luke had taken her to the hospital where they’d waited long into the afternoon to be seen. It had been unbearably hot, the waiting area full to bursting with the sick and injured, a palpable cloud of frustration and boredom hanging in the stuffy air.
She’d sat, her leg propped up on a chair while she’d waited, Luke pacing to and fro like a caged tiger. When she’d finally been called to X-ray, she’d returned some time later to find him engaged in a noisy conversation with several waiting patients, including a very drunk man with a tattooed face, a middle-aged woman with a black eye, a couple of pensioners and a teenager who reeked of weed. They’d all laughed uproariously as she approached, Luke clearly in the midst of a long and apparently hilarious story about how he’d broken his leg as a teenager. It seemed that the pall of wretchedness had entirely dissipated, a party spirit in the air now.
She hadn’t broken her ankle, but the pain was still eye-watering. ‘Wait here a sec,’ Luke had said, and off he’d vanished only to appear five minutes later with a wheelchair.
‘Are you sure we can take this?’ she’d asked, looking at it doubtfully.
‘Yep, all sorted,’ and he’d raised his hand to wave at a nurse at the other end of the corridor. ‘Bring it back tomorrow, Sue!’ he’d called and she’d rolled her eyes good-naturedly and nodded. Out on the street he’d pushed her sensibly for a few minutes, before picking up pace and stampeding down the pavements, pretending to career into lampposts and bushes, veering away at the last moment and as they’d headed towards the nearest pub at breakneck speed she’d shrieked and laughed so much she’d forgotten all about her throbbing ankle. Later he’d made her favourite dinner and invited her best friend Zoe around with a bottle of wine to cheer her up. That was the thing about Luke: he could turn any bad situation into something fun. He made everything feel like a party. She looked up to see the police station ahead of her, and taking a deep breath, pushed the memory away.
DS Anderson ushered her past the front desk and through to a large and busy office where several officers worked, either on phones or tapping away at computers. Nobody glanced up as she arrived, and Anderson led her to a corner desk and nodded for her to sit. There was something different about him today, she thought; a businesslike briskness, a grim purposefulness that made her uneasy. She sat without a word, bracing herself for whatever was coming.
Taking a seat next to her, he pressed the mouse of his computer and the screen flickered into life. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘This is CCTV footage of—’
‘Duck Lane,’ Clara finished for him, peering closely at the screen. The slightly hazy, bleached-out film showed the narrow dead-end road off Broadwick Street that ran behind the string of office buildings, shops and cafés lining Brindle Press’s part of Wardour Street. It was used by delivery vans to offload their supplies to the various businesses’ back entrances – as well as being where Brindle employees came to smoke, make private phone calls or take part in periodic fire drills.