Then She Vanishes(38)

Margot stands up. A woman who’s accustomed to hearing bad news, she senses straight away that something’s wrong. ‘What? What is it?’ she says, her eyes darting about frantically, searching his face for clues, I imagine. ‘Is it Heather?’

He shakes his head. ‘No. No. I’ve had a call. From the police. They’ve found …’ He turns to us. ‘This is off the bloody record, all right?’

I nod, although Jack’s face is impassive.

‘They’ve found what?’ asks Margot, her voice rising.

‘Another set of fingerprints on the gun.’





21




Margot


The air smells stale in the police station and Margot’s sure somebody has recently been eating egg sandwiches. She sits in the waiting room, her bag on her lap, trying not to make eye contact with some of the undesirables, her gaze trained on the posters with local helplines stuck to the wall opposite. A youth in the corner with a nose-ring has already bared his teeth at her. He’s waiting with an extremely skinny young woman, who, she’s sure, must be a drug addict, judging by her greasy hair and marked arms. It’s mid-March but the woman is in a vest top and sweatpants, although it’s unbearably hot in there. Margot can feel sweat breaking out on her back. She shouldn’t have put on her padded coat but she doesn’t want to take it off and draw attention to herself.

She shuffles in the uncomfortable plastic chair. How long is Adam going to take? The horrible blue walls are beginning to close in on her.

Adam was quiet in the car on the drive over while Margot had found it hard to suppress her excitement. Another set of fingerprints found. Which means it might not have been Heather who killed those people after all. She’s always known, deep down, that Heather wouldn’t do this. Not in cold blood. Keith was different. Keith was an unfortunate tragic accident.

Jess had been understanding when their interview had had to be cut short. She’d asked if she could go over to the caravan park and talk to Colin. Margot had agreed. She can’t imagine Colin would know anything, and she wanted to appease Jess after running out on her like that. Adam hadn’t looked particularly thrilled by the prospect of Jess and that nice boy, Jack, entering the caravan park, but he rarely looked thrilled about anything so Margot told herself not to dwell on it.

She checks her watch. It’s almost two. She wanted to go back and see Heather. What if she wakes up and nobody’s there? She’s agitated by the thought.

The drug-addict woman approaches the duty officer behind the desk and starts arguing with him. Margot shrinks in her seat, wanting to make herself even smaller. Just when she thinks she can stand it no longer and will have to get some fresh air, Adam emerges, grim-faced.

She leaps to her feet. ‘All done?’

He nods.

‘Can we go?’

‘Yep. Let’s get out of here.’

As soon as Margot steps outside she gasps for air. Oh, how she hates being cooped up inside. It makes her feel like she can’t breathe. Heather’s always been the same. They share the love of the countryside, the open spaces, the lush greenery, the hills. Some mornings, before breakfast, they’d saddle their horses and ride across a stretch of land they called the Gallops. It was when Heather said she’d felt the most free – free of the constraints of being a wife and a mother. How would she cope in prison?

She wouldn’t. That’s the truth of it. For the first time Margot wonders if it would be better for her daughter if she never woke up.

‘So, what did they say? The police.’

Adam shrugs. ‘Not much. But it’s nothing to get excited about, Marg. I’ve used the gun in the past and so have you. Our fingerprints are bound to be on it.’

Her heart falls. Of course. That’s all this is. Nothing to get her hopes up about. It was Heather who killed those people. She was seen, for crying out loud. There are witnesses.

She feels despondent as she gets back into the car. Adam turns the radio on. It’s still tuned to Absolute 90s and Margot has to swallow the lump in her throat when Sinéad O’Connor’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ comes on. An image pops into her head of her daughters belting out this song into hairbrushes in Flora’s bedroom. It had been a few months after Keith had died and she remembers being thankful that they’d seemed like their old selves. She’d been terrified their lives would be defined – ruined even – by the one idiotic moment that had cost Keith his life. But there they’d been, singing into their hairbrushes like any other normal ten-and twelve-year-old.

But they weren’t normal, were they? A thing like that was bound to have left its grubby mark on their once-clean souls.

‘Are you okay, Marg?’

Adam’s voice brings her out of the past and she realizes she has tears on her cheeks.

It’s not until much later, following an afternoon spent sitting beside Heather, brushing her lovely long hair and talking to her about the horses, her husband and son, that Margot gets the phone call. Adam’s gone to his mum’s, promising to bring Ethan back to spend the night. He’d popped in to see Heather, too, but he didn’t stay long. She’s noticed his visits are getting shorter. Margot had to get the bus back. She wasn’t a fan of public transport. Too enclosed with not enough air, and she always seemed to end up squashed against the window with the person next to her invading her space with their pointy elbows.