Behind Every Lie(33)

A good mother would have taken her responsibilities seriously.

A good mother would have been watching her child.

A good mother would have kept her child safe.

I was not a good mother.

“We have to do this together,” Seb insisted. “Eva deserves to have both of her parents pick out her casket.”

The sound of her name triggered a visceral reaction in me. A stab of white-hot pain sliced through my core, a sharp blow to my solar plexus. It was like being caught in the gravity of a black hole. Once you were within its grasp, there was no escape. All you could do was wait for it to suck you in, to crush you.

I pulled my knees to my chest and pressed Barnaby to my face. My tears seeped into his bloodstained ear, smearing red across my palms. Seb dropped his face into his hands, ragged, guttural sobs wrenching from his chest, a howl of pain so deep it reached into my soul and touched me. I knew his pain, I felt it ravaging me every conscious moment.

“They let Rose go,” he said after a while.

I vaguely remembered Seb saying Rose had been arrested.

“Why?” I whispered. The familiar, cottony numbness of the drugs had started to wind its way through my blood.

I meant why had they arrested her, but perhaps he misunderstood.

“Her husband got his fancy lawyer involved. It didn’t matter how much I paid my contact in the police department, it obviously wasn’t as much as he did. They said they had no evidence to charge Rose with anything.” Seb slammed a fist into the bed, making me flinch. “But it was her house, her window, and she opened it! She’s the reason our daughter is dead! And I swear to you, I swear to you, if it’s the last thing I do, she will pay. I will make Rose pay.”



* * *



I woke abruptly later that afternoon, as if I had been shaken. I bolted upright, gasping for breath and drenched in sweat. The sound of Eva’s scream echoed in my ears. I unplucked my rigid fingers from the tangled duvet, pain shooting from my knuckles to my elbows.

The rays of the late-afternoon sun were bleeding through the pulled shades. The sound of voices came from inside the house. I crept down the stairs, my bare feet silent on the cold hardwood floor. Cool air swirled up my nightgown, licking at my legs.

The familiar voice of Seb’s dodgiest business partner, Paddy, wormed through the crack in his office door. “Oi, mate, I was down the local with this fit bird—”

“I don’t give two fucks about that, Paddy!” Seb’s fist hit something, the desk or perhaps the wall. “What did you find? Did you follow her?”

Paddy sighed, and I heard creaking as he sat in one of Seb’s leather chairs.

“Yeah, mate, I did like you asked. Rose goes for a walk every evening. It would be the perfect chance. The only problem is she’s always with the girl. Never goes out without her.”

My heart was slamming in my chest, my breath rattling, fast and loose like a container of Pop Rocks.

It was silent for a long moment; then Seb spoke, his voice low and dark. “An eye for an eye.” The sound of a drawer opening. A hard, metallic clunk. “Take this.…”

Another long pause. “All right.”

I didn’t listen for anything else. I turned and fled back upstairs to my room, diving under the covers and pressing Barnaby tight to my chest. After a while, Seb came in. He stood over me for a long time. I kept my eyes closed, my breathing steady and even.

And finally, he turned and left.



* * *



I dressed quickly and grabbed the car keys from the hook by the front door. Fortunately, the car was still outside, which meant Seb had left with Paddy. I was uncertain how long I had.

I drove along Hyde Park, passing expensively coiffed Kensington mums and aggressive Rollerbladers. The orange-gold sun hovered just over the horizon, the color of a tangerine.

I turned onto one of Mayfair’s quiet back streets and parked just down from Rose’s house.

It wouldn’t be long, I knew. Rose took Laura for a walk every evening to tire her out before bed. The street was quiet, empty. A gentle, summer breeze set the mimosa trees stirring. I clutched Barnaby tight, feeling dizzy and disoriented. When was the last time I’d eaten? The last time I’d spoken to another human besides Seb? I couldn’t remember. I had been demented with grief and despair and anguish since Eva died.

I fiddled with the radio to fill the silence as I waited. Somewhere through the fog of my mind, I heard the newscaster reporting on the fire in North London last week.

“Cooking oil was detected on the outside of the Gardener, at the spot where investigators believe the fire started.…”

Cooking oil.

I thought of the tin of cooking oil Seb had thrown at me. And the policeman who had questioned me.

I felt like such a fool. How had I not put it together sooner? Seb started the fire at the Gardener. I was certain of it.

I gazed at the pink-streaked horizon, a soft blush as twilight draped itself around the city. Big Ben chimed the evening hour in the distance. The sky was darkening, turning the deep, satiny blue of a ball gown. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, just a few peekaboo stars twinkling in the distance.

A wave of dizziness rushed over me. I shook my head to dislodge it.

What a bloody wretched night to kill a child. I couldn’t let him do it. I had to stop this.

Finally Rose and Laura emerged. They were wearing matching green cardigans, the last strands of late-evening light winding through their red hair. They held hands as they turned up a cobbled street, heading in the direction of the private garden the neighborhood residents had access to.