Cathy was younger – eight years younger. All the same, her long brown hair was greying at the roots, and she seemed slow and tired. Understandable when she’d just had a baby. She winced when she sat down, hinting at unknown horrors in the undercarriage department. She worked for the council that ran the leisure centre Hazel trained at; this was how they’d met. Alison said, ‘I’m sorry I have to ask this, but you used a donor? I mean, what kind of donor?’ Of course they’d used a donor, duh. They’d hardly done it themselves. Tom would have ribbed her mercilessly for that. ‘I just need to check everyone’s . . . associations.’
‘Overseas,’ said Hazel, even as Cathy was opening her mouth to answer. ‘Denmark, that’s where most of it comes from in the UK.’
‘And . . . was it IVF or . . .’ She was trying not to say the words turkey baster.
‘Home insemination. Cathy popped up to the bathroom and did it.’ Hazel did not seem remotely embarrassed, and why should she be? Alison would have to get over her own qualms if she and Tom were going to embark on fertility treatment, which seemed to involve talking to total strangers about the state of your cervix on a regular basis. ‘Lucky for us it worked first time.’
‘And you chose Cathy to be pregnant because . . . ?’
The eyes went wide again. ‘I’m older, obviously. And I had some . . . issues.’
‘Hazel has PCOS,’ said Cathy, speaking for the first time in several minutes. ‘Polycystic ovaries. She tried with a previous partner, but it didn’t work.’ Hazel looked annoyed.
Hastily, Alison nodded. ‘Right, right. So the donor . . . there’s no contact with him, nothing like that?’
‘No contact. We don’t even know his name.’ It was Hazel speaking, of course, but Alison watched Cathy. She didn’t look up, just fiddled with the sling around the baby’s head. He appeared to be fast asleep.
‘And your previous partner, Hazel . . . ?’ She felt she was grasping at straws here. So far, she hadn’t heard anything to suggest the fall wasn’t just an accident, except for the insistent feeling in her gut. Police intuition. Although, as Colette had told her tartly the day before, the budget did not stretch to cover feelings.
‘Oh no, we’re all good friends. Her new partner is pregnant too, actually.’
Very amicable. ‘And how did you hear about the group?’ Alison was still intrigued about the make-up of this group, how different they all were. Maybe all antenatal groups were like this. She wouldn’t know.
They looked at each other vaguely. ‘In the library, I think it was,’ said Hazel. ‘Seemed affordable, so we thought, why not.’
‘I see.’
Cathy leaned forward. ‘DS Hegarty – how come you’re asking all this? I mean, it was just an accident, wasn’t it? A fall.’
‘We haven’t ruled anything out yet. It would help if you could tell me your exact movements leading up to the . . . incident.’
They exchanged glances. Getting their stories straight? Cathy said, ‘I was changing Arthur in the downstairs loo. It was a messy one, so I was in there a while, and when I came out people were screaming and it – it had already happened.’ Alison tried to recall the layout of Monica’s house – the downstairs bathroom was under the stairs. ‘Did you see who’d been up there?’
Cathy bit her lip. ‘I don’t know. People had come running to see what was going on, you know.’
‘And you, Hazel?’
Hazel furrowed her brow. ‘I’m trying to remember. It all happened so fast. I was in the garden, I think, doing the barbecue. Ed, that’s Monica’s husband, didn’t have the faintest idea how to get it going, everyone was starving.’ That did not surprise Alison in the slightest, either Ed’s failure or that Hazel had taken over. ‘Aisha and Rahul, they were nearby. When it happened, I went inside to see what was going on, check on Cathy and Arthur. I think I passed Ed and Monica in the kitchen.’
‘So you saw it happen?’
‘Not really. I was poking the coals. Then there was this kind of – a shadow, I guess, a shadow went over the garden. There was a scream. Then the noise.’ For the first time, she looked unsure. ‘It was the most terrible noise when it – happened. The rockery.’
‘Did you see anyone on the balcony? Anyone else, I mean?’
‘No. I was looking at the barbecue. I didn’t see anything.’
‘And how was your relationship with the deceased?’
Hazel shrugged. ‘We only knew people from the group really. Just those eight sessions.’
‘And was there any conflict within the group?’
A pause. This time Cathy spoke, jiggling the baby. ‘It was all very friendly,’ she said, and Alison couldn’t read her tone. ‘A really nice group, though we were all quite different. Very supportive.’
This time Hazel was looking away, drinking her vile tea.
‘What about Kelly’s partner? You mentioned an incident at the group.’
‘Oh, no, that was nothing really. We hardly saw him except for that one time. He wasn’t even at the barbecue, I think they’ve split up.’
Alison sighed. ‘Alright. Thank you for your time.’ It was the same thing she’d got from Monica and Ed Dunwood – they maintained they’d been in the kitchen when it happened, trying to save some kind of dessert that was melting because someone had left the fridge open. They hadn’t seen it happen, and neither apparently had Cathy and Hazel, despite Cathy being right downstairs and Hazel in the garden in eye-shot of the balcony. How could it be that there were so many people in one house, and yet nobody had seen a thing?
The day of – Cathy
1.23 p.m.
Kelly had come. No one could believe Kelly had come. Cathy and Hazel had arrived just before her, somewhat late because Hazel had come back from the shops that morning with the wrong kind of flowers. ‘What does it matter?’ she’d asked, brow furrowed in annoyance.
It would matter a lot to someone like Monica. They had to be the kind from a florist, wrapped in brown paper and tied up with twine, not supermarket daisies covered in plastic. Hazel was grouchy because she’d had to get up at eight – the weekends were the only time she didn’t have to start work at six – but since Cathy had slept for maybe forty-five minutes all night, she wasn’t very sympathetic. She’d never known tiredness like it. It wasn’t just yawning, spacing out, drooping eyes, jerking awake on the sofa realising you’d fallen asleep with your head lolling forward. It was more like a kind of madness. As she walked the dim rooms at night, Arthur a heavy weight in her arms, sniffling and huffing, she wondered what might happen if she never slept again. Like, ever. How quickly would you lose it? Go insane?
Sometimes, she took Arthur into the bedroom and held him close to Hazel’s face as he cried. She never woke up.
That day when they finally arrived, Monica swept them in, casting an eye over the flowers Cathy had brought. She nodded her approval. ‘Lovely. From the nice place on the high street?’ Cathy felt her shoulders relax. Why was she so worried what these mothers thought of her? Maybe it was just a symptom of a larger worry, the anxiety that had engulfed her ever since she’d seen the line on the pregnancy test and done a little creative accounting with her cycle.