‘You ask me, the balcony sides are way too high to fall over accidentally. I think there must have been a push. I just have no idea who from.’
‘They can do forensic modelling of that sort of thing.’
‘If she gives me the budget.’ It was confusing enough trying to figure out where everyone had been at the party, and exactly when the fall had occurred. All they had was the phone records, but two separate 999 calls had been made three minutes apart, which was suspicious in itself. ‘You should see this house though.’ She sighed, looking round at their one-bedroom flat, which could charitably be called cosy. Tiny was also a word that would fit. Cramped. ‘Five bedrooms. Rockery. Glass all round, hot tub, garden studio. Not that the rockery’ll be much good after forensics dig it all up.’ It also currently had bits of a person smeared over it, but she didn’t want to dwell on that while cooking spaghetti bolognaise. ‘This is done.’ She turned off the pans, fished out a colander for the pasta. As she did she caught sight of the calendar on the wall. Two days from now, a big red x was marked. The earliest day she was allowed to test, to see if it had happened this month, by some crazy chance, unlike every other month for a year. If it hadn’t, it would have to be IVF most likely. And if that didn’t work, if it vanished inside her like a ghost baby? Then what? Another, and another, until they had nothing left? When did you call it quits, admit you weren’t going to be a parent? It might not be so bad. More money, lovely holidays, pelvic floor tone, unsaggy boobs . . . She thought of the babies today, their chubby little wrists and vulnerable heads, their helplessness. The idea of having her own seemed so far away. Two days. That was all she had to wait, but it felt like forever.
Jax – ten weeks earlier
At work, I was the opposite of how I was with my mother. Firm, authoritative, but never cruel. At least, I tried not to be. After all the self-help books I’d read, I was aware of how easily a bullied person could begin to bully another, just to assert some power, a sense of self. I strode in the Monday after the first group meeting, my bump carried high in front of me in my wrap dress. I’d given up heels when I got pregnant, with much relief – approaching forty, my body just didn’t forgive me for pushing it too hard. Coffee, an unexpected spin class, carrying a bag on my shoulder – all these things could ruin me for a week.
My assistant, Dorothy, rushed out from her desk to meet me. Despite her name, Dorothy was twenty-two years old. She wore large clear-rimmed glasses and seemed to live in jumpsuits, which meant I spent more time than I should wondering how she peed. ‘Problems?’ I said, without breaking stride. I actually liked managing people. I tried to guide them, build their careers. There were fundraisers loyal to me spread across many of the charities in our interest area (vulnerable children and teens). I’d had half an eye on applying for a CEO post in a different charity, before I got pregnant. Funny how it just happened: a cell divided, and all your careful plans for the future were derailed. Maybe that was why my generation found pregnancy and motherhood so hard. In the past, people knew not to make plans. They knew that life was something that happened to you, not something you directed yourself.
‘Um, no, all cool.’ I’d tried to get Dorothy to speak more professionally, but behind the ums and literally and all the feels, she actually knew what she was doing, so I’d overlooked it. One day I’d coach her on how to hide all that in job interviews, how to fit yourself into the mould they expected, so later on you could unfurl yourself and smash it all wide open. I put my bag down in my office, rolled my wheely chair to the desk, and wondered if I could ask her to make me a tea. Assistants didn’t seem to do that sort of thing any more.
‘Where are we with the mailing?’ I was keen to get our annual fundraising mail-out done before I went off. Although print mailings were old-fashioned, so were many of our donors, and it was our biggest single source of revenue each year. When I needed inspiration for my work, I usually flicked through Protect, our supporter magazine, thinking about the good things the money I raised could do. Training for teachers and youth workers, programmes for abused kids, even a halfway house for when they came out of care, something that would have helped Aaron a lot when he was a kid. Some days it felt like I was trying to prove it to the universe. See, I’m a good person. Despite the evidence against.
‘The printers said, like, you could sign off the proofs this week.’
‘Good. Chase them up if they’re dragging their feet.’ She was still hovering in the doorway. ‘All OK?’ I asked again.
‘Um, well, there was just one kinda weird thing. A message through the info at email this morning. I forwarded it to you.’ We got a lot of strange spam through there, requests for money, anguished cries for help, and so on. I sighed. I didn’t need this today.
‘You can send that kind of thing to Sharon, or just bin it if it’s spam,’ I explained patiently. Semi-patiently. I thought young people were supposed to be digitally literate. Sharon was our CEO, not very good at it – if I’d wanted, I could have had her job within six months, but I had better things in mind than this middling child-protection charity.
Dorothy twisted her hands. ‘It’s about you, Jax.’
What? ‘Alright. I’ll take a look.’ Finally, she left, but I could see her head at the desk outside my door, bobbing anxiously. I clicked on my email. I hated my desktop computer – I’d lobbied for years for ergonomic keyboards and proper chairs, but Sharon was of the old-school ‘save the budget’ approach. She didn’t see that you had to balance it off against potential lawsuits from employees with RSI.
The email Dorothy forwarded had come from a bot-like address, a string of meaningless numbers and letters. It read, JACQUELINE CULVILLE IS A CHILD MOLESTER. She got with her ‘boyfriend’ before he was 16. Pass it on.
I sat and stared at it for a moment, my whole body turning cold like a wave was passing over it. What the hell? I’d met Aaron two years ago. Admittedly, he’d been twenty-two then. Admittedly, I was fourteen years older than him, something that in a man might be thought sleazy. But there was a world of difference between twenty-two and not-quite sixteen. Wasn’t there?
My finger hovered on the mouse, shaking slightly. Nasty spam, lies and rubbish. Jacqueline, it said, which I never called myself – only my mother called me that. I’d been Jax since university, trying to reinvent myself as someone cool and edgy. So whoever had sent this didn’t know me well. I ran through names in my head – someone I’d fired, some service user with a baffling grudge? A lot of the people we worked with were unstable, not always able to see who was trying to help them and who wasn’t. I told myself firmly it was nothing, blind malice, likely from someone hurting and confused. But I worked for a charity that did child protection. The merest whiff of scandal here had to be rooted out. But someone must have sent this. Someone had been watching me, and knew my partner was young, and had sat down and written this and sent it to a general inbox, that anyone could read. That meant someone must have it in for me. A jealous ex of Aaron’s? I wasn’t aware that he had any serious exes.
I should tell Sharon, I knew. We had to be spotless here, above any suspicion whatsoever. We’d laugh about it probably. Sharon’s husband was so old he was dead – he’d had a heart attack last year. My partner was too young to hire a car by himself in some places. Maybe she wouldn’t laugh as much as I thought. I breathed deeply, feeling how much this had shaken me, feeling angry that a mere string of words could do that, and I pressed delete.