‘It’s my mum,’ he says hoarsely, ‘she’s in the hospital. They think it’s a heart attack.’ He raises a hand to his eyes and I’ve never seen him like this, so untethered, so diminished. I know he and his mum are close; Jenny used to moan about it when they first got together. We see more of his bloody mother than anyone else I know.
Instantly, Jenny’s by his side, her cardigan-clad arms stretching around his torso, holding him as though he might topple at any minute.
‘We’ve got to go,’ Rick says. ‘They said this – they said this might be it.’
His eyes are staring past me, unseeing, translucent. I feel sick – I know what’s coming even before she asks me.
‘Eve’s asleep,’ Jenny says, and she lets go of her husband for a moment, comes over to where I’m standing sloppily in their porch, one shoe on, one shoe off. ‘Caroline – you couldn’t stay, could you?’
I stare at her, my heart beginning to beat fast and tight, like a drum. She reaches out and takes my hand again, squeezes it in hers. Her skin is soft and warm.
‘I’ll call you from the hospital, as soon as we know what’s happening. It won’t be long. I just—’ She glances back at Rick, who is still ashen. ‘I just need to be with him, and I don’t want to wake Eve. It’s – she doesn’t often get to sleep so easily.’
‘I don’t know,’ I say quickly, the words coming out in a rush. ‘I don’t know, Jen – are you sure you can’t take her with you?’
She releases the pressure on my hand for a second as Rick begins to move, grabbing his mobile and shoving it into his jeans pocket, reaching for the house keys.
‘Please, Caro,’ she says, ‘please.’ Her eyes are big and wide and begging. I imagine it, little Eve and me, her relying on me if anything goes wrong. I don’t know if I’m capable of it. I don’t know if I trust myself. But oh, how I want to.
‘I’ll ring you as soon as I can, Caro,’ Jenny is saying, and she is sliding on her coat and kissing me sloppily on the cheek, telling Rick that he will have to drive because she thinks she might be over the limit.
You definitely are over the limit, I think to myself, and then the door is slamming, the house reverberating from the noise, and their footsteps are hurrying away down the path and to their car.
I stand there, my breathing too loud.
And that’s how I’m left alone in Jenny and Rick Grant’s house with their baby, for the very first time.
The place feels very quiet without Jenny and Rick. I make myself a cup of tea, feeling skittery and on edge. Quarter to eleven, eleven o’clock, and still Jenny doesn’t ring. It must be taking longer at the hospital than they thought; I picture his mother lying supine on a bed, the anxious beeping of machines surrounding her. My own mother died very quickly, a car accident on the A12. The car that hit her was a learner driver. I googled pictures of him for years afterwards, but he never looked like a killer, he just looked like a normal teenage boy. Proof that nobody ever looks quite what they seem.
Eventually, because I can’t put it off any longer, I leave the kitchen and stand in the corridor outside Eve’s room. The door is very slightly ajar, and a thin shaft of light from the window falls onto the floor, highlighting my socked feet on the unfamiliar carpet.
Carefully, I push open the door. The smell of baby hits me, the soft, milky sweetness of it. My stomach is churning. You see, I wanted a baby. Someone to care for. I wanted one so much.
Callum took that away from me, and I let him. It’s something I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive myself for.
The cot is in the corner of the room, a pretty blue and white mobile dangling over it. If I stay very still, I can just about hear the sound of Eve’s breathing, the shallow little breaths, the occasional snuffle. I take a step closer, feeling my way through the semi-darkness. For a few minutes, I allow myself to imagine what it would be like to hold her in my arms, her warm little body pressed against me. Me, not Jenny. I let myself feel what it might be like to pop her into a sturdy, expensive-looking pram and have strangers smile at me in the streets, watch their faces melt as they bend down to look at her.
These are not the sort of thoughts my brain normally lets me have. I don’t think about babies any more because I don’t let myself think about them.
Not after what happened.
Eve shifts slightly in her sleep, the thin pink blanket over her moving in the darkness. She must be hot; I am. I can feel sweat beginning to prickle along the back of my neck, despite the fact that Rick has left the window open, just a crack. It is silent apart from the sound of Eve and I breathing, and for a moment, I feel as though it is just the two of us against the world. There is no Rick, no Jenny, no Callum, and no Siobhan Dillon.
A buzzing sound disrupts the silence, making me jump. For a moment, I get the sense that somebody is behind me, waiting in the shadowy doorway, but then the moment passes as quickly as it came and I realise that of course, it’s just my phone in my back pocket. My fingers trembling slightly, partly from the disturbance and partly from the adrenaline of being so close to Eve, I pull it out of my jeans and press the button to unlock the screen. I’m expecting it to be Jenny with an update from the hospital but it’s not, it’s from someone else. A number I don’t recognise.
I know what you’re doing, it says. Don’t take what isn’t yours.
I stare at the words, shining out at me from the screen, the bright light casting an eerie glow against Eve’s bedroom floor. The wine I had earlier is churning around in my stomach, suddenly making me feel nauseous. Stupidly, I suddenly want Jenny to come home, for her and Rick to burst through the door, with their irritating habits and their warmth; I want them to come in and flick the lights on, boil the kettle, check on little Eve.
The phone is hot in my hand, as if it’s on fire. Don’t take what isn’t yours. Who is it from? How did they get this number? And how do they know about me?
Chapter Five
France
12th August: One day before the arrest
Siobhan
OK, here’s the truth. I’ve known about my husband’s latest affair for four months, two weeks and three days. I’ve known that whenever we make love, he might be thinking of her, and I’ve known that every time his phone goes off, it’s her who’s texting him. Caroline. I even know her name. I’m pretty sure that’s who he was with in Norfolk last month, when he told me he was with a client. Yeah, right. He even hid his suitcase somewhere in a feeble attempt to cover his tracks; it wasn’t in the downstairs cupboard where it normally lives. Didn’t want me to see any evidence of his dirty weekend away. He wheeled it out from somewhere on the day we left for France, thinking I hadn’t even noticed its absence. He must think I’m stupid, and lately I’ve been thinking that maybe I am.
Here’s what I don’t know. I don’t know exactly how long the affair has been going on, and I don’t know exactly when they met, although I’m guessing it will be something to do with his work. It usually is – the first few liaisons were, anyway. He likes to impress people, does Callum, I’m a TV executive, yes, that’s right. Cue smile, another drink. It works on the people of Suffolk; it might not wash in London, but here our lives are smaller somehow, there is less competition. It allows him to shine. It worked on me.