The Wrong Mother (15 page)

I am about to start to explain why I’m here when I notice the way he’s staring at me. As if there’s no way he’s going to take his eyes off me in case I disappear. He can’t believe I’m standing in front of him . . . A dizzy, nauseous feeling spreads through me as I realise the harm I might be doing to this man. How could I not have anticipated his reaction? I didn’t even think about it. What’s wrong with my brain?

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘This must be a shock for you. I know I look a lot like your wife. I was shocked too, when I saw on the news . . . when I heard what had happened. That’s why I’m here, kind of. I hope . . . oh, God, I feel awful now.’

‘Did you know Geraldine?’ His voice shakes. He moves closer, his eyes taking me apart. I know one thing straight away: I am not at all afraid of him. If anyone’s frightened, it’s him. ‘Why . . . why do you look so much like her? Are you . . . ?’

‘I’m nothing to do with her. I didn’t know her at all. I happen to look like her, that’s all. And actually, that’s
not
why I’m here. I don’t know why I said that.’

‘You look so like her. So like her.’

I am certain that this man is looking at my face for the first time. He hasn’t a clue who I am. Which means he hasn’t been following me in a red Alfa Romeo; he didn’t push me in front of a bus yesterday.

‘Are you okay?’ he asks eventually. He has dropped the trowel on the drive and taken off his gloves. I didn’t even notice.

I realise I’ve been standing like a statue, saying nothing. ‘What’s your name?’ I ask him. ‘It said on the news your name was Mark Bretherick.’

‘What do you mean, “it said on the news”?’

‘So you are Mark Bretherick?’

‘Yes.’ His eyes are glued to me. This is what a person in a trance would look like.

What am I supposed to say next? That I don’t believe him? I want him to prove it? ‘Can I come in? I need to talk to you about something and it’s complicated.’

‘You look so like Geraldine,’ he says again. ‘It’s unbelievable.’ He makes no move towards the house.

Five seconds pass. Six, seven, eight. If I don’t take the initiative, he might stand here studying my face until day turns to night.

‘What happened to you?’ He points at the cuts on my cheek.

‘We need to go inside,’ I say. ‘Come on. Give me your key.’ It’s odd, but I don’t feel presumptuous, or even awkward any more. For now, he is aware of nothing but my face.

He searches his pockets, still staring at me. It’s a relief when finally he hands me the key and I can turn away from him.

I unlock the front door and walk into a large, dark room, nearly as tall as it is wide, with polished wooden floorboards and wood-panelled walls. An elaborate design of blue stucco covers the ceiling, makes me think of a stately home. There are two big windows, both largely uncovered by whatever plant is growing up the walls outside, and the front door is wide open, yet the room seems as dark as if it were underground. The low-hanging chandelier light is on but seems to make no difference. It’s as if the dark walls and floor are sucking up the light.

In front of me is a log-burning stove that’s been lit and is blazing, even though it’s August. Still, the hall is cool. Side by side in the middle of the room, directly in front of the stove, are two matching chairs that look like antiques: slim, armless, S-shaped to follow the curve of a person’s back, upholstered in a cream, silky fabric. To my right, a staircase protrudes into the hall, with solid wooden banisters on both sides. Eight steep steps lead to a small square landing, after which further steps lead off to the left and to the right. One of the windows is a bay with a window-seat, a half-hexagon that has a faded burgundy velvet cushion going all the way round it. Against the wall behind me there is a large fish-tank and a chaise-longue.

Mark Bretherick—how else can I think of him?—walks past me and sits in one of the two chairs in front of the fire. ‘The lounge is full of bin-bags,’ he says.

I lower myself into the chair next to his. He’s not looking at me any more. He’s staring at the glowing coals and logs through the stove door. I’m still chilly, even now that I can feel the warmth on my face. I look at the window nearest to me and see a drop of water on the stone beneath the glass, like a single tear trickling into the room.

‘Cold,’ he says. ‘The old ruin. This room’s always freezing.’

‘It’s cooler today than it was yesterday,’ I say. ‘Yesterday it was sweltering.’ I fill the air between us with pointless words to make the occasion of our meeting appear less bizarre.

‘That was Geraldine’s nickname for it—the old ruin. We did our bedroom and the bathrooms when we first bought it, but nothing else. Everything else could wait, Geraldine said.’

‘It’s a beautiful house.’

‘Plenty of time, she said. Thirty thousand pounds each bathroom cost me. Geraldine thought they were the most important rooms in the house. I had to take her word for it. I was never in the house.’

‘What do you mean?’

He turns to face me. ‘I almost can’t stand the sight of you,’ he says.

‘I’m sorry.’

He shakes his head. Every time he moves, the hard, sharp smell of dirt wafts towards me. ‘That’s where I found their bodies. Did you know that?’

‘Where?’

‘In the baths upstairs. Geraldine was in one and Lucy was in the other. You didn’t know that?’

‘No. All I know is what I saw on the news last night.’

‘Do you know what GHB is?’

‘You mean GBH? Grievous bodily harm?’

His mouth laughs, though his eyes are remote, empty. ‘You hear about things like this, things that are so far . . . beyond . . . and you wonder how people can carry on living after they happen. How can they be hungry or thirsty? How can they tie their shoe-laces or comb their hair?’

‘I know. I’ve thought that.’

‘When you rang the bell I was sorting out the flowerbeds.’

I am sitting beside him, but I am light years away from his grief. I can feel it like an iron barrier between us.

He looks at me again. ‘Wait here. I want to show you something. ’ He springs out of his chair. It’s enough to make me leap up too. Unpredictable; I don’t like unpredictable. I know I wouldn’t be able to stand it if he showed me anything to do with Geraldine or Lucy’s deaths. What if he’s gone up to one of the bathrooms? What’s he going to have in his hands when he returns? I picture a knife, a gun, an empty pill bottle.

I don’t know how Geraldine killed her daughter or herself. It’s a question I don’t think I can bring myself to ask.

I run my hands through my hair. What the hell am I doing here? What am I hoping to achieve? It can’t be helping him to have me here. I should open the door and run.

My phone rings and I jump. I answer it quickly, to stop its mundane trill from polluting the mournful silence. Too late, I realise I could have switched it off; that would have had the same effect. It’s Owen Mellish from work. ‘Naughty girl,’ he says. ‘Where’ve you disappeared to?’

‘I can’t talk now,’ I tell him. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘Not for me. But I thought I should let you know that Madam Snoot’s phoned twice since you left the office. She wasn’t pleased to hear you’d decided to take the day off. I told her you’d probably gone shopping.’

‘I’ll ring her. Thanks for letting me know.’ I cut him off before he has a chance to enrage me further. I can hear ominous creaks above my head. I don’t know if I’ve got time to phone Natasha Prentice-Nash before Mark Bretherick reappears, or whether I can do it without him hearing me, but I’m not sure I can stay here unless I do something ordinary. I need to take my mind off the man upstairs and his dead family, the souvenirs he might be about to show me.

I stand as far away from the stairs as I can, highlight Natasha’s name on my phone’s screen and press the call button. She answers after two rings and says her name, putting her heart and soul into the vowel sounds as she always does. ‘It’s Sally,’ I whisper.

‘Sally! At last. We’ve got a bit of a problem, I’m afraid. The Consorzio gang have arrived.’

‘Oh. Okay.’

‘Well, it isn’t okay, really. There’s been some kind of misunderstanding at their end about the documentary.’

‘Don’t tell me it’s off.’ I close my eyes, wishing I could say, ‘Actually, I’m not Sally Thorning. I’m someone who’s standing in for her, but I’ve only taken over the easy parts of her life.’

‘I spoke to the producer today,’ says Natasha. ‘She’s still keen.’

‘Great. So . . .’ I feel painfully self-conscious. There’s a door to my left. As quietly as possible I open it and slip through to an even larger room. It’s a lounge, though nothing like the one in my flat. ‘Lounge’ is too casual a word to describe it—drawing room would suit it better. Like the hall, it’s dark and wood-panelled and could almost be an elegantly proportioned cave that has been refurbished for the gentry, the temporary bolt-hole of a king in hiding. I don’t have time to notice much else about the room before my eyes are drawn to the black bin-bags. There must be at least a dozen, in a heap on the Persian carpet in front of the fireplace.

‘Vittorio seems to think he and Salvo are both being interviewed, but Salvo says you and he agreed he’d be interviewed alone,’ Natasha is saying. ‘He’s accusing us of messing him around.’

I sigh. ‘Him and Vittorio together—that’s always been the plan. Salvo doesn’t like it, but he’s known about it for ages.’

‘Could you ring and butter him up, then? Tell him how important he is? You know the sort of thing he wants to hear.’

I’d rather tell him how intensely irritating he is. I tell Natasha I’ll do my best to pacify him and she dismisses me with a curt ‘Ciao.’ I switch off my phone and put it in my bag, then open the door and lean out into the hall. There is no sign of Mark, no sound coming from upstairs. What will I do if he doesn’t come back soon? How long will I wait before going to check that he’s all right? Or leaving? It seems unlikely that I will do either.

I walk towards the pile of bin-bags that look so out of place on the elaborately patterned rug. I pull open the one nearest to me, taking care not to rustle the plastic any more than I have to. Apart from a pair of small pink Wellington boots on top, it’s full of women’s clothes. Geraldine’s: lots of black trousers—velvet, suede, corduroy, no jeans—and cashmere jumpers in all colours. Did she collect cashmere? I look in another bag and find dozens of bottles, tubes and sprays, and about twenty paperback books, mostly with pastel-coloured covers—peach, lemon yellow, mint green. Beneath these there is something with a hard edge, something that swings into my ankle as I move the plastic sack, making me grunt through clenched teeth.

I look over my shoulder to check I’m safe, then reach to the bottom of the bag and pull out two chunky wooden frames. Photographs of Geraldine and Lucy. Quickly, I hold them at a distance, not ready for the shock of seeing them so close to me. Geraldine is smiling, standing with her head tilted to one side. She’s wearing a white scoop-neck T-shirt, a black gypsy skirt, silver sandals with straps round the ankles and black sunglasses on her head like a head-band. She’s got the arms of a silver-grey sweater tied round her waist. There’s a cherry blossom tree behind her and a squat, flat-topped building, painted blue, with white blinds at the windows. She’s leaning against a red brick wall.

I bring the picture closer, staring, feeling my heartbeat in my ears. My arms are shaking. I know that place, that stubby blue building. I’ve seen it. I’m pretty sure I’ve stood where Geraldine is standing in this photograph, but I can’t remember when. The last thing I wanted to discover was another connection between Geraldine and me. But what is it? Where is it? My mind races round in circles, but gets nowhere.

The picture of Lucy, which I can look at only briefly, has the same background. Lucy is sitting on the brick wall, wearing a dark green pinafore dress and a green and white striped shirt, white ankle socks and black shoes, her two thick plaits sticking out on either side of her head. She’s waving at the camera. At whoever was holding the camera . . .

Her father. The words pierce me like a cold needle. The man upstairs, whoever he is, is throwing away photographs of his wife and daughter. Of Mark Bretherick’s wife and daughter. Jesus Christ. And I allowed myself to feel safe around him, in his house.

I don’t stop to think. I yank the bag’s yellow drawstring and close it, without replacing the photographs. I’m taking them with me. I run to the door, out into the hall, and freeze, nearly dropping the pictures. He’s there, back in his chair in front of the stove. His head bent, gazing down at his lap. Has he forgotten I’m here? I stare in horror at the photographs in my hand, hanging in the air between us. If he turned now, he’d see them.
Please don’t turn.

I unzip my handbag and stuff them in, pulling out my phone. ‘Sorry,’ I say, waving it in the air, a cartoon gesture. ‘My mobile rang and . . . I thought I’d take it in there. I didn’t want to . . . you know.’
I can’t do this. I can’t stand here with photographs of Geraldine and Lucy in my handbag and talk to him as if nothing’s changed.

My fingers tug at the zip but my bag won’t close. I hold it so that it hangs behind my body. If he looked closely he would see the edges of the frames poking out, but he hasn’t even glanced in my direction. There’s a pile of A4 paper on his lap. White, with print on it. That’s what he’s looking at. ‘I want you to read something,’ he says.

‘I have to go.’

‘Geraldine kept a diary. I knew nothing about it until after she was dead. I need you to read it.’

I baulk at the word ‘need’. In his chair, with his long legs crossed at the ankles and those pages on his knee, he looks harmless once again. Frail. Like a daddy-long-legs that you could brush with your hand and it would fall to the ground.

‘You haven’t asked me what I want.’ I inject what I hope is a reasonable amount of suspicion into my voice. ‘Why I’m here.’