The Wrong Mother (17 page)

I sit down at the table and cry for what seems like a long time, but I don’t care. I’ll cry for as long as I damn well want. In between sobs, I shout at myself for being a self-indulgent fool.

After a while I calm down and pour myself a glass of wine. I haven’t got the energy to clear up the mess. The soul-shaking terror has gone, but I can still feel the hole it blasted through me. Mark Bretherick must have felt the same, except for him the nightmare didn’t end. Instead, it became his life. Panic can’t last indefinitely. It must eventually have stopped, leaving only the horror—cold, without the distraction of frenzy, stretching on and on.

I shudder. The idea is unbearable.
Thank God I don’t know what it feels like. Thank God nothing worse has happened to Zoe and Jake than Nick’s mum’s atrocious cooking.

I retrieve my handbag from the hall, pull out the two framed photographs and take them up to the lounge, stopping off at the kitchen to collect my wine on the way. Now that I know Nick and the children are safe, I’m relieved to be alone. I sit on the sofa and lay the photos out beside me. That low red brick wall, the cherry blossom tree, the stunted blue building with the white blinds . . . I know I’ve seen these things before, but where? A spark flares in my memory: I hear myself saying, ‘It’s a bit odd that they’ve painted the outside blue, isn’t it? It’s not exactly in keeping with the surroundings.’ Who was I speaking to? My mind cranks slowly into action, blunt and fuzzy after two days with no respite and almost no food, two days of fielding one shock after another.

‘It’s owned by BT. I think it’s a telephone exchange. I don’t mind the blue. At least it’s not grey.’
Nick. Nick said that. Suddenly, full knowledge floods in: it’s the owl sanctuary at Silsford Castle. The blue BT building is behind it, across a small field. We’ve been to the sanctuary twice with the children, once when Jake was a tiny baby and then again about three months ago. Our second visit was more controversial. Zoe wanted to adopt an owl and so did Jake, and they both cried for ten minutes when I said they would have to share. They demanded one each. Eventually Nick had a brainwave and explained solemnly that owls, like children, were better off with two parents. Zoe and Jake saw the logic of this: they had a mum and a dad, so it was only proper that Oscar the Tawny should too.

I pick up the photograph of Lucy Bretherick. The wall she’s sitting on is about twenty metres from Oscar’s cage. If that. I wrap my arms tightly round my body, trying to squeeze out the fear that’s starting to gnaw at me. I don’t know what any of this means. All I know is that the Brethericks seem to be coming closer all the time.

I run down the six steps to Nick’s and my bedroom, throw open the doors of my wardrobe and pull things off the top shelf until I see the black, unironed lump I’m looking for—a T-shirt with a doodle of an owl printed on it, in white. And underneath, in white cursive-style letters, ‘The Owl Sanctuary at Silsford Castle’. Nothing ambiguous about that. Anyone who saw me wearing this T-shirt would know I’d been there.

This is what I was wearing when I caught the train to York on my way to Seddon Hall. It’s what I always wear if it’s summer and I’m travelling; it’s the only T-shirt I’ve got that’s not too smart to waste on a journey or too scruffy to leave the house.

I need to find out if the photographs of Geraldine and Lucy were taken before I went to Seddon Hall or after.

I run back to the lounge, pick up one of the wooden frames and start to dismantle it. Some people write dates on the back of their photos—that’s my only hope. Even as I’m prising open the little metal clasps, injuring my fingertips, I’m wondering why it matters. So what if these pictures were taken before the second of June last year? My brain is jammed; I can’t explain to myself why it’s important.

Finally, the back of the frame comes loose. I throw it on the floor, and find myself looking at a blank white rectangle. There’s no date on the back of the picture. Of course there isn’t. Geraldine Bretherick was a mother. I don’t have time to put my photographs in frames or albums any more, let alone label them with dates for posterity—they live in a box in my wardrobe. Sorting out that box has been one of my New Year’s resolutions two years running. Maybe it’ll be a case of third time lucky.

I’m about to reassemble the frame when I notice something at the bottom of the picture’s white flip-side: a very faint line going all the way across. I work the long nail of my middle finger—the only nail I haven’t yet lost on the household-chore battlefield—into the corner of the frame to dislodge the photograph.

Two pictures fall out on to the carpet. My muscles tense when I see the second one. It was tucked behind the photograph of Geraldine and is almost an exact replica. A woman is standing by the red brick wall, in front of the cherry tree and the telephone exchange. She’s dressed in faded blue jeans and a cream shirt. Unlike Geraldine, she isn’t smiling. There’s a lot that’s different. This woman has a square face with small, blunt features that make me think of twists in flesh-coloured Plasticine. She’s less attractive than Geraldine. Her hair is dark but short, unevenly cut in a deliberate way, longer on one side than the other—a fashion statement. She’s wearing high-heeled leather boots, a brown leather jacket and deep red lipstick. Her arms hang at her sides; she looks as if she’s been posed.

I stare and stare. Then I pick up the framed picture of Lucy and very slowly start to undo the clasps on the back.
Crazy. Of course there won’t be.

There is.

Another replica: a young girl, about Lucy’s age, also sitting on the wall. Like Lucy, she’s waving. A girl with thin, mousy brown hair, the sort of brown that is indistinguishable from a dull grey. She’s so skinny that her knee joints look like painful swellings in her stick-like legs. And her clothes . . . no, they can’t be . . .

I gasp when I hear someone in the flat, feet running up stairs, a stampede. More than one person, definitely. I’m panicking, wondering where I’m going to hide the pictures, the open frames, and how I’m going to explain myself, when I realise it can’t be Nick and the children; I didn’t hear the front door and there are no eager voices. I rub the back of my neck, trying to smooth out the knots of tense muscle that feel like ganglia at the top of my spine.
Get a grip, Sally.
This happens at least twice a day, and I should know better than to let it freak me out. The sound is coming from our unique feature, our blockage. It must be somebody who lives above us going up the main stairs, the ones that both are and aren’t in the middle of our flat.

The skinny girl in the photograph is wearing Lucy Bretherick’s clothes. Same shirt, same dress. Even the same socks and shoes. Identical, right down to the lacy frill at the top of each sock.

My head throbs. This is too much. I sweep the pictures off the sofa on to the carpet and press my hand over my mouth. I have to eat something or I’ll be sick.

The phone rings. I pick it up, manage no more than a grunt.

‘Did you switch your mobile off?’ a furious voice demands.

‘Esther. Sorry,’ I say limply. I must have forgotten to switch my phone back on when I left Corn Mill House.

‘It’s lucky I never listen to you, isn’t it? If I’d followed your instructions, I’d have phoned the police and made a complete tit of myself. What happened to calling me back within two hours?’

‘I’ll ring you back,’ I tell her, and slam down the phone.

 

‘So, you want to know what I think about everything apart from the infidelity bit. Right?’

I shovel more sauceless spaghetti into my mouth and make a sound that I hope answers Esther’s question. It took me fifteen minutes to tell her everything, then another ten to get her to swear on her life that she wouldn’t tell anyone, no matter what.

‘Funny, the infidelity is what I want to talk about most.’

‘Esther—’

‘What the hell were you playing at? That could have been it, Sal—your marriage over, your happy home wrecked, and for what? A few fucks with a man you hardly know? Your children’s lives ruined—’

‘I’m going,’ I warn her.

‘Okay, okay. We’ll discuss it another time, but we
will
discuss it.’

‘If you say so.’ I know Esther’s point of view is the correct one. It’s also easy, conventional, and it bores me rigid. ‘Didn’t I always say you’re more sensible than me?’ I try to make light of my newly confessed sin. ‘Proof if proof be needed.’

‘It’s not a joke, Sal. I’m actually shocked.’

Good.
‘Do you have anything to say about the rest of what I’ve told you? Or should I leave you in peace to consolidate your moral outrage?’

There’s a pause. Then she says, ‘Could the woman and girl in the photos be William Markes’ wife and daughter?’

Her words make me feel numb and wobbly, as if I’ve stepped off a roller-coaster in the dark. ‘Why?’

‘I don’t know.’ I listen as Esther chews her fingernails. ‘I just wondered if . . . I’m thinking of one family—the Markeses—trying to pass themselves off as another. I don’t
know
. I need two weeks on a desert island to think about it.’

‘Mark Bretherick doesn’t think his wife wrote the diary.’

‘Yeah. You said.’ She sighs. ‘Sal, isn’t it obvious? You and I can’t work it out in a phone call. You need to go to the police.’

‘The photos weren’t necessarily hidden,’ I say, stalling. ‘Haven’t you ever put a new picture in a frame and been too lazy to take out the old one? So you put the new one next to the glass and leave the old one behind it?’

‘No,’ Esther says flatly. ‘And especially not if one of the photos is of another girl wearing my child’s clothes. You’re sure they’re the same? Not just similar?’

‘All I know is they’re both wearing a dark green dress, a green and white striped blouse with a round-edged collar—’

‘Hang on. The dress is short-sleeved? If there’s a blouse underneath? ’

‘Yeah, it’s like a sort of tunic.’

‘It sounds like a school uniform,’ says Esther. ‘What colour shoes and socks? Black? Navy?’

‘Black shoes, white socks,’ I say breathlessly.

‘Hardly a casual Saturday-at-the-owl-sanctuary sort of outfit. Not that I’m an expert,’ Esther adds with distaste.

I put down my bowl of pasta, retrieve the pictures from the floor and look at them again. She’s right. What’s wrong with me? Of course it’s a uniform; it’s the green dress that put me off—it’s nowhere near as shapeless and institutional as most school tunics. Its short sleeves are fluted, the neck is shaped, and it’s got a belt with a pretty silver buckle.
A uniform.
It makes perfect sense. Every school in the county, like every parent in the county, takes its children on trips to Silsford Castle’s owl sanctuary.

‘Sally? Hello?’

‘I’m here. You’re right. I don’t know how I missed it.’

‘You should still phone the police.’

‘I can’t. Nick’d find out about last year. He’d leave me. I’m not risking it.’
Please don’t say it. Please.

Esther says it. ‘You should have thought about that before you shagged another man. For a week.’ As if only a day’s worth of infidelity would have been less reprehensible. ‘This isn’t just about you, Sally.’

‘Do you think I don’t fucking know that?’

‘Then call the police! Today you were followed, yesterday someone pushed you under a bus. Do you still think it was Pam Senior?’

‘I don’t know. I keep changing my mind. One minute it seems so crazy and the next . . . She was so keen to help after it happened. It made me suspicious. Ten minutes earlier she’d made it pretty clear she hated me.’

‘Oh, come on,’ Esther says scornfully. ‘There’s no mystery there. She’s dim, isn’t she? She sounds it, from everything you’ve told me about her. A dim person would always instantly forgive an enemy who’d nearly died.’

‘Would they?’

‘Yes. Sentiment would triumph over reason. “She nearly died, so I have to like her now”—that’s what Pam will have thought. Bright people continue to hate those who deserve to be hated, irrespective of contingencies.’ Esther’s voice is full of pride, and I know she’s thinking about her boss, the Imbecile. I listen to her loud exhalations as she tries to calm down. She hates not being in charge. ‘Look, Nick wouldn’t necessarily find out,’ she says. ‘It’s well known that the police protect adulterous witnesses.’ She talks over my snorts of derision. ‘It’s true! Most of them are at it themselves. Cops are real shaggers—everyone knows that. They won’t even disapprove. All they’re interested in is getting the facts so they can do their job. If you tell them everything you know, they’ll do their best not to involve Nick.’

‘You have no way of knowing that,’ I say, and put the phone down before she can argue with me. I wait for her to ring me back but she doesn’t. My punishment.

All they’re interested in is getting the facts.
What was the Alfa Romeo’s registration? I knew it this morning. I memorised it.

I’ve forgotten. In the hours between then and now, it has slipped out of my mind.
Idiot, idiot, idiot.

I pick up the four photographs, take them downstairs and put them in my handbag. Then I go back to the lounge and throw the two wooden frames into the wastepaper basket. The chances of Nick noticing or asking about them are zero; for once I’m glad I haven’t got a husband who’s observant and on the ball.

I think about the police.
Real shaggers.
How observant can they be if they didn’t find the two hidden photographs? Assuming they were hidden. Surely the house was searched after Geraldine and Lucy died. Why didn’t anybody find those pictures?

I know what school Lucy Bretherick went to: St Swithun’s, a private Montessori primary in North Spilling. Mark . . . the man at Seddon Hall told me. I’d heard of Montessori, knew it was a kind of educational ethos, but I wasn’t sure what exactly it entailed, and didn’t ask because he clearly assumed that as a fellow middle-class parent I knew all about it.