I hope you hid the clothes you were wearing well, I tell her with my look. Because this isn’t 1988 and no matter how many times you wash them, you’ll never, ever get the blood of your victim out enough for the police not to find a trace.
poppy
Now
‘What’s happened?’ is Mum’s greeting when she opens the door to us.
Alain and I both look at each other and then at my mother.
‘I was about to call you. Bella has been here for about an hour and she hasn’t stopped crying. We can’t get anything out of her. What’s happened? Do you know?’
‘Can we come in?’ I ask. Bella. I knew I should have stayed with her. By the time we left the hospital yesterday she was barely keeping it together. The only thing she was definitive about was the fact that she didn’t want me anywhere near her.
In the kitchen, Bella is sitting at the head of the table, her face in her hands, sobbing and sobbing. My father, my big, strong father, is sitting beside her, his hand on her shoulder, his head near hers, asking her, begging her, to talk to him. To tell him what is wrong.
‘I’ve tried your brother, but his phone is off. We were about to call you.’
Bella raises her head, running her hands down her face to dry her tears. She glares at me, her expression one of pure, unadulterated hatred. I’ve never seen Bella look at me like that before. I’ve never seen anyone who claims to love me look at me like that. I didn’t think it was possible.
‘What’s going on, Pepper, love?’ Dad asks me this. For the first time in more than thirty years he has used that nickname for me. For the first time in more years than I care to mention, he has deliberately and intentionally spoken several words to me.
I’m momentarily floored; halted in my tracks. Has Bella’s distress really done this to him? He hasn’t been able to talk to me in ten years, thirty years, if I think about it properly, and he decides to start now? When I’m about to destroy them all again?
‘Logan’s in hospital,’ I state. I was going to preamble, say I was sorry, explain how it was probably going to be all right and for them to try not to worry, but the look on Bella’s face, the affection in Dad’s voice have thrown me. I need things to flip back to normal as soon as possible. ‘He was attacked last night.’
‘Last night?’ Our parents exclaim together. ‘Why didn’t you call us?’
‘Everything happened really fast. And you couldn’t have done anything.’
‘He’s our child,’ Mum says. ‘How can you think to keep something like this from us?’
‘Because . . . if either of us had called you, you would have wanted to come to the hospital and there was nothing you could have done. We saw him for thirty seconds and waiting at the hospital was horrible. All those people. We wanted to spare you all of that.
‘And . . . and Serena Gorringe was at the hospital.’ I lower my eyes when I say this so I do not see the expressions that take over their faces. I keep my eyes down as I plough on: ‘She was there because . . . because Logan has been going out with her daughter for the last year.’
A loud fump as Mum drops into the nearest chair, a protracted sob as Bella begins to cry again, an audible gasp as Dad inhales sharply.
Alain is beside me, he takes my hand, slips his fingers through mine, holds me close. ‘I’m sorry. I had no idea. I had no idea he was dating her. I didn’t think she’d ever be back into our lives. And I don’t know if any of this is connected to what happened to Logan, but we’ll find out. We’ll find out. The police were there. They’re going to be talking to all the people who were near where he was found to try to see if they can find out what happened to him.’ I shake my head to stop the tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say again. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’
My partner/ex/whatever he is squeezes my hand, tells me to stop. Stop apologising, stop talking, stop being the bad guy in this scenario. I didn’t do this to him so I should stop apologising for it.
‘I’ll drive you to the hospital,’ Alain says. His voice is commanding and calming at the same time. ‘Poppy and I rang them earlier and there’s been no change, so let’s get ourselves together and I’ll take us over there.’ When no one moves or does anything, Alain raises his voice a notch. ‘Come on, we’re all keen to get to the hospital. See him. If you want to come you need to start getting yourselves together now.’ It’s only a notch that his voice has been raised, but it is enough to get them moving. They stand up, and in a drugged, zombie-like state, they all move towards the door to get themselves ready to go and see Logan.
‘They all hate me,’ I tell Alain.
‘They’re just in shock. Like you were last night. It’ll be fine.’
‘I love that you still have the ability to be bright and sunny about this.’
‘I get it from our daughter,’ he says and tugs me into a hug.
serena
Now
They’ve decided to speak to me first.
They made a big show of putting us all in separate rooms, each of us ‘accompanied’ by a police officer, so we don’t forget ourselves and try to speak to one another. In other words, we don’t have a chance to get our stories straight – although what they think we would have been doing last night if we were that way inclined, I don’t know.
I’ve pushed the sofa cushions back into place to sit down and DI Brosnin and her partner, whose name I didn’t catch or didn’t absorb (can’t remember which), sit in the armchair and Evan’s favourite chair.
‘This is quite a turn-up for the books, isn’t it, Miss Gorringe?’ DI Brosnin states. She’s putting it out there straight away that she knows who I am.
‘It’s Gillmare,’ I state calmly. ‘I go by Mrs Gillmare now.’
‘Oh, sorry,’ she says with a fake smile. ‘I didn’t realise. Most women have no reason to change their names nowadays. But like I say, this is quite a turn-up for the books. How long has your daughter been dating your old partner’s brother?’ she asks.
This is hell.
First we had a tour of 1988 and now we’re visiting hell. That one sentence, that one question, needs to be completely unpicked. And in the unpicking, I will make myself seem like I have so much to hide. But if I don’t unpick it, I am admitting to something they couldn’t make us confess to all those years ago.
‘Poppy wasn’t my partner. She was a girl who was dating the man I was dating at the time. And I don’t know how long my daughter has been seeing Logan Carlisle.’
‘You know him well enough to know his first name?’
‘Verity told me it yesterday.’
‘But she didn’t tell you she’d been seeing him?’
‘No.’
‘Odd that she didn’t mention it when they’ve been together for the best part of a year, according to the text messages on his phone.’
A year. This has been going on for a year. Verity has been lying to us for nearly a year. This is why she has taken against me so much. This is why she has been distant and low-level rude and disengaged from family life. Sure, she shows up for Sunday lunch, yes, she comes and hangs out here sometimes, but she is almost always distracted. Constantly ‘not there’; vacant.