I side-eye my husband for managing to give our son this excess of charm, no matter what the situation.
‘When did you find this out? Did Verity tell you?’ Evan asks.
He shakes his head. ‘I found out back in the day.’
‘You’re seventeen, there isn’t a “day” for you to hark back to, son,’ Evan replies.
‘I searched you both up about two years ago. Found you linked to that Poppy Carlisle girl. I didn’t tell Verity. I didn’t tell anyone. It was none of my business. You’re always telling me to mind my own damn business and that’s what I do – even if I know everyone’s business.’
‘Did you know about Verity and Logan Carlisle?’ Evan asks.
Conrad looks a little troubled and shakes his shaved head. I remember a time when he wanted to grow the biggest Afro. The amount of trouble it caused at school. The number of letters we were sent, meetings we had, threats to exclude him we had to field. The school’s attitude got mild-mannered, laid-back Evan’s back up. Usually, I deal with school stuff but with this . . . he took it as personally as anyone could or should. No one was going to criminalise his child for how they wore their hair and Evan went to war with them after the first threatening letter.
Several legal letters in response later, and the school backed down. (I’m sure it had nothing to do with it being pointed out in one of the last letters we sent that Conrad was one of the brightest students in the school and his loss would do nothing for their grades come GCSE results time.) The day the school reversed their thoughts on how Conrad wore his hair was hugely celebrated in the Gillmare house. Conrad, in particular, celebrated by shaving his head in the bathroom using Evan’s clippers, then calling his dad to ask him to do the back.
When Evan came to bed that night, I’d thought he’d be annoyed that after all that battling, all that money, all that energy, Conrad had decided to de-hair himself. But no. He climbed into bed and said, ‘You know why he did it, don’t you? He knew we’d go all the way, we wouldn’t stop until he got to wear his hair how he wanted. He did it because he wanted everyone else to have the same freedom. The kids whose parents can’t afford it, who don’t have his marks, who don’t have parents with that fight in them can now wear their hair how they want, too. Without the fight.’ He’d cuddled up to me and I could see tears of pride shining in his eyes. ‘We’ve got a good kid there. And we did that. We raised a kid like that.’
In the present, my youngest child continues to run his hand over his head. ‘I had no clue.’ He hesitates, looks unsure whether to say what is sitting there at the back of his throat. ‘Vee and me haven’t been close for a while. She’s not been available for a while now and . . .’ He stops speaking and looks at each of us as though trying to work out if we can handle what he’s about to say. ‘And about six months ago she changed the locks on her flat and didn’t tell me.’ He shrugs again, but this one isn’t as unburdened. ‘I probably should have guessed something was up. But I just figured she was done with me using her place as a crash pad so left it.’
‘This isn’t your fault,’ Evan and I say together.
‘You think she’s going to prison?’ Conrad asks.
Evan is about to say no. I can tell he’s about to declare that with certainty, but my husband can’t promise that. He has no idea what is coming, what it’s going to be like. He has no idea what things will be twisted and found and torn apart, dissected and micro-examined to find anything that will make her guilty.
‘We don’t know anything,’ I say quickly. My voice is like a scalpel that has been inserted into a bubble of delusion and lanced it. Now it will cut away any of the hope that is starting to grow. All of that needs to be removed as quickly and cleanly as possible because we need to be on the other end of the scale. We need to be as pessimistic as possible so anything other than a worst-case scenario is a bonus. ‘Her solicitor is advising her and since he works with her we can be sure he cares. But no one knows anything, no one can say anything for sure. We all need to hang in there and wait to see how things pan out. See what the next few days and weeks bring.’
It’s Evan’s turn to cast a sour look in my direction. ‘And stay positive. What Verity needs right now is for us to stay positive, focused on her coming home and being hopeful that this is all over soon.’
Do you know why I’m sitting here like this, with two children and a twenty-five-year marriage? I want to scream at Evan. Do you know why you get to love me and fuck me and live your life with me? It wasn’t staying positive, it wasn’t people focusing on me coming home, it wasn’t hoping that it would all be over soon. It was because my fingerprints weren’t on the knife. After all of it, after everything that was said in court to trash me, my reputation, my personality, my humanity, I only ‘got away with it’ because they couldn’t prove I had even touched the thing that killed him.
I look down to stop myself getting to my feet and shouting this at my husband in front of our son.
Conrad reaches for me again and rests his hand on mine. ‘It’ll be all right, Mum. No matter what happens, it’ll be all right.’
Evan slips his arm around my shoulders and for the first time ever, I want to tell him to get his hands off me. For the first time ever, I don’t want Evan anywhere near me.
Part 6
poppy
Now
If I didn’t have Betina, I would start smoking again.
I’m drinking too much, but I need the edge that smoking brings to deal with this. It’s only been three days, but everything about me seems to have stopped functioning properly.
Work? What’s that? When I’m there I’m going through the motions, sending out invoices, interviewing people, doing spot checks, admin, bookkeeping, accounting on autopilot. I barely notice what I’m doing until it’s done and then I wonder if I did it to the best of my ability.
Parenting? What’s that? When I’m home I’m going through the motions and leaving the rest of it to Alain who, without being asked, has moved in. I crumpled when the police liaison woman told me that Serena’s daughter had done this to Logan, burst into noisy tears that Alain had to console me through, and after that he went to his house, got his stuff and didn’t leave again.
I’m still processing everything. Still.
There was evidence of a struggle at her flat. Two types of blood found. Splatter consistent with a knife wound in one room, but nothing definitive. She, the family liaison officer, has been strangely forthcoming with information. She has told us stuff that I don’t think they’d normally share, but she only does it when I’m there. I’ll get a call summoning me over to my parents’ house because the family liaison is paying a visit and once I get there, she will speak and retell in great detail something about the case, all the while watching me closely. I’ve noticed that she studies me while she overshares, visually notes my every reaction.
Alain thinks it’s paranoia, but I don’t. Why tell us about the other blood? It’s not like we’re going to know who Verity Gillmare has had over at her place. Why tell us about the splatter consistent with a knife wound? It’s not as if we know what type of knife it might be.