‘Was she running, Mummy?’ Alfie asked. He’d been warned every day not to run by the pool, and saw this as the cardinal sin.
‘We don’t know, darling, but this is why you must always be sensible around water and not run or be silly.’
‘Was Ella being silly by the pool, Mummy?’ he asked.
‘In a way,’ I said, shaken by what had happened and finding comfort in the simplistic way my kids viewed life and death.
Violet was clearly confused and upset, and then Alfie started on the questions about heaven – ‘What’s it like in heaven, Mummy? Will Ella be able to see Thomas the Tank Engine – is he in heaven?’ and so it went on.
I suggested Bob go and comfort Joy while I played with the children for a bit, for myself as much as them. I wanted them round me, my little cocoon. I gathered them up and we went inside, where I made breakfast last longer than usual so we could stay in the kitchen while the police arrived. But after a while they were restless. Whatever had happened it was the last day of their holiday, they wanted to play out, and as I’d made it clear the pool was out of the question, I suggested they play in the garden again. I was trying so hard to make everything seem normal that when the police arrived, I was laughing with the kids – something Dan was only too quick to point out to me later. ‘I know you didn’t like Ella, but you might have shown some respect,’ he’d said.
‘And we all know how much you liked her,’ I’d spat back.
A detective arrived with the police and announced this looked like ‘omicidio’.
Joy had quickly assured him in her Italian voice, ‘No, dear – no one killed the girl! It must have been suicidio.’ She’d obviously been on Google Translate. He asked how Ella had seemed when we last saw her and if anything had happened that was out of the ordinary, but we couldn’t really offer him anything.
‘I actually think it was an accident,’ I said. ‘She was probably taking a selfie and fell in. She couldn’t swim, you see…’
But, as the detective pointed out, her phone had been found in the garden, and ‘If she’d been taking a selfie, wouldn’t her phone have gone in the water with her?’
Of course it would; stupidly in all the madness I hadn’t thought of that. So what happened?
‘She’d had this offer of work in TV,’ Jamie said dolefully. At this, I felt my heart pounding through my whole body. No one except Ella and I knew the truth about the TV offer. ‘She said it would break her heart not to go… I begged her not to – but this was a huge opportunity.’ He added, ‘I think she was overwhelmed, it messed with her head, she was very fragile.’
‘Yes…’ Joy nodded in agreement. ‘She wasn’t in a good place.’
Each word was like a pin jabbing me, reminding me that if I hadn’t goaded Ella with that fake Instagram message we probably wouldn’t be here now. What an idiot I was. I might as well have pushed her in myself.
‘She only ever sat on the edge of the pool, and the other day she fell in and was so distressed…’ I told the police. ‘But that’s why I don’t think she killed herself. If she wanted to end her life, she’d have found another way. I think it was some horrible accident.’
A little later, the detective asked us all separately about a possible motive, family dynamics and why we thought she might have killed herself. It gave everyone a chance to speak honestly, without other family members present, and I desperately hoped Jamie wouldn’t tell them anything about him and me; it wasn’t relevant to her death. Yes, she wanted Jamie to have recognition for Freddie, but I also knew that wasn’t why she’d drowned. She was far too vain to kill herself, and even though the TV offer wasn’t real, she was moving on, continuing the life she’d led before Jamie, before the Taylors. As I explained to the police, nothing that happened at the villa had any bearing on her death, because none of us really meant anything to her. It had to be an accident – what else could it be?
As I spoke, the detective wrote everything down, just nodding or asking me to repeat what I’d said. I was as honest as I could be, without spilling my own secrets. ‘Ella was happy enough. I’m a nurse, I’ve worked with psychiatric patients, and Ella didn’t seem depressed, and I certainly don’t think she was suicidal.’
But why the hell was she close to water with no one else around? Ella was self-preserving; she wouldn’t have put herself in danger. But if it wasn’t suicide or an accident, then I found myself asking who in the Taylor family had a reason to want Ella dead… but then again, who didn’t?
Chapter Thirty-Three
‘Your instinct was right,’ Dan admitted once the children had gone to bed and we were alone in the garden. ‘Ella… she wasn’t trustworthy. I’m not saying it’s good she’s dead. But she’d have cost us a fortune. Not just her shoddy attempt to blackmail me either. And what if they divorced, which, let’s face it, would probably have happened sooner rather than later? Like Mum said, Ella was the kind to demand a huge payoff if there was a divorce.’
‘Your mum said that?’
‘Yeah, and I knew it was a matter of time before she was filing for divorce – and demanding a big payout. Makes me shudder to think what might have happened to the business if she was still…’ He didn’t finish the sentence, he didn’t need to. But I couldn’t help but wonder if Dan had more than one good reason to go down to the pool at dawn and push her in.
* * *
The heat and tension continued for forty-eight hours, pulsating through the villa as police wandered the beautiful place in big boots and a forensic team arrived. The children were mesmerised and Alfie kept asking his crazy questions loudly: ‘Where is Auntie Ella, is she up in the sky yet? I can’t see her,’ and ‘Who’s going to heaven next, Mummy?’
It was extremely difficult, with everyone walking round the villa in shock like zombies, and the carabinieri still swarming. They’d checked the pool thoroughly, talked to each of us in broken English and, between us all, we’d tried to give them as much information as we could to help.
I hadn’t slept much. I hadn’t told them that the TV offer was fake, and it was me, and I was worried this might come back to bite me. The family still didn’t know, and I didn’t really want them to, it wouldn’t help. So I asked the detective if I could have a word with him on my own.
‘But we interview you already,’ he said; he was shuffling papers on the table outside.
‘Yes I know, but… there’s something I didn’t mention.’
‘Okay,’ he sighed, and gestured for me to sit down.
Once seated, I waited for him to put down his papers, and eventually he sat back and gestured for me to speak. I took a deep breath and said, ‘The TV offer was something I made up.’
He seemed confused and inclined his head like he was trying to understand.
‘It wasn’t real… the television offer,’ I repeated.
He nodded, but I still wasn’t sure he really understood.
‘The thing is, Ella bought it… she believed a TV show wanted her, but then I told her it was me and she was upset and said she was going away.’