With sudden resolution, I head back up to the promenade. I should have more faith in Lou. If she says that woman poisoned Bagpuss, I should take it on trust that she’s right. We all should. Celia needs to stop playing games with that damned party invitation and make it clear we all stand foursquare behind Lou.
As I reach the Parade, the sun goes in. I quicken my steps back to the hospital car park as the first fat raindrops splatter the pavement, and then suddenly spot Andrew and Bella coming out of The Ginger Dog about a hundred feet ahead of me. How odd. It’s Friday: Bella should be in school, not having lunch at a pub in Brighton with her father. She’s in uniform, so it’s obviously not a day off, either. I’m still quite a long way off, and they both have their backs towards me, so neither of them notice me as Andrew puts his arm solicitously around his daughter, pulling her against him and stroking her hair.
There’s something about the scene that strikes me as not quite right. I can’t put my finger on it, but I feel a distinct sense of unease as they disappear around the corner. Something is happening within this family, something dangerous and fracturing. And instinct tells me we’re running out of time to stop it.
One week before the party
Chapter 29
Louise
Money is missing from my account. I haven’t just made a mistake, or miscalculated how much I’ve spent on petrol and groceries over the last month. Three hundred pounds was withdrawn in cash with my debit card last Thursday, and since the card is safely back in my wallet, the only person who could’ve done it is Bella.
It’s not the first time she’s ‘borrowed’ money from me. Usually, it’s just five or ten pounds here or there, to buy herself a coffee from Starbucks when she’s out with her friends, or a new – invariably black – T-shirt at Primark. But she’s never taken anything like this much before. She’s put me into overdraft, and precipitated the text alert from my bank; but I’m less concerned with the hole she’s blown in my finances than the reason she needs so much money. I check back through my past transactions on my banking app, consumed with worry. Is it drugs? That would certainly explain her moods. She’s sixteen; I suppose it’s inevitable she’d try them sometime. But three hundred pounds? That’s an awful lot of weed.
I glance up as my brother, Luke, sticks his head into my parents’ hallway. ‘Are you coming?’ he asks. ‘Lunch is on the table.’
‘Sorry. Be right there.’
I scroll rapidly through the rest of my transactions. No other unexplained withdrawals, so that’s something, I suppose. I know parents are always the last to know about things like this, but I really can’t see Bella doing drugs. She’s fanatical about ‘clean living’ and won’t even take paracetamol if she has a headache. We had hell to pay when she had to have a tetanus booster a few years ago. But if not drugs, why does she need the money?
‘Louise!’ my mother calls.
I hurry into my parents’ dining room just as Dad bears the Sunday roast in from the kitchen with all the pride of a man who hunted and speared it himself. Mum clears a space in the centre of the table as he lays down the platter. ‘Shall I do the honours?’ Dad asks rhetorically, as he always does.
He carves perfect pink slices of roast pork as Mum passes a steaming tureen of Brussels sprouts around the table. Luke and Min’s two youngest boys, Sidney and Archie, graphically mime vomiting until Min reaches across the table and tartly smacks each of their hands with the back of her fork.
‘Is it true your cat died?’ five-year-old Archie asks me suddenly.
‘Of course it’s true,’ Sidney says scornfully, with all the authority of his seven years. He lowers his voice dramatically. ‘He was poisoned.’
Archie tugs my sleeve. ‘Was he poisoned, Lula?’
I’ve always refused to be called ‘Aunt Louise’: it makes me sound like an Edwardian spinster. ‘I’m afraid so, Archie. He ate something he shouldn’t have.’
Archie looks at his plate. Min has spooned the despised vegetables onto it while he wasn’t looking. ‘Was it because of sprouts?’ he asks dejectedly.
After lunch, Dad goes into the sitting room to read his paper, and Luke takes the boys outside to kick a ball around. Min and I shoo Mum out of the kitchen so we can tackle the washing-up, but instead of putting her feet up as we exhort her to do, she goes out to work in the garden. She could no more sit still for five minutes than the sun could choose to rise in the West.
We watch her walk past the kitchen window with her gardening trug over her arm, heading towards the new tomato beds. ‘You know Andrew put those in for her,’ Min says.
I know exactly where this is going. ‘Min, please don’t start.’
It’s like trying to stop a runaway train. ‘This isn’t healthy for anyone,’ she says. ‘You’ve got to talk to Celia, and get her to see sense. She might listen, if it comes from you.’ She scrubs the roasting pan with more vigour than strictly necessary. ‘You and Andrew need to properly separate yourselves. Your lives are way too tangled these days. I’m sure Celia invited him to the party with the best of intentions, but things have changed, even she must see that.’
‘I’m not so sure about her intentions,’ I mutter.
‘She stirred up a bloody hornet’s nest with that invitation,’ Min says crossly. ‘That’s where all this nonsense started.’
‘I’m not arguing.’
She puts the roasting pan on the drainer, and turns to me, bubbles dripping from her soapy hands onto the floor. ‘Lou, I’m worried about you. This horrid business with Bagpuss—’
‘Min, you know how much I value your advice,’ I interrupt.
She sighs. ‘Yes, but you never take it.’
She means well, I know that. Whatever concern she has for me, it comes from a place of love. And unlike everyone else, including my mother, she doesn’t have a hidden agenda. I wish I could confide in her, and tell her what I learned from my visit to Caz’s mother. But even admitting I tracked the old woman down and went to see her will just fuel Min’s conviction that I’m obsessed. I know she’s already wondering about Bagpuss. I don’t blame her: with my history, I’d do the same.
‘Min, dear,’ my mother says, letting herself in the back door and making us both jump. ‘Would you like to go out and join Luke and the boys? I can help Louise finish up in the kitchen.’
Min recognises an imperative interrogative when she hears one: it may sound like a question, but it’s actually a command. She mouths a quick ‘Talk to her!’ at me, and disappears outside.
Mum puts her basket of tomatoes on the counter and snaps on her rubber gloves, groping around in the soapy dishwater. ‘You’re handling Andrew all wrong, Louise,’ she says bluntly, rinsing a serving bowl under the tap. ‘I’ve told you before. Rushing off to London like a lunatic—’
‘Yes, I know,’ I say testily. ‘I shouldn’t have done that, but I was upset.’
‘He needs to be gently reminded what he gave up when he walked away from you, not bludgeoned over the head with it,’ Mum says. ‘You know how much family means to him. He didn’t just walk out on you when he left, he walked out on all of us, and he’s regretted it ever since.’