‘Beth, are you absolutely certain you didn’t leave the bath taps running?’ Vic was in the kitchen, cooking pasta with fresh tomatoes, chilli and herbs. I’d left him to it while I supervised Hayley’s bedtime. ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he added, holding up a wooden spoon as if to ward off an attack.
‘Honestly, Vic, don’t you think I’d remember something like that?’
‘It’s just odd, that’s all.’
‘Not if it’s part of someone’s plan to freak me out.’
He swivelled to look at me properly. His eyes were pouched with tiredness. I guessed he’d had a disturbed night, thanks to my tossing and turning, and felt a stab of guilt. ‘Who has a key to the house?’
My heart skipped a beat. I knew what was coming. ‘Pam next door, in case of an emergency,’ I said. ‘But she’d hardly come in and turn on my bath taps, would she?’
‘Doesn’t Matt still have a front door key?’ He turned back to the pan. His shoulders were relaxed as he stirred, but I knew he didn’t like that Matt could potentially come into the house any time he wanted.
‘He wouldn’t turn up uninvited,’ I said, remembering too late he’d done just that, and he’d brought me a birthday gift too. He was probably regretting that now. I tried to remember where I’d left the box of paints. ‘Why would he do something so awful?’ The question was directed as much to myself as Vic.
He turned down the heat under the pan, moved to the fridge and took out a jar. ‘Maybe he’s hoping you’ll turn to him for support.’ He tipped some capers into the pan on the hob, his movements as slick as a chef’s, never rushed or clumsy. ‘It’s obvious he still loves you.’
The words rang between us like a bell, clear and true. I remembered Matt’s reaction when I told him I’d met someone new. How – white-faced – he admitted he thought that once I’d had some space, I’d realise we were meant to be together, that it had been hard for him to stay away for so long.
‘And he’s trying to win me back by threatening me, tapping into my worst fears?’ I said, shakily. ‘Not a brilliant plan.’
‘I think he’d like full custody of Hayley.’ Vic carefully stirred the pasta. ‘Perhaps he’s trying to paint you as an unfit mother.’
Though quietly spoken, his words reverberated through me. I hoisted myself onto one of the kitchen stools at the breakfast bar. ‘We agreed joint custody, no courts, no disruption, to keep things as settled as possible for Hayley,’ I said. ‘Nothing’s changed.’
‘He doesn’t like you being with me.’ Vic picked up the chopping board and rinsed it at the sink. ‘Now he realises we’re serious, that things will have to be made official, it might have tipped him over the edge,’ he said. ‘And it must be hard for him, seeing another man around his daughter, hearing her talk about me.’ He threw me a loaded glance over his shoulder. ‘Who better to mess with your head than someone who knows you so well?’
Sickness fizzed in my stomach as his words sank in. The thought that the culprit was a stranger was frightening enough, but hearing Vic confirm my theory that it could be someone I knew, a loved one, was truly terrifying. ‘I don’t know,’ I said.
My thoughts pinballed from Jamie, who’d resented me for more than twenty years, to Matt, who’d been there when the inflatable appeared; he’d been in the garden on my birthday too, and this morning had turned up out of the blue. I could hardly bear to believe he was trying to scare me in a warped attempt to win me back, or get custody of Hayley, but it seemed like too much of a coincidence. The text messages … they didn’t seem like the sort of thing Matt would stoop to, but maybe I didn’t know him that well anymore.
I decided not to tell Vic about Matt’s visit this morning for now. It would only fuel his suspicions. Hayley hadn’t mentioned her dad taking her to school. If she did, I could say he’d got the date wrong. I needed to be sure before I took things any further—
‘It might be best to keep contact with Matt to a minimum,’ Vic said, making me jump. ‘And the sooner we start looking for a place of our own, the better.’
‘Hang on, what did you mean, by make things official?’ I tried desperately to shake off my chaotic thoughts. ‘Was that some sort of proposal?’
When he turned, his relief at the change of topic was evident. It must have been hard for him to say those things about Matt. He’d probably thought about it all day, trying to decipher the most likely explanation. ‘Maybe not quite yet,’ he said, a smile cutting across his face. He looked younger when he smiled, like the version of him I’d seen in old photos from his time at medical school, with friends, and his older sister, Fran, who was a paediatric nurse in Ontario.
I’d spoken to her once, via Skype, when Vic decided we should ‘meet’, a bit drunk after his Christmas party with colleagues from the hospital. Though she was stunning, a female version of Vic with raven hair and deep brown eyes, I’d found her a bit stiff and cold – though it might have been that the time difference meant she’d just woken after a long shift.
‘She couldn’t wait to get away from the UK,’ Vic had said, when ten minutes of stilted conversation ended abruptly as the screen froze on her face mid-sentence then went black. ‘She never got over losing our parents, hated living with our aunt. Once she’d hung around long enough to see me graduate, she left and never looked back.’
He’d rarely spoken about his family until then, and hearing the sadness of loss in his voice, I understood why. Vic was all about looking forward, or living in the present – the same philosophy we tried to foster in our clients at Fernley House – but I knew he felt the lack of family, and I’d questioned why he didn’t want children of his own.
‘I couldn’t bear them to go through what my sister and me went through if anything happened to us,’ he’d said.
Now, his smile broadened. ‘I was thinking about us getting our own place before I put a ring on it.’ He spoke with such a typical mix of playfulness and formality I couldn’t help smiling back.
‘Not the most romantic way to ask for my hand in marriage.’ I repressed a mental image of Matt in the living room at Mum and Dad’s, after we’d been out for a meal and they’d gone to bed, when he’d brought me a cup of tea and a biscuit, dropped to his knees in front of me and said, ‘I think we should get married.’ Worried Vic might guess my train of thought, I added quickly, ‘I’d have to get divorced first,’ surprised by the pang of pain the word produced.
‘That’s what I really meant about making things official.’ Vic picked up the pan and started spooning food onto plates. ‘I think Matt might have guessed where things are heading.’
My smile had slipped. ‘Right.’
‘You know, you can love, protect and respect someone, but you can never own or possess them, and shouldn’t want to,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s something Matt needs to learn.’
Looking at the wooden bowl of salad leaves on the worktop, in various shades of green, shiny with oil and balsamic vinegar, I felt a plunge of despair. I wanted so badly to live in the present, but couldn’t escape my past.
Did Matt want to keep me there?
‘By the way, I got you a personal alarm,’ Vic said. ‘I think you should keep it with you until this thing is resolved.’
With a superhuman effort, I resurrected my smile. ‘What, you just popped out to Tesco and picked one up in your lunch break?’
His mouth twitched. ‘Actually, we keep a few at the hospital, since one of the staff had a stalker who kept turning up when there was no one else around.’
I shuddered as we took our plates and cutlery into the living room. The doors to the garden were open, the room soft with peachy light, the air scented with jasmine. After checking the intercom was working, in case Hayley woke up and needed me, I sat on the sofa beside Vic, trying to soften my muscles and get comfy; to empty my mind, at least until I’d eaten.
Vic picked up the remote and aimed it at the TV. ‘Let’s hope Rosa can get to the bottom of things, before we go away,’ he said. ‘Does your brother know?’
My fingers tensed round my fork. I hadn’t even mentioned confronting my brother, earlier. ‘That Rosa’s on the case?’
Vic nodded, shaking a paper napkin across his lap.
‘He doesn’t.’ I thought of the word I’d seen printed over and over on the copier paper in Jamie’s study. ‘You know what he’s like,’ I said, tension knotting the back of my neck once more. ‘He’ll accuse me of raking up the past again. Rosa said she’d rather we didn’t tell him.’
‘I can’t say I blame her.’ Vic’s voice dipped into disapproval. ‘The way he behaves towards you at times makes me wonder whether he might have something to do with what’s going on.’ Jamie hadn’t taken to Vic the way he had to Matt, despite Vic’s efforts to be friendly. He’d gone as far as telling me I was an idiot to let Matt go.
‘You thought it was my husband a few minutes ago.’ I was aware that I was being a hypocrite, accusing Vic of jumping to conclusions, when I’d done the same thing myself.
Vic gave me a long, focused glance. ‘I’m as in the dark as you are,’ he said. ‘We’re just discussing possibilities here.’
‘Well, I’ve spoken to Jamie.’ My gaze fell on the paint box on the floor by the armchair where I’d left it that morning. It seemed to pulse with light and colour and I knew I should tell Vic where it had come from. Would Matt have brought me a gift, if he was trying to scare me?
‘When?’ Vic’s eyes were still on me, his fork poised over his plate.
‘After work,’ I said, glossing over the details, aware I was holding things back again without really knowing why. ‘He says it’s nothing to do with him.’
‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he?’ Vic ate a mouthful of food, chewing purposefully. ‘I bet he didn’t take it well.’
‘He didn’t.’ I pushed my pasta around, wishing with all my heart that my parents hadn’t witnessed the exchange. How was I going to explain myself to them? What had Jamie told them after I left? My phone had rung as I drove home, but seeing Mum’s number flash up, I’d ignored it.
Now, as if attuned to my thoughts, my phone vibrated with a text.
‘Shall I get it?’ Vic tensed, fork halfway to his mouth, but I’d already risen and snatched my phone from my bag. There were a couple of messages from Mum, but it was the latest text that made my heart leap.
‘It’s Rosa.’ I sat down and scanned her message; the first I’d ever received from her. ‘Apparently, Jamie told her I’d been to see him.’ My mouth dried. ‘She hasn’t told him I went to see her too.’
He was pretty upset, Beth, she’d written. I wish you’d told me you suspected him.
My face burned with shame.
Things have been tricky between us lately. What did that mean? I’m not going to tell him I’m looking into things for you, because I know he’ll be angry and will ask me not to. Just wanted to let you know. Rosa.
‘Maybe she could keep an eye on Matt too.’ Vic had put down his plate and shifted closer to read the message. He put his arm around my shoulders. ‘Will you ask her?’
I leaned against him. ‘I’ll think about it,’ I said. I hated lying again, but couldn’t face involving Rosa any further than I already had; couldn’t bear giving voice to my concerns about Matt to anyone else. ‘Can you pass me the wine?’
*
After another restless night, I decided to take matters into my own hands and call Jamie the following morning after dropping Hayley at school. When I’d watched her skip up the playground, holding her best friend Daisy’s hand, looking forward to the last day of term before the summer holidays, I got back in the car and phoned him.
‘Jamie Abbot,’ my brother said, in the smiling tone he used with everyone but me. He must not have registered it was my number, we called each other so rarely.
‘Hey, it’s Beth.’ My voice was brittle.
‘Now what do you want?’ He’d switched to coldly furious. ‘Haven’t you done enough damage for one week?’
‘Did you tell Mum and Dad what it was about?’
‘No, don’t worry, sis. I didn’t want to burst their little denial bubble. Let’s pretend everything’s fine in the Abbot family.’ His tone was flat. ‘I’m assuming you’re one of us again, since you broke up with Matt.’
I wasn’t; not just because it was easier to have the same surname as Hayley, but because it hadn’t crossed my mind to change it back.
‘Jamie, I …’ I closed my eyes briefly. ‘Things are a bit weird at the moment.’
‘Mum tried calling you when you left.’
‘I know,’ I said. I’d read her texts before bed.
Whatever you’re going through, we can help, love. We’re here if you need us. XX
Whatever Jamie’s done, you know he didn’t mean it. He loves you, we all do. XX
I’d replied, thanking her and apologising for my outburst, knowing it was what she wanted to hear, though I knew she’d still be fretting even as she reassured Dad it was ‘nothing’ just ‘brother and sister stuff’ as she’d done so often over the years. ‘It’s fine, I smoothed it over,’ I said, thinking about the power of words, how they had the ability to distort as well as reassure. Did Mum believe me? I doubted it.
‘So, what was it all about?’ Jamie said. ‘Why do you think I want you dead?’
I couldn’t tell him about the balled-up paper I’d seen in his study without admitting I’d been to see Rosa when she didn’t want him to know. ‘Someone sent me some texts on my birthday, and … there was some other stuff too.’
‘So, go to the police.’ His tone grew challenging. ‘Isn’t that what any normal person would do if they’ve had a death threat, rather than accuse their own brother?’
Interesting that he didn’t suggest talking to Rosa when he mentioned the police. Could he be calling my bluff?
‘Rosa mentioned you were making some flyers to promote the business,’ I said to divert him.
‘When?’
Shit. ‘At my party the other evening.’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘I’m just showing an interest, that’s all.’
‘Beth, you can’t accuse me of threatening you one minute, then be all friendly the next. That’s not normal.’ I couldn’t think of a response and wished I hadn’t called. ‘Anyway, how did she know about that?’ he said, sharply. ‘She must have been in my office.’
I remembered what Rosa had told me. ‘Isn’t she allowed in there?’
‘It’s private.’ He pushed out a sigh. ‘Not that it’s any of your business.’
Despite it being the longest conversation I’d had with my brother in ages, I wanted it to end. We never talked properly, not in a friendly way, about anything that really mattered. ‘Does this flyer have the word life in it?’ It wasn’t subtle, but it was too late to take it back. ‘As in, A LIFE FOR A LIFE?’
I had no idea what I expected him to say. Oh yes, like on the note I left on your car, months ago, because … why?
‘What are you on about?’ He was wary now. ‘I can’t remember. I didn’t get very far with it.’
I wished I could see his face, but then again, I hadn’t been able to read him yesterday. It struck me that he’d got better at hiding his feelings.
‘Look, I’ve got to go, I’m on my way to a job,’ he said. ‘We can’t all afford to go to work when we feel like it.’
‘Jay, that’s not fair,’ I began, but he’d gone.
I looked at my phone through a blur of tears. He’d seemed different after meeting Rosa. There was a glimpse of the man he’d become; a man I could see getting married and becoming a father one day. Was this the real him, still simmering under the surface, desperate to punish his sister for ruining his childhood?
How bad were things between him and Rosa?
I took out a tissue and blew my nose. All the other mothers at the school gates had gone, some to coffee mornings I wasn’t invited to, because everyone knew I worked at Fernley House.
I drove there on autopilot, uncaring whether anyone might be following me. If Jamie had sent the texts and left the message on my car, I doubted he’d risk tailing me now in his van, especially during work hours.
Something struck me. His girlfriend was a police officer, so how did he think he’d get away with any of it? Unless he didn’t care. If their relationship was under strain – if he thought Rosa was planning to leave him like all the others – perhaps he’d had enough. Deal with the cause not the problem. I knew on some level Jamie thought I was the cause of his problems, and as horrible as it was, and as terrible as I felt for suspecting him, it wasn’t much of a stretch to think he might want to be rid of me altogether.