January 1990, Silverbeach Residential Home, Brighton
The snow was settling thick and deep, in a way it rarely did this close to the shore. Tabitha was not a good driver, had never been a good driver, and driving in snow gave her a sinus headache. But her son was drunk. Look at him, she kept saying to herself. He was side-slumped in the passenger seat, his face smearing the window. Just look at him. She pulled up onto Silverbeach Drive. The car ahead was parked at a 90-degree angle to the kerb and most of the snow on its bonnet had been scooped off. She lit a menthol cigarette and shook her son by the shoulders. ‘Freddy. Freddy.’
‘OK, OK, I’m awake.’ He had a crease like a bracket around one eye from where his cheek had been pressed to the glass.
‘Look,’ she said, pointing through the windscreen. There was a news crew gathered outside the home – three men and a woman standing near a BBC van, all wrapped in winter coats and scarves with puffs of fog coming out of their mouths.
‘Fucking vultures,’ said Freddy.
‘Well, of course they’re vultures, darling. Will you comb your hair, please?’
He looked in the rear-view mirror and ran his fingers through his greying curly hair. He needed a haircut and a shave. Probably a wash. He’d been blessed with such lovely looks, his grandfather’s looks, and now his stomach bulged out like a darts player’s and his earholes were clogged with thick black hair and dead skin cells. Frankly, it was wasteful.
‘Do eat some breath mints,’ she said. ‘You know they’ll want to talk to us.’
Frowning, he helped himself to one of her cigarettes and tucked it in the corner of his mouth. ‘How shocked they’ll be that Bettina and Bartholomew Dawes spawned a bunch of pissheads. What a gobsmacking revelation.’
‘Speak for yourself.’ She went into the glove compartment and pulled out some Mint Imperials. ‘Please,’ she said, holding out the tin.
‘After my fag,’ he said, taking a handful. ‘Can the heating go any higher?’
‘No.’ She watched as the front door of Silverbeach opened and a care worker stuck her head out. She said something to the reporters and closed the door. ‘Probably telling them to bugger off,’ said Tabitha. ‘I don’t know what they’re hoping to achieve. I mean, are they honestly expecting my eighty-five-year-old mother to Zimmer her way out into the snow and confess to a murder that happened half a century ago? Preposterous. Freddy?’
‘I’m listening.’ He was fiddling with the heating knob.
‘I told you it was on full. Why don’t you ever—’
‘OK. Just checking.’ He rubbed his hands together, blowing on them. ‘I personally would love to see Nana swan out here and confess to murder. In a Givenchy gown and her old fox fur, with a piss-bag strapped to her ankle.’
‘Don’t be mean.’
‘With a cigarette holder longer than her arm. Remember that one with the diamonds going in little spirals? “I, Bettina Dawes, wife to the great thespian of yesteryear, Bartholomew Dawes, have a confession to make.”’ He tilted up his chin and smoke wafted from his nose in an oyster-white plume. ‘“The gun belonged to me! I murdered him. And goddammit, I’d do it again! Oh, bother, one seems to have shat oneself. Nurse!”’ He hunched over laughing, spilling the mints onto the floor of the car.
‘She’s nothing like that, Freddy. And she’s not incontinent. Hurry up and finish your cigarette.’ She took her lipstick out of her purse and reapplied – her lips in their natural state had lost entirely all their colour. She was getting pouchy little flabs under her mouth, at the corners, and she hadn’t enjoyed a jawline in twenty years. So bloody what? She was a sixty-one-year-old lawyer specialising in wills and probate. Nobody would expect her to look fantastic. Except … well, they might. Because look at her parents.
Freddy stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Showtime.’
As they pushed open their doors and got out, the female reporter’s head snapped around.
‘Oh, look out,’ said Freddy. ‘She’s got a whiff of carrion.’
‘Don’t you dare say anything rude,’ said Tabitha. ‘Take my arm, please.’
‘What am I supposed to say to them when they ask questions?’
‘No comment. Say you don’t know anything. If they mention the gun, say you knew nothing about it.’
‘I don’t know anything about it. Nobody knows anything about it.’
‘If they ask about your grandfather—’
‘Which they undoubtedly will—’
‘No comment. Just say no comment. Like in the films. And for God’s sake, don’t let them smell your breath.’
The snow under their shoes gave way in a flumpy-soft crunch. Tabitha almost lost her footing on a wedge of crystallised snow and Freddy held her up, barely, his feet skidding. The houses in this street were huge, with three levels and long, ploughed drives within beautiful landscaped gardens. Not too dissimilar to the sort of house she’d grown up in, actually. Possibly even a little inferior. The reporters watched their slow approach. She’d had dealings with reporters before, but never the predatory sort. Just magazine journalists wanting to ask the same tiresome questions about her parents. ‘Retrospective,’ was the word they often used. The last one had been trying to draw parallels between her mother and Zelda Fitzgerald, which was ridiculous and trite. Most asked about her father, who after all had been the more well-known of the two, and were often a smidge sycophantic, trying – quite transparently – to make her feel like an important person: but that was to be expected, and she didn’t mind indulging them. Only it all felt a little pointless. Because everything had already been said. Until now.
They were roughly six car-lengths from the home. ‘Do you think she did it?’ said Freddy, quietly.
‘Of course not.’
‘She did hate him though.’
‘So? You hate your wife and your boss. Do you plan to murder them?’
‘I don’t hate Theresa. I intensely dislike her.’
‘I just can’t imagine Mum doing such a thing. I’ve thought about it and thought about it and—’
‘Maybe he took her gin away.’
‘Oh, shut up, Freddy.’
‘Prised it out of her vice-like alky grip.’
‘Shhh.’ Two car-lengths away now. The reporters were still watching, but not with much interest. There were a dozen or so public photographs of Tabitha with her parents, but most were ancient; Christmas family portrait shots of the Joan Crawford variety: oh, how her father had hated – positively loathed – posing for those! His sarcastic quips to the photographer: ‘Look how fucking wholesome we are!’ His whisky within reach on the bureau, just out of shot. The most recent picture of Tabitha with her mother, published in Tatler in 1958, showed them at the Royal Opera. Tabitha’s face was partly obscured by her hair, deliberately so, and of course she looked so much younger, with her once-cherished jawline and a pair of lips unstripped of their rosy melanin. It was possible these reporters wouldn’t even recognise her.
And they didn’t.
‘Morning,’ said one of them, a young man – a child, practically – with his hair worn in bleached-blond curtains.
‘Morning,’ said Tabitha.
The female reporter was looking down at a clipboard, a steaming cup in her gloved hand.
A care worker let them in, glancing peevishly at the reporters before closing the door with admirable placidity. The home was warm, as it usually was, and this sudden change in temperature set off a tingle in Tabitha’s toes.
‘They’ve been here since six,’ said the carer, whose name might have been Lindsey.
‘Eager little beavers,’ said Freddy, kicking the welcome mat to shake the snow off his shoes.
‘The police were here earlier, too,’ said the carer. ‘For questioning.’
‘Yes, we were informed by the manager,’ said Tabitha.
‘Cup of tea?’ said the carer.
‘Coffee,’ said Freddy. ‘Strong, three sugars.’
‘Not for me, thanks,’ said Tabitha. ‘Can we see her?’
‘Of course. She’s in her room. Fancied some alone time – can’t say I blame her. Give us a shout if there’s an issue.’
‘Can I have some biscuits with my coffee?’ said Freddy.
A playful smile. ‘I’ll see what I can do, my love. Two tics.’
‘She prefers men to women,’ said Tabitha, beginning to climb the stairs. ‘I can always tell. I hate women like that.’
‘I love women like that.’
Her mother’s room was on the second floor at the back of the house, with a view of the garden. She was often found in an armchair by the window, reading a large-print book through her pearl-handled magnifying glass, a plastic beaker full of sherry – sometimes gin – on her tray-table and a cigarette smouldering in an ashtray next to the whining, squealing hearing aids she refused to wear. The carers had tried to ration her alcohol once and she’d threatened to go on hunger strike (which was laughable), and the senior carer decided that since Mrs Dawes was still in full possession of her faculties, she was free to drink herself to death.
She was in her armchair now, looking out of the window. Her book lay closed on the carpet, the magnifying glass placed on top. She looked like she always did – fat and sunken with one oedemic leg propped up on a footstool, but her silver hair immaculate and all her best jewellery on, a floral silk scarf tied around the neck that hung fat and super-soft like a post-pregnancy apron. An uneaten breakfast of poached eggs on toast was on her tray-table, pushed away. With warped fingers she held her beaker of sherry tight to her stomach, as if afraid someone was going to take it away. The room smelled of bananas going bad.
‘Tabby, darling. I’m so glad you could make it. Freddy, oh! I didn’t know you were coming. Come and have a drink! Tabby, where’s your brother?’
‘Still in the States. How are you feeling?’
‘Bloody awful.’ She pointed out of the window. ‘The bastards keep sneaking round the back to try to get photos of me. They won’t leave me alone.’
‘Empty your bedpan over their heads,’ said Freddy.
‘What did he say?’ said her mother.
‘Nothing.’
Freddy leaned in closer. ‘I said, empty your bedpan over their heads.’
She laughed. ‘I should, shouldn’t I? Only I don’t have a bedpan, darling. I have my own en-suite lavatory. Sherry?’
‘I shouldn’t,’ said Freddy, grinning. ‘But I will.’
Tabitha made a point of looking at her watch – it wasn’t even lunchtime yet, for God’s sake – but Freddy didn’t notice. He took the sherry from the cabinet and poured himself a glass. Hanging above the cabinet was an original Hannah Gluckstein of an androgynous woman in a beret. On the opposite wall was a Romaine Brooks watercolour – not a very good one – and underneath, a bookcase full of her mother’s books.
‘Top me up, there’s a good boy,’ said Bettina, holding out her beaker. She gave her daughter a defensive look. ‘Well, it’s either drink or cry. Don’t judge me – I’ll be dead soon.’ She picked up her cigarette from the ashtray and took a puff, her jaw wobbling as she let the smoke out. ‘They won’t leave me alone, darling, honestly – it’s awful. I feel like Quasimodo up in his bell tower. I think they’ve been throwing gravel at the window. Mind you, better the BBC than those fatheads at ITV. They’ve been here since early this morning, darling. In the snow. Honestly. It’s either drink or cry. Drink or die.’
Tabitha sat down on her mother’s bed and lit a menthol. ‘You can hardly blame them, Mum. It’s juicy stuff.’
‘It’s absolute horseshit. What would I be doing with a gun? Really? Your father would—’
A smattering of tiny stones hit the windowpane and her mother startled, spilling her sherry onto her crotch.