‘I took the day off to mark these.’ Joanna points to a pile of essays. ‘But I was kidding myself. I can’t concentrate.’
Pauline Baxter – attractive, thirty something, a single mum since her husband of seventeen years ran off with their dentist – says nothing. When Pauline pops round for coffee, as she does from time to time, Joanna makes it obvious she has things she wants to get off her chest.
‘All this with Carrie,’ Joanna continues. ‘It’s making it impossible for me to put the necessary piano practice in too. I’m frighteningly behind. So much so, it’s looking like I’m going to have to postpone the recitals I agreed to give in Germany this autumn.’
‘That’s a shame,’ Pauline answers. ‘But if it helps take the pressure off. Mike said things had been full-on – you went to sort out your sister’s flat, didn’t you?’
‘That was more of a fact-finding mission. I needed to piece together what happened. To find out why she managed to kill herself while trying to stab that bloke.’
‘And did you find out much?’ Pauline sips her coffee.
‘A bit. But it’s all so complicated – and the more I unravel, the more confused I get.’
‘Two heads, and all that,’ her neighbour offers.
‘I wouldn’t know where to start.’ Joanna plonks down on a chair beside Pauline. ‘But it’s colouring my life. Whatever I think I uncover just creates new questions I don’t have the answers to.’
Chin in her hands at the kitchen table, the dog at her feet, Joanna watches the world turn through the large casement windows of her beautiful Wheathampstead home.
‘Death’s so horribly final, isn’t it?’ she says, her voice flat. ‘I know to even say that sounds stupid, but I think it’s taken me till now to understand it fully.’
‘You’ve lost enough loved ones to know, and you’ve had your own health troubles, you poor thing,’ Pauline consoles. ‘I’m lucky, the only person I’ve lost is my grandfather, and he was well into his nineties.’
Clouds bubble like sand castles behind the panes of glass. They lead Joanna back to that long ago, happy seaside holiday in Caswell Bay, and bring unexpected thoughts of her father bobbing beyond the collapsing breakers. He was blind without his specs but on the rare occasion he removed them, his face took on a vulnerability that still makes her anxious to know how he manages to see anything of heaven without them.
‘Dad’s been dead for nearly thirty-three years, but d’you know,’ a weighted pause, ‘it still feels like pressing a bruise to think of him. Then Mum, now Carrie.’
‘You poor thing.’ Pauline squeezes Joanna’s arm.
‘My problem is I feel so guilty.’
‘Guilty?’
‘Yes. Even before I saw Carrie’s mental health nurse … and she said some pretty alarming things.’
‘Really?’ Pauline wrinkles her nose. ‘Like what?’
‘About me lying to Carrie. When we were kids. Apparently she was still going on about it – couldn’t forgive me, the nurse said.’
‘Bit extreme, isn’t it? D’you remember what you lied about?’
‘Dean.’
‘Isn’t that the bloke whose name she shouted in the supermarket?’
‘Yep.’ Joanna sighs. ‘She was nuts about him … well, obsessed more like. And I told her he liked her. That he’d told me he was going to ask her out.’
‘And that was a lie?’
‘Yes. But this was real playground stuff. I was only nine, for God’s sake – I didn’t think she was going to take me seriously.’
Pauline gives Joanna a look.
‘I said it to cheer her up. I was sick of her moping around. She was so grumpy, it was spoiling everything.’ Joanna defends herself. ‘But, the thing was, Dean already had a girlfriend, didn’t he? And even if he hadn’t, he was way too old for Carrie.’
‘How old was he?’
‘Eighteen. Carrie was thirteen.’
‘And this is what your sister couldn’t forgive you for?’ Pauline asks.
Joanna nods. ‘And get this – and this is more alarming – according to Carrie’s nurse, me duping her into thinking Dean loved her when he didn’t – yes, she actually used the word duping –’ she slumps further into her chair – ‘well, it drove her to do something terrible, apparently. Something she couldn’t forgive herself for.’
‘Really? D’you know what?’
A shake of the head. ‘I knew Carrie could get fixated on things – I could give you loads of examples of that. And she had a memory like a bloody elephant, could be very unforgiving. I’ve never known anyone bear a grudge like her. But I didn’t think for a minute this was her problem with me – I’d forgotten all about what I said.’
‘I can see why you think so, it is rather over the top.’ Pauline fiddles with her long dark hair. ‘But remembering what I was like at that age, I can sort of identify a bit with your sister.’
Joanna looks surprised.
‘There was this older boy I had a huge crush on,’ Pauline confides. ‘It lasted right through school, and beyond. Pathetic, I know, but it’s powerful stuff, first love – it can really screw you up. Look at what happened to Romeo and Juliet.’
‘Romeo and Juliet ?’
A sharp laugh from Pauline. ‘Perhaps not the best example.’
‘Okay.’
‘I still dream about him, my schoolgirl crush – even though he never wanted anything to do with me. Or ,’ Pauline pulls a face, ‘perhaps because he wanted nothing to do with me. So, while I can understand where you’re coming from, I can sort of understand your sister’s predicament too.’
‘Can you?’ Joanna’s eyebrows shoot up.
‘Weren’t you ever infatuated with someone as a teenager? Someone who didn’t fancy you.’
‘Not really. Too focused on the piano.’ A fleeting smile. ‘Mike was the first guy I was ever interested in. And then we got married.’
‘Lucky you. You’ve never had your heart broken.’ Pauline stares out through the windows at the bare cherry trees lining the bottom fence. ‘Because I don’t think you ever find that intensity of feeling again.’
‘Oh, come on.’ Joanna is disbelieving. ‘Course you can – if Carrie’d gone on to have relationships when she was older, she’d have forgotten about Dean straight away. That was only puppy-love, all she needed was to experience the real thing, and she’d have seen that for herself.’
‘It didn’t work for me.’
‘No ?’
‘No. If I’m honest, the memory of him has never really gone away – in fact, I’d go so far as to say that I’ve built him up into something more since Tony left me. He’s like this fantasy man who would’ve given me this fantasy life. Mad, I know, but maybe that’s what your sister did with this Dean too.’
Joanna isn’t sure how to respond, so says nothing.
‘Didn’t she go on to have any relationships, then?’ Pauline asks.
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘That’s sad.’
‘It is, isn’t it. If only she’d told me what was bothering her, we might have been able to sort it out. I wasn’t even aware she knew I’d made that up about Dean. I certainly didn’t tell her, it never came up,’ Joanna rambles. ‘Although, I should have guessed it had nothing to do with the money Dora left her – accusing me of being resentful was just another excuse for her to have a go. Because we were never the same after we came home from Witchwood.’ She picks at the tapestry of her thoughts. ‘But then, what is odd –’ she turns to Pauline – ‘is the scrapbook I found in her flat. Full of photos of me, cut from the papers, brochures, you name it … She’d been following my career from the off. Why would she go to all that trouble, if she hated me?’
‘Because she was mixed up? She sounded mixed up.’ Pauline suggests. ‘Or maybe her mental health nurse got it wrong?’
‘D’you see what I mean?’ Joanna flung her head to the string of halogen ceiling bulbs. ‘The more I find out, the more questions there are.’
‘I do.’ Pauline nods sympathetically. ‘What did Mike say when you told him what the nurse said?’
‘I didn’t.’ Joanna looks uneasy. ‘You can see why – it takes some swallowing, and I’m not sure he’s the stomach for it.’
Pauline rolls her well made-up eyes.
‘But supposing I was the root of her problems, I shouldn’t have dismissed her as a hopeless cause, should I? Because she wasn’t hopeless, was she?’ She looks at Pauline. ‘She was just troubled and … and lost, really. And what sort of person does that make me?’
‘I think you’re being too hard on yourself. You were only a child.’
‘I know, but—’
‘And Mike says she was a handful.’ Pauline tries to be helpful.
‘Yes, maybe, but I still think Carrie deserved better, that’s all I’m saying. I’m wondering whether I was right to listen to Mike.’
‘Oh, Jo.’ Pauline drains her coffee. ‘Course you were. He was looking out for you. He thinks the world of you, you know that.’
Rootling her handbag for the postcard Caroline wrote but never sent, Joanna passes it to Pauline. Watches her neighbour’s expression as she reads the frantic: He’s here. He’s hunted me down. He wants to kill me. You’ve got to stop him. You’ve got to help me.
‘I shared that with Mike as soon as I came home, but he wasn’t at all bothered by it.’
‘Wasn’t he?’ Pauline certainly looks bothered.
‘He dismissed it as a symptom of a deranged mind. He said, if things were that bad, then why didn’t she just pick up the phone and tell me straight.’
‘Yes, but he’s not saying it to be unkind, Jo.’ Pauline returns the card. ‘It’s because he’s got family problems of his own. What with his mum on her own now, she’s his priority, along with you and the boys – not your sister, who from what I can gather did nothing but push you two away.’
‘I suppose.’ Joanna stares into the whorls of wood of the tabletop. ‘And it’s not like he didn’t try; he was far more patient than me, if I’m honest.’
‘There you go then,’ Pauline affirms. ‘You can’t blame him if he was sick of her moods, frustrated she never returned your messages, ignored the cards you sent for Christmas and birthdays.’
‘You’re right. Carrie never showed any interest in Freddie or Ethan either.’
‘How about we stop all this introspection and blame, eh?’ Pauline gets up to rinse her mug under the tap. ‘It’s not getting you anywhere. Now –’ she twists to face her – ‘you seem to think your sister was still hung up on Dean, so much so she hadn’t forgiven you for what you said about him when you were kids.’
‘And,’ Pauline pushes her logic into Joanna’s eyes, ‘the last thing she called out before she died was his name. I don’t know about you, but, maybe … What’s this Dean bloke doing with himself these days, then. You thought about that?’
‘Yes, I was a bit curious. I did a quick search for him on the internet coming home on the train. But there didn’t seem to be anything and I’ve not had the chance since.’
‘Why not have a proper look now? You said yourself you’re in no fit state to get any work done.’
Somewhat reluctantly, Joanna opens the lid of her laptop, activates the internet and keys Dean Fry into the search engine. She doesn’t know what she expects to have changed, but again there’s nothing much: a LinkedIn profile, and 192.com telling her it’s found thirty-eight people in the UK with his name.
‘He could be any one of them or none of them.’ She points at the screen. ‘There has to be an easier way of finding him.’
‘Have you tried Facebook?’ Pauline suggests. ‘Everyone’s on there nowadays, I’ve found loads of my old friends.’
‘He’s hardly a friend ,’ Joanna says bluntly. ‘But, yes, I did, as it happens, it’s the first place I looked. There were a few with that name, but none of them were him.’
‘Oh, okay, shame that – you can usually find anyone on there.’
‘Hang on, I’ve just thought of something.’
‘What?’
‘That poor bloke, the one Caroline tried to stab. Perhaps I could have a look for him on Facebook, because I’ve been thinking … and I know the police didn’t want me talking to him, but it’s been niggling me, I feel I need to say something … apologise on Carrie’s behalf … I don’t know, what d’you think?’
‘Yes, why not. If it’d make you feel better.’ Pauline heads for the stairs. ‘D’you mind if I nip to the bathroom?’
‘Sure. You know where it is.’ Joanna, only half listening, is already typing the name Kyle Norris into the search box. It brings up twelve people and she spools through their faces carefully, reading their potted histories, their places of residence: a New Zealander, a black guy from New York, a man in his mid-fifties surrounded by his family, a Chinese guy living in Prague, a teenager in a hoodie from Newcastle-upon-Tyne … Totally absorbed, she misses the chirruping of the telephone in the background and keeps scrolling through, until the head and shoulders photograph of a man in his late-twenties stops her dead.
No way. A hand flies to her mouth in disbelief. Doubting what her eyes are telling her, she hunches closer, double-clicking the image to make it fill the screen. Staring back is a face she knows. A face as it looked to her that summer with Dora in Witchwood.
The ringing of the telephone eventually stops. And spinning to the here and now she mouths ‘Dean? ’ into the swaying silence. Her shock, loud enough to wake the snoozing Buttons.
‘Are you all right? Didn’t you hear the phone?’ Pauline is by her side, leaning into the screen. ‘God, Jo. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’