Nina had the contents of the fridge spread out across the island unit, so she could put everything back when she’d finished cleaning. She did this once a week, took out all the shelves and racks and washed them in some ecologically friendly gel, then went at every nook and cranny in the fridge with an electric toothbrush.
‘I’m going to call those people from the TV,’ Lily said, opening a bottle of mineral water. ‘You know, the ones who do that programme about obsessive compulsive cleaners. I think they could help you.’
‘Most daughters would be happy their mother was protecting them from getting food poisoning.’ Nina dipped the brush in a bucket of diluted solution and moved on to the plastic channel inside the fridge door.
‘Do you even know why you’re doing it?’
Nina ignored her.
‘Cleaning compulsion comes from a deep-seated psychological trauma.’
The brush kept whirring and Nina’s shoulders squared, head tucking into her shoulder.
‘You’re trying to wash something away but it’s not in the fridge. It’s in you.’
Lily opened one of the glass jars near the coffee machine, took out a wholemeal biscuit studded with not enough cranberries. Home-made but there was no love baked into it.
‘That’s why nothing’s ever clean enough, Nina. Because you’re seeing dirt and germs and bacteria that aren’t really there.’
The intercom buzzed and they both ignored it, Lily going for another dry biscuit as Nina resumed her epic battle with the microscopic manifestations of her disorder.
They’d been bombarded with callers this morning, neighbours and friends, journalists insisting that Nina needed to talk to them, that only they would give her a sympathetic hearing, a necessary counterbalance to whatever Sam was going to tell the journalists doorstepping her. As if they weren’t the exact same people.
Lily had switched her own phone to silent, turned off the Wi-Fi, sick of the sound of messages pinging in every few minutes. Missed calls from whoever at school had the job of checking on students with murdered parents. Texts from her friends, but they all said the same thing because what was there to say apart from ‘Are you okay?’ and ‘I’m so sorry.’ And then the stuff from people she wasn’t friends with, messages so toxic she knew she’d be getting into fights when she did go back to school because she couldn’t let that kind of shit stand.
The intercom buzzed again and a few seconds later a message pinged through on Lily’s mobile. Jessica – let me in pls x
Jessica had bolted the first chance she got. Off to university in Aberdeen, literally as far away from here as she could get on her grades, then a gap year to Australia and when she came back she moved straight down to London. She stayed there until a year ago, when she landed some stupid PR job in a Dubai shopping centre, taking blood money to whitewash the image of a country which would probably stone her mother to death if she went there to visit.
Which was the only way Mum would have seen her because she never came home unless it was an emergency. Hadn’t even bothered for Christmas. She sent their presents over by DHL, Skyped an apology.
Lily buzzed her in and opened the front door. She looked like crap, washed out and knackered, but she didn’t have any luggage with her, so she must have stopped off somewhere else already.
‘Lillipop.’ Jessica threw her arms around her and Lily collapsed into the hug, a few hot stinging tears running down her face. Jessica shushed her and stroked her hair and it was like it had always been, ever since Lily was small, running to Jessica for sympathy she didn’t want from Nina.
Finally they broke apart and Jessica’s cheeks were damp too. ‘Sorry I didn’t come yesterday. Sam called me in such a state, she doesn’t have anyone else, and …’ She looked up the stairs towards the door to her old bedroom. ‘I wasn’t ready. Coming back, it feels realer somehow. Do you know what I mean? She should be here.’
Lily understood exactly what she meant. Kept expecting the click of Mum’s heels coming down the stairs and her bright, high voice calling out.
‘I keep thinking she’s coming back,’ Lily said quietly.
‘Me too.’ Jessica reached out and dried her face with the cuff of her cardigan. ‘The whole way home I was convinced I’d get here and find out it was a mistake. I was all worked up to shout at her for making me miss work.’ Jessica shuddered. ‘How’s Mum doing?’
For a moment Lily didn’t understand, then she realised Jessica meant Nina.
‘Fine. Like, properly not giving a shit.’
‘No, Lil, don’t say that. She cares.’
Lily nodded. ‘You’ll see.’
They went into the kitchen where Nina was replacing the shelves she’d taken out of the fridge, giving them one final, very careful wipe-down. She stopped when she saw Jessica and hurried over to her, pulling her into a brief embrace.
‘How was your flight, darling?’
‘I didn’t really notice.’
‘No, of course. I’m sorry you had to find out over the phone but there really wasn’t anything I could do. Not with you being so far away.’ Nina squeezed her arms, a small gesture to erase the subtext. ‘What time did you get in?’
Jessica hesitated. ‘Yesterday morning.’
‘Oh.’ Nina smiled one of her acid smiles, didn’t ask why but Lily knew she must have guessed and Lily could see it hurt her. The same prickle she’d felt herself when she realised. ‘I’ll make some tea, shall I?’
Nina asked Jessica about work, while she spooned green tea into a pot and took down cups, just the two, knowing Lily wouldn’t drink the stuff. Jessica answered in a monotone, ever the dutiful daughter.
When Nina’s phone rang she checked the display. ‘Sorry, I have to take this. Would you finish the tea, Jess?’
She answered the phone as she left the room, using her cheerful but steely business voice, so Lily knew whoever was on the other end had something she wanted.
‘See what I mean?’ she said, climbing onto one of the high stools at the island unit. ‘It’s not normal.’
‘What about our family has ever been normal?’ Jessica leaned against the counter, arms wrapped around her middle. ‘I’ve met someone. At work. Omar, he’s a copywriter.’
‘Great, good for you. So what?’
Jessica scowled at her but Lily didn’t care. This wasn’t about Jessica’s love life and she couldn’t believe she was bringing it up now.
‘So,’ she said, through gritted teeth. ‘He wanted to come with me and I had to stop him because how was I going to explain that my dad – the dad I’d been telling him stuff about – was actually living as a woman?’
‘Doesn’t sound like much of a relationship if you’re already lying to him about something that big,’ Lily told her. ‘All my friends knew about Mum. They didn’t care that she was kind of different. And if they did I dropped them, because I don’t hang around with small-minded freaks.’
‘It’s not the same.’ Jessica rubbed her temple. ‘This only seems normal to you because you’ve never known anything else. To everyone else it’s really weird shit, Lil. Even I thought it was weird sometimes.’
‘Well, I guess you won’t have to work out how to tell him now, will you? Not now she’s dead.’
Jessica didn’t answer, just looked around the large, blisteringly white kitchen as if she’d never seen it before. Like it hadn’t been her home too. Or maybe she was remembering the pancake breakfasts and the barbecues out on the deck, the birthday cakes and ice-cream floats, and Mum and Nina arguing late at night when they thought nobody was listening.
That was normal. No matter what Jessica thought, they’d been a family just like any other and the fact that Dad had become Mum didn’t change anything.
‘The police came to Sam’s this morning,’ Jessica said. ‘They want to talk to Harry.’
‘What?’ Nina was standing a few feet away from them, had padded silently back into the kitchen. Her face was hard, bloodless. ‘Why do they want to speak to him? He hasn’t done anything wrong.’
‘Maybe someone told them about Christmas,’ Lily said.
‘And who would have done that?’ Nina turned towards Jessica.
‘Don’t look at me.’
‘Yes, because you didn’t come home for Christmas, did you?’ Finally, a reaction. ‘Oh, no, you were far too busy with work. And we all know how important Christmas is in Dubai.’
There was a sick pleasure in watching Nina lose it. She did it so infrequently that Lily couldn’t help but nudge her on.
‘Harry was pretty aggro with Mum.’
‘It was nothing,’ Nina snapped. ‘And if you have a single shred of good sense in that head of yours you’ll keep quiet about it. Do you realise how much trouble Harry could be in?’
Jessica was looking at her now, eyes wide, just as shocked by Nina’s uncharacteristic outburst as Lily was thrilled by it.
‘What did he do?’
‘He threw Mum out,’ she said.
‘Why?’
But Lily didn’t know. She’d heard the tail end of the argument as she came downstairs and she wasn’t fully concentrating, had been up in her room smoking some of the weed Jack had brought in for her on the last day of school. It was stronger than she was used to and she was trying hard not to let the effects show, gripping the banister, watching her feet find the treads.
‘You know what Corinne was like,’ Nina said, fast regaining her usual poise, but Lily could see how much effort it was taking, in the tilt of her head and the stiff way she walked around the kitchen to finish the tea. ‘Always a production.’
‘What does that mean?’ Jessica asked, still rattled.
Nina ignored the question, sipped her tea and pulled a face. ‘This is stewed.’
‘Mum, what happened?’
‘It’ll be nothing. The police always have to talk to members of the immediate family.’
‘You know why they talk to the family?’ Lily said. ‘Because most people are killed by someone they know.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Lil, just shut up, will you?’ Jessica was weary of them already, probably regretted coming home to this abnormal family. ‘It’s going to be someone she was seeing. The police found a phone in Corinne’s wardrobe. There’s only one reason anyone has a second phone.’
‘It might have been an old one.’ Lily realised how childish that sounded the moment she’d said it. But she couldn’t believe Mum would cheat on Sam. She’d seen them together, seen the love there, nothing like how she’d been with Nina.
‘Your father never could help himself where women were concerned.’ Nina threw the rest of her tea in the sink. ‘Why do you think he’d be any different just because he was wearing a dress?’
‘She’s right,’ Jessica said. ‘I don’t even think Sam was shocked.’
‘We always know.’ Nina washed up her cup, a smile on her face when she turned round, grimly triumphant. ‘Men think they’re so good at hiding it but I always knew and I bet Sam did too. She was never right for him.’
‘Like you were?’ Lily asked.
Jessica told her to shut up again, quietly, that tone she’d used when they were younger. But she wasn’t six any more, scared of her big sister’s threats to decapitate her Barbie dolls.
‘Just because you couldn’t keep him happy it doesn’t mean Corinne was going to cheat on Sam!’
Nina folded her arms across her chest, every inch the victor now. ‘You’d prefer your brother to be a murderer than your father to be a whore?’
Jessica told Lily to apologise but Nina kept talking.
‘Try to understand this, Lily, a man can be a whore every day of his life and nothing bad will come of it, but women live by different rules and if Corinne was sleeping around like she used to it was only a matter of time before she picked the wrong person.’ Another filleting smile. ‘Especially if she was looking for men.’
‘She wasn’t like that,’ Lily snapped.
Nina gave her an indulgent look. ‘You think you’re so mature but you really have no idea what kind of person Corinne was.’
‘She loved Sam.’
‘She loved herself. Just like your father only ever really loved himself. With people like that there’s never any room for anyone else. Not even their children.’
‘Shut up!’
‘He didn’t come here at Christmas for you, sweetheart.’ Nina walked over to her, braced her hands against the marble countertop, spread wide like she was at a lectern. ‘If he cared about you he wouldn’t have behaved like such a bloody drama queen. He came here for me. To show off what he was turning into. And what an absolute mess of a woman he was.’
‘Mum was beautiful.’
Nina shook her head. ‘No, darling, no she wasn’t. She was just an ugly person with a pretty face.’
Lily slid off the stool and stormed out of the kitchen, ran upstairs and slammed her bedroom door as hard as she could.
She wanted to hit something or smash something, go back down and slap Nina around her lying face.
She stopped.
Shit.
Boxing Day, coming out of her room, stoned … she remembered the lightness as she put one foot in front of the other, that sensation like her head wasn’t quite connected to her neck. She was concentrating so hard on hiding how baked she was that she barely registered the shouting downstairs. Mum and Harry.
Mum laughing and Harry … what did he say?
Lily tried to get back there, remember what she’d heard, because it felt like it had weight to it and she would need to tell the police when they finally came here to talk to her. They’d talked to Jessica and now they were questioning Harry. Maybe he was at the police station already.
Concentrate.
She’d heard a slap.
Mum laughing and Harry talking, really quiet, and then a slap.
But Harry didn’t hit Mum. She hit him.