Emma was unfamiliar with this part of London and if it wasn’t for Google Maps and the efficient female Australian voice giving her directions, she would have absolutely no idea of how to get there. She’d only decided an hour ago that she was coming. Despite leaving numerous messages, no one had returned her calls. She had planned to go to her yoga-meditation class and then spend the rest of the day with Si. Emma liked to have a clear agenda, but Si, without putting it in the diary, had gone off to a day’s orchestra practice – their annual concert was coming up and this year the bassoon actually had a solo.
She decided against the yoga. The central heating was playing up and there was so much preparation involved for a class before the humiliation of piling herself into her yoga clothes. Shaving and hair washing were vital – mid-lizard pose it was possible to find yourself alarmingly close to random parts of strangers’ anatomies. Somehow she always seemed to end up next to twenty-year-old contortionists in spray-on stretch suits who made her feel huge and ancient with the malleability of a crowbar. Then there were further embarrassments in the tiny changing rooms as naked, nubile, rippled, perky-breasted girls with no hang-ups and topiaried little mounds chatted loudly by the cubicles while Emma, clasping a towel to her roll-over tummy and untamed bush, tried to squeeze past to the showers.
A long time ago, when she and Si were first together, she used to get her bikini line waxed. She couldn’t remember when she stopped; she cited feminist reasons but really it was laziness. But why was she lazy? When did she stop bothering? When did she stop thinking of herself as a sexual being? How had she lost her libido? She knew it was still there somewhere, lying latent; she still had occasional urges, but the urges had become secretive, not something to be shared with Si.
Did you and Si Hubby ever have passion?
‘Turn right on to Fulham Palace Road,’ said the Australian.
Emma didn’t want to think about sex; it made her uncomfortable. Far too much importance was placed on it; we were cluster bombed by it wherever we looked. She had decided somewhere along the line, manipulated by the media and advertising, no doubt, that sex was the terrain of the young. Connie was right, the body didn’t lie; now that her periods were deeply painful and erratic, it seemed that her own uterus was conspiring against her, and her vagina had joined in the rebellion by becoming paper-dry. And she didn’t know whether the cause of it was physiological or psychological. Oh, the joys of the menopause knew no bounds: the hair that fell out when she washed it, the sudden claustrophobic sweats and the indisputable fact that her biological purpose on the planet had come to an end, all spoke of mortality. She, as a human being, in essence, had become obsolete.
Emma had been putting off going on HRT; she had been putting off labelling herself as going through the menopause full stop. But she was. These days she wanted to concentrate on other aspects of herself: the meditation, the effort to try and change her habitual thinking, to have more self-belief. But in actual fact, despite trying for a year now, she felt she hadn’t progressed at all. She wasn’t sure she had any graspable technique or aptitude for it. The moment she sat straight and closed her eyes in a search for stillness, it eluded her. Her thoughts played havoc, her mind a whir of daily problems, self-doubt and guilt. The book by her bed was reinforcing the fact that she must be kind to herself, not be full of blame towards either herself or anyone else.
But her behaviour in Connie’s room the other day was shameful, whatever the book said; even thinking about it set off a profound embarrassment. It had been horribly unprofessional – Connie could have done anything. She could have escaped (she’d already escaped once from Milton House, for God’s sake), she could have attacked someone, stolen a car … the consequences could have been unthinkable. Afterwards, Emma had driven straight to her supervisor to confess. But when, at the end of a long day, she’d arrived at Tom’s office, one lone light on in the building, her tread silent with the shame of her deeds, she had found him playing Call of Duty, a duvet laid out on the sofa. She’d suspected he was having marital problems but hadn’t realized that he was sleeping at the office. She had discreetly exited and re-thought her own bad behaviour, and Connie’s future. The psychologist assessing Connie was getting nowhere – she was refusing to even speak to him, or the social worker. The CT scans showed that there was nothing neurologically wrong with Connie’s brain. Emma knew, in fact, that she had come a long way with her, that things were progressing. There had been reported a noticeable change in Constance’s behaviour at the clinic; no incidents recently, which meant no fitting, no public urination or defecation, no fights, no inappropriate sexual behaviour. She was taking her medication. If Emma was taken off the case, her assessment would have to begin all over again. It was one tiny lapse that no one need know about. She felt resolved. She hadn’t had a drop to drink since then.
‘In four hundred yards turn right …’
But Connie hadn’t escaped or done any of those things Emma might have imagined; she had been kind and tender. And Emma had been quite thrown when Connie cried. This was progress; she was feeling. The sound she made was what had shocked Emma, that ghastly soul-wrenching sob, as if her body knew what she had done even if her mind couldn’t remember it. Emma had wanted to take her in her arms, hold her, rock her and tell her everything was going to be OK. But it so evidently wasn’t. In fact, everything was going to get a lot worse; so instead, she had scuttled out like a rat.
‘In three hundred yards turn right on to …’
She found herself looking forward to their sessions. Connie’s company, although unsettling, was strangely exhilarating. She wondered whether it was because Connie didn’t lie. The rest of us are all plausible liars. When she was with Connie she felt like she was following a straight line in a world of angles. She couldn’t veer from it now; she’d gone too far down it to turn back. Now she found herself conscious of the lack of her; she missed Connie’s ruthless, rasping commentary.
‘Carry straight on for eight hundred yards.’
She’d rowed with Si this morning. She’d picked a fight with him. And he’d accused her of getting obsessed with this psychopath. But was he right? Was she obsessed? She had always been somewhat obsessive: from Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie to Siouxsie and the Banshees and serial killers. But what he didn’t seem to understand was that this was the way she had to work: she had to get inside this woman’s head, slip her feet into Connie’s shoes. (Had Connie really put on her shoes while she lay there crashed out on her bed?)
‘At the roundabout take the third exit on to Putney Bridge Road.’
She drove over the bridge, the uneven tarmac echoing slaps against the car’s underbelly. She turned to see the view over the river. It was beautiful. The tide was high, the sun was out, and clouds moved fast across the sky. They’d found Connie somewhere down here, stark naked. She turned right and pulled up where she could. She got out of the car, did up her jacket. The wind was strong but not cold; it felt pleasant against her skin. She breathed in the air as she wandered down to the water and away from the bridge. There was a faint whiff of chimney smoke mixed in with river dampness and autumn leaves. The ducks were swimming between the sunken branches of the trees, the water beyond them moving at an incredible speed. She stood there, hands in her pockets, mesmerized by it. Flotsam and jetsam drifted past her and she felt comfort in the transience, the assurance that sooner or later we would all be swept away and replaced. She thought of Connie. The report said she’d fought the police off and in the end they’d had to taser and sedate her before she was bundled off and sectioned.
Emma stepped back to let a procession of bikes go past in a blur of lycra. The scent of male sweat engulfed her and she felt irritated by the certainty with which they occupied space. Why did no one ring bicycle bells any more? Were they not aerodynamic enough or was she just old? Beyond them, she focused on a log in the middle of the river, almost the size of a tree.
‘Emma?’ She turned to her right. One of the cyclists had stopped and turned around to look at her.
‘Emma Davis?’ He was clad in skin-hugging black and yellow, like a thin wasp.
‘Yes,’ she said, curious. No one called her Davis. Something about his smile was incredibly familiar. He took off his helmet. Oh my God. It was Dougie.
‘Dougie?’
‘Yes!’
‘Dougie Thompson? Oh my God!’
She couldn’t help it, she felt herself flush profusely. At school, she had had a crush on Douglas Thompson so intense she had been flattened by it, rolled out like a piece of unleavened dough. She had not been the only one. Everyone was touched by him, with his quiet confidence and his sense of self.
‘Wow …’ she said, stupidly seventeen again.
Dougie hadn’t just been the coolest boy in school; he was also the cleverest. Not as clever as Emma, but only because he didn’t work as hard.
‘I thought it was you!’ he said, lifting one long leg over the back wheel and picking up the bike as if it were no heavier than a bag of crisps. He brought it back to where she was standing. ‘I thought, I know that girl …’
Girl. It hadn’t been until the first year of A-levels that he’d even noticed Emma. He was going out with Deborah Jenkins at the time – he only went out with cool girls, not Goths like Emma and Sally Pea – and the rumour was that he’d got Deborah pregnant. Emma remembered the day when the maths teacher had given him a hard time for not handing in his work and she had passed him hers under the table. They’d hung out a bit after that and Deborah Jenkins had got her to be a kind of go-between. And she did get between. She and Dougie would get so carried away talking that they’d both completely forget to pass messages back to Deborah. And when Deborah began to freeze her out, Emma had understood for the first time the powers of her own attraction.
‘You look really well,’ he said. What he meant was: you used to be so fat. Puppy fat, her mother had called it; pointing it out the very day Emma had begun to appreciate her own contours.
‘I mean, I liked the Goth look and everything …’
Any personal comment made her blush – she no longer had the white make-up to hide behind – and she felt the second wave of blood rush about her body and settle on her chest. There was nothing she could do about it; it betrayed her time and again, announcing her inner feelings to the outside world.
‘How are you? Do you live round here?’ he asked.
‘Thanks. Fine. No … Do you?’
‘Yeah, not far. Battersea. You’re a doctor, aren’t you, a psychiatrist …?’
‘That’s right.’ She was flung back to the contradictions of her youth: the self-assurance masking the vulnerability, the cliques, the passions, the stuttering, that heavy weight of the future brimful with possibility.
‘Sally and I always thought you were going to be prime minister!’ he said. She laughed. Had they really? ‘But I’m not surprised you’ve gone into people’s heads; you were always curious. And kind.’
The flush on her chest burned again. ‘And you?’ she asked. ‘What do you do?’
She switched off after the letters ‘IT’. Always curious and kind. Dougie Thompson. Sally Pea. Deborah Jenkins. How had she lost touch with everyone? Where had all the years gone?
‘Did you hear about Sally?’ he was saying, still smiling at her.
‘No, I’ve lost touch with lots of people …’
‘She just won a hundred and fifty grand on the lottery.’
‘What? No way!’ Emma shrieked. It was incredible. He was laughing, they both were. He had always had that effect on her, relaxing her in a highly unrelaxing way. He moved a little closer as another stream of bikes passed by.
‘Honestly, that girl!’ he said, shaking his head. ‘She’s throwing a huge birthday party – she’d kill me if I told her I saw you and didn’t ask you. You’ve got to come.’
‘That’s right! Her birthday. December 14th!’
He was getting his phone out of a bicep pocket. His skin was smooth and brown. ‘What’s your number, Dr Davis?’
‘Robinson,’ she corrected, and immediately wished that she hadn’t; she’d brought a kind of otherness into their conversation. This was no place for husbands. It wasn’t fair that a man could keep his mystery but a woman had to be branded. She watched him tap the number into his phone as she told him the digits, noticing and remembering his ease of movement, the grace of his fingers and how, to her delight, someone had once mistaken them for a couple. She wondered whether he remembered that night at Jamie Storm’s party, how they’d talked all evening on the sofa and their legs had been touching for hours. She never knew whether he was aware of it or not.
What a fool she was; of course he wouldn’t remember. That was thirty years ago.
‘Yes, you’re married, I knew that. You’ve got kids, haven’t you?’ he asked.
She stared at him. Her head went blank. The blush drained away.
‘Yes,’ she heard herself say. ‘And you?’
‘Yeah, two boys. What about you?’ he asked.
She paused. ‘Just one. A girl. Abigail.’
Just for a moment she wanted to be like a normal person.
‘Lovely name,’ he said. She looked at him and nodded. Yes, it was a lovely name. ‘How old is she?’
‘Nine,’ she said. It was as if Emma was watching the conversation from one of those speeding clouds up there.
Afterwards she sat in the car for a long time without moving, staring at the steering wheel. Why aren’t the streets full of wrecked people?
It wasn’t until the parking attendant tapped on her window that she came out of her reverie and started the engine. The cheery Australian voice, impervious to loss, took her by surprise.
‘Rerouting.’
Yes, she thought, rerouting. She looked at her phone, noticing that her battery was about to die. It was eleven. Still no response to her messages. She would make it a brief visit.
Emma parked up in Allinson Road, as near to number five as she could. It was a gentrified Victorian terraced street. She had once hoped that she would live somewhere like this, where blonde women pushed prams, kids left unlocked bikes outside jolly coloured doors that were left open, window boxes bloomed, bins lived in painted kennels nestled beside olive trees wafting in lavender, and neighbours popped in to arrange dinner parties, postmen whistled and left packages next door. Bad things don’t happen in places like this.
Oh Connie, how did you let it all go so wrong?
She watched the road in her wing mirror: muddy boys in football gear climbed out of a four-by-four. Two girls whizzed round the corner on skateboards in tutus, followed by a woman with neatly messy hair being tugged by one of those non-moulting poodles on a lead, a small boy bouncing a ball behind her. Emma watched them go. She had always wanted that: to be part of a busy, bustling family, like the one Si had come from. That had been a strong part of her attraction to him – his family: the noise, the jostling, the jibes and the effortless love.
Her own mother’s love had always felt conditional – on Emma making her mother feel good, on Emma being clever (like her), on Emma being thin (like her). And it had just been the two of them for most of the time. It wasn’t until she was older, when she was an undergraduate and had come across the personality of a narcissist in her studies, that she had begun to make sense of her mother. When Emma had failed to get pregnant, her mother would constantly remind her how easily she herself had got pregnant, keen to remove herself from Emma’s failings as a woman. And so it had transpired that all those years of taking contraception and morning-after pills had been for nothing, because Emma’s body (‘such child-bearing hips’, ‘such a maternal bosom’) wasn’t up to it. And what joy, what extreme happiness for her and Si, when the second round of IVF had worked. And so the blow had felt even harsher when it came.
Why had she lied to Dougie?
She got out of the car. She locked the door, ran a hand through her hair, and slung her bag across her shoulder as she approached number five. The de Cadenets’ house had an air of neglect: overgrown acer trees spilled on to the pavement, a mound of dead leaves made the front tiles slippery, the curtains were drawn, the front door was black and chipped, and the glass was thick with dust.
Emma rang the doorbell. It was dark and quiet within. No response. She stepped back to look and see if there was any life upstairs. Dots of rain prickled her skin and speckled her pale grey jacket. If no one was in then she would leave a note for them. She’d take a sheet from their recycling box, which was bulging with loose-lined pages covered in neat ink-penned handwriting. From the point of unity, the same self may retreat … The rest was hidden under a Wetlands magazine. She rang again and peered through the panel. She was about to leave when she saw a figure slowly approaching. She stood back. With much unlocking, the door opened and an old man stood there. It was clear from his eyes, dark and fiery, and his skin, sallow and swarthy, that he was Connie’s father. He blinked at her.
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you. I did try ringing several times …’
‘Hello,’ he said. There was a smell of mustiness and drains.
‘I’m Dr Robinson.’
‘Is this bad news?’ he asked. He looked scared.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m from the Tatchwell, I’m working with Connie.’
At the mention of his daughter’s name, a weighted sorrow seemed to seep through his features; his shoulders dropped, his head hung, his mouth drooped.
‘Come in,’ he said, opening the door wider. She stepped inside. It was dim in the house. The walls of the hall were crowded with paintings and prints, and the floor was lined with piles of books in Sainsbury’s bags. He moved awkwardly through the hall, leaving a faint waft of urine in his wake. She wondered whether there was a carer in place or whether he was trying to care for his wife alone; she would ring social services when she got back and find out exactly what was going on.
‘Is your wife in?’ she asked, but he had bent down to move a heavy metal doorstop and it fell over with a bang, drowning out her voice.
She glanced up into the darkness of the floor above. No curtains were open; the house was still, the green carpet worn on each step. A painting caught her eye: Connie and her brother as teenagers, lying on a sofa reading books.
‘Your son David lives in Australia, is that right?’ she asked.
‘That’s right,’ Mr de Cadenet said, pausing mid-shuffle, sounding most surprised that she should know.
‘No one else is in?’ she asked, as they turned left into a sitting room where piles of clothes spilled out of black bin bags. They were having a sort-out. Every cranny of wall space was filled with paintings or prints and every inch of the floor appeared to be occupied, either with the bags or piles of books that grew in towers across the carpet and upon the sofa and chairs. The Life of the Medici, The Letters of Marsilio Ficino: Volume V and Ramses lay on the tops of the nearest piles.
‘Gosh,’ she said. ‘You’re certainly having a clear-out!’
‘Yes, we’ve been trying to … sort things out,’ he said, looking about the room confusedly while a telephone began to ring. He didn’t seem to hear it, or he ignored it. Her own calls had obviously been similarly left to the ether.
‘Are you here to take the books?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m here to talk about Connie … I’m the forensic psychiatrist?’
‘Of course you are.’
Dust lay thick about the place. The paintings were skew-whiff, revealing darker stains on the walls behind. Her eyes followed a trail of crumbs across the carpet that led to a half-eaten lemon drizzle cake, which lay in its Sainsbury’s box on a chair. A faux fire glowed dimly but the room was cold and his hands were purple, trembling slightly.
He set off across the room. She noticed how his cardigan had stains on the back as if someone had been hurling mess at him. She thought of Connie and her brother and the game they would play with him, making him guess what he was wearing. It was hard for him to walk, and looking down she noticed why: his shoes were on the wrong feet. She would ring social services as soon as she got back to her car.
‘But I can definitely take some bags to the charity shop if you need me to,’ she said. ‘And here, let me take these plates and cups to the kitchen.’
He stopped mid-voyage and turned to her. ‘How very kind of you,’ he said, surprised by the offer.
She picked up the cups that were lying around, all of which had congealed mould at the bottom. She scooped up the lemon drizzle and found a couple more plates amongst the piles. ‘You’ve got some lovely paintings,’ she said as she did so. And he stopped and looked upwards around the room as if he had only just noticed them.
‘Yes, we’ve always enjoyed art. Not me so much, but I enjoy other people enjoying art …’ He smiled at her and his eyes almost disappeared.
She took the crockery through to the kitchen, which was in an equal state of disarray. Emma put the soiled things to soak in the sink and filled up the dishwasher, which was half full of dirt-ingrained plates. She turned it on for them and on her way back through to the sitting room she was distracted by a photograph stuck on a cupboard: the whole family, wrapped up in scarves and hats, stood on a windy British beach somewhere. It could have been an advert for life insurance or a bank, manipulating happiness into money: everyone was laughing, smiling, all eyes on Annie, who was kicking a leg high in the air, grinning a toothless grin, her red hair blown wildly up by the wind. Emma felt her heart beat fast in her chest. The abject finality of loss still struck her with the same force as it had all those years ago. The phone began to ring. She stood there listening to it for a moment before coming back through.
‘Do you want me to get that?’ she asked. He was sitting down on the small two-seater; he’d cleared a space for them both and had poured two whiskies, which sat on either arm of the sofa.
‘Oh no, don’t bother. I can’t understand a word they say … Please sit down. Have a drink,’ he said. She sat down next to him, shifting one of the bin bags at her feet.
‘Has Connie remembered anything yet?’ he asked, tapping his elegant but stiff fingers against his glass.
‘Things are coming back,’ Emma said, straightening her skirt, turning to face him better.
‘The car?’
‘We’ve shown her photographs of the girls …’
She saw it then, the incomprehension and bewilderment. He looked pummelled by shock. With a shaky hand he drank from his whisky glass.
‘She’s in denial,’ Emma said.
‘Karl said you called it something, her condition …?’
‘Dissociative amnesia. It’s one way of dealing with trauma.’
‘He thinks she’s faking it. Do you?’
‘Well, faking it is comparatively unusual. Dissociative amnesia is more to do with the brain protecting itself, locking traumatic events away, as it were, into a box, and pushing it to the back of the brain,’ she said. It was something she herself had become quite adept at, in a conscious way, of course.
‘And what’s wrong with that?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Must she remember?’ he asked. ‘No good is in that box. Just pain. Wouldn’t you agree that perhaps there is enough pain about already? Why bother?’
She wanted to take a sip from her glass. She could imagine how good it must taste; she could almost feel the burn in her throat.
‘I have to assess her mental state at the time of the offence and whether she is fit to stand trial. At some stage, Mr de Cadenet, she has to be held accountable. If Connie doesn’t acknowledge her actions, how can there ever be recovery?’
‘Recovery?’ he repeated, taking his glasses off and pinching the skin between his eyes. He was from another generation: war children raised by parents who kept whole worlds locked away in boxes.
‘I think we all have to face pain, Mr de Cadenet,’ she said, like the hypocrite she was.
‘I’m sorry to be disrespectful but I don’t trust you doctors,’ Mr de Cadenet said. ‘Connie wasn’t herself, you see … Those drugs that silly grinning GP gave her … they did something, I’m sure …’
She knew exactly which drugs Connie had been taking at the time of the offence: aside from the Lofepramine for the depression, she’d been prescribed a benzodiazepine for her anxiety. Nothing unusual.
‘That’s very unlikely, Mr de Cadenet.’
‘They all think I don’t notice anything, but I do.’ His voice faltered, his lip quivered. He was looking right at her now. ‘She just wasn’t herself at all.’
He pulled out a grubby grey handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his eyes. Emma reached out and touched his cold shaking hand. Where was David? Where was Karl? Where was Mrs de Cadenet? He shouldn’t be here on his own.
Her touch, her empathy, elicited a release and the old man hung his head and began to weep. She took his hand in both of hers and smoothed it and squeezed it. ‘Connie was most likely suffering from a psychotic episode …’
‘That doesn’t mean anything! What did we do wrong?’ He was crying like a child. ‘I don’t know if I can forgive her. I thought I was a Christian … but I just can’t …’
Emma gripped his old mottled hand in hers. She said nothing.
‘I don’t know what to do. Julia always knows what to do when things go wrong …’
There was a ring of the doorbell. ‘That might be her … I’ll get it,’ Emma said, letting go of his hand, getting up, making her way into the hall. She opened the front door expecting Julia to be standing there, but instead a tall middle-aged man with messy, dark, greying hair and paint-splattered jeans hovered on the doorstep, clutching keys in his hand. Behind him in the road was parked a van with its engine running, its back doors open and its hazard lights flashing.
‘Oh, hi,’ he said, evidently wondering who she was. ‘Just come to pick up Andrew’s books for the market …?’ He had a faint Irish accent.
‘Oh, right,’ she said.
A car horn honked. A car had pulled up behind the van. He turned round, whistled and raised his hand to the driver.
‘All the ones in the Sainsbury’s bags, apparently,’ he said.
Emma held the door open for him and he stooped to pick up the first few bags. Outside, the car behind his van hooted again.
‘Here, let me help,’ she said. She grabbed another couple of bags and followed him out to the van. He was grateful and dealt with the driver behind calmly, gesturing that he’d be a few minutes. Then he turned to Emma and said, ‘What a plonker,’ under his breath. She smiled and went back in for the last few bags.
As she was putting them into the van, she managed to get her cardigan caught on something. She couldn’t reach the catch. He leant over to try and help her free herself, gently tugging at her cardigan. He smelt of something musky but pleasant.
‘Oh, sorry,’ he said, only making things worse. The thread had come loose.
‘Don’t worry!’
The car behind revved its engine provocatively. He gestured politely and smiled at the driver. ‘Take your time … wind the idiot up,’ he said, his blue eyes twinkling at her. Emma smiled, freed herself from her cardigan and tried to unhook the catch but she was too close; she needed her glasses. He stood there patiently as she unhooked herself at last, then he slammed the van doors shut and thanked her for helping him.
She went back into the house and closed the door. What a nice guy. Some people just had a way of making you feel better than you felt before you saw them. The hall looked much better empty. She returned to the sitting room, where Mr de Cadenet was sitting in exactly the same position that she had left him in, only his whisky glass was empty. He seemed lost in his own world and for a split second he didn’t appear to recognize her as she sat down next to him.
‘Has Karl gone already?’ he asked.
‘That was Karl?’ She could hear the van pulling away. She drew the curtain back and looked out into the street. She wished she’d taken more in, introduced herself. She wanted to talk with him. You’ll think he’s fantastic. He’ll make sure of that.
She should get on with the business she came here for. ‘Mr de Cadenet, I was wondering whether it might help if you came to visit Connie?’
He sighed and clasped his hands together.
‘At the Tatchwell,’ she added.
‘No … I couldn’t do that … no.’
‘She’d love to see you …’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Would Mrs de Cadenet consider it? Connie misses her dreadfully. I could pick her up and bring her back if that was easiest?’
Slowly he turned to face Emma; he seemed confused. ‘Mrs de Cadenet?’
‘Yes. Connie is desperate to see her.’
‘Julia is dead,’ he said.
Emma stared at him, at those eyes that could be Connie’s eyes. She opened her mouth a little, but nothing would come out. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said eventually. Why didn’t she know this?
‘She died two months ago. I’m glad she’s not around to see what’s going on now. She adored Annie …’
‘Julia died two months ago?’
‘She took an accidental overdose.’
‘I am so sorry.’
‘It was my fault.’
Emma turned sharply. ‘No, no. You mustn’t say that.’ It was a stupid thing to say; those words meant nothing. People used to say them to her. ‘When Julia died, was Connie in Milton House?’
‘She’d just visited Connie, yes. Karl took her. It was a dreadful place. She came home with a terrible migraine. She went to bed and took some painkillers … I didn’t put the pills away. I didn’t understand about the Alzheimer’s. She didn’t remember that she’d already taken her painkillers … so she just kept taking more … I should have noticed,’ he said, bringing his cold mottled hand up to his face and pinching the skin between his eyes again as if he could press it all away. ‘I should have taken better care …’
‘Oh, Mr de Cadenet, I am so sorry. Was Connie told about Julia?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But she wasn’t allowed to come to the funeral.’
Why, in God’s name, had no one told her that Connie was grieving?
Much later, after she had tidied up, cleaned the sitting room and the kitchen, and taken all the bin bags to a local charity shop, Emma drove back across the bridge in the darkness, a cigarette in her fingers, tears blurring the city’s lights. She drove through Kew and hit the North Circular, past those grim grubby houses all the way back to Wood Green, eventually letting herself in to the ordered safety of her own house. She leant against the door, blocking out the day behind her.
In the kitchen she could see Si seated at the table eating and she remembered that hours ago she’d said she would pick up some lamb and make them supper. She walked down the hall into the kitchen. ‘Hi, love,’ she said.
‘Thanks for letting me know you weren’t going to be back,’ he said, pointedly getting up and putting his scraps in the recycling box before exiting the room.