‘Are you completely sure you’re OK now? I didn’t mean to creep up on you. I was sure you’d heard me coming through the gate after you.’
In the flesh, Steffie Garitson’s eyes were a deep, warm brown, although ringed with purple, as if she hadn’t slept in a long while. After so long knowing them only as a series of angry red pen marks, Corinne couldn’t help staring.
‘I’m fine. I feel like an idiot, screaming like that.’
‘I have to say it’s not the normal reaction I get from people I haven’t met before.’
Steffie had a way of talking and smiling at the same time, as if the two things were actually one single smooth, effortless action. Corinne stopped herself just at the beginning of a reciprocal smile, reminding herself that this young woman standing in her hallway had all but destroyed her daughter.
‘I was shocked to find you on my doorstep,’ she said, keeping her voice cool. ‘After everything you’ve put my family through.’
Steffie furrowed her brow, although her smile remained in place.
‘You’re talking about Danny. Let me explain—’
‘Explain what? How you had an affair with my daughter’s husband and got pregnant by him and turned up at their flat to taunt her with it, until she was driven crazy enough to imagine herself to be pregnant, because she couldn’t bear not to be?’
Now Corinne remembered about the weird things that had been happening at the clinic.
‘And what about the stuffed toy in Hannah’s room? The rabbit with the missing ears? And the colouring book?’
The smile was gone, replaced by a look of – Corinne narrowed her eyes – could that be fear?
Steffie Garitson was afraid of her.
‘I shouldn’t have come. You’re clearly distraught,’ Steffie said, turning to leave in such a rush the bag she was carrying on her shoulder knocked over the vase of spring flowers on the little shelf by the door.
‘Shit. I’m sorry. Have you got something I can clean it up with?’
Steffie dabbed at the pool of water with the tea-towel Corinne fetched for her, her bag still hooked over her back, a draught blowing in through the front door which had been left ajar.
‘Danny told me they were separated.’ Dab, dab, dab. ‘He said they were only living together in the flat because they had such a massive mortgage. He said they were leading separate lives, but Hannah didn’t want her dad to know so they were keeping it secret. I would never have given him the time of day if I’d known they were still a couple, let alone shown up on his doorstep. It makes me sick how gullible I was.’ Dab, dab, dab. ‘Do you know, I even bought him a present, a silver bangle? I used to imagine him wearing it in his London life and thinking of me.’
Corinne remembered the bangle Danny had been wearing in the pub, the way he’d kept touching it like a talisman, and a bit of her heart splintered.
‘And you expect me to believe all that?’ she asked, hardening herself.
‘Believe what you want.’
Steffie tossed the tea-towel on the shelf and glared at Corinne.
‘And as for the rest of it – cuddly toys and colouring books – have you any idea how totally crazy you sound?’ Suddenly, she looked stricken. ‘No offence,’ she added.
Corinne found herself wavering. She was so convincing, this Steffie. No wonder she’d been able to cause so much devastation.
‘So why are you here then, if it isn’t you who’s been tormenting Hannah? Why have you come to my home? This could constitute harassment, you know.’
‘Oh, and you driving halfway across the country to turn up at my parents’ house is perfectly fine, is it?’
‘That’s different. I was protecting my daughter. And after I’d had a chat with your mother, I realized I was absolutely right to think she needed protecting.’
Steffie’s features sagged.
‘That’s why I came. My mother told me you’d been to see them. I don’t generally keep in contact with my parents, but they have a number for emergencies and my mother called to say you’d been there. She took great pleasure in letting me know you’d had a “long chat”.’ Steffie curled her fingers in the air to make speech marks.
‘She warned me about you.’ Corinne was scrabbling to hold on to the moral high ground, but it seemed to be crumbling beneath her feet. ‘She told me about all the awful things you’ve done.’
‘My mother is a narcissist and delights in causing me grief.’ The words came out in a rush, and for a split second the two women stared at each other in surprise. Then Steffie took a deep breath and continued.
‘Look, I don’t know you, and I don’t have to explain myself to you, but I want you to understand. Mine was not a happy childhood. When I was born, my mother couldn’t stand the fact that my father loved anyone except her. She was jealous of her own baby. Can you imagine? My father had affairs because he couldn’t stand my mother, and she took it out on us. We were terrified of her.’
‘But your brother followed me to the car, specifically to warn me about you. “She hurts people.” Those were his exact words.’
‘He’d be talking about her. Our mother. Do you know he used to drag his chest of drawers against his bedroom door to stop her coming in?’
Corinne felt nauseous. Could she really have got this so wrong?
‘My brother and I are really close. Look at my text messages.’ Steffie waved her phone in front of Corinne’s face. ‘They’re mostly from him. He’s the only reason I ever go back there. He’s not well.’
Corinne remembered Jacob Garitson’s clammy yellow skin and the way he looked at her as if from the end of a long, dark tunnel.
‘He has medication. Lithium. And when he’s taking that he’s like a different person, but my mother says it makes him like a zombie.’
Corinne warned herself not to be taken in. Steffie Garitson was dangerous, she reminded herself. And yet her words felt solid, as if studded with heavy rocks of truth.
‘What about the needle in the pie?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Your mother told me she was doing a catering job for your neighbour’s birthday dinner and you slipped a needle into one of the apple pies.’
‘A needle? Are you serious? Don’t you think I might be taking a long vacation at Her Majesty’s pleasure somewhere if I’d done that? Shall I tell you what really happened? Mum agreed to do the catering job but then the client criticized the hors d’oeuvres, said they didn’t taste of anything. So my darling mother crushed five laxatives in with the mixture in one of the pies and stuck a candle in the top to make sure the birthday girl got it. Ruined the evening, apparently, though no one else got ill, so they couldn’t prove anything. And by the time the neighbour could tear herself away from the bathroom, all the evidence had been thoroughly cleared away. By the way, did you see that photograph?’
‘What photograph?’ Corinne’s head was spinning.
‘The one in the hallway, showing our perfect family? The one Mummy Dearest stage-managed to the nth degree, making us all wear white, like something out of a washing-powder advert?’
‘Yes, I saw it. But what has that—’
‘Did you notice there was a line across my neck?’
Corinne nodded slowly, remembering the faint silver line she’d at first mistaken for a choker.
‘When I said I wanted to stay home to revise for exams instead of going out clothes shopping with her, she cut my head out of the photograph with a Stanley knife. I came downstairs and it was lying on the floor. Dad was the one who stuck it back in place.’
Corinne remembered Patricia Garitson standing in her sterile kitchen in Tunbridge Wells and describing her daughter as selfish, and how, when they’d met in the café in London, she’d said that thing about Jacob being scared of his sister and then stared so greedily at Corinne’s shocked expression, as if she would gulp it down whole.
But from Steffie herself there was none of the same chill Corinne had felt with the rest of the Garitsons. And yet, if she accepted Steffie hadn’t done those things in the clinic – the rabbit, the colouring book, the scan – the only other option was that Hannah had made them up, that they were a sign of a new delusion. The thought froze the breath inside her. Corinne’s mind raced, trying to find an alternative explanation, one that pinned the blame on Steffie once and for all.
‘You were here!’ she blurted out suddenly. How could she have forgotten? ‘You rang my doorbell and then ran away, leaving a baby’s knitted hat on my doorstep for me to find.’
Relief flooded through her. Hannah hadn’t made it up. Steffie had been taunting both of them, leaving reminders of the baby that never was. How unutterably cruel.
Yet instead of denying it, or crumpling into an abject heap and confessing all, Steffie stared at Corinne with a strange half-smile.
‘Was it red?’ she asked at last.
‘Was what red?’
‘Never mind. Wait here.’ Steffie stepped through the still-open front door.
‘Hang on,’ Corinne shouted after her. ‘You can’t just …’
There was the sound of the gate creaking and the bipping of a car electronically unlocking. Just as Corinne had convinced herself Steffie was planning to make a dash for it, there came the unmistakeable noise of a car door slamming shut and, seconds later, Steffie was walking back into the house.
‘We’ve been looking for that hat everywhere,’ she said. ‘It was …’ But Corinne didn’t hear the rest of what she said because all her attention was focused on the thing Steffie was carrying in her arms. A thing that was wrapped in a red knitted blanket to match the hat Corinne had hidden away in her kitchen drawer and stretching its tiny arms as if freshly woken from sleep.
‘Meet Eleanor,’ said Steffie.
The baby started to cry.