After Corinne’s marriage ended, it was Sundays she minded most of all. As a child, Sunday had been the most boring day of the week, no television apart from sport and Songs of Praise, no shops open, just a yawning chasm of slowly ticking minutes. But when she and Duncan were together and the girls were young, Sunday became her favourite day. Duncan was no cook, but he prided himself on his roast and would spend the morning peeling and chopping while Corinne and Megan went to watch Hannah playing netball or football or whatever sport was flavour of the month at that time. Then the afternoon was family time, curled up together on the sofa watching a movie or playing a game, or testing whichever daughter was currently revising for an exam.
But the divorce had coincided with the girls going off to lead their own lives, with their own ideas of what the weekend should mean, and Corinne had found herself increasingly transported back to the stultifying Sundays of her childhood, eating baked beans on toast alone in front of the television, afraid to invade the sanctity of her coupled-up friends’ weekends.
Which is why, as she stood at the cooker, making a last-minute bread sauce from a packet and listening to the chatter of voices from the living room, she was overcome by an enormous wave of gratitude. She’d come so close to losing everything and yet, here she was, about to serve an admittedly imperfect roast dinner to the people she loved most in the world.
‘Is it ready yet, Mum? We’re starving.’
Still such a jolt of pleasure from seeing her younger daughter here in her kitchen. Megan would be flying back to the States in a few days, but Corinne had seen a lot of her over the week she’d been here. And, after her original plan to visit Megan the previous spring had to be shelved when Hannah fell ill, she and Hannah now had Christmas in New York to look forward to.
When Corinne thought about how differently things could have turned out if Megan hadn’t made that mad, spur-of-the-moment decision six months ago to fly back to confront Hannah at The Meadows and force her to see her … Well, Corinne tried not to think about that.
Finally, the food was ready and everyone was seated around the table.
‘This is fantastic,’ said Paddy, momentarily resting his big hand on her knee under the table.
‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ laughed Corinne, brushing her hair out of her eyes and hoping she didn’t look as hot and flustered as she felt. How strange it was having Paddy here with her and her daughters, and yet, at the same time, how very natural it felt. Especially now she was no longer his supervisor.
Early days, of course. But still.
Hannah was carving the chicken, still wearing the baggy sweatshirt and leggings she’d put on earlier, straight from the shower. Corinne couldn’t claim it had been plain sailing having her older daughter living here with her over the last six months, adjusting to each other’s routines and idiosyncrasies, but overall, it had been rewarding on a level she’d never imagined. Hannah was moving out soon, which was only natural. When Becs’ lodger had given notice, it was too good an opportunity to pass up. Corinne would miss her.
She glanced at Paddy, who was telling Megan about the summer he’d spent in New York as a nineteen-year-old, going door to door selling hideous artwork featuring the Statue of Liberty embroidered in neon thread on a black velvet background.
On the other hand, having her home to herself again would have some advantages.
Hannah’s phone started ringing. Why on earth she’d decided to make her ringtone that Beyoncé song, Corinne would never know.
‘Danny,’ Hannah said, glancing at the screen. ‘I’ll call him back later.’
Corinne tensed but held her tongue. Though she still found it hard to forgive her soon-to-be-ex-son-in-law, she had to accept this was Hannah’s life. Hannah’s decision.
‘Don’t look like that, Mum. I’m not about to get back with him, if that’s what you’re worried about.’
This was a new thing. Hannah’s uncanny ability to tell what she was thinking. Corinne supposed it had something to do with them living so much in each other’s pockets these past months.
‘I’m not worried.’
‘Yeah, right. Look, Mum, I still care about him. Of course I do. You can’t turn emotions off like a stopcock. But I don’t love him. Not any more. I feel a bit sorry for him now, actually. I mean, what’s he ended up with? No job since he had that showdown with Dad and stormed out, nowhere to live once the flat lease is up. And it’s not as if he’s going to be playing happy families any time soon.’
Corinne had dreaded telling Hannah about Steffie and Eleanor. After everything she’d gone through trying to have a baby with Danny, everything it had cost her, how would she cope with finding out another woman had had his child?
In the end, though, Danny had told her himself, blurting it out while Hannah was still in hospital, recovering from hypothermia. And though she had been devastated, she hadn’t fallen apart. By then, she’d already decided to separate from him so, in a sense, she said later, his confession made that decision easier.
Corinne had never told either of her daughters about her first encounter with Steffie here in the hallway of her cottage, or how she’d held Eleanor while Steffie went to the loo, and how the tiny, snuffling creature had nuzzled into that hollow between collarbone and neck that always seems just made to fit a baby’s head. Nor had she told them about meeting up with Steffie a second time, or about offering to give her a reference so that she could apply to university as a mature student. She liked her. That was the thing. Whenever Corinne thought back to that strange house in Tunbridge Wells, or to Patricia Garitson complaining that children could be disappointing, she felt a rush of pity for the young woman who’d believed Danny Lovell was her fresh start, her reward for surviving her past. ‘In a way, I was as delusional as Hannah,’ Steffie had told her. ‘The truth was staring me in the face, blowing a bloody vuvuzela, but I didn’t want to see it.’
If there was one thing Corinne had learned from the past year, it was how fine the line was that separated what was ‘normal’ from what was not, and how easy it was for a person to stray across it, reality unravelling until life itself was in freefall. She admired Steffie Garitson for trying to transcend the destructive pull of her family and for holding firm when a newly separated Danny came begging for a second chance, as Corinne had no doubt he had. She’d seen the way he played with that silver bangle Steffie had given him, as if it were a good-luck charm. If only he’d had the courage right from the start to tell Hannah he’d met someone else.
‘He’s not a bad person,’ Hannah said, once again reading her thoughts. ‘Just a bit weak. Like we all are.’
‘Maybe he’ll end up back with her. Serve them both right,’ said Megan, prodding her stuffing with suspicion. ‘I might be wrong, but isn’t stuffing supposed to have a bit of give to it?’
‘I may have left it in the oven slightly too long,’ admitted Corinne. ‘And if you’re talking about Danny and Steffie, I’m quite sure she wouldn’t go near him. She had no idea he was still married.’
‘That’s what they always say,’ said Megan.
Later, while they were clearing up, Hannah lowered her voice to a theatrical whisper to say, ‘I think Megan likes Paddy. That’s like the papal seal of approval.’
Corinne felt herself glowing with pleasure.
‘What time are you seeing Seema tomorrow?’ she asked, changing the subject.
‘I was going to talk to you about that,’ said Hannah, turning away to put a saucepan into the cupboard. ‘I’ve decided to cut my sessions down to once a fortnight rather than once a week. Seema agrees.’
Corinne bit back her first reaction, which was to say, No. It’s too soon. When Hannah had been discharged from hospital following her near-drowning, she’d started off as an outpatient at their local hospital’s psychiatric clinic, going in every day to talk through what had happened. Then, after a month, she’d gone down to twice-weekly sessions with Dr Seema Chauhan, and then once a week. Corinne worried she was leaving herself open to relapse, but she knew better than to argue with her headstrong daughter. ‘You have to let her get back to herself,’ Paddy had told her, just a few days before. ‘And maybe part of that is letting her make her own mistakes.’
‘If you’re sure,’ she said mildly.
‘Mum. It’s fine. I just want to get on with my life.’
‘I know you do, sweetheart.’
Neither of them voiced what they were both thinking. That it was never going to be possible to leave Laura Whittaker and her legacy behind completely. Not just the two patients she’d induced to take their own lives, but also poor Drew Abbott. The cameraman’s body had been found in the egg chair in the Mindfulness Area hours after the ambulances taking Hannah and Megan to hospital had departed. His phone was in his hand and the theory was he was about to phone the police when he was killed by a single blow to the skull from a baked clay head that was found at the scene.
By that time, Laura was long gone, having slipped away from the clinic while everyone was watching the drama unfolding down at the lake. The manhunt that followed was one of the biggest in recent history and had ended only when her pink Beetle was found parked by the cliffs at Beachy Head, her bag and phone still inside.
That didn’t stop some speculating that she was still alive. There’d been a couple of unconfirmed sightings in France, and one in the Netherlands. But most people accepted she’d thrown herself into the sea rather than risk being confronted with the reality of her crimes.
Corinne had hoped that would be an end to it, but the media had latched on to Laura’s case with barely disguised glee, combing through her life, interviewing old schoolmates and fellow nurses from the hospital where she used to work, who all professed themselves stunned. She was odd, they said, but harmless. The phrase ‘she wouldn’t hurt a fly’ came up again and again. Several people brought up her first two victims’ histories of suicide attempts and self-harm. ‘Maybe she thought she was doing them a favour,’ was one comment that had stuck in Corinne’s mind.
The official line was that she’d engineered the deaths of the women at The Meadows to destroy Oliver Roberts’ reputation and close down the clinic to which he’d dedicated his life. There was speculation that she’d stumbled on his new identity after seeing him interviewed on television, and that had prompted her to switch from nursing to occupational therapy, and then art therapy. Some had even suggested that she’d made a half-hearted attempt to confess after the death of Sofia Redding, which is why Charlie Chadwick was researching the initials WK on the morning she died. ‘DID PSYCHO THERAPIST TIP OFF SECOND VICTIM?’ screamed one tabloid headline.
Interest in the case had only intensified after Justin Carter’s documentary had been aired the previous month, to furious interest. Hannah had refused to watch and Corinne had had to switch off after the message ‘This film is dedicated to the memory of Drew Abbott’ flashed up in the opening frame.
Just the day before, Corinne had come across a newspaper article written by an academic she’d met once at a university function asserting that Laura Whittaker had a God complex. ‘When she saw people suffering, making multiple suicide attempts, she felt compelled to put them out of their misery, as she saw it, in a way she couldn’t bring herself to do with her own mother,’ he speculated.
Oliver Roberts had also gone to ground. ‘On sabbatical’ is what The Meadows’ website had said before it was shut down. Corinne suspected he’d be back once he’d reinvented himself again. The clinic itself was closed while an investigation took place into what had gone wrong. The patients had dispersed, mostly to other psychiatric facilities. Odelle – who police now believed had been the original intended third victim before Hannah let slip the name William Kingsley in front of Laura and became the new focus of her attention – was, unexpectedly, back home. Her near-miss seemed to have reset something in her brain, prompting the realization that she really, really didn’t want to die, and she’d begun eating again. She’d called Hannah a couple of months before to apologize for the things she’d done while they were all at The Meadows – putting the macabre toy in her room after Hannah had talked in Group about buying a cuddly rabbit for her unborn baby, sketching a baby into Hannah’s colouring book, sending the scan picture. She’d been jealous, she admitted, that Laura was giving Hannah attention instead of her. Now she realized that had probably saved her life. ‘I wasn’t myself,’ Odelle told her by way of explanation. Hannah could understand that.
Against all medical advice, Stella had insisted on moving back to the Notting Hill flat her mother had bought her when she left school. The last time Hannah had visited she’d found literature from a cosmetic surgery clinic in South Africa. ‘I was only browsing,’ she’d said.
Some scars run too deep to be healed.
In Corinne’s kitchen, Hannah turned back to face her mother, leaning against the worktop with a tea-towel flung over one shoulder. Corinne recognized it as one Megan had brought back from the States that bore the Aristotle quote ‘No great mind ever existed without a touch of madness.’
‘It’s post-ironic,’ Megan had explained, and for a moment Corinne’s heart had stopped, waiting for Hannah’s reaction, to see how fragile was this newly born truce between her daughters. But Hannah had laughed.
‘Mum, I just wanted to say, because I don’t think I ever said it before, how grateful I am. If you hadn’t believed me—’
‘Don’t be silly. Of course I believed you. You’re my daughter.’
And yet there had been moments of doubt, and for that Corinne would always reproach herself.
They both knew it would never be completely behind them. But some truths were better left unspoken.
Now Corinne was aware of the knife edge on which all their lives balanced, there would always be a tiny knot of anxiety in the pit of her stomach. Still, she couldn’t help feeling optimistic. They’d faced down the darkness once, she and her two daughters. And they could do it again, if they had to.
Reality was more fluid than she’d ever imagined. The human brain more fragile. And sometimes, love wasn’t enough to win out. Yet it was all they had.
It was everything.