I ring Mark back. Leave a message about the card that makes so little sense I have to stop, take a breath, then explain myself again.
“Call me as soon as you get this,” I finish.
Suicide? Think again.
The meaning is clear.
My mother was murdered.
The hairs on the back of my neck are still prickling and I turn slowly around, taking in the wide stairs behind me, the open doors on either side with their floor-to-ceiling windows. No one there. Of course there isn’t. But the card I hold has unnerved me as surely as if someone had broken into the house and put it directly into my hand, and it no longer feels as though Ella and I are alone in the house.
I stuff the card back into its envelope. I need to get out of here.
“Rita!”
There’s a scuffle in the kitchen, followed by a skittering of claws on the tiles. The result of a rehoming appeal, Rita is part Cyprus poodle, part several other breeds. She has auburn tufts that fall over her eyes and around her mouth, and in the summer, when she’s clipped, the white patches on her coat look like snow. She licks me enthusiastically.
“We’re going out.”
Never one to be asked twice, Rita races to the front door, where she cocks her head and looks at me impatiently. The pram is in the hall, tucked beneath the curve of the stairs, and I push the anonymous card into the shopping basket at the bottom, covering it with a blanket as though not seeing it changes the fact that it’s there. I pick up Ella just as she’s morphing from contentment to grouchiness.
Suicide? Think again.
I knew it. I’ve always known it. My mother had a strength I wish I had a tenth of—a confidence I coveted. She never gave up. She wouldn’t have given up on life.
“Let’s go and get some fresh air, shall we?”
Ella roots for my breast again, but there’s no time. I don’t want to be in the house for another minute. I find the diaper bag in the kitchen, check for the essentials—diapers, wipes, burp cloths—and throw in my purse and the house keys. This is usually the point at which Ella will fill her diaper, or throw up her milk and require a full set of clean clothes. I sniff cautiously at her bottom and conclude that she’s fine.
“Right—let’s go!”
There are three stone steps that lead down from the front door to the graveled area between the house and the sidewalk. Each step dips in the middle, where countless feet have trod over the years. As a child, I would jump off the bottom step, my confidence growing with my years until—accompanied by my mother’s Do be careful!—I could leap from the top step and land square-footed on the drive, my arms raised for inaudible applause.
Ella in one arm, I bounce the pram down the steps before putting her inside and tucking the blankets firmly around her. The cold snap shows no sign of lifting, and the sidewalks glitter with frost. The gravel makes a dull crunch as clumps of frozen stones break apart beneath my feet.
“Anna!”
Our neighbor Robert Drake is standing on the other side of the black railings that separate our house from his. The properties are identical: three-story Georgian houses with long back gardens and narrow outdoor passages that run from front to back between the houses. My parents moved to Eastbourne in 1992, when my unexpected appearance had curtailed their London lives and launched them into married life. My late grandfather bought the house—two streets from where Dad had grown up—for cash (It’s the only currency people listen to, Annie) and, I imagine, for significantly less than Robert paid when he bought the neighboring property fifteen years later.
“I’ve been thinking about you,” Robert says. “It’s today, isn’t it?” He gives a sympathetic smile and tilts his head to one side. The action reminds me of Rita, except that Rita’s eyes are warm and trusting, and Robert’s . . .
“Your mother,” he adds, in case I’m not following. There’s a touch of impatience in his voice, as though I should be more grateful for his compassion.
Robert is a surgeon, and although he has never been anything but friendly toward us, he has an intense, almost clinical gaze that makes me feel as though I’m on his operating table. He lives alone, mentioning the nieces and nephews who occasionally visit with the detachment of a man who has never had, and never wanted, children of his own.
I wrap Rita’s lead around the handle of the pram. “Yes. It’s today. It’s kind of you to remember.”
“Anniversaries are always tough.”
I can’t listen to any more platitudes. “I was just taking Ella out for a walk.”
Robert seems glad of the change of subject. He peers through the railings. “Hasn’t she grown?” There are so many blankets around Ella that he couldn’t possibly see, but I agree and tell him what percentile she’s on, which is probably more detail than he needed.
“Excellent! Jolly good. Well, I’ll let you get on.”
The drive is the width of the house, but only just deep enough for cars. Iron gates lie flat against the railings, never closed in my lifetime. I say good-bye, then push the pram through the opening and onto the sidewalk. Across the street is a park, a grown-up space with complicated planting, and signs that keep you off the grass. My parents would take it in turns to walk Rita there, last thing at night, and she strains now at the lead, but I pull her back and push the pram toward town instead. At the end of the row of town houses, I turn right. I glance back toward Oak View, and as I do I realize Robert is still standing on his driveway. He looks away and walks back into his house.
We walk along Chestnut Avenue, where glossy railings flank more double-fronted town houses; bay tree sentries wrapped in twinkling white lights. One or two of the huge houses on the avenue have been turned into flats, but most are still intact, their wide front doors uncluttered by doorbells and letterboxes. Christmas trees are positioned in bay windows, and I catch glimpses of activity in the high-ceilinged rooms beyond. In the first, a teenage boy flops on a sofa; in the second, small children race around the room, heady with festive excitement. At number six an elderly couple read from their respective papers.
The door to number eight is open. A woman—late forties, I guess—stands in a French gray hall, with one hand resting lightly on the door. I nod a hello, but although she lifts a hand in greeting, the laughing smile is directed toward a gently squabbling trio wrestling a Christmas tree from the car to the house.
“Careful—you’re going to drop it!”
“Left a bit. Watch the door!”
A peal of laughter from the teenage girl; a wry grin from her clumsy brother.
“You’ll have to lift it over the railings.”
Dad, directing proceedings. Getting in the way. Proud of his children.
For a second it hurts so much I can’t breathe. I squeeze my eyes shut. I miss my parents so badly, at different times and in ways I could never have predicted. Two Christmases ago that would have been me and Dad with the tree, Mum mock scolding from the door. There would have been tins of Roses chocolate, too much booze, and enough food to feed the five thousand. Laura, arriving with a pile of presents if she’d just started a job; IOUs and apologies if she’d just left one. Dad and Uncle Billy, arguing about nonsense, flipping a coin to settle a bet. Mum getting emotional and putting “Driving Home for Christmas” on the CD player.
Mark would say I’m looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses, but I can’t be alone in wanting to remember only the good times. And rose-tinted or not, my life changed forever when my parents died.
Suicide? Think again.
Not suicide. Murder.
Someone stole the life I had. Someone murdered my mother. And if they murdered Mum, it followed that Dad didn’t kill himself, either. Both my parents were murdered.
I grip the handle of Ella’s pram more tightly, unsteadied by a wave of guilt for the months I’ve raged against my parents for taking the easy way out—for thinking of themselves above those they were leaving behind. Maybe I was wrong to blame them. Maybe leaving me wasn’t their choice.
Johnson’s car showroom is on the corner of Victoria Road and Main Street, a beacon of light at the point where shops and hairdressers give way to flats and houses on the outskirts of town. The fluttering bunting I remember from my childhood has long gone, and heaven knows what Granddad would have made of the iPads tucked under the sales reps’ arms or the huge flat-screen scrolling that week’s special deal.
I cross the forecourt, navigating Ella’s pram between a sleek Mercedes and a secondhand Volvo. The glass doors slide soundlessly open as we draw near, warm air luring us in. Christmas music plays through expensive speakers. Behind the desk, where Mum used to sit, a striking girl with caramel skin and matching highlights taps acrylic nails on her keyboard. She smiles at me and I catch the flash of diamante fixed to one of her teeth. Her style couldn’t be more different from Mum’s. Perhaps that’s why Uncle Billy hired her; it can’t be easy coming in to work, day after day. The same, but different. Like my house. Like my life.
“Annie!”
Always Annie. Never Anna.
Uncle Billy is Dad’s brother, and the very definition of “confirmed bachelor.” He has a handful of female friends, content with Friday-night dinners and the occasional jaunt to London to see a show, and a regular poker night with the boys the first Wednesday of the month.
Occasionally I’ll suggest Bev or Diane or Shirley join us for a drink sometime. Billy’s response is always the same.
“I don’t think so, Annie, love.”
His dates never become anything more serious. Dinner is always just dinner; a drink’s always just that. And although he books the nicest hotels for his trips to London and lavishes gifts upon his companion of choice, it’s always months before he sees her again.
“Why do you keep them all at arm’s length?” I demanded once, after too many of what are known in our family as “Johnson G&Ts.”
Billy winked at me, but his tone was serious. “Because that way no one gets hurt.”
I wrap my arms around him and inhale the familiar mix of aftershave and tobacco, along with something indefinable that makes me bury my face in his jumper. He smells like Granddad did. Like Dad did. Like all the Johnson men. Only Billy left now.
I pull away. Decide to just come out with it. “Mum and Dad didn’t commit suicide.”
There’s a look of resignation in Uncle Billy’s face. We’ve been here before.
“Oh, Annie . . .”
Only this time it’s different.
“They were murdered.”
He looks at me without saying anything—anxious eyes scanning my face—then he ushers me into the office, away from the customers, and settles me into the expensive leather chair that’s been here forever.
Buy cheap, buy twice, Dad used to say.
Rita flops on the floor. I look at my feet. Remember how they used to dangle off the edge of the seat, and how, gradually, they stretched to reach the floor.
I did work experience here, once.
I was fifteen. Encouraged to think about joining the family business, until it became clear I’d have struggled to sell water in the Sahara. Dad was a natural. What is it they say? Ice to the Eskimos. I used to watch him sizing up customers—prospects, he called them. He’d take in the car they were driving, the clothes they wore, and I’d see him select the appropriate approach like he was choosing from a menu. He was always himself—always Tom Johnson—but his accent would slide a few notches up or down, or he’d declare himself a devotee of Watford FC, the Cure, chocolate Labradors . . . You could pinpoint the moment the connection happened; the second the customer decided they and Dad were on the same wavelength. That Tom Johnson was a man to be trusted.
I couldn’t do it. I tried mimicking Dad, tried working with Mum on the desk and copying the way she smiled at customers and asked after their kids, but it sounded hollow, even to me.
“I don’t think our Annie’s cut out for sales,” Billy said—not unkindly—when my work experience was up. No one disagreed.
Funny thing is, sales is exactly where I’ve ended up. That’s what charity work comes down to in the end, after all. Selling monthly donations; sponsored children; legacies and bequests. Selling guilt to those with the means to help. I’ve been with Save the Children since I left uni, and it’s never once felt hollow. Turns out, I just never felt that passionately about selling cars.
Billy’s wearing a navy pinstriped suit, his red socks and suspenders lending him a Wall Street air I know is entirely deliberate. Billy does nothing by accident. On anyone else I’d find the bling crass, but Billy wears it well—even if the suspenders are straining over his stomach slightly—with a touch of irony that makes him endearing rather than flashy. He’s only two years younger than Dad, but his hairline shows no sign of receding, and what gray there might be around his temples is carefully touched up. Billy takes the same care of his appearance as he does of the showroom.
“What’s all this about, Annie?” He’s gentle, the way he always was when I fell over, or when I’d had a spat in the playground. “Tough day? I’ve been out of sorts myself today. Be glad when it’s over, to be honest. Anniversaries, eh? Full of memories.” Beneath the brusqueness there’s a vulnerability that makes me vow to spend more time with him. I used to come by the showroom all the time, but since Mum and Dad died I’ve made excuses, even to myself. I’m too busy, Ella’s too small, the weather’s too bad . . . Truth is, it hurts to be here.
“Come for supper tomorrow night?”
Billy hesitates.
“Please?”
“Sure. That would be nice.”
The glass between Billy’s office and the showroom is tinted one way, and on the other side of it I see one of the salesmen shaking hands with a customer. He glances toward the office, hoping the big boss is watching. Billy nods approvingly, a mental note filed away for the next appraisal. I watch him, looking for the tell, trying to read his mind.
Trade’s been slow. Dad was the driving force, and his death hit Uncle Billy hard. When Mum went, too, there was a moment when I thought he was going to fall apart.
I’d not long discovered Ella was on the way, and I’d come down to the showroom to see Uncle Billy, only to find the place in disarray. The office was empty, and disposable coffee cups littered the low tables in the waiting area. Customers wandered unaccompanied between the cars on the forecourt. At reception, Kevin—a newish sales rep with a shock of ginger hair—perched on the desk, flirting with the receptionist, an agency temp who had started the week after Christmas.
“But where is he?”
Kevin shrugged. “He didn’t come in today.”
“And you didn’t think to call him?”
In the car on the way to Billy’s place, I ignored the rising panic in my chest. He’d taken a day off; that was all. He wasn’t missing. He wouldn’t do that to me.
I rang the bell. Hammered on the door. And just as I was fumbling in my bag for my mobile, my lips already forming the words familiar from my parents’ inquest—this is a fear for welfare—Billy opened the door.
Fine red lines covered the whites of his eyes. His shirt was open, his suit jacket crumpled enough to tell me he’d slept in it. A waft of alcohol hit me, and I hoped it was from the previous evening and not from this morning.
“Who’s running the shop, Uncle Billy?”
He stared past me to the street, where an elderly couple were making slow progress along the sidewalk, a wheeled shopping basket in their wake.
“I can’t do it. I can’t be there.”
I felt a surge of anger. Didn’t he think I wanted to give up? Did he think he was the only one finding this hard?
Inside the house was a mess. A greasy film covered the glass-topped coffee table in the sitting room. Dirty plates covered the kitchen surfaces; nothing in the fridge but a half-empty bottle of white wine. It wasn’t unusual to find no proper meals in the house—Uncle Billy considered eating out to be the primary advantage of single life—but there was no milk, no bread. Nothing.
I hid my shock. Dumped the plates in the sink, wiped the counters, and picked up the post from the hall floor.
He gave me a tired smile. “You’re a good girl, Annie.”
“You’re on your own with the laundry—I’m not washing your underwear.” My anger had passed. This wasn’t Billy’s fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.” I gave him a hug. “You need to get back to work, though, Billy. They’re just kids.”
“I’m not sure there’s any point. We had six customers show up yesterday—all tire kickers.”
“Tire kickers are just buyers who don’t know it yet.” Dad’s favorite saying brought a lump to my throat. Billy squeezed my arm.
“He was so proud of you.”
“He was proud of you, too. Proud of what the two of you achieved with the business.” I waited a beat. “Don’t let him down.”
Billy was back at work by lunchtime, putting a rocket up Kevin’s arse and offering a bottle of champagne to the first rep to make a sale. I knew it would take more than champagne to get Johnson’s Cars on an even keel, but at least Billy was at the helm again.
It was Dad who had the tinted glass installed, a few weeks after Granddad retired, and Billy and Dad had moved into the office, a desk on either side of the room.
“Keeps them on their toes.”
“Keeps them from catching you having forty winks, more like.” Mum could see through the Johnson boys. Always had.
Billy turns his attention back to me. “I’d have thought that man of yours would have taken today off.”
“It’s Mark, not that man. I wish you’d give him a chance.”
“I will. Just as soon as he makes an honest woman of you.”
“It’s not the 1950s, Billy.”
“Fancy leaving you on your own today.”
“He offered to stay home. I said I was fine.”
“Clearly.”
“I was. Before this arrived.” I fish in the bottom of Ella’s pram for the card and give it to Billy. I watch his face as he takes in the celebratory greeting, the carefully typed message stuck inside. There’s a long pause; then he puts the card back in its envelope. His jaw tightens.
“Sick bastards.” Before I can stop him, he’s ripped the card in two, and then in two again.
“What are you doing?” I leap out of my chair and snatch back the torn pieces of card. “We need to take it to the police.”
“The police?”
“Think again. It’s a message. They’re suggesting Mum was pushed. Maybe Dad, too.”
“Annie, love, we’ve been through this a hundred times. You don’t seriously believe your parents were murdered?”
“Yes.” My bottom lip wobbles and I clamp it shut for a moment to regain some control. “Yes, I do. I’ve always thought something was wrong. I never thought either of them was capable of suicide, least of all Mum, when she knew how much Dad’s death affected us all. And now—”
“It’s someone shit stirring, Annie! Some jumped-up prick who thinks it’s funny to trawl the obituaries and upset grieving families. Like the shits who look through funeral listings to see when to go out burgling. They probably sent a dozen others at the same time.” Even though I know it’s the sender of the card who’s annoyed him, it feels like his anger’s directed at me. I stand up.
“Even more reason for me to go to the police with it, then. So they can find out who sent it.” My tone is defensive; it’s that or bursting into tears.
“This family never used to run to the police. We used to sort out our own problems.”
“‘Problems’?” I don’t understand why Billy’s being so obtuse. Doesn’t he see this changes everything? “This isn’t a problem, Billy. It isn’t some argument you can settle out the back of the pub. It could be murder. And I care what happened to my mum, even if you don’t.” Too late, I bite my tongue. Billy turns away, but not before I’ve seen the hurt on his face. I stand helplessly for a while, looking at the back of his head and trying to say sorry, but the words won’t come.
I push Ella’s pram out of the office, leaving the door wide open. If Billy won’t help me, I’ll go to the police on my own.
Someone murdered my mother, and I’m going to find out who.