Running feet make a pleasing sound on wet tarmac. My trainers feel strange after what must have been a year at the bottom of the under-stairs cupboard, and my leggings cut into the soft flesh around my waist, but it feels good to be moving. Out of the habit, I have forgotten my headphones, but the rhythmic sound of my own breathing is hypnotic. Reassuring.
Mark’s mum, Joan, has come for Christmas, and as soon as she arrived, early this morning, she and Mark practically press-ganged me into letting her take Ella out.
“It’ll give her a chance to get to know me.”
“A little break will do you good, sweetheart.”
“And don’t you dare do housework. You’re to put your feet up and read a magazine.”
“Go back to bed, if you want to.”
Reluctantly I packed Ella’s bag with diapers and expressed milk, issued Joan a list of instructions I knew she’d ignore, and walked around my house, looking for ghosts.
The house was too quiet, the ghosts all in my head. I drove myself mad sniffing the air for jasmine; screwing shut my eyes in an effort to better hear voices that weren’t there. There was no way I’d sleep, or even settle for a few minutes with a magazine, so I went upstairs to put on my running things. The landing was darker than normal, the piece of board over the nursery window blocking out the light.
I run past a parade of shops, colorful lights strung like bunting across the street.
Tomorrow is Christmas Day. I wish I could go to sleep tonight and wake up on Boxing Day. Last year Mum had been dead for four days. Christmas didn’t happen; no one even pretended to try. This year the weight of expectation sits heavily on my shoulders. Ella’s first stocking, her first time on Santa’s knee. Our first Christmas as a family. We are making memories, but every one is bittersweet.
“Do you have to work today?” I asked Mark this morning.
“Sorry. Christmas is a difficult time for a lot of people.”
Yes, I wanted to say. Me.
My lungs are burning and I haven’t run more than a mile. The year before last I did the Great South Run; now I can’t imagine making it to the beach without collapsing.
The main street is thronged with harassed shoppers buying last-minute presents. I run into the road to skirt the queue at the butcher’s, customers snaking down the road for their turkeys and chipolatas.
I haven’t been paying attention to my route, but as I turn the corner I see Johnson’s Cars at the end of the road. My pace falters. I put one hand on the stitch in my side.
On Christmas Eve Mum and Dad would always shut up shop at lunchtime. They’d lock the doors and gather the staff, and I’d fill sticky glasses with sweet mulled wine, while Billy and Dad handed out the bonus checks, and “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day” piped through the speakers.
I could turn back. Take the side street on the left and double back toward home. Put Mum and Dad, and the police investigation, and the smashed nursery window out of my mind for a few more hours.
I could.
I don’t.
“Run, Annie, run!”
Billy is walking across the forecourt. He’s pumping his arms as though he’s sprinting, and I laugh because he looks ridiculous and he doesn’t care. He comes to a halt a few feet away from me and does half a dozen star jumps before stopping abruptly.
“Hope the lads don’t put that on YouTube.” He wipes the back of his hand across his forehead. “Christ, I haven’t done that since Jane Fonda was on the box.”
“Maybe you should. YouTube?” I stretch, feeling my hamstring burn as I push down on my extended leg.
“CCTV.” Billy gestures vaguely up and around us. “Used to be dummies, but the insurance company insists on real ones now. And trackers on the cars, after . . .” He breaks off, reddening. After two partners in the business made off with brand-new cars, abandoning them in the public car park at Beachy Head to be recovered by police.
“Billy, someone threw a brick through the nursery window last night, just after you left.”
“A brick?” A couple browsing the forecourt look up, and he lowers his voice. “Christ alive . . . Is Ella okay?”
“She was still downstairs with us. She sleeps with us at the moment anyway, but we could have been changing her, or put her down for a nap, or . . . It doesn’t bear thinking about. The police came straightaway.”
“Do they think they’ll be able to find out who did it?”
“You know what they’re like. ‘We’ll do our best, Miss Johnson.’”
Billy made a dismissive sound.
“I’m scared, Billy. I think Mum and Dad were murdered, and I think whoever killed them wants to stop us finding out more. I don’t know what to do.” My voice cracks and he opens his arms and wraps me in a bear hug.
“Annie, sweetheart, you’re getting yourself in a state.”
I pull away. “Do you blame me?”
“The police looked into your mum and dad’s deaths—they said they were suicides.”
“They were wrong.”
We look at each other for a second. Billy nods slowly.
“Then I hope they know what they’re doing this time.”
I point to a black Porsche Boxster in pride of place on the forecourt. “Nice wheels.”
“Picked it up yesterday. Wrong weather for it, of course—probably won’t shift till the spring—but I’m hoping it’ll pull in the customers.” There’s a worried look in his eyes.
“How bad is it, Uncle Billy?”
He says nothing for the longest time, and when he eventually speaks, he keeps his eyes trained on the Porsche. “Bad.”
“The money Dad left you—”
“Gone.” Billy gives a bitter laugh. “It paid off the overdraft, but it didn’t touch the loan.”
“What loan?”
Silence again.
“Billy, what loan?”
This time he looks at me. “Your dad took out a business loan. Trade had been slow for a while, but we were doing okay. You have to ride the rough with the smooth in this game. But Tom wanted to do the place up. Get the lads using iPads instead of carrying clipboards; smarten up the forecourt. We had a row about it. Next thing I know, the money’s in the account. He went ahead and did it anyway.”
“Oh, Billy . . .”
“We fell behind with the repayments, and then . . .” He stops, but I hear the rest of his story in my head. Then your dad topped himself and left me with the debt.
For the first time in eighteen months, Dad’s suicide starts to make sense. “Why haven’t you told me this before?”
Billy doesn’t answer.
“How much is the loan? I’ll pay it off.”
“I’m not taking your money, Annie.”
“It’s Dad’s money! It’s right that you have it.”
Billy turns so he’s standing square on to me. He puts his hands on either side of my shoulders and holds me firmly. “First rule of business, Annie: keep the company money separate from your own money.”
“But I’m a director! If I want to bail out the business—”
“It’s not how it works. A company needs to stand on its own two feet, and if it can’t . . . well, then it shouldn’t be in business.” He cuts across my attempts to argue. “Now, how about a test-drive?” He points at the Boxster. Our conversation is over.
I learned to drive in a Ford Escort (Start with something sensible, Anna), but once I got my license, the sky was the limit. In exchange for valeting every weekend, I’d borrow cars from the forecourt, knowing I risked the wrath of both my parents and Uncle Billy if I didn’t bring them back in mint condition. I never developed the same speed gene as my mother, but I learned how to handle fast cars.
“You’re on.”
The wet roads mean the Boxster’s a little tail-happy on bends, and I head out of town so I can open her up. I grin at Billy, enjoying the freedom of a car with no baby seat in the back. A car with no backseats at all. I catch a worried look on his face.
“I’m only doing sixty-two.”
Then I understand it’s not the speed Billy’s concerned about, but the sign for Beachy Head. I hadn’t been thinking about where we were going; I’d been enjoying the feel of a responsive engine, of a steering wheel that twitched like a live thing beneath my hands.
“I’m sorry. It wasn’t intentional.”
Billy hasn’t been to Beachy Head since Mum and Dad died. On test-drives he takes people the other way, toward Bexhill and Hastings. I glance to the side and see his face, pale and crumpled, reflected in the nearside mirror. I take my foot off the accelerator, but I don’t turn around.
“Why don’t we take a walk? Pay our respects.”
“Oh, Annie, love, I don’t know . . .”
“Please, Uncle Billy. I don’t want to go on my own.”
There’s a heavy silence; then he agrees.
I drive to the car park where Mum and Dad left their cars. I don’t need to look for ghosts here; they’re all around us. The paths they trod, the signs they passed.
I last came on Mum’s birthday, feeling closer to her up here than in the corner of the churchyard where two small plaques mark my parents’ lives. The cliffs look the same, but the questions in my head have changed. No longer “why” but “who.” Who was Mum with that day? What was Dad doing up here?
Suicide? Think again.
“Okay?”
Billy nods tightly.
I lock the car and take his arm. He relaxes a little, and we walk toward the headland. Focus on the good times, I think.
“Remember that time you and Dad dressed as Laurel and Hardy for the summer party?”
Billy laughs. “We argued over who got to be Laurel. And I won, because I was the short arse, only then—”
“Then the two of you got pissed and fought about it all over again.” We burst out laughing at the memory of Laurel and Hardy rolling around the showroom floor. Dad and Uncle Billy fought in the way only brothers fight: fast and furious, and over as soon as it began.
As we walk we fall into a companionable silence, interspersed with occasional snorts of laughter as Billy recalls the Laurel and Hardy night all over again. He squeezes my arm.
“Thank you for making me come. It was about time I faced up to it.”
We’re standing on the cliff top now, safely back from the edge. Neither of us has a proper coat on and the rain is coming from all directions, soaking through my running jacket. Out at sea a small boat with red sails cuts through choppy gray water. I think of Mum, standing where we are now. Was she scared? Or was she here with someone she trusted? Someone she thought was a friend. A lover, even—although the thought sickens me. Is it possible my mother had been having an affair?
“Do you think she knew?”
Billy doesn’t say anything.
“When she came up here. Do you think she knew she was going to die?”
“Anna, don’t.” Billy starts walking back toward the car park.
I run to catch up. “Don’t you want to know what really happened?”
“No. Give me the keys—I’ll drive back.” The rain has pasted Billy’s hair to his head. He holds out his hands, but I stand still, defiant, the keys between us.
“Don’t you see? If Mum and Dad were killed, it changes everything. It means they didn’t leave us; they didn’t give up on life. The police will look for their murderer. They’ll find answers for us, Billy!”
We stare at each other, and then to my horror I see Billy is crying. His mouth works without words, like the TV on mute, and then he turns up the sound and I wish with all my being I’d driven toward Hastings instead.
“I don’t want answers, Annie. I don’t want to think about how they died. I want to think about the way they lived. I want to remember the good times and the funny times, and the nights in the pub.” His voice gets gradually louder until he’s shouting at me, the wind whipping the words straight at me. The tears have stopped, but I’ve never seen Billy like this before. I’ve never seen him out of control. His fists are tightly balled and he shifts from one foot to the other as if he’s spoiling for a fight.
“Mum was murdered! Surely you want to know who did it?”
“It won’t change anything. It won’t bring her back.”
“But we’ll have justice. Someone will pay for what they did.”
Billy turns and walks away. I run after him, pulling him back by the shoulder. “I just want answers, Uncle Billy. I loved her so much.”
He stops walking, but he won’t look at me, and in his face is a mixture of grief and anger and something else, something confusing. Understanding comes a split second before he speaks, so quietly the wind almost takes it away without me hearing it. Almost, but not quite.
“So did I.”
We sit in the car park, watching the rain on the windshield. Every now and then a strong gust of wind rocks the car, and I’m glad we came down from the cliffs when we did.
“I remember the first time I saw her,” Billy says, and it should feel awkward but it doesn’t because he’s not really here. He’s not sitting in a Porsche Boxster at Beachy Head with his niece. He’s somewhere else entirely. Remembering. “Tom and I were living in London. Tom had done some big deal at work and we’d gone to Amnesia to celebrate. VIP passes, the lot. It was a big night. Tom drank champagne all night; spent the whole time on the sofa with a string of girls. I think he thought he was Peter Stringfellow.” Billy gives me a sidelong glance. He flushes, and I worry he’s going to clam up, but he keeps talking.
“It was 1989. Your mum was there with a friend. They didn’t give a second glance to the VIP area—they were on the dance floor all night. She was stunning, your mum. Every now and then some guy would come up to them and make a move, but they weren’t interested. Girls’ night out, Caroline said later.”
“You spoke to her?”
“Not then. But I gave her my number. I’d been plucking up the courage all night; then suddenly it was last orders and everyone was leaving, and I thought I’d missed my chance.”
I’ve almost forgotten that he’s talking about my mother. I’m captivated by the expression on Billy’s face; I’ve never seen him like this before.
“Then there she was. In the queue for the cloakroom. And I thought: if I don’t do it now . . . So, I did. I asked if she would take my number. Give me a call. Only I didn’t have a pen, and she laughed and said was I the sort of bloke who would forget his wallet, too, and her friend found an eyeliner pencil and I wrote my number on Caroline’s arm.”
I can see it so clearly. Mum in her eighties finery—big hair and neon leggings—Uncle Billy gauche and sweating with nerves. Mum would have been twenty-one, which would have made Billy twenty-eight, Dad three years older.
“Did she call you?”
Billy nodded. “We went out for a drink. Had dinner a few days later. I took her to see Simply Red at the Albert Hall; then . . .” He stopped.
“What happened?”
“I introduced her to Tom.”
We sit in silence for a while, and I think about poor Uncle Billy and wonder how I feel about my parents breaking his heart.
“I saw it straightaway. She’d had a laugh with me, but . . . I went to get the drinks, and when I came back I stood in the doorway and watched them.”
“Oh, Billy, they didn’t—”
“No, nothing like that. Not for ages. Not till they’d both talked to me, and apologized, and said they never meant to hurt me. But they had this connection . . . I already knew I’d lost her.”
“But then you all worked together. How could you bear it?”
Billy gives a rueful laugh. “What was I supposed to do—lose Tom, too? By the time your granddad got ill and Tom and I took over the business, you were on your way and it was water under the bridge.” He shakes himself and turns to me with his trademark jollity. Except that I know it’s an act, and I wonder how many other times I’ve been fooled.
I wonder if Mum and Dad were fooled.
“I love you, Uncle Billy.”
“I love you, too, sweetheart. Now, let’s get you back to that baby of yours, shall we?”
We drive back sedately, Billy cornering the Boxster like he’s in a Toyota Yaris. He drops me off outside Oak View.
“One more sleep!” he says, the way he used to when I was a kid. “I’ll see you first thing in the morning.”
“We’ll have a great Christmas,” I say. I mean it. Billy didn’t let his past dictate his future, and I can’t, either. Mum and Dad are gone, and whatever the circumstances of their deaths, nothing’s going to change that.
Joan isn’t due back with Ella for another hour. Ignoring the damp seeping through my running clothes, I put on an apron and make two batches of mince pies. I fill the slow cooker with red wine, orange slices, and spices, pour in a generous slug of brandy, and turn the heat on low. The doorbell rings, and I rinse my hands and look for a towel. It rings again.
“All right, I’m coming!”
Rita barks, just once, and I put my hand on her collar, half to chastise, half in reassurance. She lets out a series of miniature growls like a revving engine but doesn’t bark again. Her wagging tail tells me there’s nothing amiss.
Our front door is painted white, with a stained-glass panel across the top half that catches the afternoon sun and throws colors onto the tiled floor. When visitors arrive, their silhouettes stretch out across the floor, interrupting the rainbow. As a child, I would tiptoe around the edges of the hall when I answered the door. Stepping through someone’s shadow felt like walking on a grave.
The winter sun is low, and the visitor’s outline stretches thin like the reflection in a carnival mirror, his or her head almost touching the base of the banister. A child again, I skirt the wall toward the door. Rita has no such qualms. She bounds across the shadow, her claws skittering, and comes to a skidding halt by the front door.
I turn the key. Open the door.
And then the world falls silent and all I can hear is the blood pounding in my head. I see a car pass on the street but it makes no noise because the drumming in my ears beats faster and faster, and I put out my hand to steady myself but it isn’t enough and my knees are buckling beneath me, and it can’t be—it can’t be.
But there on the step. Somehow different. And yet the same.
There on the step, undeniably alive, is my mother.