The smell of freshly mown grass fills the air. It’s still cold, but the promise of good weather is just around the corner. I’ve swapped Ella’s pram for a stroller, and she babbles happily as I strap her in. I call Rita and put on her lead.
“I’m going to get out of your way. I’ll be on my mobile if you need me.”
“No worries, love. Anything in the kitchen you want us to leave out?”
Oak View is a hive of activity. There are five moving men, each in a different room, and there’s a mountain of boxes already packed.
“Just the kettle, please.” In my car is a box of essentials—tea, loo roll, a few plates and mugs—to save unpacking when we get to the new house.
I chat to Ella as we walk, pointing out a cat, a dog, a balloon caught in a tree. We pass the forecourt of Johnson’s Cars, but pause only to catch Billy’s eye. He waves and I lean forward to take Ella’s hand to wave back. He’s busy speaking to a new rep, and I don’t want to disturb him.
The forecourt looks good. The Boxster sold with the first hint of spring. It’s been replaced by two other sports cars, their tops optimistically down and their hoods gleaming. Uncle Billy finally let me bail out the business, so I put in a cash injection that will keep the wolf from the door for a while, at least. Mark thought I was mad.
“It’s a business, not a charity,” he said.
Only it isn’t just a business. It’s my past. Our present. Ella’s future. Granddad Johnson took over from his father, and Billy and Dad took over from him. Now it’s down to me and Billy to keep things afloat till business picks up. Who knows if Ella will want to continue the tradition—that’s up to her—but Johnson’s Cars isn’t going under on my watch.
We walk along the seafront. I look at the pier and think about walking here with my parents, and instead of the anger that has filled the last three months, I simply feel overwhelmingly sad. I wonder if that’s progress and make a mental note to mention it in my next counseling session. I’m “seeing someone” again. Not someone from Mark’s practice—that would have felt too weird—but a thoughtful, gentle woman in Bexhill who listens more than she talks and leaves me feeling a little stronger each time we meet.
Down a side street, leading away from the seafront, is a row of small terraced houses. The stroller bumps on the uneven sidewalk, and Ella’s babbling increases. She’s making noises that sound almost like speech now, and I remind myself to write down each milestone, before I forget it.
We stop at number five, and I ring the bell. I have a key, just in case, but I’d never use it. I’m already bending down to take Ella from the buggy when Mark opens the door.
“How’s it going?”
“Organized chaos. I know we’re early, but we were getting under their feet, so . . .” I give Ella a kiss, holding on to her for as long as I can, before handing her to Mark. I’m still not used to it, but every time feels a little easier. There’s nothing official, no every-other-weekend-and-a-day-in-the-week arrangement. Just the two of us, still parenting jointly, despite our separate lives.
“It’s no problem. Do you want to hang out here for a bit?”
“I’d better get back.”
“I’ll drop her off at the new place tomorrow.”
“You can have the grand tour!”
We lock eyes for a second, acknowledging everything that’s happened, how new and strange this feels; then I kiss Ella again, and leave her with her dad.
It was easy, in the end.
“Will you marry me?”
I didn’t speak. He waited, expectantly. Hopefully.
I imagined standing at the altar with him, Ella a toddling flower girl. I imagined turning and looking at the congregation, and I felt fresh loss at the absence of my father. Billy would give me away, I supposed. Not my dad, but the nearest thing I had to one. I was lucky to have him.
There would be friends, neighbors filling up the pews.
No Laura.
I felt no grief about that. Her trial date had been set, and although the thought of testifying against her was already giving me nightmares, Victim Support had talked me through the process. I’d be alone on the stand, but I knew there was a team of people behind me. She’d be convicted—I was sure of it.
She’d written a couple of times, begging forgiveness. Remand prisoners were forbidden from making contact with trial witnesses, and the letters had come via a mutual acquaintance, too blinded by friendship to believe Laura had truly done the things of which she’d been accused.
The letters were long. Effusive. They played on our shared history, on the fact that we had only each other. That we’d both lost our mothers. I kept them as insurance, not out of sentiment, although I knew I’d never show them to the police. Laura was taking a risk, writing to me, but it was a small one. She knew me too well.
I felt no grief, either, that my mother wouldn’t be at my wedding. Thinking of her forms a hard ball of hatred in my heart that no amount of counseling will lessen. But it isn’t Dad’s murder I hate her for—although that is where it starts. It isn’t even for the lies she told in faking her death, in abandoning me in my grief. It’s for the ones she told afterward; the story she spun from the half-truths of her marriage to my father. It’s for making me believe that he was the alcoholic; that it was he who hit her, not the other way around. It’s for making me trust her again.
“Well?” Mark had prompted. “Will you?”
I realized the “no” on the tip of my tongue had nothing to do with who would or wouldn’t be at our wedding.
“If we hadn’t had Ella,” I said, “do you think we’d still be together?”
He paused—a fraction too long. “Of course we would.” I held his gaze and for a moment we stayed that way. He broke away, gave a tiny smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Maybe.”
I reached for his hand. “I don’t think maybe’s enough.”
Oak View sold quickly, to a family with three children who accepted the house’s history in exchange for a price far below market value, and who will, I hope, fill the rooms with laughter and noise. Mark’s Putney flat is on the market, and for now he’s staying in Eastbourne, so we can continue to bring up Ella together.
I cried when the Sold sign went up, but only for a moment. I had no desire to stay on Cleveland Avenue, where the neighbors looked at me with morbid fascination, and tourists went out of their way to walk past the house and gawp at a garden they couldn’t even see.
Laura and Mum had disposed of the broken glass in the septic tank, along with Dad’s body. Mum’s prints were on the neck of the wine bottle, Laura’s on the pieces of glass she’d so carefully picked up and thrown in the tank.
The tank is long gone. Robert’s extension is under way, his thirty-grand sweetener a carrot dangled before the new owners in exchange for the inconvenience. They don’t plan to replace Mum’s rose beds, though; a soccer goal and climbing frame are on their shopping list instead.
I walk back toward Oak View, my hands feeling empty without a buggy to push. Rita strains at the lead as a black-and-white cat crosses my path, and I just manage to stop myself from pointing it out to an absent Ella. I wonder if I’ll ever get used to her not being with me all the time.
The house I’ve bought is as different from my family home as it is possible to get. A neat modern box, with three bedrooms and an open-plan ground floor, where, as Ella starts to crawl, I can keep an eye on her from the kitchen.
Back at Oak View, they’re loading the truck. They’ll leave my bed, and Ella’s crib, and tonight we’ll sleep in a near-empty house, ready for the big move tomorrow. It’s only a mile down the road, but it feels so much farther.
“Nearly done, love.” The moving man is sweating with the effort of heaving furniture into the van. I’ve left the heavy wardrobes, the long kitchen table, and the big hall dresser for the new family, who were delighted to be saved the expense. The furniture is too big for my new house, and too tied up in memories I no longer want. The moving man wipes his brow with the back of his hand. “Post came. I popped it on the side for you.”
It’s on the dresser. Hand-delivered by Laura’s friend, again. I wonder if she’ll still be so supportive after the trial, once all the evidence has been laid out for the world to see. The charges stack up. Concealing a crime; hiding Dad’s body; threatening me and Ella.
The envelope prompts unwanted images. Laura with a gun in her hand. My mother, edging closer to the edge of the balcony. I shake myself. It’s over. It’s all over.
I pull out the letter. A single sheet. None of the effusive apologies of her previous letters. My failure to respond—to withdraw my support for the prosecution—has clearly hit home.
I unfold the paper, and suddenly there’s a buzzing in my ears. Blood singing; my pulse racing.
A single line, in the center of the page.
Suicide?
The letter shakes in my hand. Heat envelops me and I think I might pass out. I walk through the kitchen—among the boxes and the moving men hustling like worker bees back and forth from house to van—and open the back door.
Suicide?
I walk into the garden. Make myself take deep, slow breaths until I’m no longer dizzy; only the buzzing won’t leave my ears, and my chest feels tight with fear.
Because this time I don’t need to look elsewhere for the answer.
It wasn’t suicide this time, either.
My mother didn’t jump.