It had been one week since the last podcast and everyone in Severn Oaks knew what that meant. Tuesday nights were no longer ordinary nights, and with tomorrow being the first day back at school for the children of Severndale Primary, tensions were particularly high in the houses behind the gates. What would they find out about the night Erica died tonight? What would be the topic of conversation tomorrow at the school gates?
Over the last couple of weeks of the school holidays Felicity, Miranda and Karla had been able to pretend it wasn’t all happening to them – that the anonymous voice behind the screens of their smartphones and laptops could be referring to anyone – like any true-crime podcast that had gripped the nation, it belonged to someone else, other people’s lives that were good for a bit of salacious catching up around the water cooler or leaning up against the door of their cars after the kids had been safely deposited in school. Only this time the tragedy that was being played out in delicious detail every week was their lives, and there would be no escaping it tomorrow morning when they had to venture out into the wider world. Felicity assumed they had all been clicking ‘refresh’ on the blog as often as she had, cringing every time the photographs of them all loaded. Who had taken them? None of them felt safe any more, the one thing they had always taken for granted in Severn Oaks.
The journalists weren’t letting up. It would have been bad enough if none of them had been under suspicion, with cars parked outside the gates all day, beady eyes glinting through the windscreens and dictaphones glued to the hands of those whose job it was to turn real life into entertainment. Karla and Marcus’s celebrity had notched the story up a level – who would dare accuse Cheshire’s power couple of murder?
‘I wonder what she’d have done,’ Felicity mused, accepting the glass of wine that Karla handed to her in her own kitchen. ‘Thanks.’
‘Who, Erica?’
Erica’s name hit the air like a noxious fart. It was funny how they’d all avoided talking about her in the weeks since the revelations had been rolled out by the stilted, slightly robotic voice they had all grown to hate. The conversation Miranda had had with Jack in her back garden – so out of left field and surreal that she wasn’t even sure it had really happened now – was the first time Erica had actually been front and centre of anyone’s mind. They were all so busy worrying about what it meant for them.
‘She’d have been the one holding the cards.’ Miranda spoke for the first time since they had all arrived at Felicity’s house, twenty minutes ago. It struck Felicity that this was the first time they would all be in the same room since the first podcast aired. No, not all, of course – Mary-Beth still hadn’t come home.
‘True . . .’ Karla sat down next to Miranda at the breakfast bar. ‘How was it that she always knew so much about everyone?’
‘Knowledge is power,’ Felicity offered. ‘She made it her business to squirrel away every nugget of information she could about us, about everyone she knew, so that she had a level of control over everyone. There aren’t six suspects, there are bloody dozens. Do you remember when Marianne Gilespie’s daughter wanted to play the violin in the talent contest?’ She took a slug of her wine, finding it easier with every mouthful to speak ill of the dead. ‘And we all knew that Emily was going to play the violin. What did I say to you, Karla?’
‘That Mary-Beth would be on stage doing a striptease before Erica would let her daughter be upstaged by Tiffany Gilespie.’
‘And what happened?’
‘If the answer is that Mary-Beth did a striptease then I’m going to start attending the school talent shows.’
The three women looked up to see Miranda’s husband, Alex, in the doorway. ‘Sorry, the front door was open.’
Miranda scowled. ‘Do you always have to be so inappropriate? Mary-Beth is missing,’ she practically hissed.
‘And Erica is dead, but that hasn’t stopped you three sitting here like the Witches of Eastwick stirring your cauldrons.’
‘Oh, do fuck off, Alex.’ Karla grinned and stood up. ‘Do you want a drink? I don’t suppose you saw my husband on your way over, did you?’
‘He was on the phone in the garden. Something about getting a refund on a hit he’d organised.’
Miranda looked as though she was about to be sick. Alex grinned and Karla shook her head. Karla had often wondered how it was that someone so laid-back and mischievous (not to mention attractive) as Alex Davenport ever ended up married to the hot mess that was Miranda Clarke (as she was back then). Oh yes, to the outside world Miranda might appear to be completely in control of her life, but these days Karla was beginning to suspect the truth. Miranda had always been desperate to be top of the heap, valued, important . It was so crucial to the core of her being, her self-worth, that she be seen as super-organised, always the one that people turned to in a crisis. She’d have been hosting the crisis meeting they were at now, if Felicity hadn’t flat-out refused to leave the twins in bed alone while she went across the road. It had annoyed Miranda – what did she think would happen, for goodness’ sake, they lived in the safest neighbourhood in England – but she’d acquiesced, of course. As she frequently reminded herself, arguing with people only got you a name for yourself. There was more than one way to skin a cat. Instead, she’d ordered a selection of biscuits from Selfridges Foodhall, arranged them on expensive porcelain, and popped a tub of Whittard’s Rocky Road Hot Chocolate in her handbag for the opportune moment.
Now – for the sake of appearances – she forced a smile. Alex smiled back over his beer glass, knowing he would pay for his flippancy later, no doubt.
‘It’s all right for you, joker,’ Felicity said. ‘You’re the only one who hasn’t been called out as a suspect by this guy.’
‘It’s my innocent face.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ Marcus Kaplan appeared in the doorway. ‘Picture of innocence, you. Sorry I’m late.’
‘It hasn’t started yet,’ Felicity said, checking the huge black-framed clock on the wall. ‘Five minutes. I thought Peter was coming?’
‘He’s having a cigarette,’ Marcus replied. ‘I didn’t know he smoked?’
‘He’s not supposed to,’ Felicity said, without thinking. Quickly she added, ‘Mary-Beth wouldn’t like it.’
‘Have we heard anything about Mary-Beth yet?’ Miranda spoke in hushed tones, as though Peter might hear his wife’s name through the two walls that separated them.
‘There wasn’t anything in the car that proved where she might be. But it was right next to the river, so . . .’
‘So what’s our best guess? Mary-Beth kills Erica, then does a runner when this Andy guy threatens to out her on his podcast? Jumps in the river? Or fakes her death to live in Mexico?’ Alex offered.
The doorbell rang before anyone could answer.
‘Saved by the bell,’ Marcus quipped. ‘That must be Peter. I’ll let him in.’
‘At least someone has some manners,’ Felicity frowned, ‘although I hope he hasn’t woken the girls.’
Peter and Marcus burst into the kitchen and slammed the door shut. Marcus flicked off the light, and everyone in the room began to shout at once.
‘Hey, mate, what’s the problem?’
‘Marcus? What’s going on? Is it the police?’
‘Sssshhhh! Sssssshhhh! ’
Felicity made her way over to the light switch and flicked it back on. She looked seriously at the two men. ‘We’re at the back of the house. The gate is locked. And the blinds are closed. Is there any need for the panic? Who’s out there?’
‘Jack!’ Peter put a finger to his lips. ‘He looked like he was coming here, so we hid behind the fence and legged it inside when he went back to check his front door was locked. Are you sure the side gate is locked?’
‘I always keep it locked, except on bin day. The girls disappeared over to play with Emily once without me knowing, and I was frantic. Anyway, what’s so wrong with Jack coming over? He might not want to be alone, knowing another one of those hideous episodes is coming up.’
‘And you want him in here listening to it, do you?’ Marcus raised his eyebrows. ‘While one of us is dissected, while all the reasons we had to kill his wife are laid out in stereo?’
Felicity’s face coloured. ‘I suppose not. I guess I just don’t like to think about him sitting there, night after night, all alone. And now, with all this going on, I just feel . . .’
‘Guilty?’ Alex offered, with a grin. ‘Maybe it’s your episode tonight, Flick.’
Felicity saw Miranda’s face slacken. She’d obviously never heard her husband call Felicity by her childhood nickname before, and Felicity wanted to thump him. He only did these things to wind Miranda up, and she’d walked right into it at one of their community barbecues at the beginning of the summer. They’d all carried their meat over to Miranda’s front garden, where Alex had held court at the barbecue while Miranda pulled out a steady supply of couscous and potato salad. Felicity had made the mistake of telling Alex that her sister didn’t call her Fliss, like her new Severn Oaks friends – mostly because her name was Melissa and they hadn’t wanted to be Liss and Fliss. Instead, they’d ended up as Swish and Flick, which neither of them had liked any better.
Felicity glowered at him now.
‘We’re about to find out . . .’ Karla held up her phone. ‘It’s gone up.’