Let’s go for a walk or something,” Scott says to me in the foyer at lunchtime. His body language is off: his gaze downward, a hand to his throat. “I can’t deal with any more of this shit.”
Ethan is standing in the foyer, looking at us. No doubt he has views on the damning evidence, but I don’t want to hear them.
“Okay,” I say to Scott, last night’s conversation forgotten, subsumed into the swamp.
So what if we disagree about what happened to our daughter? It won’t change anything, after all.
We stand on the steps together in the blazing heat. “It’s too hard to listen to,” he says. “Like watching a car crash.” He runs a hand through his hair.
I think about what he said about Layla deserving better. He won’t unpick the events of the night of out of respect for her. Somewhere, something quiet and soft and optimistic swells in my chest. He is a good person. A better person than me, maybe.
“There isn’t even an accusation of a Calpol overdose,” I say quietly, unable to stop myself from going over it.
“I know. It doesn’t make any sense. They’re trying to establish evidence of a motive, I guess. That she was looking for ways to . . .”
I tune him out.
A couple of years ago, Becky and I met up one Sunday for a walk. It was early spring, and Marc had moved out a few months before. The weather was just beginning to warm up, and Becky was wearing a striped T-shirt. She brought a hand to her face to gather her hair—it was windy—and I saw her knuckles were grazed.
“Been fighting?” I said with a small laugh.
“Only with walls,” she said.
“Walls?”
“Marc and I had a row. He wanted to switch our weekends around because of a curry with the lads when he wouldn’t switch with me so I could come to London with you.”
“You punched a wall?”
“I felt like an idiot, afterward,” she said ruefully. “I did wait until he’d gone before I did it.”
“Jesus,” I said. I’d laughed it off with her at the time but, now, I think: Would I have ever done that?
No. I wouldn’t.
Was it normal? I didn’t know. That edge of hers, that temper.
I open my mouth to talk to Scott. But then he turns to me, and his blond hair catches the sun, and here we are, together, on the steps, and all I can think is: He looks so much like Layla. Strawberry blond. The slightly turned-down mouth. The wide-set eyes.
The look of sadness that crossed both of their features sometimes.
Scott heads back inside but I stay out on the steps, telling him I want five more minutes. I walk back to the seafront, my phone in my hand. I think about Marc’s lack of alibi, about Theresa’s testimony in which she wondered if Becky was alone, about Becky leaving Layla as she walked to Londis, and suddenly I know what I’m going to do.
My fingers find Marc’s contact details on my phone and then I’m calling him before I can stop it. I shouldn’t be. It is probably a crime. We are witnesses on opposing sides of a murder trial.
“You have no alibi,” I say when he answers.
“Martha?” he says.
“You have no alibi,” I say.
“For that night?” he says.
“Of course, for that night.”
“God, Martha,” he says. “I was at home.”
“Did you go and help Becky? Were you there? Did you go over there when she was out?” I say, the words rushing out. “Are you letting her take the rap?”
“No,” he says.
“Theresa said Becky didn’t sound like she was alone.”
“Well, she was alone,” Marc says. “Nobody came over. I won’t listen to these questions, Martha. I’ve been asked too many times.” His voice is tight.
“By who?” I say.
And then, to my surprise, he hangs straight up, without answering me. Without explaining at all.
It is only later that I consider the very specific language he used. Came over. Nobody came over.
A word he would only use if he had been there himself.