Saturday 9th December 2023
Chrissy
Sometime between twilight and midnight, a knock on the door makes Chrissy turn from her kitchen window. She is alone now, apart from Amrit, the family liaison officer who arrived after the detectives left to consult with the pathologist. The house feels quiet, but not peacefully so; it feels like it’s holding its breath.
Amrit looks over at her, halfway through making yet another cup of tea. ‘Want me to get that?’
Chrissy is about to nod, then changes her mind. ‘I’ll go.’
Her heart booms as she walks to her front door. Is this it? The moment she’ll know? She opens the door, expecting police officers, and instead is utterly thrown.
‘Tess!’
Her sister is standing there. Hair as wild as Chrissy’s; scruffy blue jeans to Chrissy’s scruffy black ones. She’s holding a green casserole dish under one arm and has an overnight bag slung over the other. Yet she still manages to fold Chrissy into a hug, and Chrissy cries on her shoulder at the unexpectedness of her presence.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘What do you think?’ Tess says. ‘Is there …’ she pulls back, looking at Chrissy searchingly ‘… any news?’
Chrissy shakes her head. ‘Nothing since I called you. I wasn’t even sure if my voicemail would make any sense, to be honest. I was so … I could barely … How did you get here so quickly? I didn’t mean for you to …’
‘Hey, hey, it’s okay, Chris. Take a breath.’
Tess hugs her again, and this time it’s a crush of an embrace, and Chrissy’s tears soak into her fleece. ‘We’re still waiting for ID on the …’ She can’t bring herself to say ‘body’. She considers saying ‘man’, then shudders and gives up.
Chrissy lifts her head from Tess’s shoulder eventually, and they go through to the kitchen. She introduces Tess to Amrit, her voice cracking again on the word ‘sister’. Tess lives miles away. Has a family of her own to look after. She and Chrissy don’t keep in touch as often as they should, both busy, Chrissy sometimes unable to face it. But Tess is here.
‘When did you last eat?’ Tess flicks the oven on and shoves the casserole dish inside. Chrissy hasn’t the energy to explain that her oven takes an eternity to heat up and that the huge pot of food might never actually cook. But there is something comforting about seeing the light glowing through the oven door.
‘Tell me,’ Tess says, taking Chrissy’s hand. ‘Tell me what’s been going on.’
‘I don’t know where to start.’
‘The beginning,’ Tess says.
‘I don’t …’ Chrissy rubs her face. ‘I don’t even know what the beginning is.’
The first time Ethan chatted her up in the Raven? The day she married him, ignoring the churn of misgiving in her stomach? The night with Peter? The night Ethan died? The night she argued in the cellar with Alice, while Leo and Robbie were arguing, fatefully, above?
‘Tess … you visited Leo in prison sometimes, didn’t you?’
Tess nods. ‘He was always my favourite nephew.’
‘Only nephew,’ Chrissy says, but a smile tugs at her lips. It’s true that Tess and Leo always got on well. His moods never fazed her.
‘Did he ever say anything to you?’ Chrissy asks. ‘Especially towards the end of his time in there. Did he seem different? Did he seem … upset? Afraid?’
‘He seemed …’ Tess pushes her hair back from her face, mirroring Chrissy, who is, as ever, doing the same ‘… haunted,’ she says finally.
‘Haunted?’
Tess tilts her head to one side and her curls flop heavily. ‘By what he did.’
‘Yes …’ Chrissy feels a deep twist of sadness and guilt. Always the guilt, even when she can’t connect it to anything specific. ‘He never stopped hating himself for it.’
‘But it seemed to get worse, not better, don’t you think?’
‘I’m not sure.’ Chrissy feels panicked, again, that she may have missed something important; that other people have seen things in her son that she hasn’t.
‘Especially towards the end,’ Tess says. ‘I suppose that’s natural. He was being released early for something he was still punishing himself for.’
‘Maybe … maybe it wasn’t just that,’ Chrissy murmurs.
‘What do you mean?’
‘He found out …’ Chrissy glances at Amrit, who is discreetly finishing her tea-making but clearly listening. It’s still a huge thing to say aloud, an admission of a long-term lie. She still hears Ethan’s voice in her head calling her a liar and a bitch. ‘Leo found out, a few weeks before his release, that Ethan … that Ethan wasn’t his dad.’
Tess raises her eyebrows, but her reaction is mercifully low-key. ‘Oh?’
‘I … I always knew he wasn’t. But I never told him. Never told anyone, except his real dad.’
‘And that is …?’ Tess prompts gently.
Amrit puts the teas down on the table in front of them and retreats. Chrissy reaches for hers, scalding her hands.
‘Peter,’ she whispers into the steam.
‘Alice’s Peter?’ Now there is a stronger note of surprise in Tess’s voice.
Chrissy nods, closing her eyes. She’s had every regret it’s possible to have in the last few hours. Never telling Leo. Never telling Alice. If it had been someone else – a stranger, an anonymous one-night stand – she probably wouldn’t have hidden the truth. But something about the tangle of relationships always made it feel too hard.
Even after Ethan’s death.
Especially after Ethan’s death.
And in the end, Leo had found out at the worst possible time.
‘Are you shocked?’ she asks Tess. Then she puts down the mug and starts crying. ‘It doesn’t matter if you are. Nothing matters now except … except him being okay.’ She buries her face in her hands and Tess touches the back of her head.
‘That is all that matters,’ she says, stroking Chrissy’s hair. ‘And I wish I could promise he’s going to be okay. I really do.’
A phone rings and Chrissy jolts upright. In the corner of the room, Amrit pulls it out of her pocket and answers it. Chrissy stares at her. Is this it, now? Amrit isn’t saying much, just listening. Chrissy starts to get to her feet, but Amrit is wrapping up the conversation, nodding and saying, ‘Understood.’
She hangs up and comes over to the table. She looks serious, yet calm, but this is her standard look, Chrissy is coming to realise.
‘That was the SIO,’ Amrit says. ‘Sorry, that’s senior investigating officer. The barn fire and Leo’s disappearance are still being treated as two separate cases at the moment, but they’re being overseen by—’
‘Please,’ Chrissy says. ‘Just tell me, is Leo alive?’
‘Still no ID on the body,’ Amrit says apologetically.
Chrissy lets out a moan.
‘I’m sorry,’ Amrit says. ‘I know it’s awful, the waiting. I do have some information for you, though, if you feel able to hear it?’
‘Yes.’ Chrissy straightens herself up. ‘Yes, please, whatever you’ve got.’
‘The men who were in the white car – the driver and the passenger – are in custody.’
Chrissy leans forward. ‘Who are they?’
‘Their names are …’ Amrit picks up her phone and swipes sideways. ‘Ryan Fuller and Paul Jones.’ She looks at Chrissy over her glasses. ‘Ring any bells?’
‘No.’ Chrissy racks her brain, just in case, but draws a blank. ‘No, I’ve never heard of them.’
‘You’re sure?’ her sister asks, as if willing Chrissy to find the memory in the depths of her mind.
Chrissy tries, she really tries. She’s so desperate to be of some use. But she can’t magic up a connection that isn’t there. ‘No, I don’t know who they are.’
‘They’ve been arrested on suspicion of car theft,’ Amrit says. ‘There’s nothing else we can link them to at the moment – not the fire, or Leo – but the officers at the nearby station will hold them for as long as they can. Apparently, Fuller has a minor criminal record, but apart from that, there isn’t a lot we can go on.’
‘Could they have crossed paths with Leo in prison?’ Tess speaks up.
‘Neither of them has ever served a custodial sentence,’ Amrit says. ‘But they are local to the area. Both have residential addresses within ten miles of the barn, and thirty miles of Cromley.’
There is silence for a moment. Chrissy stares at the table. Amrit shifts and clears her throat as if she has more to say, so Chrissy lifts her head and nods for her to go on.
‘Scenes of crime officers have been inspecting the barn now that the fire has been put out,’ Amrit tells her.
‘Is there … There is just one …?’
Amrit nods quickly. ‘Just the one fatality. No other people on the scene. As you know, they found Leo’s coat nearby …’ She hesitates, then taps her phone and shows Chrissy a photo. ‘This is his, isn’t it?’
Chrissy forces herself to look. The navy parka lies in a crumpled heap, as if Leo has disappeared from inside it. It is covered in streaks of dirt, and other stains that might be charring, might be blood.
‘That’s his,’ she chokes out, closing her eyes. ‘He’s had it for years.’
‘Forensics are analysing it, too.’ She hears Amrit tapping again at her phone. ‘Chrissy …’ she says gently. ‘Can I show you something else, or do you need a break?’
Chrissy breathes in deeply. She can smell the casserole, now, but it’s too meaty, too strong. She opens her eyes to see Tess and Amrit watching her with concern. ‘I’m okay,’ she says.
Amrit holds out the phone. Unsure what she’s looking at, Chrissy takes it from her and zooms in on the picture. Everything looks dark and burned and indistinct. For a moment she fears she’s being shown the body, and almost throws it back at Amrit.
‘Can you see it?’ Amrit leans over to point at a paler shape among the charred debris. ‘This was found in the barn.’
Now Chrissy starts to make it out. A half-blackened heart. The snake of a silver chain.
A locket. It’s a locket.
She leaps up and runs to the drawer where she normally keeps hers, fumbling open the velvet drawstring pouch. It’s empty. She got it out earlier, didn’t she, alongside the note? Swivelling back to the table, she sees the corner of the note under the cookery book she threw on top of it when Amrit first arrived. She had forgotten, in all the madness, that the locket should also have been there. And it’s not. The locket is gone. The locket was in the barn, in the fire, and she has no idea how or why.