22 SEPTEMBER

Twenty-eight days after abandonment

32

It was fifteen days since Agnes had last seen her mother. She was alone in the caravan with her father and her brother. The three of them had fallen into a new routine, Dad taking Christie to school and bringing him home, Agnes taking care of the cooking and washing, watching her brother from the edge of her eye, wondering.

Her mother’s trial was scheduled for the spring. Trevor would stand trial for manslaughter. He would plead not guilty despite the evidence against him. Ruth, against whom there was no compelling evidence, was going to plead guilty. Unless Agnes could find a way to stop her.

‘Your mum told the police she lost her temper, just for a second.’ Dad had sat with them on the morning of Ruth’s arrest, looking sick to his stomach. ‘They were upstairs, Mum said. Emma was upset about Luke’s foot and all the problems with the houses. Mum was trying to explain how hard we were working to put it right.’

Christie made an impatient sound in his throat.

Dad glanced at him, then away. Agnes could feel the heat coming off Christie, his anger at being made to sit and listen to this.

‘Emma didn’t believe we cared. It was all about money, she said, and we’d failed.’ Dad’s stare shifted around the caravan. ‘Your mum couldn’t make her understand. She reached out to try and take her hand – just to take her hand – but Emma didn’t want Mum touching her. She pulled away and that’s when she fell. Lost her balance and . . . went down the stairs.’

He blinked twice, as if to clear the images in his head. ‘It was an accident.’

He paused on the word, weighing it against their silence. ‘We know your mum would never hurt anyone. She’s told the police everything. It was an accident.’

‘Can we go now?’ Christie had been kicking at the table leg the whole time Dad was talking. ‘Are you done?’

That night, he’d crept out of his bunk and into hers.

Agnes was curled on her side when he slipped under the duvet to lie next to her, staying there until his breathing deepened into sleep. She lay awake for a long time with the heat of him at her back. Thinking of the storage locker whose key she’d yet to find. Christie wasn’t hiding treasure, not now, not in days. All his secrets were inside. She’d wanted to roll away, find a cool spot where she could sleep. But she’d made a promise to keep him safe. Ruth trusted her to mend what was left of their family.

Fifteen days since she’d made that promise.

She wanted to visit the prison but for that to happen Ruth needed to add Agnes to her visitor list. So far, the only name on that list was Dad’s. This morning, he’d been to see Ruth for a second time, between taking Christie to school and bringing him home. Her brother had been in his bunk, playing on the old Game Boy Agnes had fixed.

‘How was Mum?’ She set the mug of tea on the table.

‘Thanks, love.’ Dad touched the rim of the mug. ‘She was . . . the same. The same as always.’

‘It must be hard, going there. Seeing her there.’

‘It’s easier the second time.’ He put a hand across his mouth, fingers spanned. ‘Harder for her.’

‘It isn’t right. What she’s doing, taking the blame. It isn’t right.’

‘I’ve tried. We thought . . . there was no evidence. Nothing to prove she did it.’

‘Of course there isn’t. But then why haven’t they let her go? Or charged her with something else? Obstructing the course of justice . . .’

‘Agnes . . .’ His palm was a muzzle but his eyes shouted with horror and pain. ‘She told me today, it’s all changed. They have evidence, a motive.’

‘What?’ She felt blank. ‘But they can’t have.’

‘Her solicitor says they’ve arrested Luke.’

‘Arrested him?’ Her heart leapt. ‘For Emma?’

It would solve everything.

Her mother could come home, Christie would be cleared.

‘Luke killed her?’

But Dad shook his head. ‘They searched Silverthorn.’ He rubbed at his face with stiff fingers. ‘They found . . . cages and poison. A lot of poison. Pellets, traps . . . They’re saying Dearman isn’t even their real name.’ He sounded bewildered.

‘Poison?’ Agnes touched her fingers to the table to ground herself. ‘Traps?’

‘To kill rats. But they weren’t trapping rats. Some of the cages were big enough for dogs.’

Odie limping towards her, his paw raised. Iris finding the cage in Silverthorn’s garden then dropping it, as if the cage had burnt her. Because she knew the purpose it was put to? That night by the field, she’d said, ‘Some of the cruelty out there, you wouldn’t believe.’ She’d known the truth about Emma and Luke, tracked them from wherever they’d been before Blackthorn Ashes.

‘They were convicted of animal cruelty,’ Dad said. ‘When they lived in Exeter. Dozens of dogs and cats were found dead or in cages, in terrible conditions. They were running away from . . . that. When they came to Blackthorn Ashes. They were hiding.’

Running away. Not all the poison came from the land, or the houses. Some of it was brought by the people, abandoning their old lives but not their old selves. Emma and Luke putting down pellets and traps, injuring Odie.

Agnes shuddered. ‘But if they’ve arrested Luke . . .’

‘For animal cruelty and fraud, using a false name. Not for Emma.’

Dad blinked ahead of him, as if trying to bring an impossible picture into focus.

‘When your mum confessed, there was no motive. That’s what we were holding on to. But now they think . . . Emma killed Binka.’

Agnes stared at him. He stretched a hand for hers then stopped himself, gripping his own wrist as if afraid of what his hand might do. ‘They exhumed her, love.’

Something in her silence seemed to ground him.

He spoke more calmly than he had in a long time. ‘They exhumed Binka and they found poison that matches the pellets in Silverthorn. Emma’s prints were on the packet. Not Luke’s, just hers.’

Binka, limp in her lap. Mum trying to comfort her, Christie sitting on the grass at a distance. She’d blamed Blackthorn Ashes but it was Emma. Emma killed Binka.

‘But they can’t think Mum . . . Not because of that, not for Binka. We all loved her but she was just a rabbit. It’s not a motive for murder.’

‘Manslaughter.’ Dad winced reflexively. ‘They’ve never called it murder. We were poisoned, they know that. Carbon monoxide causes mood changes and paranoia, even hallucinations. None of us were in our right minds. We weren’t ourselves.’ That plea was in his eyes again. ‘That place did so much damage, love. We might never know how much.’

‘Then they think Mum was . . . mad? Or Emma was?’

‘Mum didn’t have packets of poison in her house or cages, or boxes full of broken glass.’ Dad’s eyes darkened. ‘They think Emma may’ve put the broken tin in Chloe’s sandpit.’

Agnes felt ill. ‘But we know. It wasn’t Mum. She’s taking the blame because she’s scared Christie—’

Dad cut her short. ‘She knows best.’

He put his hand back across his mouth, fingertips white where they gripped at his cheekbones, eyes pleading with her.

‘She always . . . knows best.’

‘She could get fifteen years in prison.’

And you, she thought, you could get fifteen years for corporate manslaughter.

Christie would be her age by the time they got out. Agnes would be middle-aged. It had only been fifteen days but already the loss of her mother was like a stone in her throat. How could she live like this, for fifteen years?