‘No!’ Mum’s been quiet until now, and the sudden shout makes Ella start. ‘I won’t.’ She looks at me. ‘I won’t. She can’t make me.’
‘I don’t have to make you. I’ve got the gun.’ Laura holds it aloft, the fabric of her shimmery top still wrapped around her fingers. ‘It’s got your prints on it.’ Slowly, she walks towards Mum, the gun pointing directly at her. I look at the door; wonder if I’d make it. ‘No one will ever know it wasn’t in your hand the whole time.’
‘You won’t get away with this.’
She raises one perfectly plucked eyebrow. ‘There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?’
There’s a roaring in my ears. Ella feeds hungrily.
‘As it happens, I have an insurance policy of my own.’ She smiles. ‘Should the police be suspicious, I just have to point them in the right direction. I’ll remember that I overheard you both talking about Tom’s life assurance policy; that you clammed up when you saw me coming. The two of you were in it together from the start.’
‘They’ll never believe that.’ There’s more noise from somewhere inside the building. I listen for the ‘ping’ of the lift, but this is something different. Something rhythmic.
‘And when they dig a little deeper, they’ll discover that the phone used to report Tom’s suicide was bought in Brighton …’ she pauses for effect, ‘by none other than Anna Johnson.’
The rhythmic sound grows louder. Faster. I stall for time. ‘I always saw us as family.’ I move slowly across the flat until I’m standing next to my mother. Facing Laura.
‘The poor relation, I suppose.’
I know what this noise is.
Laura’s consumed with anger, spitting out thirty-three years of resentment. ‘It was just normal for you, wasn’t it? Big house, clothes allowance, skiing in the winter, France every summer.’
The noise is that of feet, running on stairs. Police boots. Stopping two floors below and continuing more quietly than a lift that announces its arrival.
Laura’s eyes snap to the door.
I start to shake. It was Mum who bought the gun; who brought Ella and me here. Mum who killed Dad and hid the body. They don’t even know Laura’s involved. Why wouldn’t they believe her story? She’ll get away with it all …
‘That’s not my fault, Laura. And it isn’t Ella’s.’
‘Just like living on benefits in a damp flat with a sick mother wasn’t my fault.’
Outside the door, there’s a whisper of a noise.
Laura’s hand moves. Just a fraction. Her finger, closing around the trigger of the gun. Her face is pale, a pulse throbbing in the side of her neck. She’s scared, too. We’re all scared.
Don’t do it, Laura.
I strain my ears and hear the quiet shuffle of feet outside the door. Will they burst through, the way they do in films? Shoot first, ask questions later? Adrenalin’s coursing through me and, as Ella pulls away, I feel my whole body tense.
My mother is breathing hard. She’s cornered; nowhere left to run, no more lies to tell. She backs slowly away from Laura, away from me.
‘Where are you going? Stay where you are!’
Mum glances behind her, at the unguarded balcony with its seven-floor drop. She looks at me with eyes that plead forgiveness. Like a television playing mutely in the corner of a room, my head fills with scenes from my childhood: Mum reading me stories; Dad teaching me to ride a bike; Mum at dinner, laughing too hard, too long; shouting downstairs; Dad shouting back.
What are the police waiting for?
A rabbit on the doorstep; a brick through the window. Mum holding Ella. Holding me.
Suddenly I know what she’s thinking, what she’s going to do.
‘Mum, no!’
She carries on walking. Slowly, slowly. From the apartment next door comes a burst of shouting, as the party guests count down to midnight. Laura looks wildly between the front door and Mum, distracted by the shouting, not knowing what to do, where to look.
‘Ten! Nine! Eight!’
I follow Mum onto the balcony. She knows it’s all over. She knows she’s going to prison for what she’s done. I think what it will be like to lose my mother for a second time.
‘Seven! Six!’
There’s a dull clunk of something heavy from the landing.
Laura moves the gun. Points it directly at me. Her finger tightens. Behind me, Mum is crying. The wind whistles across the balcony.
‘Five! Four! Three!’ The cheers from next door grow louder. Around us, more fireworks, more cheers, more music.
‘Don’t shoot!’ I scream it as loudly as I can.
The sound is extraordinary. A thousand decibels. More. The door off its hinges, crashing to the floor, and a hundred armed police running over it. Noise – so much noise – from them and from us and—
‘Drop the weapon!’
Laura backs towards the corner of the room, the gun still in her hand. My mother’s feet graze the broken glass at the edge of the balcony. The hem of her dress flutters. She looks into my eyes.
And then she goes.
I scream – on and on until I don’t know if it’s only in my head or if everyone else can hear it too. Her dress billows like a failed parachute and she spins over and over, plummeting downwards. Fireworks explode overhead, filling the sky with gold and silver rain.
A police officer, by my side. Mouthing words I can’t hear, a face full of concern. Wrapping a blanket around me. Around Ella. He puts a hand on my back and guides me inside, not letting me check my pace as we walk through the apartment and out to the landing, even though I can see Laura lying on the ground, a police officer kneeling beside her. I don’t know if she’s dead or alive, and I don’t know if I care.
In the ambulance, I can’t stop shaking. The paramedic is cheerful and efficient, with blonde hair in two thick plaits over her shoulders. She puts a shot in my arm that, seconds later, makes me feel as though I’ve drunk a bottle of wine.
‘I’m breastfeeding,’ I say, too late.
‘You’re no good to her if you’re having a panic attack. Better she’s a bit sleepy, than hyper on second-hand adrenalin.’
There’s a clunk as the back door of the ambulance opens. I think I recognise the police officer with the blanket, but the drugs have made me woozy and everyone in uniform looks the same.
‘Visitors,’ he says, and steps to one side.
‘They wouldn’t let us past the police tape.’ Mark clambers into the ambulance and half sits, half falls onto the bed next to me. ‘No one would tell me what was going on. I was so scared you were …’ He breaks off before his voice lets him down, and instead wraps his arms around Ella and me. She’s asleep, and I wonder again what babies dream of, and if she’ll ever have nightmares about what happened tonight.
‘Been in the wars, Annie?’ Billy tries for a smile but fails. Worry is etched on his face.
‘Laura …’ I start, but my head feels too heavy; my tongue too big for my mouth.
‘I’ve given her something for the shock,’ I hear the paramedic say. ‘She’ll be feeling a bit groggy for a while.’
‘We know,’ Billy says to me. ‘When Mark cancelled the party, he told me what had happened. About Caroline’s cousin and her violent ex. It didn’t sit right with me. Caroline never mentioned a cousin Angela, and then there was the Shogun Laura had borrowed …’
Just hours ago, I was lying across Ella’s car seat. Keeping out of sight, terrified I’d be seen. It’s as though I’m recalling a film, or a story that happened to someone else. I can’t recapture the fear I felt, and I wonder if it’s just the drugs making it feel unreal. I hope it isn’t.
‘I picked up Billy and we got here as quickly as we could.’
There’s something different between them – no more tension; no more verbal rutting – but I’m too tired to analyse it, and now the paramedics are gently ushering them both outside, and lying me down on the bed, and strapping down Ella, too. I close my eyes. Give in to sleep.
It’s all over.
SIXTY-NINE
MURRAY