I had just finished giving my statement, the result of almost eight hours in a windowless room with a female detective who looked like she’d rather be anywhere but there. She wasn’t the only one.
Back home, the kitchen – the scene of my dad’s murder – had been cordoned off, white-suited forensic officers swabbing every inch of it.
‘It’s my house,’ I said. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’
They found traces of Dad’s blood in the grout between the tiles, despite the bleach poured on the floor by Laura and Mum. Blood beneath my feet, for all those months. I feel like I should have seen; should have known.
It was three days before we were allowed full use of the kitchen again; another twenty-four hours before they finished in the garden. Mark has pulled the curtains across the glass doors from the kitchen, so I can’t see the piles of earth that now pass for our lawn, and closed the shutters at the front of the house, to avoid the telescopic lenses of the headline-hunters in the road.
‘There aren’t as many today,’ he says now. ‘They’ll be gone by the end of the week.’
‘They’ll be back for the trial.’
‘Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.’ He hands me a steaming mug of coffee, and we sit at the table. I’ve moved things around; re-positioned the table and switched the two armchairs. Small changes that I hope – in time – will stop me remembering; stop me picturing what happened here.
Mark sifts through the post, leaving most of it unopened and putting it in a pile for the recycling, along with the notes from reporters that litter the driveway until Mark picks them up.
Cash waiting in exchange for exclusive rights to your story.
There have been offers from publishers and literary agents. Approaches from film companies and reality TV shows. Sympathy cards, funeral leaflets, letters from Eastbourne residents shocked to discover that Caroline Johnson – campaigner, fundraiser, committee member – had murdered her husband.
They all go in the bin.
‘It’ll die down soon.’
‘I know.’ The hacks will move on to the next juicy story, and one day I’ll be able to walk through Eastbourne without people whispering to their friends. That’s her – the Johnson daughter.
One day.
Mark clears his throat. ‘I need to tell you something.’
I see his face and my stomach lurches, a lift dropping to the ground floor without buttons pressed for pause. I cannot take any more announcements, any more surprises. I want to live the rest of my life knowing exactly what is happening each hour, each day.
‘When the police asked about the appointment Caroline made with me …’ He stares into his coffee; falls silent for a while.
I say nothing, my heartbeat a drum roll in my ears.
‘I lied.’
I feel that shift again, the ground beneath me cracking, splitting, moving. Life, changing with a single word.
A single lie.
‘I never met your mother.’ He looks up, his eyes searching mine. ‘But I did speak to her.’
I swallow, hard.
‘I didn’t make the connection, not until after your first session with me. I looked through my diary and there it was: your mother’s name. And I remembered her phone call; remembered her telling me her husband had died, and that she needed help working through it. Only she never showed up, and it didn’t enter my head again until that moment.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
Mark lets out a breath like he’s just run a marathon. ‘Patient confidentiality?’ There’s a question mark in his voice, as though he knows it sounds absurd. ‘And because I didn’t want you to leave.’
‘Why not?’ I say, although I already know the answer.
He takes my hand and rubs his thumb across the inside of my wrist. Beneath his gentle pressure the skin pales, blue-green veins just visible, like the tributaries of a river. ‘Because I was already falling in love with you.’
He leans forward, and I do the same. We meet in the middle, awkwardly bent across the corner of the kitchen table. I close my eyes, and feel the softness of his lips, the warmth of his breath on mine.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
I understand why he did it. He’s right: I would have gone somewhere else. It would have felt too strange to unburden myself to a man my mother had chosen for her own confessions. And if I’d gone elsewhere, Ella would never have been born.
‘No more secrets, though.’
‘No more secrets,’ Mark says. ‘A fresh start.’ He hesitates, and I think for a second there’s something else he wants to get off his chest, but instead he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small, velvet-covered box.
He holds my gaze as he slips off his chair and onto one knee.
SEVENTY-ONE
MURRAY
‘One more, please.’
It was an awkward pose for the camera, standing side by side with their hands mid-shake, and Murray’s framed commendation held between them.
‘All done.’
The photographer finished, the chief constable shook Murray’s hand again and smiled with genuine warmth. ‘Celebrating tonight?’
‘Just a few friends, ma’am.’
‘You deserve it. Good work, Murray.’
The chief stepped to one side and allowed Murray a moment in the limelight. There were no speeches, but Murray put his shoulders back and held his commendation in front of him, and as the chief began to clap, the room filled with applause. A few tables back, Nish gave him a double thumbs-up, a beam on her face, before resuming her wild clapping. From near the door, someone cheered. Even dour John from the front counter at Lower Meads was applauding.
Briefly, Murray pictured Sarah sitting in the audience. She’d be wearing one of her brightly coloured, voluminous linen dresses, a scarf draped around her neck or tied around her head. She’d be grinning fit to burst, looking around the room, wanting to catch someone’s eye, to share her pride with them.
His eyes were stinging. He turned the commendation around and held it away from him so he could look at it, blinking hard until there was no more risk of his eyes watering. He had been picturing Sarah on a good day, he reminded himself. There was every chance that Sarah might not have been in the room at all; that she’d have been at Highfield, or at home under the duvet, unable to face accompanying Murray today. To his final work commitment.
C6821 MURRAY MACKENZIE IS COMMENDED FOR THE DEDICATION, TENACITY AND INVESTIGATIVE SKILLS THAT ENSURED THE DETECTION OF THE MURDER OF TOM JOHNSON, AND THE IDENTIFICATION OF BOTH SUSPECTS. HIS CONTRIBUTION IS AN EXCEPTIONAL EXAMPLE OF SUPPORTING FORCE VALUES.
The identification of both suspects. It had been carefully worded. Murray felt a twinge of regret that they’d been unable to bring Caroline Johnson to justice. She had jumped from the balcony of Mark Hemmings’ seventh-floor flat, landing in front of a crowd of onlookers who would for ever be haunted by the sight of her body hitting the ground, taking with her any secrets that hadn’t already been shared with her daughter.
Laura Barnes was on remand pending trial. She had made no comment during interview, but the body-cams worn by the arresting officers had recorded a series of admissions made by her in the heat of the moment. The recordings, together with the case DS James Kennedy and his team had built against her, meant Murray was confident of a guilty plea. Laura had covered her tracks well, but ANPR showed her car in Brighton at the time of the Fones4All purchase. A voice recognition specialist had confirmed that the call to control room from ‘Diane Brent-Taylor’ matched Laura’s voice, and would appear in court as an expert witness to that effect.