‘I wasn’t. I … Didn’t you hear your dad just now? He said he’d been looking for you.’
Lottie stared at him. ‘There’s nothing in Granny’s study any more,’ she said. She was tall for a thirteen-year-old, with dark brown hair, parted in the centre. Her school uniform – maroon jumper, pale grey trousers – looked too big and baggy on her, and her heavy black eye make-up and pale pink lipstick both looked as if they’d been plastered on in a hurry. Around her neck was a small silver pendant on a chain: a rectangle with four thin bars going across, each one with a tiny coloured gemstone set into it.
‘Is there something that makes you want to go in there?’ she asked Sellers.
He was about to say, again, that Paddy was looking for her, but changed his mind. ‘Yeah,’ he admitted. ‘I couldn’t tell you what it is, though. You?’
‘I didn’t go in, and I don’t want to. I’ve only been in here,’ she said in a tight voice. ‘Granny never let anyone in. The door was always kept locked.’
‘It was locked when we got here,’ said Sellers.
‘Did you find the key on her? On her dead body?’ Lottie asked, her eyes widening. ‘She always kept it with her, wherever she went. One time it fell out of her sleeve. I was the only one who noticed. She tucked it back in before anyone else saw.’ In a quick, jerky movement, Lottie darted past Sellers on her way out of Gareth’s office. The rest of what she said was muffled by the creaks her feet made on the stairs: ‘I’m going down to wait for Mum. Don’t stay in Marianne’s room too long. You might have dreams about it. I used to.’
Why ‘Marianne’ suddenly, and not ‘Granny’?Sellers thought.
She’d dreamed about it? Her grandmother’s study, that she’d never been allowed inside? Perhaps it wasn’t that surprising: the idea of a locked room was a powerful … thingamajig; Sellers couldn’t think of the word he wanted.
Was he going to cross the threshold and inspect the nothingness of the empty room for a third time?
He walked in, looked at his polished shoes on the decaying carpet underlay, turned round and walked straight out again.
There. Done. Not that he needed to prove anything to himself.
He’d started to make his way downstairs when Gareth Upton appeared in front of him, travelling in the opposite direction, with two meshes of red lines where the whites of his eyes used to be. Sellers hoped Upton wouldn’t be one of those elderly people who were dead from grief within a fortnight of their spouse dying.
‘I was looking for you. Could we …?’ Upton gestured towards the top floor of the house. ‘I need to talk.’
‘About?’ It sounded serious. Sellers hoped this wouldn’t mean a delay to his encounter with Suzanne’s lasagne.
‘It’s about Marianne’s will,’ said her husband.
7
Monday 30 October 2023, 6.30 p.m.
JEMMA
The door closes and Sergeant Zailer’s gone. I’m alone. I didn’t hear a key turn, but I get up anyway and walk over to the door to check. Not locked. The door opens easily.
That’s good. I’m free to go if I want to.
I close the door, go back to my chair and reach into my bag for my phone, sure that by now Lotts will have decided Paddy’s explanation of where I am and what I’m doing is insufficient and sent me a ‘Where the hell are you, Mum?’ message.
Damn.My phone’s out of battery. A flash of panic passes through me. I should have texted Lottie directly in the first place. Instead, I sent the explanation for my absence to Paddy, knowing he’s a much less efficient communicator than our daughter; knowing he wouldn’t immediately hit reply and demand more information. For today only, until this task is done, I need things to be a little vague and blurry – and for that, Paddy Stelling is always your man.
I’ll think of a convincing story to tell Lottie later. And Paddy. I can hardly say I came here to stop myself committing the murder I’ve been planning for months. Suzanne heard the unedited version, late last night – I always tell her everything– but no one else. Nobody wants to hear something so disturbing about their mother or their wife, however true it might be.
It’s fine.I force myself to breathe fully and deeply for a few seconds. Lottie will be fine. Hopefully it won’t be too much longer before the most senior detective gets here. Sergeant Zailer said he was on his way. “The head honcho”, she called him.
There’s a small table in front of me, and I’ve got my laptop with me, so … I pull it out of my bag, open it and go straight to the file called ‘Diary’. Until DS Head Honcho turns up, I can write about what’s happened so far with Sergeant Zailer and DC Waterhouse.
I’d be embarrassed if anyone knew how hard I try when I write my diary. The effort to turn it into something that might one day have readers who aren’t me – that might even be publishable … Though of course I could never publish it while Dad and Marianne are alive.
Listen to Lady Muck, still waiting for her adoring fans to turn up.
Most lonely, confused children invent imaginary friends to keep them company. After Mum died and Dad became preoccupied with keeping Marianne happy to the exclusion of all else, I invented an imaginary cheering audience that followed me wherever I went and whooped ecstatically at everything I accomplished: good exam results, victories in school netball matches, getting asked out by a fanciable boy. Except the person these non-existent fans couldn’t get enough of wasn’t me, Jemma Upton. In my fantasy life, which for many years felt more real to me than my real one, she was called Lady Muck. That was her stage name – or, I should say, mine. Mum used to call me it as a joke when I asked for breakfast in bed or for more marshmallows to be added to my cup of hot chocolate. ‘Allright, Lady Muck,’ she’d say affectionately as she got up to get me whatever it was I’d asked for.
The nameless hordes of devotees I’d invented hung on my alter ego’s every word. Most of what she had to say was about Marianne Upton, naturally – formerly Marianne Taggart, a woman who had gone with alarming speed from being Lady Muck’s mother’s good friend, whom she’d met on a garden design course, to being the fiancée and then the wife of Lady Muck’s poor deluded father. Wasn’t it the day before Nancy Upton’s funeral that Marianne had first been spotted at the Upton family home, tiptoeing out of a bedroom that was definitely not yet hers? Why, yes, it was. And hadn’t her hand lingered a suspiciously long time on Gareth Upton’s arm at the wake, after the funeral?
