How long is it going to take him to ask me why, why for so long, why on the same night that someone murdered Marianne?
Come on, Paddy. It’s just words, arranged in an order that makes sense. You can do it.
Perhaps I’m the one who should start asking questions: all the unanswered ones that have been circling my brain all the way from Spilling to here.
Who killed Marianne?
Was it someone who’s here now, at Devey House?Dad … Paddy … Suzanne?Because it has to have been one of them, surely.
Only if the killer is the same person who read and altered the diary file.
They must be. Who else could have known the date and time I’d chosen for Marianne’s murder? I didn’t even tell Suzanne that detail. I told her about my plan and that I was going to the police to make sure I never did it, but I never said how I’d chosen when to go, or that Monday 30 October at 5.15 p.m. had originally been reserved for a quite different event. And I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe in coincidences that big and unlikely.
Which means … maybe it wasn’t Marianne who altered the diary file, changing ‘Ollie’ to ‘Olly’ throughout. What if someone else did that, wanting me to think it was her handiwork?
Why? Why would anyone want that?
Who else could have got into my laptop last week, the week before? Dad, Paddy or Lottie, easily. Suzanne, too. All four of them would have tried ‘Lottie’ as their first guess at my password, and struck lucky. I’ve never thought to hide my computer or even put it away. And sometimes, both at Dad’s and at home, I leave the room for longish periods of time, if I have to take a work call. I fall asleep on the sofa for half an hour, my laptop on the table next to me …
I can rule out Tom Tulloch and Ollie, neither of whom had the opportunity.
Unless …
I think about the time last year when Marianne sent me her Wordle result, then claimed she’d done it by mistake, that she’d meant to send it to Paddy. Suzanne was sure that was a lie and that Ollie was the intended recipient. And if Ollie and Marianne were still in touch, then she could have been the one who tampered with the diary, and then told him all about it:Guess what? Jemma’s hired someone to kill me. She’s even picked the date and time of my execution.Which means Ollie can’t beruled out as the person who decided to kill her at that precise time, on that date.
My daughter’s voice drags me out of my spiralling thoughts. ‘Hey, Mum. S’cuse, Dad.’ She’s hurrying towards me, down the stairs, past Paddy. I run to her, cling to her, burst into tears, which makes it hard to ask if she’s okay as many times as I’d like to.
‘Calm down,’ she says. ‘Mum, I’m okay. You’re the one who isn’t.’
Understatement of the century.
Suzanne says something about helping Dad make hot drinks, and I know she’s trying to get herself and Paddy out of the way so that Lotts and I can have a few minutes together alone.
Thank God for brilliant Suzanne.
‘Mum?’
‘Yes, darling.’
Lottie looks over her shoulder to check everyone’s gone. Then she says, ‘Was Granny an evil person?’
Something twists inside me. ‘I …’
‘Don’t say no one’s either completely good or completely evil. That’s what Suzanne said before, when I asked her.’
I can’t help smiling at this, imagining the restraint Suzanne must have employed for Lottie’s sake when talking about Marianne. ‘That woman is the devil on steroids,’ she was fond of telling me.
‘Even if it’s true, some people are much more good and some are much more bad,’ says Lottie. ‘Which was Granny?’
‘Why are you asking?’
‘Because she’s been killed.’ Her voice cracks on the last word. ‘And eleven years ago, someone tried to murder her then too. So, like … maybe there was something quite bad about her if people kept wanting to kill her. That’s all I meant. Do you think it’s true?’
15th June 2006
Suzanne said something earlier that I can’t get out of my head. I was talking about how much things can change in a very short time, and I used Paddy’s attitude to being in a relationship as an example. I pointed out that he’s switched in the space of a few weeks from ‘Yeah, I’m sleeping with a few other women, sure, but none of them are as good in bed as you are’ to ‘You’re enough for me now, I don’t want or need anyone else’. I said I couldn’t help wondering if meeting Ollie at my house – a firefighter, there in his official boyfriend capacity – had anything to do with this sudden transformation. Maybe it brought it home to Paddy that other blokes his age aren’t as chicken-shit as he is. He might have reflected on the fact that Ollie isn’t afraid to run into burning buildings and risk his life in order to save strangers, and certainly doesn’t balk at the even more supposedly terrifying ordeal of Being A Boyfriend, which for years seems to have been Paddy’s main phobia.
But … and … New Paddy has now declared himself happy to be a boyfriend, which should make me feel less bitter, and maybe it will one day if I give it a chance, and no doubt it was disloyal of me to say what I said to Suzanne this morning, but I couldn’t resist. Rant bitterly first, forgive later – that’s my motto. Or, sometimes, don’t forgive ever.
