I take a deep breath, trying to figure out how best to deal with this. ‘He’s not crazy. He has depression. It’s an illness that affects your brain. But he’s on medication now and he’s getting better.’
‘He scared me that time in the car.’ She’s still not meeting my eye.
I brush her long dark hair away from her face. ‘I know. But he’d never do anything like that again. He loves you. You can trust him. He’s still the same daddy.’
She turns to me then, narrowing the brown eyes that are so like her father’s. ‘I don’t know who to trust.’ And before I can reply she jumps up and flounces out of the room.
24
One day after
Rachel is at the door by eight the next morning. I can tell by the nervous energy she’s trying to hide behind a professional demeanour that she has something important to tell us.
Adrian lets her in. He’s still in the T-shirt and checked trousers he slept in. The girls are in bed and Mum hasn’t surfaced yet with Ruby.
Rachel steps over the threshold, bringing with her a gust of cold air. She rubs her hands together. I notice that her fingers are bright red. Her fashionable wool coat doesn’t look warm enough to keep out that bracing wind. She needs gloves. There are no dead flowers on the doorstep this morning and I wonder if they’ll stop now that Selena is gone. I think again of Nigel. Was he sending them? Had Selena been right to fear that he’d found her?
‘Come in,’ urges Adrian. ‘Can I get you a coffee?’
‘That would be lovely. Thank you. The traffic was bad this morning.’
‘Where have you come from?’ I ask politely.
‘Bridgend. Headquarters are there, and I live just outside. I feel like I’ve been in the car for hours.’
We troop after Adrian through the empty dining room to the kitchen. I’ve only just begun cooking breakfast. It feels wrong to carry on working, and if it was just us, Nathan and Julia I wouldn’t bother, but Janice is still here and the Greysons, so I have to be professional even though it’s the last thing I feel like doing. Apart from Susie, who stayed in her room, I haven’t seen the Greysons since Selena died, and I was beginning to worry that we’d have to send for the mountain rescue team because they’d got lost somewhere in the Brecons. Thankfully I heard them arrive back late last night. Nobody else has come down for breakfast yet.
I go to the frying-pan and flip over the eggs. One has burned in my absence so I scoop it out and throw it into the bin. Adrian switches on the coffee machine and waits for it to heat up.
‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this,’ says Rachel, her face serious, ‘but the police – we – are treating Selena’s death as suspicious.’
I prod another egg so hard that I end up breaking it. The yolk oozes out and settles at the edge of the frying-pan. ‘Suspicious?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘What makes them think that?’ blurts out Adrian. ‘I mean, it was an accident. It must have been!’
I reach over and take his hand, squeezing it gently, trying to communicate for him to stay calm but he moves away from me and shoves a capsule into the coffee machine with more force than is needed.
Rachel continues, ‘The way she landed, it’s …’ I can see that she’s trying to find a way to explain in layman’s terms. ‘Put it this way. If it had been an accident, if Selena had stumbled or caught the hem of her nightgown, she’d roll or tumble down the stairs. As a result, injuries aren’t usually fatal. I know that’s not always the case,’ she acknowledges, when Adrian opens his mouth to object, ‘but usually it wouldn’t be a head injury. When someone is pushed, though, they would be standing, their body in an erect position at the top of the stairs, which means they would have taken off into the air, causing a greater impact when landing.’
Adrian clears his throat. ‘So, just to be clear. You’re saying that Selena was pushed?’
Rachel nods. ‘Yes.’
I grip the handle of the spatula so tightly it digs into my palm. ‘So she was murdered?’ Janice was right.How did she know?I can’t believe that ‘the spirits’ told her, even though I’m sure that’s how she’d explain it. She must have been attention-seeking, unless she was involved somehow, but I can’t imagine that. Although I wouldn’t have imagined Selena was murdered either.
‘I’m sorry. I know this must be a shock. There will be an investigation. And I will be here.’
It suddenly occurs to me. ‘Did the police suspect this yesterday? Is that why the forensics team were here and that detective?’ I ask. They’d deliberately kept us in the dark.
‘We had to cover every eventuality,’ she says noncommittally.
We fall silent. The only sound to be heard is the coffee machine as it spews hot liquid into a mug. Adrian hands it to Rachel and she takes it gratefully, wrapping her hands around it as she gulps it back. She must have a Teflon mouth. I watch her carefully, noting the diamond studs at her ears, the silk scarf around her neck. Her hair has been scooped into a chignon and a few tendrils escape around her face. How are we supposed to trust her? She won’t have our best interests at heart. She’ll be here watching and waiting, hoping someone will slip up. I think of Adrian. He was lying to me yesterday, I could tell. Does he know more about Selena’s death than he’s letting on? Did he see something? Or do something? I won’t let my mind go there. I can’t. I trust him, of course I do. Yet I felt he wasn’t being completely honest with me.
Rachel might not be on our side per se but she’ll be on Selena’s. She’ll haveherbest interests at heart.
I’ve always been a stickler for the rules. Adrian teases me about it – and so did Selena.Before. I’ve never parked on a double yellow line, or had a parking ticket. I stick to the speed limit. Once, when Adrian and I first met, we found a wallet stuffed full of twenty-pound notes. Adrian wanted to keep it – we were broke, we could have done with the money, which amounted to about three hundred pounds – but I insisted we gave it in to our local police station. I even went through a phase when I wanted to join the force. It was only the thought of having to confront dead bodies that put me off.
