I don’t know how long Cait’s been staring in at me, but her ghostly face suggests she’s seen everything. I smile as casually as possible, which I realize is inappropriate when wrapping up a dead man, but then what is the right expression?
Presumably Cait didn’t believe my story about the dead rabbit. I wipe my hands and pull a sheet over the body, which will at least hide the stab wounds – damage limitation.
I answer the door dressed in bloodstained Liberty pyjamas. If it were Halloween I could justify the outfit, but that was weeks ago. Cait stares at me intensely. I’m not sure what approach she’ll take, but I wonder if professional interest brought her back. I mean, what better for her podcast than a real-life corpse?
‘Are you on your own?’ she whispers.
‘Aimée’s with the children in the garden.’
‘I knew it wasn’t a rabbit,’ she says, and pushes past me into the living room, which is quite un-Cait-like.
I follow her in, intrigued by her brisk, confident tone. She stands at the fireplace fixated on the dead man under the sheet, biting her lower lip and taking everything in, slowly and methodically. I’m expecting her to take out a roll of crime scene tape, but she just stares.
‘It was an accident,’ I say, to interrupt her reverie.
‘Did he hurt you?’ Cait turns to me and holds my gaze.
‘Yes,’ I say, as it sounds better given the nature of his injuries.
‘I’m so sorry. I should’ve known.’ Cait wraps her arms around me and hugs me tightly, without a care in the world for the forensic integrity of the crime scene or her Toast linens. I can feel her skeletal frame pressing against me, and want to fetch her a slice of birthday cake.
‘I’ll do whatever I can to help you. I won’t tell,’ she confides, stifling her low sobs.
‘No?’ I say, surprised. I wonder if she’s afraid of me, but the hug suggests female solidarity.
‘It can happen to anyone. I always wondered about you,’ says Cait, rubbing my back. ‘You’re always so perfect, but perfection is a just a mask. We’re all hiding from something. And the way you knew instinctively about Owen’s abuse. I knew you understood how it feels.’
Cait is so understanding that it crosses my mind that she’s found something out about my past and I’m angry at myself for letting the memory back in. I remember sitting for so long in the cellar that I couldn’t distinguish myself from the darkness, listening to the world above – carpet-muffled footsteps, the drone of television, clinking cutlery, my mother sobbing.
‘Perfection isn’t a mask, it’s full body armour,’ I say, and prise her arm from my back.
‘When did it happen?’ she says, leaning over the corpse.
‘Just before Sophie arrived.’
‘And you just went on with the party?’
‘I had no time to think, Cait. I just went on automatic,’ I say, steering her away as her foot steps in a pool of blood.
‘I used to do that,’ she says. ‘Owen would punch me, then the children would come in and I’d be weeping in a corner one minute and singing jolly nursery rhymes the next. You just put on a face, right?’
‘That’s exactly what you do, Cait. You put on a face.’
‘How long’s the abuse been going on?’ she asks.
‘The abuse?’
‘Stephen,’ she says, gesturing towards the corpse. ‘How long’s he been hitting you?’
‘Stephen?’ I say. ‘Stephen doesn’t abuse me, he’s a kitten. I mean, I sometimes wish he was a little more forceful, to be honest.’
‘If that’s not Stephen,’ she says, her face a caricature of confusion, ‘then who’s dead?’
‘I think he was a burglar. He didn’t say. It all happened so quickly.’
‘He was in your house?’ says Cait.
‘I was getting ready for the party and heard a noise. I went to investigate and he went for me. He had a knife,’ I lie, realizing that this story works better from a legal perspective. In truth, I think he realized I’d heard him, and then hid behind the door, but when I came in, he panicked and grabbed me.
