She’d driven to Cambridge without telling Ben. She felt strongly that this was something she had to do on her own. When she parked up outside Martin’s cottage, she experienced the strange sensation of having been here before, on this road, with the crawling wisteria and the uneven kerbstones. But she hadn’t ever been to Martin’s house so she must have imagined it. It was only when she clocked the street name that she realised it was the road where Vicky Dillane had been killed. She’d read about it in an old newspaper cutting, found among her father-in-law’s possessions when he died. She’d known when she married him that Ben had been involved in a fatal car crash while at university and she had known, too, the lengths his family had gone to in order to cover it up. Back then, she had seen this as a noble example of Fitzmaurice family loyalty. They protected their own. As she swung the car door shut and pressed the lock on her key fob, Serena wished she had questioned some of her lazy certainties. That much-vaunted protection was not infallible. It had not, after all, extended to her. She knew now she was disposable.
She pressed the doorbell. Martin answered.
‘Serena,’ he said, grazing her cheek with his. ‘She’s upstairs.’
She was grateful he didn’t try to stop her. She squeezed his hand. He removed it quickly from her grasp.
‘Thank you, Martin. You’ve been very kind.’
‘Oh,’ he said, surprised. ‘No. She’s been no trouble. It’s been nice to have her around.’
Serena went up the rickety staircase into a bedroom with stripped floorboards and a single bed, made up neatly with a patchwork quilt over the top. The walls were hung with nice watercolour landscapes. A small desk pushed under the window and there, sitting at her laptop, was Cosima. She turned when Serena walked in. They looked at each other in silence.
‘Hi, Mum,’ Cosima said. She rose from her chair and walked over to Serena and hugged her. Serena held her tightly, feeling the ridge of her spine and inhaling the smell of unfamiliar shampoo. She was nauseous with relief.
‘I brought you something,’ Serena said. There was so much else she wanted to say but she didn’t know what words to use. She had to tread carefully or she might scare Cosima off.
Serena held up the tote bag she’d brought with her and handed it over. There was a shoe box inside. When Cosima opened it, she laughed. It was a new pair of Doc Marten boots.
‘Yours looked a bit scruffy,’ Serena said.
Cosima smiled but underneath the smile, Serena felt the same coolness resurfacing, the same resentments and misunderstandings. A small lifetime of them. It would take effort and patience to mend the damage.
‘Can we talk?’ she asked. Cosima nodded, half-heartedly.
They had tea, made by Martin in the kitchen and presented with a plate of stale fig rolls. They started talking, gingerly at first, about how unhappy she’d been at school and how bored she was at home and how she’d fallen in with Oblivion Oil and how it had given her a sense of purpose.
‘I understand that, Cozzie, I do, but you have to promise me to leave that … organisation. You simply cannot be protesting in the streets like that. It’s undignified. Especially when your father …’
She didn’t have to finish the sentence.
‘Yeah, yeah, I get it. When my father is running for prime minister.’ A pause. ‘You know, he never asked me, Mum? You know that, right?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He never asked his kids once if they minded.’
‘Minded what?’
‘That he wants to become fucking prime minister!’
‘Swearing, darling,’ Serena said automatically.
‘… if we minded being ripped to piss by our friends for having a dad who’s a politician, if we minded that Hector would be more bullied than he already is …’
‘Hector’s being bullied?’ Serena hadn’t known.
‘… and it would have been nice, that’s all. Obviously he wouldhave ignored us, but still, a little sign, however fake, that he actually gave a fuck about us would have been nice.’
Cosima glanced at her mother, narrowing her eyes, then added: ‘Did he even ask you?’
She had always seen straight through to the truth of things, Serena thought.
‘He didn’t have to. I’ve always known it’s what he wanted.’
Cosima rolled her eyes.
‘You see? You’re trapped too, Mum.’
