Chapter 10
Carla
NOW
I pride myself on being a rational person, but I’m a firm believer in my own form of karma. I used to be anyway. I like to think that if you do good deeds, then good things end up happening to you, whereas if you do something bad, you eventually get what’s coming to you. Since what happened to Iris – my beautiful girl, who is generous and empathetic to a fault – I’ve become more cynical. Life is often unfair and it doesn’t work that way. Tragic things happen to good people; bad people often come out on top. But now Josh has been murdered, I wonder if he has finally had his comeuppance.
I put this to Daniel as we get ready for bed that evening. It’s later than usual because he got home so late. I was in no hurry to get to bed. I won’t sleep well. I’m glad Iris has gone to the party – she deserves to have some fun after everything she went through, but I’ll toss and turn until I hear Ash’s car pull up and Iris coming through the front door.
Gently, Daniel takes me by the shoulders and turns me towards him. I’m wearing only my underwear and at first, I misinterpret the gesture. I’m about to say I’ve missed him but I’m really not in the mood tonight, but his expression is serious, not amorous, as he looks into my eyes. My words stick in my throat.
‘Carla, Josh was eighteen years old. Whatever he did, he didn’t deserve this. If he was behind what happened to Iris, he made a mistake.’
I feel betrayed because of Daniel’s ‘if’. I also feel really mean because he’s right. Josh was only a kid. He didn’t deserve to be stabbed to death. But Josh’s ‘mistake’ ruined my daughter’s life. It could easily have cost herherlife. She was – understandably – withdrawn and depressed for months afterwards. She became paper-thin and gaunt, practically agoraphobic, and I was terrified she would harm herself.
‘I know you’re worried about Iris,’ Daniel continues. ‘But if she has nothing to do with this, she has nothing to be afraid of.’
There it is again. That ‘if’. With that two-letter conjunction, Daniel has expressed a sliver of doubt about Josh’s guilt as well as about Iris’s innocence. Anger boils inside me and I push Daniel away.
‘For Christ’s sake, Daniel!’ I shout, then lower my voice a notch. These walls are thick, but I don’t want to risk waking up Margo and Olly even so. ‘Just for once it would be nice to know you’re on my side.’
I turn away from him, unhook my bra with one hand and grab my nightshirt with the other.
‘I am on your side,’ Daniel protests. ‘Carla, darling, I’ve always been on your side. I’m sorry. I’m jet-lagged and that didn’t come out the way I meant it.’
In bed, Daniel holds me and the tension eases from my shoulders a little as I inhale his clean, familiar smell. But long after he has fallen asleep, I lie awake, listening to his slow, regular breathing and staring blindly at the ceiling in the dark.
*
Sitting at the kitchen table, nursing my second coffee of the morning, I eyeball my laptop. I haven’t found the willpower to lift the lid and boot it up yet. When I’m alone in the house, I often work in the kitchen, wheeling in my office chair from the adjoining study. It’s lighter and warmer in here, for one thing, and the view is better – over rolling green fields, either side of the winding river Bray – although such beautiful scenery can sometimes be more distracting than inspiring. This morning, the rain is belting down and it’s misty, so I can’t blame my lack of concentration on the view. Nor can I take Cheddar out for a walk to clear my head.
I drain the dregs of my coffee, grimacing as it’s now cold, and decide to do a bit of housework. It’s always more motivating to knuckle down to some editing when the place is clean and tidy. Perhaps instead of clinging to a belief in karma, I should turn to Saint Expeditus. The patron saint, amongst other things, of those suffering from procrastination.
I clean the worktops and downstairs loo, dust the bookcases and shelves in the sitting room, hoover and wash the floors, Verdi’sRigolettoblaring out of my Bluetooth speaker. It’s strangely therapeutic doing such mindless tasks, and I start to feel better.
When I’ve finished downstairs, I lug the vacuum and the bucket of soapy water upstairs and get to work in the bathrooms and bedrooms. Olly’s room looks like a bombsite. There are crisp packets and mugs on the floor. With a groan, I throw the rubbish into his wastepaper basket and leave it at the top of the stairs to empty when I’ve finished up here. Next, I pick up his dirty clothes and stuff them into the overflowing laundry basket on the landing. I tidy his desk, make his bed and pull back the curtains. No matter how often I nag him to clear up after himself, he remains messy. He’s an adult now, unlikely to change, I suppose. I sigh in defeat.
I hardly ever go into Iris’s bedroom. She keeps her room spotless. But as I pass the closed door, I pause. Iris’s counsellor, Melanie, advised Iris to write a journal, to jot down her thoughts and feelings so they could work through them together in their sessions. I know Iris did this, at least at first – I bought her a Moleskine notebook to use as a diary and I saw her jotting things in it once or twice. Did she hold on to it? Is she still writing in it?
My heart trounces as a thought occurs to me. Could there be anything … private in her diary? Something ambiguous that could be used against her if it – assuming it exists – found its way into the wrong hands?
Without thinking through what I’m about to do, I open the door and walk into the room. The contrast with Olly’s room is remarkable. Everything in here is tidy and clean. It even smells fresh. How can you bring up two children the same way and have them turn out so differently? I rifle through the drawers of her desk. No diary. As I close the last drawer, I think I hear something and whirl round. Iris will never forgive me if she catches me in here. I’m doing this for her, but she’ll see it as an invasion of her privacy. And she’d be right.
But it’s my imagination. There’s no one there. I carry on, peering under ornaments and into jewellery boxes and rummaging through the wicker basket containing her socks and undies. I look through the books on her bookcase. Every few seconds, I check over my shoulder, anxious in case someone should come through the door and find me here.
Nothing. I find nothing. After a few minutes, I sink onto the bed. A wave of guilt washes over me. I’m snooping, searching for something that’s none of my business. I can’t believe I’m doing this.
But I have to protect my daughter. That’s what mothers do. My eyes are drawn to the drawer in her bedside table. Of course! If I wrote a diary, that’s where I’d keep it. I move to the end of the bed and open the drawer. It’s uncharacteristically messy and there’s lots of stuff inside, so I tip the contents onto the floor and sit on the carpet, my back against the bedframe, to sift through everything. Paracetamol; earplugs; a box of rings; a box of condoms – I wince at that; no mother likes to think of her daughter having sex – receipts; shop loyalty cards; an anti-stress ball, which rolls under the bed. There’s a small, velvety box and I open it to peek inside. It contains a necklace, which I recognize as a present from Josh. A fox pendant on a silver chain. It was part of a pair – Josh had the other one. Iris stopped wearing hers when they split up. She was irritated that he continued to wear his.
But there’s no diary. Perhaps Iris is one step ahead of me. She may already have got rid of it. Or maybe I haven’t looked in the right place.
With a sigh – a mixture of relief and frustration, I put everything back into the drawer, fit the drawer back into the bedside table and close it. Then I check the wardrobe. Under clothes, in pockets, even inside shoes and boots. At this point, I see how ludicrous I’m being. Thank God no one is at home to burst in on me. I’m not sure how I would explain this.
Standing up, I take Iris’s navy-blue pyjamas – I don’t know if they need a wash or not, but I’m about to put on a load of darks. I empty the laundry basket on the landing, separate the washing and wrap my arms around the bundle of dark clothes. I grab Olly’s wastepaper basket on my way past and make it downstairs to the utility room without dropping so much as a sock.
As usual, I check all the pockets as I load the washing machine. There’s always something that someone has forgotten – earbuds, bus pass, money, keys, you name it – even though I ask everyone to check before they put their dirty clothes in the laundry basket. I find a scrunched-up tissue in the pocket of Iris’s jeans. Iris still has a bit hay fever, even though the pollen season should be more or less over by now, and she’s a little snuffly at the moment.
But as my fingers close around it, I realize there’s something wrapped inside it. Standing up straight, I open the tissue. I left the music on when I went upstairs and the third and final act ofRigolettocrescendos to its climactic end. A resounding silence follows, as I stare in disbelief at what I’m holding in my hands. It’s a necklace. One of a pair. I’ve just put Iris’s half – the fox on the silver chain – back into the drawer of her bedside table. This one – the wolf pendant on a leather lace – belonged to Josh.
