‘I mean, when they find Josh, they’ll think it was you.’
Chapter 39
Carla
NOW
Iris won’t say any more and we set off on our journey home from the beach in silence. But I hear her words clearly, as though she’s repeating them out loud. Briefly, they transport me back to the terrasse of the Saunton Sands Hotel, where we were sitting at a table in the setting sun just a few minutes ago.Josh supplied the drugs.I only found that out afterwards. A long time afterwards.I glance at my daughter, sitting in the passenger’s seat. She gives me a taut smile, but her expression is impassive and I have no idea what she’s thinking. I hear my own words, too:Why didn’t you tell your dad and me about this at the time? Why didn’t you tell us Josh had been dealing drugs?
Another question is pinwheeling around my brain. I think it might actually be the answer to the questions that Iris ignored. But the words don’t make it past my lips, although they’re screaming in my head:Did Olly know?
Iris puts on the music. It’s some sort of angry hip-hop, which I usually hate, but right now it helps to drown out my nagging suspicions.
It’s relatively flat for the first few miles, but as soon as we reach a steep hill, I realize Iris’s car is still playing up. It just doesn’t seem to have enough energy to make it to the top. I have my foot to the floor, in first gear, and the car slows to an alarming snail’s pace. The driver in the car behind me is riding my bumper, so I flick on the hazards and he backs off.
Once we’re on a downhill stretch, Iris rings Daniel with my phone to tell him we’re on our way home. He says he’ll have dinner ready. I describe the problem with Iris’s Twingo. Without thinking, I tell him Iris was too scared to drive it home, which earns me a black look from the passenger’s seat.
‘Hmm. It’s not tyre pressure – I checked the tyres not long ago,’ Daniel says. ‘Maybe the spark plugs? We’ll have to take it in to the garage.’
I sigh. Daniel has a busy week ahead – he’s away for three days – and I have another deadline.
Daniel seems to read my mind. ‘Perhaps Olly can take it in next week, make himself useful.’
I bristle at my partner’s thinly veiled criticism of my son, but he’s got a point. Olly does very little to help out. And it’s the October half-term next week, so the kids are off school. ‘I’ll ring the garage on Monday and ask when they can take a look at it,’ I say.
After the phone call to Daniel, Iris leaves the music off and there’s nothing to act as a buffer for my thoughts. I sift through my earlier conversation with Iris again, trying to read between the lines of what she said and work out what she didn’t say. According to Ash, Olly said Liv was raped by some guy at a party. Iris has just told me it was Josh’s eighteenth birthday party. When she told me that it was Josh who supplied the drugs, she hesitated, as if she was going to say something else, then thought better of it.Josh…he…er…supplied the drugs. Why am I so sure there’s something Iris didn’t tell me?
And then it hits me like a blow to the stomach.
‘Iris,’ I say. She grunts. ‘Was it Josh who drugged Liv? Is that what happened? Did Josh—’
Iris bursts into tears. I turn towards her, alarmed. ‘Oh, Iris, don’t cry. I didn’t mean to make you cry,’ I say. ‘Sweetie, I just want to help. I want to protect you.’ I expect her to make a snide remark, to point out that I’ve failed – miserably – to protect her until now. But she doesn’t. ‘I think it might be time to tell me the whole story,’ I say gently.
We’re heading towards Holtleigh along a narrow lane with tufts of grass sprouting up in the middle. There’s a car coming the other way, so I pull into a lay-by to allow it to pass. I stay in the lay-by, even after the other car has gone, and turn to Iris, looking at her questioningly.
It comes out as a whisper. ‘Yes,’ she admits.
‘Josh drugged Liv?’
‘Yes,’ she repeats.
‘Did he … did he …?’
‘Yes, he was the one who raped her, if that’s what you’re asking.’
Iris is crying again. I reach out and put my arm around her shoulders. We stay there for a while, in the lay-by, until Iris is all cried out. She finds a pocket pack of tissues in the glove box and blows her nose loudly.
At home, I go through the motions. I set the table, listen to Margo babbling away, tell Daniel that dinner smells great. I sit at the dinner table, forcing myself to eat and watching as Iris does the same. I glance from Olly to Iris and back again. Iris seems to be doing the same as me. Putting on a brave face, pretending everything is fine. Inside, I’m reeling from shock.
I try to confine my suspicions to a corner of my mind for the rest of the evening, but as soon as I go to bed, they clamour for my undivided attention. My first thought when Iris told me that Josh had been selling drugs to his classmates was that someone else might have had a motive to kill him. Now I know there’s more to it than that. Josh wrecked Iris’s life, then ruined Liv’s. The more I think about it, the more I believe my daughter is innocent after all.
And the more I believe my son is guilty.
*
‘Carla, Harry Tomlinson was arrested for Josh’s murder,’ Ash points out. I thought it would do me good to talk to Ash on the phone, but for once, his gentle, deep voice does nothing to soothe me. ‘He’s dead. It’s over. You have to let this go. It’s time to move on.’
I burst into tears. I can’t help it. I’ve had hardly any sleep, I have a looming deadline and I’ve added more things to my to-do list than I’ve crossed off. I just don’t have the bandwidth to deal with any of this. I certainly can’t cope with the mental torture my brain seems hellbent on putting me through.
