They came home that day quiet. I’d made them a big joint of roast beef, Yorkshire puddings, roast potatoes, parsnip, spring cabbage, carrots, gravy, even home-made horseradish sauce. All of this was mainly to keep myself occupied for the hours that the house was empty. But when they got home, none of them wanted to eat. The three of them sat at the kitchen table talking, trying to make sense of it, while I carved and dished up. It was as though someone had turned their positivity off at the mains. They were no longer talking about what they could do to help the legal team that Leonard had put together. They were talking about how they could come to terms with what they’d seen.
I tried to understand them. I tried to buoy them up again, tell them that this moping around wasn’t going to do Leonard any good. I tried to tell them that they should eat something, that it would help, it would make them all feel better.
Stephen shouted something at me, something about how I couldn’t make it alright, not this. That a roast dinner wasn’t going to suddenly make everything better.
Janet’s husband came to collect her. He was supposed to be coming for dinner, but they both left straight away and went home. The boys sat in the kitchen and I sat in the dining room on my own, at the table laid for six (I laid Leonard’s place at the head of the table every day, whether he was here to eat or not). The beef was cooked to perfection and every mouthful tasted of anger. Fury at their failure to support their father in his hour of greatest need; resentment at their refusal to eat the meal I’d spent the whole day cooking for them.
When I’d finished I went back through to the kitchen. They’d been talking, but they fell silent when I came in.
‘What about pudding?’ I said, as cheerily as I could manage. ‘I made a trifle, would you like some of that?’
Stephen stood up abruptly, his chair scraping noisily against the terracotta tiles. He pushed past without even looking at me and left the room.
‘What about you, Adrian? Could you manage some trifle?’
‘No, Mum,’ he said.
I sat down next to him and put my hand over his. There were tears running down his cheeks. The sight of my grown son in tears affected me more than any of it.
‘It’s alright,’ I said, moving my hand to his shoulder. ‘It’ll be alright, my darling! They’ll see that it’s all been a horrible mistake and then they’ll let him come home. And we can all get back to how we were.’
‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Those pictures…’
‘I know, I know. They must have been dreadful for you to see. But they were hidden on his computer, and…’
‘He was
in
them, Mum. Dad was in some of the pictures.’
‘But they can do things with pictures now, can’t they? They can do airbrushing, or whatever it’s called. They can manipulate – ’
‘It was him, Mum. If you’d seen it…’
I still didn’t believe it.
They didn’t go back to the court after that. I was there on my own the next day, and for the remaining two days of the trial. I imagined the press were reporting on every aspect of the case, given Leonard’s position, but I deliberately avoided the newspapers; I didn’t turn on the television when I came home.
When he was convicted, I stood up in the court and shouted ‘NO!’ as loudly as I could. I was asked to leave. The next day he was sentenced.
The trial was very costly for me. It destroyed my marriage, because, even though I’d stood by him at every stage, once he was convicted Leonard refused to see me. He didn’t send me a visiting order and even when I applied directly to the prison I was told that the prisoner was under no obligation to see anyone he did not wish to.
Stephen didn’t come round any more. I spoke to Ina on the phone once or twice, but they never came round for Sunday dinner after that. I phoned up and asked if I could see the girls, if I could take them out somewhere. Ina made excuses. When I pressed her, she said that Stephen did not want the girls to see me until they were much older. I didn’t understand this at all. It was Leonard who was accused of those terrible things, not I. But Stephen said I must have known. That I had covered up for him.
I knew no such thing. I still didn’t believe it could be true. They had all denied him, all abandoned him.
Adrian took Diane and Joshy back to Australia and, although he phoned me once in a while, when I rang them there was never a reply. His calls grew less frequent as the months and years passed.
Things had also changed between Janet and me. I called her every so often for a chat, and it was an unspoken rule between us that we would not discuss Leonard. We talked about the children, about politics. But even those calls grew less frequent. She was cold towards me, as though my cheeriness disgusted her.
I went out, although less frequently. I found I could not trust my friends, after one of them gave an ‘exclusive’ interview with a daily newspaper and suddenly the whole thing was brought up again.
I went occasionally to the university to do a yoga class, but when the block of sessions I’d booked came to an end I didn’t renew. There was no point. I’d reached the end. And so I went back to the house, the wonderful house that had nurtured us, kept us all safe, seen my children grow into strong men and protected me in those lonely months when the wolves were at the door, and I shut myself in and closed my eyes, and I waited.
Sam was supposed to be giving me a lift to work when his mobile rang. I was already about half an hour late, but instead of asking me to answer it, he pulled over into a bus stop and accepted the call. ‘Hello? … No worries, what’s happened?’ There was a long pause during which I could hear a muffled voice ranting about something in Sam’s ear.
It was Monday, and it was raining, and despite myself I was still living at Keats Road. I had gone home with Sam briefly yesterday evening, the cat in a basket. The house had been stale and hostile, as though it was pissed off that I’d left. I stood in the living room and looked around, while Sam undid the cat basket. She’d leapt out, bolted for the kitchen and shot straight through the door, which he’d opened to let in some fresh air.
We went outside to look for her. We shook a box of cat biscuits and called her. After that I started to get a bit worried.
Sam made cups of peppermint tea for us both, since I didn’t have any milk. We sat at the kitchen table with the back door open in the hope that the cat would come in of her own accord once she realised she was home.
‘I wish you’d think again about this,’ Sam said.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘About being here, on your own.’
I sipped my tea, even though it was scalding hot. ‘I just think it’s a bit weird, moving in with a family of complete strangers. Don’t you think it’s weird?’
He looked at me with a surprised expression, then looked away. ‘No, I don’t think it’s weird.’
‘Really?’
‘We’re just helping out, that’s all.’
‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful… but it’s just… I’ve been so rude to you. Haven’t I?’ I gave up, then, feeling awkward.
‘You haven’t been rude. Not that I’ve noticed.’
‘I mean in the hospital when my mum was ill. I know you were trying to help. I just thought it was a bit strange that you turned up. It was like you were stalking me.’
He coughed over his tea. ‘I did explain, I was there because of that body.’
‘Not the second time.’
‘No, but you can hardly call it stalking when I came to find you
once
to check you were OK.’
‘Once, and then you came to my house because I wasn’t answering my phone.’
He didn’t reply, and I remembered I was trying to apologise and had instead accused him of being a weirdo and a stalker. I backtracked. ‘Although… you did kind of save my life…’
‘Yep,’ he said, his tone of voice suggesting he was starting to wish he hadn’t bothered.
‘And I am grateful. Really. For everything. And sorry, for being such a… pain.’
He was quiet again. He wasn’t about to deny it.
‘What was your mum like?’ I asked Sam, doing my usual trick of changing the subject to avoid awkwardness and instantly making everything a hundred times worse.
‘She was lovely,’ he said. ‘I still miss her.’
‘Was it hard for you, when your dad started a relationship with Irene?’
He smiled over his tea, the discomfort of our previous exchange apparently forgotten.
‘No, it wasn’t like that. I think me and Mum engineered it, to be honest.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She didn’t like any of the carers she had until I found Irene. She wasn’t especially fond of Irene either – too bossy, she said – but she let her stay. I think she chose her not because she liked her as a carer, but because she could see that she got on with Dad. And with me.’
‘I like her. She’s been so kind.’
I watched Sam drinking his tea, wondering why he looked so sad. ‘Did I say something wrong?’ I asked.
‘No. I was just remembering my mum. That’s all. I miss her. You must miss your mum, too…’
‘Yes,’ I said.
I missed being a daughter, I thought, more than anything. I missed being useful to someone. Being important.
An hour later, while we were sitting discussing the man they’d arrested, and what he might be like, Sam’s phone had beeped with a text message. It was Irene, to let us know that the cat had just turned up back at Keats Road. After that, with the heavy weight of inevitability resting on my shoulders, I’d picked up my untouched holdall full of the clothes that Irene had washed and ironed, even though I’d insisted I’d be fine to do it myself, and we’d gone back to the car. Clearly the cat and I weren’t quite ready to go home after all.
Sam was still talking, parked in the bus stop. When he was finally able to interrupt the tinny voice I could just hear from his phone, he said, ‘That’s really interesting. Have you got the address?’
He pulled a ballpoint pen from the driver’s side door pocket and selected a parking receipt from the pile in the central console, scribbling something on the back of it while the muffled voice continued.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’m on it. I’ll let you know. Ring you later. OK. Bye.’
He turned to me, his eyes sparkling again. ‘Guess what?’
I was still a bit pissed off with him for making me even later for work, however reluctant I was to go back to looking at criminal damage and sex offenders, but now I was curious with it.
‘No idea. What?’
‘One of my contacts tells me that a woman phoned in just now to report that her housemate went into town with friends from work on Friday night and hasn’t been seen since.’
I frowned at him. ‘And?’
‘The woman’s name is Audrey Madison.’
‘Is that name supposed to mean something to me?’
‘You obviously haven’t been rooting around Facebook, have you?’
‘I’m not on Facebook.’
‘You should be,’ he said, pulling the car round in a wide U-turn and heading back towards the town centre. ‘It’s a fantastic research tool. Audrey Madison is the former girlfriend of one Vaughn Bradstock. Still not ringing any bells?’
I shook my head. His cryptic delayed reveal was getting on my nerves.
‘He has a few friends on Facebook, unlike Mr Colin Friedland, who has only one: Vaughn Bradstock. In other words, the ex-girlfriend of Colin’s one and only mate has gone missing.’
I stared at him.
‘Colin’s your man, isn’t he? The one you identified by phone records?’
‘How the hell did you know that?’
He smiled.
‘I keep telling you you’re not my only source of information, Annabel. In fact, you’re the crappest source I’ve ever had, to tell you the truth.’
‘Here he is,’ Sam said, as the black cab stopped outside Colin Friedland’s address.
The house was large, detached, set back from the road a little and on a slope above it. It was an old house, Edwardian by the look of it, likely to be worth a fortune. The search teams would have been through it from top to bottom, and, if they’d found anything at all, Colin would not have been released.
We’d come here by car and waited, parked about a hundred and fifty yards away from the big house in which, according to the edited electoral register, Colin lived all by himself.
‘I still don’t know what you’re hoping to achieve by this,’ I said.
‘I don’t know either,’ he said. ‘I just don’t trust him. Do you?’
‘I need to get to work, Sam,’ I said. I’d been trying to call Frosty, trying to call the DCI, trying every number I could think of and leaving voicemail messages all over the place, but I hadn’t managed to get hold of anyone yet. The thought of Audrey Madison – whoever she was – missing for the whole weekend was developing an uncomfortable bubble of urgency inside my chest.
Down the street, a figure got out of the taxi and leaned in through the window to pay. He looked as if he was counting out coins.
‘Is that him?’ Sam asked.
‘Yes.’
The man who had been my angel turned away from the cab and towards us, seemed to look straight at us. Then he went towards the big villa, opened the gate and went up the path and out of our line of sight.
They’d let him go.
The house is cold, the vegetables in the pan smelling faintly rotten. I tip the water out of the saucepan and throw the vegetables in the bin. The refrigerator smells worse, and to my intense disappointment I have to throw away the salmon as well. And then of course I have to take the bag outside to the wheelie bin to dispose of it properly.
They’ve been in here, although nothing appears to be out of place. The whole house smells of them and their boots, trampling over my carpets and disturbing the ghosts. I will make sure I get some sort of compensation when all this is finished with. They didn’t interview me – they went for humiliation and disrespect. I deserve better than that. I deserve their thanks.
I spend several minutes walking from room to room, inspecting the house as though I’ve been away from it for weeks, not just a few hours.