Forget Me Not (26 page)

‘I understand,’ I say.

The bone-china teacup, feather light, feels strangely heavy in my hands and I have to use all of my energy to lift it to my lips.

‘We don’t have enough evidence to determine Vivien’s state of mind, her intention when she took the overdose.’

‘You’re saying it could have been an accident? That she didn’t mean to kill herself?’

‘We simply don’t know.’

To my relief, DS Cole doesn’t raise the issue of the missing medicine packaging. Ben told me that they assume Vivien took the pills while she was in the park. That she disposed of the empty packaging there. DS Cole is young and idealistic. I’m guessing she has no children of her own. Talking to a parent about the death of their child isn’t a job one ever gets used to, and I think the young detective has done well. She never allows herself to become emotional, she retains a certain professional detachment, but at the same time she never comes across as uncaring.

I think she does care. And though we’ve met several times now, and she is not my friend or my confidante, sometimes I wish she was both. I long to confess. But that would not help Lexi. So instead, I concentrate on holding the lid of the teapot in place as I top up her tea.

‘I also wanted to reassure you about the head injury,’ DS Cole says. ‘We had some concerns initially, but we now think the most likely explanation is that Vivien fell and hit her head against the side of the bath, when she lost consciousness.’

I remember holding Vivien and stroking her fontanelle.

I remember lifting her up, and then smashing her head against the side of the bath. I was in a panic. I wanted to do something, anything, to hide what Lexi had done. I wanted it to seem as if someone else was with Vivien when she died, as though there was someone else who wanted to hurt her.

I will never be able to explain what I did when I found her body. I acted on instinct, not logic. I was consumed with grief and with guilt. I had a primitive urge to protect Lexi. Perhaps DS Cole would see what I did as a crime. I don’t know. I’m not proud that I’ve lied to DS Cole, or that I seem to have got away with it. I’m not proud that I left Vivien lying alone, in that bathroom.

But if I have saved Lexi from a lifetime of suffering, then I might have done something good.

My right hand is a little unsteady as I replace my cup in the saucer.

DS Cole looks thoughtful as she sips her tea. I think she understands me. ‘There is one more thing,’ she says. ‘I thought you’d like to know what happened to Vivien’s missing earrings.’

‘You found them?’

‘Yes. The waitress who works in the café at Regent’s Park has come forward with more information. She wasn’t entirely honest with us in her first interview.’

As I fold my hands in my lap, I notice that the bruises on the back of my left hand have all but disappeared. The headaches too are less frequent.

‘This woman, Oksana, is from the Ukraine. She’s been in the UK for three years, and she left her child behind, with her mother. She’s the breadwinner and she sends money home to her family. She said that she and Vivien would talk sometimes, and that she’d told Vivien about her daughter. On the morning she died, Vivien came in to the café and gave Oksana a pair of extremely valuable diamond earrings. She told Oksana she wanted her to have them, to sell them, so she’d have enough money to bring her daughter over here to live with her.’

I don’t wipe away my tears. I enjoy the feel of them against my dry skin.

‘Vivien wrote her a note, on a serviette, saying the earrings were a gift. We believe Oksana is telling the truth.’

‘Will she be allowed to keep them?’

‘That’s up to Ben. I’ve got a feeling he’ll say yes.’

DS Cole picks up her bag and opens it. She pulls out a tissue and reaches over to hand it to me. I pat my cheeks dry.

‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘It’s so kind of you to come and tell me in person.’

DS Cole nods. She leans forward to put her teacup down onto the tray, then she crosses her legs and relaxes back into the chair. She waits, as though she knows there is something more I need to ask.

‘I do have one more question,’ I say.

‘Go ahead.’

‘Did they ever catch the person who killed your sister?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did this person go to prison?’

‘Yes.’

‘And did that help you, with your heartache?’

‘No,’ she says. ‘Not with that.’

She is very still as she speaks. I recognize that stillness, the lack of expression. It’s a stillness I too have perfected, as though if I keep my body quite still, I can stop the pain, keep it buried in my core.

‘We have to be careful,’ I say, ‘not to allow ourselves to become prisoners of grief. Do you agree?’

‘I do.’ She looks directly at me with those clear green eyes and she does not flinch.

‘It might sound strange,’ I say, ‘but I’m going to miss talking to you.’

DS Cole smiles, as though she feels the same way.

‘Thank you for the tea,’ she says. And then she rises from the armchair in one fluid, easy motion.

When she is gone, I stand alone in my living room. Vivien’s wedding photograph is still on the mantelpiece and next to it, Lexi’s latest school photograph. It’s stuffy in here. The windows are shut and the net curtains are drawn. This flat, where I’ve lived for so long, has begun to feel alien to me, while Blackthorn Road feels increasingly like home. It turns out Cleo was right. I do like being on the inside.

Lexi and I are holding hands. This graveyard is a peaceful place, a square of green grass enclosed by an old stone wall. Vivien’s headstone is beautiful; Ben chose a white marble that glows in the sunshine. Bluebells have begun to spring up around the wooden benches.

Lexi has sprung up, too. She’s grown taller since her mother’s death; all of the hems of her trousers have had to be let down. She’s flourished in these past few months, like a plant deprived of water and sunshine in a too-small container that now basks, replanted in a large and sunny corner of the garden.

I am holding a bouquet of flowers that Lexi and I made together, in the kitchen of the house on Blackthorn Road. I watched over her as she used scissors to trim the stems of the gardenias. When she had finished, I added forget-me-nots to our arrangement. The gardenias I bought, but the forget-me-nots grow in Vivien’s garden. I noticed them one spring morning, as I stood in the kitchen, preparing Lexi’s breakfast: bright patches of violet blue emerging from between the cracks in the wall, on either side of the lion’s head.

Alexandra reaches over and prises the bouquet from my fingers. She runs forward to her mother’s grave and kneels down to arrange the stems. Her tongue pushes at the side of her cheek and she is deep in concentration. When she has finished, she begins to trace the gold lettering:
Vivien Kaye, beloved wife, mother and daughter.
The brief time between the dates of her birth and death speaks for itself.

I feel a shifting of air, a crackling, as Isaac walks up behind me.

Lexi is on her knees, tracing the years of her mother’s life. Her hair shines coppery in the sun. I have let it grow long and beautiful. It is her lion’s mane, her courage.

I feel the pressure of Isaac’s hand on my waist as I lean back into him. Happiness flutters behind my ribcage, but at the same time, there is also a soft stirring of apprehension. I’m used to this sensation. It has become my constant companion.

I don’t know what my granddaughter is thinking, as she traces the inscription on her mother’s grave. Nor do I know what she intended, the day her mother died. She has never spoken about what she did, or what I found, hidden underneath her quilt.

I am always careful to make sure that any medicine in the house on Blackthorn Road is securely locked away. We do not speak of what happens at night.

Lexi comes back to me. She runs and throws herself at me and she buries her head and her soft curls in my middle. I hold her and rub her back.

Then we say goodbye to Vivien, once again.

Isaac takes us for hot chocolate, with marshmallows and cream on top.

This is our ritual.

It has been my privilege to work with my editor, Harriet Bourton, on this story. Harriet helped me through several drafts, challenging and encouraging in equal measure and at all the right moments. Harriet accepts only the writer’s best.

Beth Kruszynskyj has worked side by side with Harriet for much of this process and I am most grateful for all of her enthusiasm and assistance. My thanks go to the entire team at Transworld.

My agent, Madeleine Milburn, continues to support me with expert advice and guidance. Thanks also to Cara Lee Simpson and all at the Madeleine Milburn Literary, TV & Film Agency.

A number of experts gave generously of their time while I was writing this novel. Malcolm Fried, John Hawkins, Steve Andrews and Wendy Wong spent several hours talking to me while I researched the background to the book. Callum Sutherland explained police procedures and pointed me to articles about forensic investigation. Sam Lewis, the finest GP I know, and also my brother, helped with aspects of toxicology and the practicalities of finding a dead body. Professor Michael Patton kindly answered my questions about genetics. Ultimately though, this is work of fiction and any errors are mine alone.

Thanks as always to Jake and Joseph for their patience and for putting up with less attention than they deserve while I am distracted and in another world entirely. And finally, I’m so grateful to Rachel Tucker, Sarah Fisher and Emma Smith for all their support.

At first, she ignored the doorbell.

The sound rang out, echoing through the entrance hall, crashing through into the living room and clattering and bouncing inside her skull.

She stood at the window looking out at her garden, at a world that blazed white. A layer of snow coated the ground and the tangled arms of the trees and the Chiltern Hills beyond. It looks like Narnia, she thought, as though Aslan might stride out from the forest at any moment.

The quiet was unnatural. Unnerving.

The snow had begun to fall at nine o’clock that morning. The newspapers carried warnings:
A Wall of Snow
. Airports cancelled flights. Her husband had left for work as usual.

The doorbell rang again. Longer, louder and more insistent.

She felt exposed, in front of the wall of windows stretching across the back of the house. Her home was a white concrete edifice, a modernist triumph of sharp angles and tall windows. Nobody should be able to get past the entrance to the driveway without the intruder alarm sounding an ear-splitting warning. And yet someone had. The snow was the problem: it must have piled up so high that it had covered the infra-red eye of the sensor.

She pulled at the neck of her jumper. It was too tight and her throat itched. Her mouth was dry and her palms moist. It was three o’clock and darkness would come soon. Her husband would not be coming home. Inches of snow had turned to ice, had made the steep approach impossible.

She checked the locks on the patio doors. A draught whistled around the edges of the black steel doorframe, as if the cold was trying to force its way inside. The house was Grade II listed, nothing could be done, the doors and the windows could not be changed. She tested the locks once more and then pulled the heavy drapes closed.

The doorbell rang again. And again.

She paced the living room. A half-empty bottle of wine stood open on the coffee table. She breathed. In for three, out for three. She pressed her hands against her ears.

A normal person would go to the front door and see who was there.

Stella walked through to the large square entrance hall. A chandelier with myriad round glass discs spiralled down above the staircase. She flicked a switch and light bounced off the pale-grey walls and shimmered, everywhere, too bright. She was disoriented, as though she had stepped inside a hall of mirrors and could not get her bearings. She would not panic. Nobody had ever tried to harm her at Hilltop. People intending to do harm did not announce themselves, or wait to be invited inside. But she could not think of a reason why someone would ring her doorbell in the middle of a snowstorm.

She checked the monitor mounted on the wall next to the front door. A young woman was outside. She stood on the doorstep, her arms wrapped around her chest, shifting from one foot to the other. A beanie hat was pulled down low over her long fair hair. A short leather jacket, covered in studs and zips, barely covered her midriff.

Stella lifted the handset. ‘Yes?’ she said.

‘I’m freezing. Can I come inside?’ Snowflakes churned around her as she shouted at the intercom. She shivered with cold and she didn’t look like much of a threat. ‘Could I use your phone?’

She looked up into the camera. Her face was lovely on the screen, with cat-like eyes and high cheekbones.

‘I’m sorry,’ Stella said. ‘No. Try one of the neighbours.’ She placed the receiver back on to the cradle.