‘Thank you. I feel so much better now I’m away from that house, from Roger, from that pretence of a life. I feel as if anything is possible. Do you know what I mean?’
Jessie nodded. ‘What happened with Zoe, Carolynn?’ she murmured, her voice neutral, knowing that Carolynn would be hyper-attuned to every nuance of her tone.
‘Let’s not talk about that now. We’re having such fun.’
‘Friends talk to each other, share stuff.’
Carolynn didn’t reply. She reached to smooth Jessie’s hair back from her face, tuck it behind her ears. Jessie dug her incisor into the delicate inside of her lip to stop herself from slapping Carolynn’s hand away.
‘I didn’t like her,’ Carolynn said suddenly.
‘Huh?’
‘My daughter. Zoe. I didn’t like her.’
‘Not every parent likes their child,’ Jessie murmured.
‘She wasn’t ours, actually. Roger and I adopted her. We couldn’t have children of our own, not even with IVF.’
I know, Jessie wanted to yell, right into Carolynn’s face. So she’d been right. Had Marilyn checked the DNA database yet, confirmed what she’d told him? What was he doing now? Thinking now? Where was he?
Carolynn’s hand moved to cup Jessie’s chin, lifting her face to the overhead lights. The electric suit was hissing and snapping, tightening around her throat, making it hard to breathe. She bit harder into her lip, tasting copper, trying to anaesthetize the suit with self-inflicted pain.
‘Zoe was stupid and irritating. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, given where she came from, but—’ Carolynn broke off, and gave a light laugh that made Jessie shiver. ‘But I came from the same background and look at me: I’m clever. I just expected that she would be the same, that I would be able to make her the same as me.’
‘Was it an accident?’
Carolynn looked confused. ‘An accident?’
‘On the beach, with Zoe. When she died.’
Carolynn straightened. She looked shocked. ‘No, no, no, you’ve got it all wrong, Jessie.’ There was a hard edge to her tone. ‘I wasn’t on the beach when Zoe died – I didn’t kill her. I found her, but I didn’t kill her.’
Jessie nodded. She didn’t believe a word the woman was saying, but she couldn’t afford to push further. Ahmose, not the truth, had to be her priority now. It was Marilyn’s job, not hers, to find out the truth. She had given him enough. She had to focus on what was important to her, and that was the people she loved. It was too late for Zoe, too late for Jodie.
‘Of course I believe you. It’s past history, anyway, and you’ve already been through too much.’ Her voice sounded like that of a robotic implant. ‘Let’s talk about something else.’
She still felt dizzy and sick – really sick. It was a struggle to concentrate, to form coherent thoughts. Leaning forward, she put her head in her hands.
‘Are you OK, Jessie?’ she heard Carolynn say. ‘You don’t look too good.’
‘I feel a bit sick. Silly of me not to have had any lunch.’ She swayed slightly as she stood and reached to the countertop to steady herself. ‘The edge of the bath is too low. You’re having to bend. Let me grab the chair from the bedroom.’
Holding on to the countertop, she shifted around Carolynn and walked slowly to the door. She wobbled, her shoulder banging against the doorjamb as she stepped into the bedroom.
When she returned with the chair, Carolynn had her back to the door, was painting eyeshadow colours on to her wrist, holding her arm up to the light to compare them. Jessie swayed as she planted the chair by the door, snatched at its back to stop herself from falling. She couldn’t focus properly as she reached for the bathroom door handle and began to ease the door closed, making no sound, no sudden jerky movements that might snag Carolynn’s peripheral vision in the bathroom mirror. Tilting the chair, she jammed its back under the door handle, kicked the two back legs hard to wedge them securely into the thick pile carpet.
No sound from inside the bathroom, then a tentative, ‘Jessie?’
She didn’t answer. The chair was solid, the carpet anchoring it deep, but she had no idea how long it would hold. Reeling across the bedroom, she yanked open the cupboard and staggered backwards, almost losing her footing. No Ahmose. Lurching across the landing, she checked the spare bedroom. Empty also.
As she ducked back on to the landing and surged towards the stairs, she heard a roar of fury and something heavy slammed against the bathroom door. Her foot found space where she had been expecting solid floor – I must have misjudged the stair, she realized in the split second before she fell. Cartwheeling down the stairs, ricocheting off the wall, smashing her head against the banister, the snap audible as she put her arm out in a vain attempt to break her fall.
She lay at the bottom of the stairs creased up in agony and heard wood splinter.
90
Without making eye contact with the broken young woman in front of him, who would break so many more times over when she discovered exactly who she had murdered two years ago, Marilyn cuffed her wrists together in one swift, practised movement. Laying a firm hand on her back, feeling the tense, elevated beat of her heart against his palm, he shepherded her, as her heels clack-clacked down the path to the road. DC Cara was waiting in the driver’s seat of the first marked car, keeping the engine running as Marilyn had instructed him to, aware that the situation – this arrest for child murder in such an incendiary case – in this small, claustrophobic cul-de-sac of run-down council flats, just one narrow road in and
