Freya pulled at a cotton shirt on a wooden hanger. Lilac. She plunged her fingers into the pocket.
A white shirt. Then a blue. Then another white. She didn’t know what she was looking for. Just knew that she had spent her childhood smothered in secrets, always knowing that there are questions you don’t ask, places you don’t go. You just had to take daddy’s word for it. You just had to let him lie to you, even if you knew it was a lie.
Freya had kept her coat on as she’d stood in the kitchen, watching him, pulling the red padded material tighter around her, colder now in their home where Victorian radiators pumped out heat than she had been in the snow. Her father wore a navy cashmere sweater, white shirt collar, blue jeans. No coat. The snow littered his shoulders. Freya couldn’t hear what it was he said. But then she didn’t really need to. The tightness of his neck and the way his fingers clenched up tight into baby fists was enough.
She had felt a sinking in her insides. Plunging déjà vu.
Freya pulled at the trousers, neatly lined like toast slices in a rack, lightly done, medium, burnt, pulled the fabric towards her, dipping her hands into pocket after pocket.
Her father’s right arm had dropped, pulling the phone away from his ear, staring at it. A long pause, and then his head had sunk.
He had turned then, facing back towards the house, eyes red like he had been crying.
Hangers scraping on the rail, Freya worked faster, her head swimming.
Freya had wondered distantly what she would do, as her father turned towards her, phone dangling helplessly in his fingers. Turn and walk away. Pretend she hadn’t seen. Do what her mother would do. But her feet had planted themselves against the travertine tiles, and then, suddenly, it had been too late. A lightning fast flash of emotion flying across her father’s face, footsteps frozen on the snowy ground, and then an effortful smile as he pushed open the patio door, voice far, far too loud.
“Hiya love. I didn’t know you were home.”
There was a way these things worked. They all knew it by now. You lowered your head, gave a light, ignorant smile, started on with some nonsense about the weather or the rugby or something else that no-one cared about. Anything to avoid talking about what was there in front of them.
“That was work.” His words had been too fast, tumbling one after the other, gaze flitting across the kitchen counter, to the clock, to the radio, anything to avoid looking at her. “It was…it was work.”
Strange, Freya had thought. He’s normally a better liar than that.
Then there was nothing left. The hangers shoved roughly from one side to the other, wardrobe gaping, no secrets to tell. Nausea welled. Freya sat down hard on the carpeted floor. What had she been looking for? What had she hoped to find? There was nothing that could make this right, nothing that could take this away. There were no answers waiting for her inside the wardrobe, just the paltry remnants of her father’s life. Freya’s hands begin to shake. She leaned her head back against the bed. Could feel it, the sudden upswell of grief waiting there, just beneath the surface.
Was it possible? Could they be wrong? Could it have been just an accident after all? The phone call in the garden just work, just like he had said? And her, so conditioned to believe her father a liar, that she saw lies when there was only the truth.
Freya closed her eyes. Tried to breathe.
What was going on with your father?
Chapter 25
Jim – Monday, 19th March – 12.12pm
Jim’s footsteps crunched deafeningly loud on compacted snow. There was a swish at his back, cars hurrying through slush up on the main road. But the cul-de-sac was quiet. Just him, the crunching snow and the falling light. He kept his head down. Snowflakes falling steadily into a thick curtain, creeping their way beneath his collar, down his back. The cold jarred him. Reminded him that he was awake, that all of this was real.
“Drop me off here, Tom.” Jim hadn’t looked at him when he said it. Had waved with a hand that felt ridiculously heavy now.
“I can take you to the door. If you want.”
He could feel Tom looking at him. Assessing. A dim memory of what it was like to be that side of the car rather than this. Wished like hell that he was.
“Could do with the walk.”
He felt rather than saw Tom nod. Understanding. Had gotten out of the car slowly, an old man now. A nod to Tom. Had closed the car door carefully. Turned to face the snow.
Libby was in front of him. Although that was impossible in any practical sense, still there she was. His daughter. Laying dead on a trolley.
Jim blinked, rubbed at his eyes. The snow stung. Everyone had their lights on, even though it was early, only just noon, the snow plunging them into a pre-emptive night. Life going on beyond the windows, undented by tragedy. He paused for a moment, watching as the guy from number 9, the one he had always referred to as a bit of a prick, played with his kids. Jim stood, watching. Wished like hell that he could be that prick.
Jim turned, looked along the road to where his house stood. He squinted through the snow. His house, the one right up on the end, double fronted with the large drive, the only one without the lights on.
Jim couldn’t remember how many bodies he had seen. An occupational hazard, one blending very much into another over the years. By the end you didn’t really look at them. Not as bodies anyway. Certainly not as people. They were evidence. A series of clues, the answers to the questions you had to know how to ask.
Jim remembered his first. Everyone did. A little old lady, living alone. Had slipped on her way to the toilet, hit her head. Had been found the following morning. He remembered how it had jarred him, standing in the room with death, how fragile it had all felt.
But you couldn’t live like that, could you? Not doing what he did. So you became invincible. Pretended to yourself that this was something that happened to other people. Until the day that it happened to you.
He was walking slowly. Inching towards the house, like he was afraid of breaking a hip. Glanced up. Six houses left. Far enough to wipe the vision of his dead daughter from in front of his eyes? Far enough to learn to breathe again, to compose his face, so that when his wife opened the door she wouldn’t see this burning, pulsing knot of pain?
He slowed down a little more.
Funny thing was, now that he thought about it, he didn’t want to stop seeing Libby lying there like that. Was that weird? He didn’t know. All of the victims over the years, he’d never once thought to ask. Was it normal to want to cling to this? Your last, precious moments with your little girl. Was it normal that when they’d pulled the curtain back, even though he’d steeled himself for it, and even though it was horrific, his heart had still swelled up fit to bursting, the way it had every time he looked at her ever since she was the tiniest of babies with a grip like a professional arm wrestler.
He stopped. Breathe. Breathe. Looked up into the falling snow.
You weren’t supposed to have favourites when it came to your kids. He didn’t know much about much, but of that he was fairly sure. You’re supposed to love them both equally.
Sometimes he justified it to himself, saying that he was young when Ethan had come along. That he’d been busy trying to establish a career, support a young family. Hadn’t been there as much because he couldn’t be, not because he hadn’t wanted to. The truth of the matter was that Ethan had scared him. Ridiculous. A grown man scared of a tiny child. But it had been the truth. He hadn’t known what to do with him. And as he had grown, it had become apparent, to Jim at least, that his son had inherited from him the worst of his qualities – a tendency towards laziness, an unwillingness to listen. And his temper. Ethan had definitely inherited that.
Esther said that he was too hard on him. That he was a good boy, that Jim just needed to lighten up. There is so much good in him. Why can’t you see it? It was easier for her. Perhaps because she had so many years of experience loving the father in spite of all his flaws, that loving the son came naturally.
Then Libby had come along. It was different with her. Had been from the get go. Maybe because he had done it before, made all his mistakes with Ethan. Maybe because she had won the genetic lottery, inheriting his best instead of his worst.
And now she was dead.
Jim closed his eyes. Snow littering his face. It was cold. Bitingly so. He could stay here, like this. Maybe he would just drift away. They would find him, tomorrow or the day after that. A real life snowman. Allowed himself one last moment. The tear sliding down his cheek.
But Esther was waiting for him inside. Esther needed him.
Roughly brushing the tear away, Jim turned and began slowly trudging towards the house again. The porch light was on. Ethan’s Audi in the drive. He’d stayed with his mother then. That was one thing to be grateful for at any rate.
Jim’s breathing had become more ragged now, a pit opening up in his stomach, as he began rehearsing the lies. She looked peaceful. They said that it was very quick.
And then, before he was ready, his time was up, the front door swinging open. Orange light flooding the snow-bound path.
“Dad.” Ethan wasn’t wearing a coat. Hurried down the drive, arms wrapped tightly around himself, and Jim felt a flush of unreasonable irritation. Just put a fucking coat on.
He shoved it down. “Hiya, Eth.”
“How was it?”
How the hell did you answer a question like that? How the hell could you even begin to describe the feeling of staring at your dead daughter, knowing that some evil bastard had done this to her, that you had failed when you promised that you would always protect her?
“It wasn’t the best, Ethan.”
“No. Well. No…Did they… Have they found anything?”
“What?” Jim could feel the irritation building, doing his best to suppress it. Failing.
“The police, I mean…do they know who…”
Jim was about to snap. He truly was. Then he looked beyond his son to the patch of light just inside the doorway. To his wife, looking so much smaller than she ever had before.
“No.” He answered, briefly. “Nothing.”
Then he turned and prepared to lie to his wife.
Chapter 26
Freya – Monday, 14th February, 1997 – 10.58am
Afterwards it was the tiniest of details that Freya would remember. The purple sky that darkened to grey. The chattering of the wipers, pushing a path through the pounding rain. The way four year old Richard’s breathing cut through the thrum of the heaters, a gentle snoring. The shine on the red coupe blocking the drive, like it belonged there. And the smell of violets.
Freya had been ten years old. Sick. Had been sitting in class while her teacher talked about something that she couldn’t remember, her head swimming. Had raised her hand to ask to see the nurse. Hadn’t been fast enough. The vomit had pumped from her with volcanic force, coating the floor, the desk, her uniform, in murky yellow. The other children shrieking with delight and mock disgust.
Her teacher had led her from the class, her arm tentative around her shoulder. Let’s call your Mum. Steering her down ghost empty corridors tickling with the sounds of distant children’s voices.
She would remember the trickle of warm tears down her cheeks, even though she was trying so hard to be a brave girl, the tang of acid in her mouth.
It’s Freya. It’s nothing to worry about, just a little sick, that’s all. Think she wants her Mummy. No. No. I tried your husband. I knew you were working. No. Yes, house and mobile. No answer. Okay. Okay, we’ll see you soon.
Mummy’s on her way, Frey. Have a seat. She won’t be long now. We, ah, we couldn’t get hold of your dad, so Mum is going to leave work.
She would remember the look, one teacher to another. The pungency of it. She would remember wondering for a moment what it meant, and then just giving up, giving way to the sickness and the way the world spun.
Her mother arrived, in a flurry of skirts and jasmine. Encasing her in her arms. I’m sorry, I would have been here sooner but I had to get cover. Her teacher smiling one of those tight smiles that adults give when they don’t really mean it. Don’t worry about it, Adele. Her mother, slipping Freya’s arms into her coat, like she was a toddler. I don’t understand where Oliver is. He’s off today. I don’t know why he isn’t answering. The teacher not looking, playing with some papers that were splayed like groping fingers across the desk. Sure it’s nothing. Sure everything’s fine. Freya looking at her mother, wondering if she knew that her teacher was lying too.
Come on, love. Let’s go home. Her mother had taken her hand. We’ll pick Richard up on the way.
Freya would remember her mother’s face, the tight lines, lips pressed flat. The sparking anxiety that rolled through her stomach like tumbleweed on a prairie. An old friend. Sitting up straighter in her seat, trying to catch her mother’s eye, to smile, pretend she wasn’t so sick so that at least her mother wouldn’t have to worry about that as well.
They collected Richard from the childminder, his eyes so heavy he could barely keep them open.
They drove, so slowly that it seemed to Freya that she could walk faster.
She would remember the rain, bulbous drops smudging the Cardiff skyline. The cold of the window against her forehead. She must have dozed off, because the next thing she remembered was the jolt, her body straining against the seatbelt.
She couldn’t see her mother’s face, but she could see her back, her shoulders, the muscles in her neck standing proud, her jaw working, chewing invisible gum. Freya sat forward, fingers clinging to her mother’s seat.
The cherry red car sat at the end of their drive. She didn’t know what car it was. A sporty one, with the kind of top that you could roll down. But she knew that it didn’t belong there, where it sat, blocking her father’s car. Her mother was staring at it.
Freya wanted to ask. There was something here, something not right. But she was ten and she didn’t know what. She opened her mouth, but then she saw the light glistening, catching on the single tear that rolled down her mother’s cheek.