Chapter 2
JEMMA
Like mother, like daughter, eh?
I didn’t include the words that fought to get out of my mouth in response, because I was too scared to say them: ‘You’re not my mother.
You never have been and you never will be.
You’re my enemy.’ I remember thinking to myself as I typed, my tears hitting the keyboard harder than my fingers: Sorry, but no.
If you were too much of a coward to say it, then it doesn’t get to be part of the story.
I slam my laptop shut, my heart hammering as if it’s still happening now: the shock of that moment, that conversation, being alone with Marianne on the top floor of the house.
I knew she wouldn’t do anything to me then and there, but the look in her eyes and her ‘You’ve done it now’ smile were unambiguous: she wanted me scared.
I guess I’ve just proved to myself that my writing has the power to deliver an emotional gut-punch, so if I ever decide I want to go public with this diary, or book, or whatever it is, maybe it will be of interest to somebody: the story of how I, a murderer in my heart, stopped myself from committing a murder – that’s how I’d describe it.
I feel a strong urge to open the file I’ve only just closed and look again.
Was there something wrong in there? Did my eye skate over a line or phrase that needed fixing?
I could swear my mind snagged on something, but it was subliminal and didn’t fully register.
And maybe I’m being paranoid. If I am, I blame my present location a little bit – an eerily impersonal police station reception area – and Marianne a lot.
If she hadn’t stolen and read all the other diaries I’ve ever kept, I’d probably still be handwriting in notebooks with turquoise and purple ink pens like I always used to until 2006, when my diary of the moment went missing and never reappeared.
Before then, Marianne had always returned them to wherever she’d found them in my bedroom, once she’d had a good nosey.
Not the 2006 diary, though. Clearly, she wanted to read and reread my thoughts from that crucial year: the one that contained the end of my relationship with Ollie and the beginning of me and Paddy trying to make a proper go of it together.
Nice way of putting it, Jemma. It would have been quicker and easier to say ‘the year I chose Paddy and dumped Ollie’, but let’s not make things any more painful by assigning responsibility, shall we?
My words on the subject of Ollie getting dumped and Paddy being declared the winner of the ‘Who-Gets-To-Be-Jemma’s-Boyfriend’ competition were evidently so important to my stepmother (‘Wicked enough to convince anyone that Cinderella really didn’t know how lucky she was’, as my best friend Suzanne once said) that she decided to deprive me of them forever.
I’m sure my 2006 diary was one of the things she kept locked inside her study, before she gutted it.
Where is it now?
‘Oh, she’s got it stashed away somewhere, for sure,’ Suzanne said, after I told her about Marianne showing me the empty, stripped room. ‘She was way too invested in your love life and which boyfriend you chose.’
I thought but didn’t say, I don’t care where it is, as long as I don’t have to read it again. Too painful.
‘Jemma? Is it okay if I call you Jemma? Are you all right?’ The dyed-blonde sergeant is hovering over me again.
What’s her name again? That’s right: Zailer.
Charlotte Zailer. I didn’t notice her coming over.
‘Will you come with me to an interview room so that we can talk about this properly?’ she says.
‘And I’ll need an address immediately, assuming there’s a body to be found. ’
‘A body?’
She leans in closer. ‘You said you wanted to tell us about a murder, remember? When you first came in? Then just a minute ago, I asked you for the name of the victim. You said “Marianne Upton”.’
‘There’s no body,’ I manage to say, praying she’ll decide to leave me alone. ‘I’ll explain the situation to DC Waterhouse when he gets here.’ I’ll make his arrival my fresh start. As soon as I see him – a detective who deals with murders – I’ll pull myself together. Somehow.
‘Would you like a glass of water? Jemma, I do need Marianne Upton’s address.’
Not yet. I need to explain first.
‘Oh, no,’ Sergeant Zailer mutters. I look up. She’s staring over my shoulder, looking angry. ‘Here he comes, breaking new records for whatever’s the opposite of “in mint condition”. I thought he’d gone home, but no such luck. Too late: you wanted him? You’re about to get him.’
I’m not sure she’s thinking straight. I never said I wanted DC Waterhouse specifically.
I’ve got no idea who he is and didn’t know his name until I walked in here today.
All I said – with no idea if I was using the correct terminology – was ‘a major crimes detective who’s experienced at dealing with murders. ’
I turn and see a tall, broad-shouldered man walking towards me.
He stops when he reaches my side, and blinks at me.
There are patches of stubble on his face.
He looks stunned – as if he’s just come round from a general anaesthetic and found himself standing, fully dressed, in a police station’s reception area.
His probably-once-white shirt is creased and sweat-stained, his greying dark hair just long enough to look untidy.
‘Simon Waterhouse,’ he says abruptly; it’s almost a grunt. ‘You Jemma Stelling?’
I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this.
‘She’s here to confess to the murder of a Marianne Upton, and says there’s no body,’ Sergeant Zailer tells him, pronouncing each word distinctly, as if this is his first encounter with the English language. His wife. Who thinks he’s a dick.
I wonder if there’s a different police station I could go to.
Silsford, maybe – that’s not too far. These two are making me want to run away, but they probably won’t let me leave given what I’ve already told them.
Then again, maybe they’d shrug and say, ‘See you.’ There’s something not quite right about either of them, and both of them together.
It’s as if they’re impersonating police officers. Badly.
‘Why’s there no body?’ Waterhouse asks me.
‘Can we go somewhere more—’
‘Why no body?’
Feeling his words like something tightening around me, I take a deep breath. ‘I haven’t killed her yet.’
‘For God’s sake.’ Sergeant Zailer lets out an expansive sigh. ‘Then … how about you carry on not killing her, or anyone else? Then there’ll be no problem, will there? I think you’re a fantasist time-waster who probably has no clue that planning a murder is also a serious crime.’
‘If I hadn’t come here, she’d have been killed today,’ I say.
I want to explain everything properly, from the beginning, alone in a room with a serious, attentive detective.
At the same time, now that I’ve started, I can’t stop talking.
‘Her murder would be happening now, but it isn’t.
Instead, I’m here talking to you. But … I’ve got a fully worked-out plan, one I’ve been working on for months.
And I’d have got away with it. No one would have been able to prove it was me.
If it weren’t for the fact that I’ve got a thirteen-year-old daughter, I’d have allowed the inevitable to happen, but I don’t want to risk—’
‘What “inevitable”?’ asks Sergeant Zailer.
Hasn’t she been listening to me?
‘I think I know what you mean, but I don’t want to assume,’ she says.
I spell it out. ‘Marianne’s murder. That’s the inevitable. Or it was, before I came here. Which I did because I can’t take even the tiniest risk of going to prison and leaving my daughter alone, so—’
‘Alone? What about your husband, Paddy Stelling?’ Sergeant Zailer emphasises his name, as if she suspects me of inventing him.
DC Waterhouse isn’t looking at either of us. He’s staring straight ahead, unblinking, like a dubious piece of public art that no sensible organisation would want in its foyer.
‘Anyone who’s only got Paddy is effectively alone.
’ The words are out before I can stop them.
‘Even if he were different, which he never can be … I don’t want Lottie to have a convicted murderer as a mother.
I’m already a murderer inside – that won’t change – but I’m not yet a murderer who’s committed a crime, and it was getting more and more obvious every day that I would soon become one if I didn’t do the unthinkable: come here and confess, like I am now.
I tried a hundred times to tell myself, “Don’t do it, don’t think about the plan, don’t take the next step”, but it wouldn’t go away. I started to do things to—’
DC Waterhouse yawns in my face.
‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ I ask him.
‘He’s having a bad day,’ says Sergeant Zailer. ‘Carry on, since we’ve got this far. You’d started to – what?’
‘Lay the groundwork. Despite all my fears and attempts to rein it in, I was acting like someone who was going to do it. It took up every inch of space in my mind: that I could make Marianne not exist any more, and so easily. Without any negative consequence, apart from the big one: living with the risk of getting caught, maybe one day actually getting caught. However much you imagine you’ve thought of everything, that can always happen, can’t it?
That’s why I had to come here. This is the only way for it to be over.
If I tell you what I’d planned, then I’ll never do it.
My life will go back to normal, which isn’t wonderful, but it’s so much better than this.
And there’ll be no risk of Lottie losing her mum to a long prison sentence. ’
‘Telling us will be enough to stop you from doing it?’ Sergeant Zailer asks. ‘Is that the idea?’
I nod. I knew it would work, and I can feel a subtle difference already.
The evil that’s been burrowing into me for so long is still there, but it’s loosened its hold and is now standing off to the side.
There’s distance between us. ‘Telling the police kills my plan stone dead,’ I say.
‘Now, if anything were to happen to Marianne, you’d know I was behind it.
The chance of me getting away with it would be zero.
So please, can one of you take my statement? ’
I’m no longer sure that my first choice is DC Waterhouse.
Charlotte Zailer might only be a sergeant and not a detective, but she seems far more skilled when it comes to interacting with other humans.
‘And … I think you probably have to tell Marianne, don’t you?
’ I direct this at Waterhouse. Let Marianne get a visit from him; I’d enjoy imagining that, if I knew it was happening.
‘You’ll need to warn her, presumably, that I’ve come in and said all this?
I mean, there’s been a threat to her life.
I assume you have a duty to inform her.’
‘According to you, the threat is now non-existent,’ Sergeant Zailer points out.
‘You’re not going to warn her? What, you’re just going to take my word for it that I won’t do it now?
’ These two don’t give a toss, clearly. Maybe their top priority is keeping their to-do list as light as possible.
‘I don’t care, as long as you take my statement.
It has to be on record: how I was going to do it and get away with it.
’ The police deciding I’m no danger to anyone and sending me home is not good enough. Nowhere near.
DC Waterhouse has started to walk away. ‘Follow me,’ he calls over his shoulder, and then: ‘Which room?’
How am I supposed to know? You’re the one who works here.
‘Four.’ Sergeant Zailer calls out, her voice echoing along the tiled corridor.
‘Go on.’ She nods at me for emphasis and I realise I need to move.
Follow. Even though no one who wanted to improve any aspect of their life or anyone else’s would allow the weird, dead-eyed detective-husband to lead them anywhere.
I’ve nearly caught up with Waterhouse when Sergeant Zailer calls after me. ‘Jemma?’
I turn.
‘If he breaks during the interview, come and find me,’ she says.