Chapter 15
JEMMA
It’s nearly half past ten by the time I arrive at Devey House.
Dad must have heard the wheels on the gravel; he’s waiting for me outside and pulls me into a hug as I step out of the police car.
‘My darling girl,’ he says. ‘Are you all right?’ What starts as an embrace turns into me holding him up.
I stagger under his weight, as the strangest thought occurs to me: he wouldn’t have come out to meet me if Marianne were still alive.
She’d be in the house too, and he’d know that she would say: ‘Why does waiting for Jemma require going outside? She has a key. I’m sure she’ll manage to find her way in. ’
If I were Dad, and Lottie were me, I’d be outside too. I’d be running through the streets until I found her and brought her home.
I wonder if Dad will start to feel more like a dad to me now that Marianne’s gone? Will he look at me and see me, instead of someone who might please or displease Marianne? ‘I’m so sorry, Dad,’ I say, hugging him. ‘You must be in shock.’
‘Better now you’re home safe.’
This isn’t my home, Dad. ‘Are the police still here?’ I ask him.
‘Most of them have left for the night but one’s just come back. A lovely chap, actually: DS Kombothekra.’
The unrufflable smiler with the velvet voice. I find it hard to think of him as lovely. ‘Do they have any idea who …?’
‘No. They don’t seem to,’ Dad says.
‘Where’s Lottie?’ I ask. ‘Not asleep, I bet.’
‘Suzanne’s been valiantly trying to get her to bed, but no luck yet.’
I disentangle myself from Dad and move towards the house. ‘I need to see her.’
‘She’s doing okay.’ Dad’s following me, out of breath already. He starts to say something else – it sounds like the beginning of a question – but I can’t talk any more until I’ve seen Lotts. The front door has been left slightly ajar and I pick up pace as I get closer.
Suzanne, at the far end of the entrance hall, sees me and starts running towards me.
‘Jemm! God, am I pleased to see you!’ She rushes over and grabs me, squeezes me tightly.
‘Lotts is fine, but – no, don’t panic, it’s not that sort of “but”.
She’s upstairs brushing her teeth. I was just going to say: she knows about what happened to Marianne in 2012. ’
‘Shit. I was going to tell her.’
‘I know,’ Suzanne says.
‘Does she know she was in the house when it happened?’
‘Everything, yeah. I told her what we know about that night, helped her to try and make sense of it. She didn’t seem overly … scared or freaked out or anything. Children, teenagers … they can’t avoid experiencing life, you know? The difficult bits too. Jemm, she’ll be fine.’
It’s all fine. Lottie’s fine.
‘Sorry. I just—’
From behind me, Dad says, ‘Would you like a cup of tea, sweetheart? Something to eat? I can heat you up some of—’
‘Just a cup of tea would be great,’ I tell him. ‘Thanks.’ God, he looks appalling under the bright lights of the hall: grey-faced and precarious, like he could fall to the ground at any moment.
Once he’s gone, I whisper to Suzanne, ‘Tell me one thing: Lotts can’t have done this, right? Charlie Zailer told me they know she was nowhere near Dad’s when it happened.’
Suzanne recoils. ‘Jemm, what the … Of course Lottie didn’t do it. Who’s Charlie Zailer? And yes, it’s beyond doubt. The police have spoken to your neighbours, who saw Lotts with Paddy at yours just after 5.30.’
‘Jemma?’ Paddy’s voice comes from behind me, and I realise he hasn’t crossed my mind since I got out of the police car. I haven’t hoped, or expected, to see him.
He’s halfway down the stairs, stops walking when I turn to face him.
‘Paddy.’
‘Where have you been?’
‘You know where I’ve been,’ I say. ‘I texted you, remember?’
He looks at me warily, eyes moving up and down as if he can’t stand to look straight at me for too long.
How long is it going to take him to ask me why, why for so long, why on the same night that someone murdered Marianne?
Come on, Paddy. It’s just words, arranged in an order that makes sense. You can do it.
Perhaps I’m the one who should start asking questions: all the unanswered ones that have been circling my brain all the way from Spilling to here.
Who killed Marianne?
Was it someone who’s here now, at Devey House? Dad … Paddy … Suzanne? Because it has to have been one of them, surely.
Only if the killer is the same person who read and altered the diary file.
They must be. Who else could have known the date and time I’d chosen for Marianne’s murder?
I didn’t even tell Suzanne that detail. I told her about my plan and that I was going to the police to make sure I never did it, but I never said how I’d chosen when to go, or that Monday 30 October at 5.
15 p.m. had originally been reserved for a quite different event.
And I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe in coincidences that big and unlikely.
Which means … maybe it wasn’t Marianne who altered the diary file, changing ‘Ollie’ to ‘Olly’ throughout. What if someone else did that, wanting me to think it was her handiwork?
Why? Why would anyone want that?
Who else could have got into my laptop last week, the week before?
Dad, Paddy or Lottie, easily. Suzanne, too.
All four of them would have tried ‘Lottie’ as their first guess at my password, and struck lucky.
I’ve never thought to hide my computer or even put it away.
And sometimes, both at Dad’s and at home, I leave the room for longish periods of time, if I have to take a work call.
I fall asleep on the sofa for half an hour, my laptop on the table next to me …
I can rule out Tom Tulloch and Ollie, neither of whom had the opportunity.
Unless …
I think about the time last year when Marianne sent me her Wordle result, then claimed she’d done it by mistake, that she’d meant to send it to Paddy.
Suzanne was sure that was a lie and that Ollie was the intended recipient.
And if Ollie and Marianne were still in touch, then she could have been the one who tampered with the diary, and then told him all about it: Guess what?
Jemma’s hired someone to kill me. She’s even picked the date and time of my execution.
Which means Ollie can’t be ruled out as the person who decided to kill her at that precise time, on that date.
My daughter’s voice drags me out of my spiralling thoughts. ‘Hey, Mum. S’cuse, Dad.’ She’s hurrying towards me, down the stairs, past Paddy. I run to her, cling to her, burst into tears, which makes it hard to ask if she’s okay as many times as I’d like to.
‘Calm down,’ she says. ‘Mum, I’m okay. You’re the one who isn’t.’
Understatement of the century.
Suzanne says something about helping Dad make hot drinks, and I know she’s trying to get herself and Paddy out of the way so that Lotts and I can have a few minutes together alone.
Thank God for brilliant Suzanne.
‘Mum?’
‘Yes, darling.’
Lottie looks over her shoulder to check everyone’s gone. Then she says, ‘Was Granny an evil person?’
Something twists inside me. ‘I …’
‘Don’t say no one’s either completely good or completely evil. That’s what Suzanne said before, when I asked her.’
I can’t help smiling at this, imagining the restraint Suzanne must have employed for Lottie’s sake when talking about Marianne. ‘That woman is the devil on steroids,’ she was fond of telling me.
‘Even if it’s true, some people are much more good and some are much more bad,’ says Lottie. ‘Which was Granny?’
‘Why are you asking?’
‘Because she’s been killed.’ Her voice cracks on the last word. ‘And eleven years ago, someone tried to murder her then too. So, like … maybe there was something quite bad about her if people kept wanting to kill her. That’s all I meant. Do you think it’s true?’