Chapter 33 Carla
Carla
NOW
Margo is kept in hospital overnight, but the following day, after the doctor has done his rounds, Daniel and I are allowed to take her home.
Her tests have come back negative. No traces of flunitrazepam or any other benzodiazepine. But I’m not convinced. I go to find the head nurse – or ‘ward brother’, as I’ve taken to calling him in my head – and bombard him with questions.
‘How long does it take for Rohypnol to become undetectable?’
‘It depends. It varies from person to person and according to the quantity consumed,’ he says.
‘Do Margo’s negative test results mean she definitely wasn’t given any Rohypnol?
‘It’s possible, despite the negative test results, that Margo did swallow some Rohypnol. The test results just show that there was none in her system when we checked for it. She’s young, so she has a high metabolism, and if she had only a small dose, she would eliminate it fairly quickly.
‘Will she suffer from any lasting side effects?’
‘If we assume she swallowed a small amount of the drug, she may have a slight stomach ache or headache for a day or two, but she probably won’t have any adverse effects at all. Was there anything else?’ His tone is patient, but he looks harried.
‘No. I’ll let you get on. Thank you.’
I remember when I got pregnant with Iris.
Ash and I would have preferred to have a little more time with Olly before another baby came along, and I was breastfeeding Olly at the time, so my second pregnancy was a bit of a shock-slash-surprise.
I knew I was pregnant, but the test was negative.
Ash was relieved; I was so disappointed.
I’d been so sure. But a few days later, I took another test. This time, it was positive and we were both delighted, although that’s beside the point.
The point is, I’d taken the first test too soon.
Margo’s urine test results remind me of this.
A negative pregnancy test doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not pregnant.
Margo’s negative drugs test doesn’t necessarily mean she wasn’t drugged.
I wince at the double negatives in my head and rephrase.
Margo may still have been drugged. But it doesn’t sound any better.
In Margo’s case, the test was too late rather than too early.
I know she was drugged, just as I knew I was pregnant.
Daniel drives Margo and me home, back to Crooked Oak Cottage.
It’s spitting and the windscreen wipers are on too fast. They squeak back and forth.
Margo chats to him non-stop from the back seat – it hasn’t taken her long to bounce back to her usual self – and Daniel sounds upbeat when he can crowbar a word in.
But I can tell he’s upset by the way his jaw is set.
Their conversation doesn’t need my input and I’m left alone with my thoughts.
I glance over my shoulder at Margo and smile at her.
She grins back, sending a mixture of relief and guilt through me.
Relief that she’s OK, that she’s coming home.
Guilt because I’ve failed my stepdaughter in much the same way as I failed my daughter.
What should I have said to protect her? I’ve told her not to talk to strangers, not to trust anyone she doesn’t know, but Jordan and Jasper aren’t strangers and sometimes the people we know best are the least trustworthy.
So, what should I have said? Stay away from the Knoll boys.
With hindsight, that’s the advice I wish I’d given both Margo and Iris.
It all comes back to the Knolls. Again. A thought strikes me and as soon as it enters my head, I know I won’t be able to get it out.
Did Yvonne know that Jordan and Jasper had spiked the Red Bull drink they gave Margo?
Did Yvonne find Margo in that summerhouse and then deliberately keep her for as long as possible at Hilltop House, playing for time, until the drugs were likely to be out of her system?
A growl erupts from my throat, which I quickly convert to a cough so as not to alarm Daniel or Margo.
Once we get home, we make Margo comfortable on the sofa.
Iris tucks the throw around her and Olly fusses over her.
Daniel fetches drinks and biscuits for everyone from the kitchen.
My face is hurting from stretching my lips upwards.
It probably looks more like a rictus than the smile I’m trying for anyway. I can’t relax.
Daniel doesn’t look relaxed either. I watch him as he studies Iris.
He seems awkward around her. He speaks when she speaks to him, but with sardonic answers.
Perhaps it’s my imagination. He probably still wonders if she had something to do with Joshua’s death and I can’t really blame him for that.
After all, I’m sure my daughter had something to do with it.
But if that’s what’s going through his head, he’ll have to let it go and be firmly on our side now he’s home.
‘I need to pop out,’ I tell Daniel.
He raises his eyebrows, but his tone is gentle. ‘What, now? Where are you going?’
I give him a kiss and answer a different question. ‘I won’t be more than an hour,’ I say.
His eyebrows invert, almost joining above the bridge of his nose. I repeat my promise not to be gone long and hightail it out of there before he can ask any more questions and I have to lie in reply.
It’s getting full in the driveway now with Iris’s car, too.
With her permission, I take her car – the powder blue Twingo – as it’s parked behind mine.
On the short drive to Hilltop House, I try to work out what I want to say to Yvonne, but it’s still raining and I’m concentrating really hard.
If I prang or scratch Iris’s car, she’ll be livid.
She loves her wheels. Anyway, I don’t have anything to say.
I just want to hear Yvonne’s version of events.
I’ll have to make a superhuman effort to be polite because if I get there and start shouting or bandying around accusations, she’ll clam up and slam the door in my face.
The gate is open. I park where I stopped the other day, across the road from the house, and force myself to walk rather than storm up the driveway.
It’s only as I press on the ‘smart’ doorbell and look shiftily into the eye of the camera that it occurs to me she might not be in.
Her car is in the drive, though, so I may be in luck.
But Richard answers the door.
‘Hi,’ I say, hearing the timidity in my own voice in that one syllable. I clear my throat. ‘Is Yvonne there, please?’
He barely turns his head, maintaining eye contact with me, and yells his wife’s name.
She takes her time to come to the door. When she sees it’s me, she puts a hand on her husband’s arm and says calmly, ‘Thanks, Rich. I’ve got this.’
Richard looks relieved at being dismissed and, without so much as a goodbye or a nod in my direction, he disappears back inside.
Yvonne fixes me with hard, hazel eyes that remind me of Josh’s.
She’s dressed smartly and wearing high heels.
Does she wear them even when she’s at home or was she expecting me?
A sudden image bursts into my head. Yvonne, standing on my doorstep weeks ago, a diminutive version of her former self, wearing so much make-up it looked as if she’d applied war paint, and yet looking anything but fierce.
Today, in her high heels and from her elevated position inside the house, she towers over me and looks almost magisterial, threatening.
I feel small. I’m the one who has come to her house demanding answers, just as she came to mine.
I didn’t give her the answers she wanted and I realize now she won’t tell me what I need to know.
A reverse image. The tables are turned. I wish I’d brought Daniel with me. In fact, I wish I hadn’t come at all.
‘Come in,’ she says, stepping back and holding the front door wide open.
I try not to show my surprise and, for only the second time since I’ve known Yvonne, I step over the threshold, into her home.
She lets me lead the way, but points towards the door into the living room.
I remember last time, we all slipped off our shoes at the door.
Force of habit. I deliberately keep mine on this time, even though it’s wet outside and her immaculate living room has a cream carpet.
She waves her hand towards the sofa. Obediently, I sit.
Yvonne chooses an armchair, which gives her a couple of inches on me.
Again, I feel at a disadvantage. I grapple for my words.
Yvonne looks at me, a mixture of anticipation and impatience in her expression.
Does she expect me to thank her for taking Margo to hospital? I’m certainly not about to do that.
‘I’m hoping you can help me understand how Margo came to be in your summerhouse overnight,’ I begin. It sounds a little accusatory, although I’m aiming for something between firm and neutral.
‘I found her there yesterday. It must have been early afternoon,’ Yvonne says.
‘She was sleepy and she complained of a headache. I tried to get hold of Iris – I don’t have your number, I’m afraid – and when I couldn’t get through, I took Margo straight to hospital.
Then I did manage to get hold of Iris. I had no idea that Margo had spent the night in the summerhouse. This is news to me.’
She clutches her heart a little too theatrically, but I have to hand it to her – she’s good. She did ring Iris. That much is true – that’s how Iris knew that Margo was at the North Devon District Hospital. But I don’t buy the rest of what Yvonne has spouted for a second.
‘Margo came to your house with Jordan and Jasper on the Saturday evening. She was staying at her grandmother’s, here, in Brayworthy. Your boys offered to lend her a bike to cycle home to Holtleigh.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ Yvonne says, her eyes wide, but the warble in her voice belies her words. ‘Tell you what, I’ll give them a shout and we’ll see if we can get to the bottom of this.’ She stretches her thin lips into a fake smile, revealing red lipstick stuck to her otherwise white incisors.
She leaves the room for a moment and I hear her shout for the boys from the bottom of the stairs. They both come immediately. I sometimes have to call Olly and Iris several times to come downstairs. Have Jordan and Jasper been briefed?
She sashays back into the room, her sons following. They remain standing while she sits back down in her armchair. ‘Mrs Ashford would like to know what you can tell us about Margo. Do you know how she came to be in our summerhouse last weekend?’
The boys both study the floor.
‘Margo had to spend the night in hospital,’ I add. ‘She was tested for drugs.’ I keep my eyes on Yvonne, but she doesn’t flinch, which seems to confirm my suspicions.
‘Jordan? Jasper?’ Yvonne’s tone is harsher than before.
‘We offered to lend her a bike to cycle to Holtleigh,’ one of them says. I have no idea which one.
‘She was thirsty. We gave her a can of soda.’
‘Did you spike her drink?’ I ask.
‘What?’
‘Spike?’
‘Did you put anything in her drink?’ I demand. ‘Specifically, Rohypnol? The date-rape drug?’
‘Now, hang on a second,’ Yvonne says. ‘I don’t know what you’re implying, but—’
‘I want to know if your boys spiked Margo’s drink. It’s a simple question, Yvonne.’
‘Did she have any trace of drugs in her system?’ Yvonne asks.
‘Well, no, but it doesn’t mean—’
‘In that case, perhaps you should leave.’ Her voice is as cold as her gaze. Yvonne gets to her feet, clearly expecting me to follow suit. I remain seated.
‘I want to know if your boys spiked my daughter’s drink.’
‘Jordan, Jasper, did you put anything – anything at all – in Margo’s drink?’
‘No,’ they reply in unison.
They both sound and look completely unconvincing. One is still staring at the floor; the other is practically hopping from one foot to the other, as if he’s desperate to go to the toilet.
‘So, how did she end up spending the night in the summerhouse?’ I ask.
‘Dunno,’ one of them says. The other shrugs.
‘Where was she when you left her?’ I continue my interrogation, as Yvonne eyeballs me, her arms folded across her chest.
One of the boys looks to his mother, as if she has the answer. She gives an almost imperceptible nod in his direction, a discreet prompt.
‘She was in the summerhouse.’
‘She was tired,’ the other one chimes in.
‘We told her to close the door when she left,’ the first one says, his gaze lowered again.
‘I’m really sorry that Margo was ill, Mrs Ashford.’
‘We hope she feels better soon.’
It’s all I can do not to roll my eyes. I want to throttle the truth out of the pair of them, get them to say something other than the lines Yvonne has scripted for them in this pathetic, badly rehearsed farce. But I’m not going to get any closer to the truth here.
‘Could it have been something she ate at her grandmother’s house, do you think?’ Yvonne asks.
This is a battle I cannot win. When Yvonne came to my house, we left things at a standoff. A deadlock. But, here, on her home turf, she has the upper hand.
I stand up, suddenly desperate to get away from Hilltop House, and all the lies contained within its walls.
Yvonne follows me as, without a word, I head for the front door and yank it open.
Leaving her to close it, I march out to my car, get in and start it up.
Before I drive off, I take one last look at Yvonne, still standing in the doorway of her home, staring after me.
I despise that woman, and yet a thought occurs to me and disturbs me.
I like to think I’m nothing like her, but we have something in common, she and I.
We’d both do anything to defend our offspring.
Indeed, we have both done everything in our power to protect our respective children.
She has covered for all three of her sons and lied for them, just as I have covered for Iris and lied for her.
Yvonne and I are not that dissimilar after all.
I wonder, as I drive home, if she has had the same thought.