Chapter 39 Carla
Carla
NOW
Iris won’t say any more and we set off on our journey home from the beach in silence.
But I hear her words clearly, as though she’s repeating them out loud.
Briefly, they transport me back to the terrasse of the Saunton Sands Hotel, where we were sitting at a table in the setting sun just a few minutes ago.
Josh supplied the drugs. I only found that out afterwards.
A long time afterwards. I glance at my daughter, sitting in the passenger’s seat.
She gives me a taut smile, but her expression is impassive and I have no idea what she’s thinking.
I hear my own words, too: Why didn’t you tell your dad and me about this at the time?
Why didn’t you tell us Josh had been dealing drugs?
Another question is pinwheeling around my brain. I think it might actually be the answer to the questions that Iris ignored. But the words don’t make it past my lips, although they’re screaming in my head: Did Olly know?
Iris puts on the music. It’s some sort of angry hip-hop, which I usually hate, but right now it helps to drown out my nagging suspicions.
It’s relatively flat for the first few miles, but as soon as we reach a steep hill, I realize Iris’s car is still playing up.
It just doesn’t seem to have enough energy to make it to the top.
I have my foot to the floor, in first gear, and the car slows to an alarming snail’s pace.
The driver in the car behind me is riding my bumper, so I flick on the hazards and he backs off.
Once we’re on a downhill stretch, Iris rings Daniel with my phone to tell him we’re on our way home. He says he’ll have dinner ready. I describe the problem with Iris’s Twingo. Without thinking, I tell him Iris was too scared to drive it home, which earns me a black look from the passenger’s seat.
‘Hmm. It’s not tyre pressure – I checked the tyres not long ago,’ Daniel says. ‘Maybe the spark plugs? We’ll have to take it in to the garage.’
I sigh. Daniel has a busy week ahead – he’s away for three days – and I have another deadline.
Daniel seems to read my mind. ‘Perhaps Olly can take it in next week, make himself useful.’
I bristle at my partner’s thinly veiled criticism of my son, but he’s got a point. Olly does very little to help out. And it’s the October half-term next week, so the kids are off school. ‘I’ll ring the garage on Monday and ask when they can take a look at it,’ I say.
After the phone call to Daniel, Iris leaves the music off and there’s nothing to act as a buffer for my thoughts.
I sift through my earlier conversation with Iris again, trying to read between the lines of what she said and work out what she didn’t say.
According to Ash, Olly said Liv was raped by some guy at a party.
Iris has just told me it was Josh’s eighteenth birthday party.
When she told me that it was Josh who supplied the drugs, she hesitated, as if she was going to say something else, then thought better of it.
Josh … he … er … supplied the drugs. Why am I so sure there’s something Iris didn’t tell me?
And then it hits me like a blow to the stomach.
‘Iris,’ I say. She grunts. ‘Was it Josh who drugged Liv? Is that what happened? Did Josh—’
Iris bursts into tears. I turn towards her, alarmed.
‘Oh, Iris, don’t cry. I didn’t mean to make you cry,’ I say.
‘Sweetie, I just want to help. I want to protect you.’ I expect her to make a snide remark, to point out that I’ve failed – miserably – to protect her until now.
But she doesn’t. ‘I think it might be time to tell me the whole story,’ I say gently.
We’re heading towards Holtleigh along a narrow lane with tufts of grass sprouting up in the middle. There’s a car coming the other way, so I pull into a lay-by to allow it to pass. I stay in the lay-by, even after the other car has gone, and turn to Iris, looking at her questioningly.
It comes out as a whisper. ‘Yes,’ she admits.
‘Josh drugged Liv?’
‘Yes,’ she repeats.
‘Did he … did he …?’
‘Yes, he was the one who raped her, if that’s what you’re asking.’
Iris is crying again. I reach out and put my arm around her shoulders. We stay there for a while, in the lay-by, until Iris is all cried out. She finds a pocket pack of tissues in the glove box and blows her nose loudly.
At home, I go through the motions. I set the table, listen to Margo babbling away, tell Daniel that dinner smells great.
I sit at the dinner table, forcing myself to eat and watching as Iris does the same.
I glance from Olly to Iris and back again.
Iris seems to be doing the same as me. Putting on a brave face, pretending everything is fine. Inside, I’m reeling from shock.
I try to confine my suspicions to a corner of my mind for the rest of the evening, but as soon as I go to bed, they clamour for my undivided attention.
My first thought when Iris told me that Josh had been selling drugs to his classmates was that someone else might have had a motive to kill him.
Now I know there’s more to it than that.
Josh wrecked Iris’s life, then ruined Liv’s.
The more I think about it, the more I believe my daughter is innocent after all.
And the more I believe my son is guilty.
*
‘Carla, Harry Tomlinson was arrested for Josh’s murder,’ Ash points out. I thought it would do me good to talk to Ash on the phone, but for once, his gentle, deep voice does nothing to soothe me. ‘He’s dead. It’s over. You have to let this go. It’s time to move on.’
I burst into tears. I can’t help it. I’ve had hardly any sleep, I have a looming deadline and I’ve added more things to my to-do list than I’ve crossed off.
I just don’t have the bandwidth to deal with any of this.
I certainly can’t cope with the mental torture my brain seems hellbent on putting me through.
‘Carla, I’m coming round,’ Ash says. ‘I’ll be there in half an hour.’
I wipe my eyes in the sleeve of my cardigan, sniff loudly and then take a deep breath. ‘There’s no need. Really.’ But I don’t sound convincing, not even to myself.
Forty-five minutes later, Ash is standing on the doorstep of Crooked Oak Cottage, looking both awkward and professional in his suit, as always.
I picture myself through his eyes – dishevelled, without make-up, in tracksuit trousers and a hoodie, my working clothes very different to his.
He takes one look at me and folds me into a hug.
The fresh marine notes of the cologne he has always worn is achingly familiar and, reluctantly, I unfold myself from his embrace.
I open the front door wide to let him in.
He bends down to unlace his leather shoes in the hallway and then walks ahead of me, in his socked feet, into the kitchen, where, without asking, he flicks on the kettle and makes us both a mug of tea.
I’ve already had two cuppas and two coffees this morning in an attempt to wake myself up and I’m jittery and wired.
But I take the mug and dutifully sip my tea.
Ash has made it exactly the way I like it.
We’re standing, side by side, gazing out of the patio window at the view.
I study this same scene every day, marvelling at how different it appears, depending on the season and the weather, like a series of impressionist paintings.
Today, the patchwork of green and yellow fields is dotted with white sheep.
The sky is a dramatic mix of grey and dark blue, announcing imminent rain, but for the moment, stubborn bursts of sunlight pierce through the clouds, illuminating the silver surface of the river Bray as it meanders its way across the canvas, dividing it in two.
‘You were so sure that Iris killed Joshua Knoll,’ Ash says. ‘What makes you think it was Olly? Why have you changed your mind?’
I explain about the drugs. I tell him Iris admitted that Josh drugged Liv with Rohypnol. The date-rape drug.
I can tell from the shocked expression on Ash’s face that this is all news to him. But there’s something else I can’t quite read in his expression, as if he can now understand something that didn’t make complete sense to him before.
‘So, let me get this straight—’ Ash begins, but he doesn’t say it unkindly; I think he’s just trying to understand my train of thought and fitting together the pieces I told him over the phone and what I’ve told him just now ‘—you think our son had motive because Joshua shared Iris’s video and then drugged and raped Liv. ’
‘That’s exactly what I think, yes.’ Ash is the only person in the world I could ever admit that to.
‘But Carla, even if Olly had something to do with Josh’s death – Christ, I can’t believe I’ve just spoken those words – it would only have been because he wanted to protect his sister and his girlfriend.’
I turn away from the window to face Ash. ‘He wasn’t protecting them, Ash. He was avenging them.’
Ash is silent for a second or two. Then he says, ‘So, what do you want to do now? You wanted to cover for Iris when you thought she might have had something to do with Josh’s death. Surely—’
‘I didn’t think she had …’ Who am I kidding? Ash knows me so well. I did suspect Iris. And Ash saw through me.
‘Surely you don’t want to turn our son in?’
‘I didn’t say that. I don’t know. No!’ I go and sit down at the kitchen table. Ash takes the seat opposite mine. Olly’s seat. ‘What? What are you thinking?’ I ask.
‘If the culprit was Olly, not Iris, does it make any difference? I mean, when you thought Iris might have killed Josh, you destroyed evidence and I tried to persuade Roly to plant some. If it’s our son and not our daughter, we’d still protect Olly, just as we protected Iris, right?’
From Ash’s face and the way he stresses the word ‘if” each time, I can tell that Ash hasn’t swallowed a word of my theory.
He doesn’t believe for an instant that Olly could be behind Josh’s death.
This reassures me. Perhaps I have jumped to the wrong conclusion.
But that’s a good question. If Olly killed Joshua, does it make any difference?
Would we – Ash and I – act any differently? I try to think this through.
Iris was Joshua’s victim before he became hers. Iris wanted to take her own life because of Joshua. Instead, she took his, or so I’d thought until now. It’s wrong to kill someone – anyone. But I really couldn’t blame her.
But Olly was a victim, too. He suffered from what Josh did – both to Iris and to Liv.
Ash and I – and Daniel – paid Olly less attention.
We focused on Iris. Olly was the one who found Iris in the bathroom that evening.
I shudder at the thought of it, seeing it through Olly’s eyes.
His sister, naked on the floor, contemplating suicide.
And then he lost his girlfriend because of the same kid.
Joshua was stabbed several times. It was a horrifically violent crime.
There’s no getting away from that. And when I imagine my daughter plunging the knife into the body of the evil young man who ruined her life, I get it.
When I picture the knife in the hands of my son, it seems less justifiable somehow.
I also fantasized about killing Joshua because of what he’d done to Iris – I’d never felt so murderous towards someone in my life; I wanted to strangle him with my bare hands – but there’s no way I would ever have done it.
And yet, Olly did. He didn’t just think about it.
He went through with it. Was he provoked?
Did Joshua say or do something that made Olly snap?
If so, would that exonerate my son in my eyes?
I try to gauge Ash’s expression. Usually, I can read him like a book, but although his eyes lock on to mine, his face is blank. I took his tone to mean he didn’t believe me just now, but now I find myself reassessing my assumption. He’s not shocked, not ruffled in the slightest.
‘Olly’s not a violent person, Carla,’ Ash reasons.
A memory rears its ugly head, as if to contradict what Ash has just said.
Olly threw a punch at Joshua and knocked him to the floor.
He was suspended for this act of violence.
I push the memory aside. Just because Olly threw a punch, it doesn’t make him a murderer.
We’re not talking about the same level of violence at all.
I’m Olly’s mother. I’m programmed to protect him, no matter what. When it comes down to it, I would fight tooth and nail to defend him, even if what he did was undefendable. I would do the same for my son as I would for my daughter.
‘You’re right. It makes no difference,’ I say, mustering a tight smile. ‘Oh, Ash, I’m a terrible, terrible mother.’ My eyes fill with tears that I furiously blink away. I need to get a grip. I can’t cry in front of Ash again.
‘You’re not! What on earth makes you say that?’
‘First, I was convinced my daughter had committed murder, then I convince myself it was my son instead. What sort of a mother believes their kids are capable of doing something like that? I should believe my kids are innocent, even if they aren’t.’
‘Carla, you’re a great mum. To Olly, to Iris and to Margo. It’s not always easy to be a perfect parent when circumstances challenge you. And, God knows, we’ve had our fair share of challenges lately.’
‘Thank you.’ I give him a grateful, watery smile. ‘You always say the right things.’
‘My work here is done,’ Ash says, spreading his arms theatrically, no doubt in an attempt to ease the tension. ‘I need to get back to the office, Carla, I’m afraid. I’ve still got work to do there.’
I follow him into the hallway, where he sits on the stairs to put on his shoes. He stands up and kisses me on the forehead.
‘It’s time to let this go, Carla,’ Ash says. His voice is firm, as if he’s issuing an order.
I open the front door for him and watch him walk away from me and get into the car.
Then I close the door behind him and lean against it.
I just need to keep telling myself what Ash told me earlier.
Tomlinson is dead. This is over. Time to move on.
I repeat it to myself, over and over, like a mantra, until I almost believe it.