Jane Renshaw - Watch Over Me

‘But how did they get in, if that window’s still locked and the CCTV –’

‘No idea. But the police are going to look at the footage – it’s kept on the server on a cloud thing, yeah, at the security company, so we can’t wipe it?’

Flora nodded.

‘The police are going to take one look and come to the conclusion pretty fucking fast that no one else could have done it. No one else has been in the fucking house.’

Flora shook her head. She couldn’t think. She needed to think .

‘I’m going to jail. Beckie –’

Caroline caught her in a quick, fierce hug. ‘No you’re not!’

Flora grabbed at Caroline’s sweatshirt. ‘Beckie, you have to look after Beckie –’

Roughly, Caroline pushed her away again, holding her by the shoulders and saying into her face: ‘You’re not going to fucking jail , Flora! We’ve got time, right, to sort this before you call the cops. We need to make it look like someone got in from outside.’ She nodded to herself. ‘Yeah, a break-in… We get a hammer or something, open the window, and reach out to break it from the other side… We won’t be caught on CCTV, not if we do it from the inside, because none of the cameras are trained on this window…’

Flora nodded. ‘Okay.’

Caroline released her. ‘Right then, great –’

‘ Great? ’

Caroline took a long breath. ‘Sorry.’ She reached out and took Flora back into a hug. ‘Oh God, Flora, I’m so sorry… We both have to hold it together for the next few hours; then we can have a complete fucking breakdown. Right? But you have to get moving. Get a hammer or whatever and break the window while I get back to Beckie. Then call the cops. Here’s what you tell them, right? You found Neil dead and came round to mine with Beckie. Then we both came back here… We didn’t look at the CCTV. We were both in a right state, crying over each other, we were both in shock. Then we were, “Beckie, we’ve left Beckie on her own” and I ran back to her. Meanwhile you were still in shock – so it took you a wee while to call the police. Took you a wee while to notice the broken window. Right?’

‘Right.’

‘Okay. I know this is a fucking nightmare and you’re barely functioning – but you have to get a grip and do this, for Beckie’s sake if for no other reason, right? That wee lassie – she needs you. She’s going to fucking need you like never before, and what’s going to happen to her if you’re in the jail?’

Flora took in a huge gulp of air and nodded.

‘You can do this. Yes?’

‘Yes.’

But like a child she trailed Caroline to the front door, the sun through the stained-glass windows flooding the vestibule with coloured light, painting their feet in their sandals alternately green and yellow and red as they crossed the tiles to the door. When Caroline had gone, Flora just stood there shivering. It was always cold in the vestibule, even in the height of summer. She remembered wondering aloud about it to Neil when they’d first moved in.

Because she’d known it would rile him, she’d speculated that maybe the ghosts of the previous occupants of the house lingered here, about to go out or come in. She’d been holding the stepladder, because Neil couldn’t be trusted to climb it to change the light bulb without somehow contriving to collapse the steps in on themselves and catapult himself head-first through one of the stained-glass windows, like something from Laurel and Hardy.

He had looked down at her with that disbelieving-but-gullible expression that always brought out the worst in her. She’d elaborated on her theory. The vestibule probably hadn’t changed at all since the house was built. If there was anywhere ghosts would linger, it would surely be here.

It was easy to imagine a Victorian or Edwardian gentleman, she’d said, taking off his hat in here. Didn’t he feel some kind of… presence?

‘You can’t seriously believe in ghosts ,’ Neil had finally spluttered, clattering down the steps to stand facing her, his chin lifted slightly. He was an inch shorter than her. ‘Ruth –’

Her grin had faded. ‘You mean Flora.’

‘I mean Flora,’ he had agreed, grimly.

And from somewhere the words had come out of her mouth: ‘Do you believe in the ghosts of Ruth and Alec Morrison?’

Sometimes she used to imagine those ghosts, the ghosts of the people they had been, still living in the cottage at Arden: Ruth and Alec Morrison sitting out in the garden on a summer’s evening, reading and talking and laughing, as Hobo swished his tail in the paddock and Beckie called down from her bedroom window that she wasn’t sleepy and could Daddy come and tell her a story?

And Neil had looked around the vestibule, and started on about how doorways had always had cultural significance; about how the Romans had worshipped Janus, the two-faced god of thresholds, one face looking back and one forward. The god of transitions, of endings and beginnings.

It had irritated her so much. Typical of him, she’d thought, to gloss over the personal and lose himself in contemplation of ancient history. But then:

‘Let’s not look back,’ he’d said. ‘Let’s think of this as a beginning, yes? Not an end.’ And he’d pulled her to him. ‘Yes, Flora Parry?’

Oh God oh God oh God .

In the hall, the grandfather clock Alec had inherited from his actual grandfather ticked placidly on in its placid Victorian way.

She’d never met his grandparents, but he’d talked about them a lot. He and Pippa had spent happy summer holidays with them on the west coast, running wild along the shore, up in the hills… It was where Alec had developed his interest in nature. In the natural world , as he called it. She’d seen photographs of his grandparents, Granny a beaming, friendly-looking soul, Grandad a sterner prospect in shirtsleeves and waistcoat and wide 1940s suit trousers.

She shook her head.

Took a breath.

She had to do this. She had to hold it together, as Caroline had said, for just a few hours. For Beckie.

She could do this.

A hammer.

She needed to get a hammer.

When it was done, when she’d made the 999 call and the operator had told her that she must stay inside with the doors locked and that the police and paramedics would be there as soon as possible, she stood in the kitchen trying to think. She should be with Alec. But she had to think , and she couldn’t do that in the bedroom with – with –

What would Alec have said?

It’s not me up there, it’s just my body. This is more important. You have to get your story straight, Flora. You have to think .

If the police found out that she was Rachel Clark, if they found out she’d killed before – what kind of implausible coincidence was it going to look like?

She felt as if all the Russian-doll layers of her life were being pulled apart to reveal the little hard solid core of her, that very last, tiniest, crudest doll which you knew was the last one but always twisted anyway, hoping it would open to reveal something better inside.

That hard little core that was Rachel Clark.

She had to convince the police that she was just what she seemed – a woman devastated by her husband’s brutal murder. An innocent woman.

When they arrived, she would bring them in here to the family room. The heart of the home, full of their ordinary lives – Beckie’s pictures on the corkboard, her puzzle books on the coffee table, Flora’s new green cardigan from White Stuff chucked over the arm of one of the sofas. A book on hamsters and some DVDs in an untidy pile under the TV.

A nice ordinary family room.

That was what the architect had called it when they’d had the extension put on. The ‘Kitchen/Family Room’. She could remember the words printed across the plans, in a friendly, arty font.