Harry was horribly shocked at the news; I spoke to him as soon as he got in from school.
‘I’m so sorry, darling,’ I said to him, ‘I know this must be a dreadful shock, her being around your age. The police are doing everything they can.’ His face went completely white; I got him a chocolate biscuit from the cupboard, usually reserved for special occasions. The last thing I need is multiple trips to the dentist. I put a hand on his arm but he shrugged away from me, took himself off upstairs.
‘Let him be for a bit,’ Jack said to me, ‘he’ll come around.’
I stared after Harry, wondering. My son has become closed off to me these last few months; he mentions school friends, but never girls. It’s normal for teenage boys to be private, Tricia told me a few weeks ago, you probably wouldn’t want to know what goes on inside his mind anyway! She’d laughed, like it was a joke. But I do want to know. I want to know everything.
Jane
Tuesday 5th February
We sit at my friend Sandra’s kitchen table, all of us on our third glass of wine, red for them, white for me. Easier to clean. I’m considerate like that. She texted Tricia and I this evening, wanting an emergency wine night. I think we’re all in shock, her message said, come to mine for seven?
‘You’ll be good for Daddy, won’t you?’ I said to the children before leaving the house, hugging their little bodies tight to my chest. I didn’t want to leave them, but Jack told me to go, and something in his eyes made me put on my coat, grab my handbag, close the front door tightly behind me. My rib twinged a bit as I walked the ten minutes to Sandra’s house, a semi-detached place with lavender borders leading up to the front door. In the summer, the smell of them is lovely; now, they are sorrowful-looking husks, scentless and dead.
My hand is underneath Sandra’s; she grabbed it as she was talking, wanting the comfort even though I know part of her loves this gossip, despite the morbidity of what’s happened. Our wedding rings chink against each other. Tricia tops up our glasses, although we’ve had too much already. Everyone drinks more these days, even the PTA. It takes the edge off.
‘This used to be a safe place,’ Sandra is saying drunkenly, her lips blackened from the drink. Another reason I chose white. Moving her hand from mine, she clutches at her skinny chest, her palm smacking the centre, where people think their heart must be. They’re wrong, obviously, usually by a good few inches. That’s what Jack says, anyway.
‘My heart,’ she says, ‘it feels like it’s breaking for that little girl. Is that silly? But it really does.’
‘I know,’ I say. I thought this was a safe town, a nice place, a community of do-gooders. It’s how my husband sold it to me. A home for us, for our little family. You will love it here, he said, his lips curving into mine. A memory comes to me, of just before we moved: the steep drop of the staircase in our old house, the spirals in the ceiling above my head as I lay on my back, my rib broken and bruised. The way they looked at me in the hospital, before I smoothed it all away.
‘Tell us again how it happened, Mrs Goodwin,’ they’d said to me, and I watched as the nurses looked at my husband, their eyes slightly narrowed, their pens poised above my notes.
‘Perhaps you’d feel more comfortable without Mr Goodwin in the room?’ one of them had suggested to me, but Jack was standing by her side and so I shook my head no, told them I was fine.
‘I slipped,’ I said, ‘I slipped and fell as I was carrying the children’s washing upstairs. Roll on the day they can do their own laundry!’ The youngest nurse had laughed at that, smiled at me kindly, adjusted my pillows. I could almost sense the goodness radiating out from her, the purity. I wanted to be like that too. For just a brief moment when Jack went to the bathroom, I wanted to reach out to grab her arm, tell her the truth. But I thought of the children, their little eyes blinking up at me, and I didn’t.
A fresh start, he said on the drive home from the hospital, for both of us. Shortly after, we moved here.
Sandra takes another sip of wine, shoves a handful of Kettle Chips into her mouth. The gesture smudges her lipstick a bit, but no one says anything.
‘I can’t imagine how you’re feeling, Jane,’ she says, ‘her being next door to you guys.’ She gives a little shiver. ‘You can’t believe it, can you?’ She lowers her voice, looks at me and Tricia, her eyes darkening just a little. ‘You don’t think – well, you don’t think the obvious, do you?’ She’s almost whispering now, and I know what she’s going to say even before she opens her mouth, her white teeth flashing in the kitchen light. She uses strips to whiten them; I’ve seen them in her bathroom. £19.99 for a pack, bright white teeth for a lifetime. ‘You don’t think she was raped?’
The word changes the atmosphere in the room, as though the walls are tightening slightly, hemming us in. I put a hand to my throat, thinking of Clare’s long legs, of my son’s eyes on her golden blonde hair.
‘I think we ought to let the police be the judge of that,’ I say, ‘but I hope to God she wasn’t.’
‘It would be a motive though, wouldn’t it?’ Sandra presses on, oblivious to my discomfort. Rather than reply, I take another sip of wine, press my hand to my stomach, feel it rumble with hunger. We haven’t eaten dinner. Liquid calories.
‘I know what you mean,’ Tricia chips in, eyes gleaming with the promise of more gossip. ‘It does seem odd, doesn’t it, for someone to target her like that, without a reason?’ She shivers. ‘And Nathan Warren being the one to find her – well, it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, does it? Poor, poor Rachel. And after losing Mark, too.’ She pauses. ‘I hope she isn’t thinking anything stupid.’
‘I took her a lasagne round this afternoon, after the police left,’ I say, and the women nod appreciatively. I did think about taking her one, which is almost the same thing. The curtains on Rachel and Ian’s bedroom window were pulled tight when I left to come to Sandra’s; I couldn’t see inside. Their bedroom faces into our bathroom; when I’m in the shower, I can see the full sweep of their bed, their his and hers wardrobe, the suit Ian hangs up before a big meeting in the city. They can’t see me, I don’t think. Anyway, a lasagne might have disturbed them. Overstepped the mark.
‘You’re such a good neighbour, Jane,’ Sandra says, hiccupping as she takes another sip of wine, and I smile, look away. Her house is a mess; kids’ toys clutter the floor.
‘We’ll get through this,’ Tricia says, nodding decisively, the effect ruined only slightly when a spill of wine slops from her glass, splashing onto her expensive cream blouse. ‘We all will. This town needs to stick together. We’re a team.’
The clock on the mantelpiece chimes – it’s an old-fashioned one, like my grandmother would own. Sandra never did have much style.
‘I’d better get going,’ I say, ‘Jack will be waiting.’ I glance at my watch, feel a rush of anxiety as I picture him looking at his phone for messages, annoyed now that I’m later than I said. Opening a beer, the soft click of the bottle cap releasing. Jack’s lucky to have you, an old friend said to me once. How true those words are now.
‘Oh, send our love,’ the women say,
