written in a nondescript hand with, as she’d thought, black felt tip. The letter looked as though it had never been sealed, and the paper, cheap and green, matching the envelope, slid out easily.
HELLO BARBARA.
CANCER IS TOO GOOD FOR YOU.
DON’T WORRY – I’LL BE WITH YOU ALL THE WAY.
JUST LIKE YOU DESERVE.
JENNIFER
Helen’s hands started to shake; the harsh New York laughter from the chat show on television seemed to be taunting her. This was a joke, surely? Yet, on the other hand, it was no kind of joke at all.
She reread the thing twice or more, but her mind couldn’t process the words. Who was Jennifer? And what could she mean? Whatever it was, the intention behind it was obviously malevolent. But could it be serious? She started to look at the note itself, mechanically noting the flimsy copier paper, the black felt tip, the careful capitals with a few wobbles – she guessed that the author was using their wrong hand. But none of it took her any further.
After a few moments, the credits music startled her into action. She refolded the note and replaced it in the envelope. Once she’d tucked it away, back under a building society statement, she could almost believe she’d imagined it. She focused in turn on the graduation pictures on the wall and the wedding-present china shepherdess that Barbara hated. This was the normal world. It was more than normal – it was the world of dull, petty suburbia that Helen had escaped. It had nothing to do with threatening notes from anonymous villains. She resolved to confront Barbara again the next day. No matter how frosty or secretive her mother could be, she couldn’t simply brush off something like this.
Helen
The thing about Darren was he’d always had a knack for giving people what they didn’t know they wanted. It occurred to Helen later that she probably shouldn’t have been so shocked when he finally managed to turn that talent into hard cash. Perhaps the more surprising thing, she mused, as she tried on her third little black dress and frowned hopelessly at the mirror again, was that it had taken him quite so long. Austerity ground on, and yet here she was, getting ready for a blowout Christmas party that would show the world just how damn successful Darren Harrison was.
The man himself, immaculate in Paul Smith, stuck his head round the bedroom door.
‘Are you getting there, Hels? The car will be here in twenty.’
Apparently they were too grand for minicabs these days.
‘Okay, thanks, I’m just going to swap this for my black one.’
‘I thought you’d got something new during the week?’ His brow creased slightly, with just the hint of a frown.
‘I didn’t find anything.’
The truth was, she’d only managed an hour to dash into a couple of local shops and, ten months after giving birth to Alys, she still found trying clothes on a miserable experience.
The business was called Date Night. Darren had started putting on these ironic telly-themed singles nights, having got the idea after watching one too many cheap nostalgic box sets. It was the seventh or eighth golden business brainwave he’d had, whilst her dull but steadily more lucrative career in financial-services HR supported them both. Finally, this one had stuck.
In a year, she’d gone from being a career girl in Shoreditch to maternity leave in Chiswick. Going back to work after Barney had felt like a return to civilisation. After Alys, though, Darren pointed out that he could pay for everything now – all the holidays they could handle. Wasn’t it better, he asked, for her to be less stressed and for the kids to be raised by their parents rather than strangers? She didn’t speak to him for three days after that and at the end of her first day back in the office she drank Prosecco with her friend Amy Stretton. Amy was in CID with the Met Police and, back then, still single. She could be relied upon to opine at length about all men being bastards.
The dress she had settled on for tonight was from the Shoreditch days. It was black, and forgivingly stretchy – although faded from too many washes. Well, surely it would be dark at the party anyway? She added a pair of silver earrings, looked in the mirror and smiled, feeling, finally, like she was herself.
‘The car’s outside, Hels.’
‘I’m coming!’
She quickly kissed her babies – they’d both been asleep for a while – then she popped into the front room to let her parents know they were off. She’d managed to persuade them down for a rare pre-Christmas visit and then Darren had casually informed her about the party. If she was being honest with herself, she’d be more comfortable booking the usual babysitter.
Darren was jiggling his keys against his hip as she came into the hallway; he looked her up and down but said nothing. His smile was flat.
*
Although it was after one a.m. by the time they got back, Barbara was not yet in bed. Instead they found her tucked in a corner of the sofa under the glow of a single lamp, peering at a laptop she had balanced on the arm of the sofa. Her dark bun had always given her something of the air of a ballerina, and she unfurled gracefully from her pose as they came into the room.
‘I hope you didn’t stay up for our sakes?’ Darren’s words were polite, but there was something querulous in his tone. He spoke more to the decanter and glass in his hand than to his mother-in-law.
‘Of course not, don’t worry.’ Barbara’s own voice was light. ‘I’m doing coursework – the time ran away with me.’ Helen and Darren had both been mildly amused when she’d announced a couple of years earlier that she was taking an OU course in computing, but although she’d initially shrugged it off as just a tactic to stay one step ahead of the endless cuts and redundancies in local newspapers, she seemed to have really taken to it.
‘Were the kids okay?’ Helen asked.
Barbara looked momentarily blank, as though she had possibly forgotten about them, but then nodded. ‘Not a peep out of either of them. All fine.’
‘Well, I’m going up,’ announced Darren, raising his whisky to them. Helen knew she should join him; after all, she had been the one who had insisted on leaving at the end of the party, rather than heading out into the West End, where many of the guests were going to continue their evening. Now she was home, though, she felt suddenly awake. And desperate to take off her heels and have a cup of tea. Barbara declined her offer and Darren slunk off.
‘Good night?’ Barbara asked as she shut down the laptop.
Helen shrugged. Had it been? She found it exhausting, having to keep track of the employees, the investors, the suppliers, the hangers-on and God knows who else. Over the years, she’d shared little of the day-to-day concerns of her life with her mother – taking her lead from Barbara herself no doubt. She wasn’t now about to start dissecting her insecurities about Darren and how she feared the business was changing him.
To be fair, the night had improved when Darren – probably irritated with her defensiveness – had insisted that she knock back a couple
