24 Hours: An intense, suspenseful psychological thriller (25 page)

I
dropped Polly
at my mother’s the day before Emily and I left London. She had decided to take Polly to Euro Disney using the Nectar points she’d saved for years now, and I had hardly ever seen Polly so excited.

‘We’re going to meet the Little Mermaid and Tinkerbell,’ she said, hopping from foot to foot as I packed her bag. Then she had a meltdown because I couldn’t find her favourite red cardigan. ‘But it’s got my Hello Kitty badge on it,’ she wailed, ‘I wanted to show Granny.’ I promised to drop it off if I found it before she left.

I had finally had an offer on the house, and it felt like a huge weight off my mind, although I wasn’t sure yet where Polly and I would go. Emily had seemed vaguely enthusiastic about the idea of flat-sharing, but I hadn’t seen much of her in the week before we went to Forest Lodge. She was very caught up with work, and I had a feeling she had some new man on the go, but she was playing it typically close to her chest.

I was toying with the idea of leaving London permanently, though I hadn’t yet mentioned it to Sid. In fact I hadn’t spoken to Sid at all since the night of the fight at my house; I was still furious and rather nervous of him again. Fortunately, he hadn’t asked to see Polly after my decision to keep them apart for a while and I was relieved that I didn’t have to deal with the situation immediately.

Mal had left for America, texting me once or twice from there with funny little updates. I hadn’t seen Suzanne since the last time I’d thought she’d followed Mal and me to his flat in her car – although every time I walked through the gates of St Bede’s I braced myself, scared I’d run into her.

The night before Emily and I went away, I delivered Polly to Mum’s. Roz and I had pizza together and then I went home to finish a supervision report.

Very late, the phone rang. When I picked it up, no one spoke, but I could hear breathing before it was slammed down again.

I went to bed, only to be woken by the phone again. I answered it automatically, eyes still closed, but again, no one spoke.

I slept fitfully for the rest of the night.

The morning dawned clear and bright, if freezing. Emily arrived to collect me, wrapped in a trusty fake fur, a copy of
The Mirror
on the seat beside her.

‘Not your standard fare?’ I said, moving in to get in.

‘No,’ she looked faintly embarrassed. ‘Just grabbed it when I was buying provisions.’ She indicated the array of sweets and chocolate on the back seat.

‘Wow!’ I glanced at the front of the paper; at a huge photo of Jolie literally falling out of a nightclub in London in the early hours, being scooped up by minders, showing her G-string. ‘Not a good look.’

‘No,’ Emily agreed, turning on the radio. ‘Not a good look at all. Poor girl.’

‘No sign of Sid,’ I scrutinised the picture. ‘Not really his cup of tea, Mahiki in Mayfair.’

‘No,’ Emily agreed again. ‘I expect not. Have you …’ she glanced at me warily, nervous since our fall-out about him last month. ‘Have you guys spoken yet?’

‘No, and I don’t want to,’ I stared ahead. ‘I’m avoiding him really. Don’t want to go down the whole Polly access road at the moment. He’s absolutely furious with me.’

‘You’re not really going to stop him seeing her, are you?’ Emily indicated left.

‘Why?’ I looked at her, surprised. ‘Don’t you think I should?’

‘It’s your call,’ she shrugged. ‘Not my business. But I really can’t see him hurting her. He loves her too much.’

Before I could answer, Nirvana came on the radio, and Emily whacked up the volume. ‘Anyway. Let’s forget about them. This is all about you and me, babe.’

S
omewhere on the
M4 I woke from a deep sleep to hear Emily hissing ‘
Fuck off
’ to someone.

‘What’s wrong?’ I sat up groggily. At first I thought she must be on the phone, but I realised she was glaring in the rear-view mirror.

‘This bloke keeps tailgating me,’ she was flapping her hand at the window as a black-clad biker roared up the inside of us, cutting her up badly. ‘For God’s sake,’ she said. ‘The guy’s got a bloody death-wish.’

He disappeared off in a trail of smoke, only to appear again at the next junction.

‘This is really stressing me,’ she said.

‘Just ignore him. He’s trying to get a rise out of you.’

‘He’s bloody well succeeding.’

He pulled up alongside us and started to make gestures that could only be described as crude.

Emily veered dangerously, the old Jeep rocking as she righted the wheel again.

‘Em,’ I put my hand on her arm. ‘Just ignore him.’

But it was easier said than done. For the next ten miles he played cat and mouse, until Emily was tearful. ‘I’m going to pull off at the next junction,’ she said. ‘He’s properly scaring me.’

‘Okay,’ I said, watching him intently in the mirror. He was tailing us again now, and I was feeling increasingly worried myself. I had a nasty memory of Mal on his bike that night outside Suzanne’s, although this figure definitely looked a little lean to be Mal.

‘What bike is that?’ I asked Emily.

‘A big horrible one.’

‘Is it a …’ I struggled to remember what Mal had said the other night. ‘Is it a Ducati?’

‘Fuck knows.’ She pulled into the slow lane to turn off at the next exit, and the bike zoomed beside us again. I read the name Yamaha on the tank as it passed, saw the arm of his leather jacket as it flashed by, his gloved hand, then as Emily approached the roundabout at the top of the slip-road, the biker accelerated, nipped in and braked right in front of us, before speeding off again – causing her to wrench the wheel to the right so hard that we hit the grass verge.

We sat in stunned silence for a moment, and then the ever-stoic Emily started to cry. ‘Oh my God. I thought we were going to die.’

‘I’m calling the police,’ I said. I had a horrible feeling I had recognised his jacket; the paint-spattered leather, but I didn’t speak my fears now. ‘In case he comes back.’ Emily didn’t argue.

Within ten minutes, a police bike had arrived, and we followed it to the town’s police station where we were given tea and a poor impression of sympathy. The officer we spoke to obviously thought we were just neurotic, deluded female drivers. I gave him the bike’s number-plate and, when Emily went to the loo, I told them of my fears that it might be my husband following us. The officer was polite but obviously dismissive; disinterested in imagined domestics; wrote something down and dispatched us again. The check on the number-plate had brought nothing up; the suggestion was it was either foreign or stolen.

Fortunately the Jeep hadn’t sustained any serious damage apart from a slow flat, which a handsome constable changed in the car park whilst Emily fluttered her eyelashes at him.

‘I do love a man in uniform,’ she said as we set off again, and I laughed, relieved to see her regain at least a little of her sense of humour. ‘I’m so sorry, Laurie.’

‘It’s not your fault.’

‘I wanted it to be perfect for you.’

‘It is, Em.’

But she was definitely a little subdued after the run-in with the biker – and not surprisingly. We’d both been terrified, and it was hardly the start to the weekend we’d planned.

The sun was streaking the sky as we neared Forest Lodge about an hour later, reminding me of the Magdalen series of paintings; the lurid skies of Sid’s imagination. I tried to thrust him as far from my mind as possible as we arrived in the hotel reception.

‘We were expecting you a little while ago. I hope your journey was all right? I told the gentleman who rang, Madame,’ the elegant French receptionist told me.

‘Oh? Did he leave a name?’

‘Unfortunately not,’ he bowed his head sorrowfully, ‘I expect he will call back.’

‘Really?’ I was surprised. No one apart from my mother knew I was here. ‘Definitely a call for me?’

Emily gave me a sly look. ‘Secret admirer?’

‘Yeah, right,’ I tried not to snort in disbelief. ‘I’d be lucky.’

‘Sid?’ Emily said rather sullenly.

‘I doubt it,’ I really didn’t want to start down this path with her now. ‘We’re barely talking at the moment, he’s so cross. So, tea or …’ I looked at the champagne bar with some longing. ‘Tea?’

The hotel was a beautifully converted old mansion on the edge of a small thicket of trees, almost a wood. Our spacious airy room was on the ground floor, French windows leading on to a small patio that overlooked lawns rolling down to the tree line.

The sun was low and the winter sky a deep blue as we explored a little; swam and used the spa. I dozed on the bed for a while before going down to the most exquisite Michelin-starred dinner, during which the mad biker faded from memory, and my fears that someone was stalking me receded somewhat.

When we returned to our room, giggly, slightly drunk, Emily had a few missed calls from a number she didn’t recognise.

‘I’d better call back,’ she said, suddenly serious. ‘It might be work.’ She slipped out onto the patio whilst I lay on the enormous bed and watched the end of
Mad Men
, already half-asleep.

‘Who was it?’ I asked her sleepily as she came back in and headed for the bathroom.

‘Don’t know,’ she said, ‘didn’t answer.’ She looked a little flushed from the wine.

‘You okay?’ I said, stretching pleasurably under the goosedown duvet.

‘Head’s hurting a bit. Hope I’m not getting a bloody migraine. Probably just tired,’ she called from the bathroom as I drifted into sleep. ‘Been a long day, hasn’t it?’

I didn’t bother to answer.

And that was almost the last thing she ever said to me.

I
ring
the hospital again when I get home and they assure me my mother is fine, that they are just keeping her in for observation after an erratic ECG, but she is sleeping, and there are no serious concerns ‘at this point’.

Polly and I sleep for a while in my bed.

When I wake, and see my daughter’s sleeping face beside mine on the pillow, the little nose spattered with freckles and the dark lashes sweeping such round cheeks; dribbling slightly, one sodden curl in her mouth; and even though she has hogged most of the bed as usual and I am practically falling off the edge, and her feet are firmly pressed into my side, one sharp toenail piercing my flesh, I think I have never been so happy. This one pure moment of joy, that’s what life is; that’s as good as it gets. Grabbing on to the ephemera of happiness when it comes.

And then the phone rings, and the spell is broken.

It’s DS Kelly.

‘Can I pop round this afternoon?’ he says. ‘About three?’

‘Yes sure.’ My stomach lurches again. ‘Am I—’

‘It’s not … it’s not about you, no. It’s just to put the lid on some things now. Please don’t worry yourself.’

I try to call Sid, but he doesn’t answer. So I get in the shower and Polly and I go to the hospital, we take my mum grapes and flowers and magazines, but when we get there she’s sitting up in bed, right as rain and moaning that it’s not clean enough, and the nurses say she’ll be out tomorrow and they look, honestly, like they’ll be glad to see the back of her. And we don’t really talk about what happened, because Polly is there, but when I leave, I bend over to hug her, and she holds on to me very tight.

‘I was so scared,’ she whispers. ‘When I thought you were, you were …’ she trails off, clutches me tighter. I think about my own frantic pain when I didn’t know where Polly was and I hug my mother back harder than I remember ever hugging her.

On the way home, I try to call Sid again, but still nothing. I have a very bad feeling in my gut now.

DS Kelly is outside the house when we arrive, finishing a packet of salt and vinegar crisps he quickly tucks away as we approach. We go inside, and I ask Polly to play upstairs for a while, which she moans about until I bribe her with a promise of a Happy Meal for tea, and she gives in.

And I offer DS Kelly tea, just to keep busy really, whilst he’s talking, and then he explains what seems to have happened at Forest Lodge. He runs a hand over his wispy hair, belying his own nerves.

And I find my hands are shaking so much I can’t even fill the kettle, and he comes over and takes it, and sits me down.

‘I am so sorry about your friend,’ he says, and I bow my head and the tears I’ve held in start, pattering down onto my knees.

‘It should have been me,’ I say after a second or two, wiping my face, and he shakes his head, and says, ‘Please don’t say that, Mrs Smith. It should have been no one.’

‘What will happen now?’ I ask, and he says, ‘Well it’s one for the CPS really. Obviously there is some further investigation to be done, and that will be carried out by the Devon force. You’ll be kept informed.’

And then he leaves.

And I go back upstairs and I sit on the sofa and watch Polly carefully setting out all the Playmobil that Emily bought her for her last birthday, and I think I have to tell her soon, that her best friend is gone – but not yet. Not quite yet. And so I just sit and watch her, and the day draws in and the light fades outside, and eventually I stand and shut the curtains.

I
f you hold
on to something too tight, it will break.

If you hold on to someone too tight, then you risk breaking them. You strain the bond to its utmost breaking point.

Jolie found that out the hard way.

She wanted Sid so badly, but he wasn’t ready, and she was too riven with her own insecurities to see that it was him who couldn’t do it, and not her fault. Then she miscarried her baby, and after that, she couldn’t see straight any more.

That morning, Sid found Jolie out in the woods at Hampstead Heath, hysterical, suicidal. She wanted to be found, I guess, and so he talked her down and took her back to his.

Then he called the police, because she told him what had happened. Jolie was now in custody.

She couldn’t live with the guilt, she said, and she had wanted to die herself, although she said it had been a terrible accident.

But it still didn’t really add up for me.

I went to see Sid at his studio. He wasn’t expecting me; he looked shocked when he answered the door.

‘Can I come in?’ I said, pointlessly, for I was in already.

‘Why did she want to kill me?’ I asked him, and he shrugged.

‘Because she’d found out that we’d slept together again.’

‘How?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Really?’ I eyed him suspiciously. ‘And that was enough to push her into such – such violent action?’

‘Seems so.’ He lit a cigarette and then ground it out again. ‘I’m trying to stop,’ he said.

‘Good for you.’ I didn’t care anymore. ‘And how did Randolph get involved?’

Sid pulled a face. ‘He always had a thing about her. I think they might have even slept together once or twice,’ he stood and started to clean a brush. I thought about the bracelet on Randolph’s windowsill.

‘Do you mind?’

‘Do I mind?’ he wiped the brush carefully on a rag. ‘About Randolph and Jolie?’ He gave a bitter dry laugh. ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. I’m done with relationships now.’

I watched his thin back, the way his shoulder-blades protruded slightly through his jumper, like the stubs of wings.

My fallen angel. I stared at his back, as if I’d never see him again. ‘You know, I always thought it was you that he loved,’ I said to Sid. ‘Randolph, I mean.’

‘Me?’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Christ, I doubt it. I don’t think Randolph knows the meaning of love. I was just a cash cow, I imagine. It suited us both, didn’t it?’ He shoved the brush in a jar with vehemence. ‘Me and him. A marriage made in hell.’

‘I went to Randolph’s, you know. When I was looking for Polly and Mum. He was foul. He hit me.’

‘He hit you?’ Sid looked round now; incredulous first, angry second.

‘Well,’ I admitted, ‘I went for him first, I guess.’

Sid grinned. ‘Now that I wish I’d seen.’

‘But I don’t get it, Sid. Why did he pick my mum and Polly up?’

‘I suppose he thought he was being helpful.’

‘He said you asked him to.’

‘
Me?
I didn’t. I absolutely didn’t. I hadn’t even spoken to him.’

‘So … who …’ But it began to make sense now. ‘Jolie?’

‘Yes. Jolie asked him to.’

‘So how did he know where they were?’

‘Because Jolie told him, I suppose,’ Sid shrugged. ‘Does it matter now?’

‘And how did she know?’

‘She was in the room when I spoke to you, I guess.’

He looked weary; he didn’t want to talk any more, I could tell.

Still, I needed to know. I took a very deep breath. ‘How did she do it, Sid?’

‘What?’

‘You know. How did she start … start the fire?’

‘I really don’t know, Laurie. I don’t want to know, actually. It sickens me.’ He shook his head. ‘She said something about cigarettes. The police will tell you, won’t they? If you ask them.’

It didn’t quite make sense yet; I was struggling with this new truth.

‘But you know, when I spoke to her the morning she confessed, well, she didn’t sound surprised to hear from me.’

‘Well, she knew you were alive then, didn’t she? Why would she be surprised?’

‘Because she wanted me dead? Because that must have been her aim?’ I thought about it for a minute. ‘I guess she must have known by then, yes. That she’d killed the wrong woman.’

Sid turned his back to me, running water into the sink to finish cleaning up.

‘I thought it was you,’ my voice broke. ‘I thought it was you, Sid.’

‘I know you did.’ He wouldn’t look at me. ‘God knows why.’

‘I thought you wanted to kill me because of Polly. Because I said you couldn’t see her.’

‘Laurie,’ and now he did look at me, his eyes dark with sorrow. ‘I am not proud of things I’ve done; of the way I treated you in the past. I owe you an apology or three, I know. But I could no more kill you than Polly. I love you both.’ It still hurt, to hear him say it. ‘You are all I’ve ever loved.’

He looked away, out of the window, out at the dying light, and then he picked something up from the windowsill.

I couldn’t quite follow what he mumbled then, but he turned, handed me a blue feather.

‘Thank you,’ I said, a little surprised as I took it from him.

‘I think it’s from a jay. I found it in the park,’ he said. ‘Polly would like you to have it, I thought. For your collection.’

I think it was the first time since she’d been born he’d given me something for my collection.

Then he turned back to finish the brushes, signalling the conversation was over.

And I was sure he was hiding something. But then, he was always hiding something.

I left the studio soon after that. I didn’t look back.

T
here were still too
many unanswered questions, and I couldn’t rest until I understood it better. I was still ravaged by guilt over Emily’s death; I was utterly convinced that I could and should have prevented it – and all the time, I missed her more than I could have ever imagined possible.

Every morning when I woke up, I had to remember that Emily was dead all over again, and the guilt never seemed to lessen, and nor did the grief.

I had told Polly now. A few days after we returned home, I took her to the park and bought us both hot chocolate in paper cups, and then we’d walked to the playground. She’d picked up a ‘funny stone’ she found for me, ‘Look it’s got a face,’ she said, and then I’d sat her on my knee on a bench and told her.

She didn’t speak; she didn’t cry. She just went totally silent and owl-eyed and then she slipped off my knee, leaving her hot chocolate on the bench, and run on ahead to the big slide. I found her sitting up there, waiting for me. She slid down once, hair flying, small red wellied-feet planted on the ground at the bottom of it. Then she stuck her hands deep in her pockets and asked to go home. When we got there, she went to her bedroom and sat in the corner with Toy Bear and asked me to put her story tape on. So we listened to ‘How the Leopard Got His Spots’ and other stories, holding hands in silence. My best beloved.

Since that day, she’d refused to talk about Emily at all. I thought it was best to just leave it for a while.

I’d also spoken to Pam Southern on the phone, sobbing my way through some kind of garbled apology, to which she had responded as stoically as someone in her position could, assuring me that the blame didn’t lie with me. She didn’t want to talk about Jolie and I didn’t mention it, but it had been all over the news since she was charged. No one could miss it; the story of the year.

I promised to go up and see Pam before the funeral; I thought maybe I should take Polly too. The inquest was looming and then we hoped the police would finally release Emily’s body back to the family.

At least my mother was safely out of the hospital again, back home, watched over by an anxious John who now refused to leave her side. I was infinitely relieved for selfish reasons; my world was not completely shattered.

Only partially so.

D
S Kelly rang
and told me that Jolie had asked to see me. I contemplated how sensible a visit was, given my emotional state, but in the end, the chance to ask the questions that addled my brain each day was too strong to resist.

I went to see her at the police station where she was still in custody.

We sat opposite one another in a bare room with a very young policeman staring at the beige wall opposite, Jolie pulling her sweatshirt sleeves incessantly over her hands, nails no longer glittering, but scraggy and bitten. Without a scrap of her usual make-up or insouciance, she seemed a different creature to the exotic, wild one I’d known before; now caged and ordinary.

She asked me how Polly was.

‘Fine,’ I said flatly. ‘Thank you.’

We sat in silence for a while. From my own work, and since she’d asked to see me, I knew the best thing was probably to wait for her to start talking of her own accord.

Sure enough, eventually, Jolie began to speak. Her voice was a curious monotone, the street-smart lilt gone as she stared first at me and then at the wall behind my ear.

‘It was an accident,’ she said. Then she looked at me very directly, challenging me to disagree. I thought her pupils looked dilated; I wondered what medication she was on.

‘Right,’ I said.

She seemed surprised that I didn’t dispute this.

‘I was on my way back from the gig at Eden.’

‘How did you know where we were? Me and Emily?’

‘Sid mentioned it,’ Jolie shrugged. ‘He said Polly wasn’t coming that weekend ’cos you were away and she was in Euro Disney. I asked him where, and he said he wasn’t sure but it was some flash place in South Devon. I read Sid’s text, it said where.’ She actually looked proud of herself.

‘So you always planned to come?’

‘No way,’ she stared at me, affronted. ‘I had a car after the gig. Record label offered me a chopper, but I bloody hate flying.’

‘Okay.’ I needed to wait for her to offer the information.

‘I was meant to meet Sid after in Cornwall, but it all went to shit.’

‘Because?’

‘We had a massive row on the phone in the car ’cos he was being all weird.’ She bit her pretty lip so hard I could see teeth-marks.

‘Weird?’

‘Didn’t want to see me,’ she frowned at the memory. ‘He said we should cool it. And I knew exactly bloody why.’

‘Why?’

‘What is it with all the questions?’ she glared at me. The shadows beneath her eyes were huge.

‘Sorry,’ I sat back a little, giving her space.

Eventually, she started to talk again.

‘So then I started knocking back the champagne. Was planning to come straight back to London and go to Rita’s do at Whisky Mist.’

‘But you didn’t?’

‘Nah. We were on the motorway, and then I remembered the name of the hotel. I saw the signs to Forest Lodge and I couldn’t resist it. I got my driver to take a detour. No bother.’

‘I see.’ I didn’t really see, but I had to play along with her.

‘It wasn’t planned. It was just a … you know.’ Jolie blinked at me. ‘A spur of the moment thing.’

She made it sound like she’d just decided to go and buy herself a new designer dress, or book a holiday.

‘I wanted to check he wasn’t there,’ she explained. ‘I rang her, and she said go away.’

Something wasn’t making sense. But I remembered the missed calls when Emily and I got back from dinner; Emily stepping outside to check her messages. ‘How did you get in the room?’

‘Through the French windows,’ she shrugged. ‘It was easy. Just climbed over that funny little wall. You hadn’t shut them properly.’

‘Oh,’ I said, remembering the phone ringing in my dreams before Emily begged me to get her pills.

‘But how did you know what room we were in?’

‘It’s not hard to get information,’ Jolie stuck her jaw out defiantly.

‘When you’re you.’

Jolie didn’t reply.

‘I just wanted to talk,’ she looked at me plaintively. ‘Honestly.’

‘To me?’

For a second, she didn’t meet my gaze, twiddling a curl round her finger. ‘Something like that.’

‘Something like that?’ I shook my head. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I just wanted to get it sorted. Know why it was going on.’

‘Why what was going on?’

‘Why Sid was fucking her.’

‘Fucking me,’ I corrected.

‘No,’ she stared at me. ‘Fucking
her
.’

‘Fucking … who?’ I stared at her. ‘You mean … Emily?’

‘Yeah. Fucking your best mate. Surely,’ Jolie sat up a little straighter. ‘Surely you knew that was going down?’

The policeman in the corner shifted slightly.

We gazed at each other. She looked so incredibly young without her make-up, so indefensible. I couldn’t speak; words stuck in my throat.

‘No?’ she half-smiled. I couldn’t tell if she was crowing or not. ‘You didn’t?’

‘No. I didn’t. I don’t …’ I shook my head slowly. ‘I’m sure … I think you’ve got that wrong.’

But she wasn’t wrong.

Of course she wasn’t wrong. And it all started to fall into place now. Emily’s strange behaviour during the last week of her life; the way she’d been with Sid during the fight with Mal, not standing up to him as usual. The fact she’d disappeared that night and then the next morning, had been so hung-over and rueful in the cafe. Racked with guilt; insisting she took me away. The fact she’d hardly been around that week before we went to Devon, always a sure sign there was a man in the offing.

It all made horrible and clear sense now. How had I not seen it?

‘I didn’t mean to kill her,’ Jolie said, and she grabbed my hand across the table. ‘I swear on my mother’s life, I didn’t mean it. Please believe me. It just got out of control, you know? I was so angry, and I was a bit … like, pissed. I just came to talk to her. I said if she didn’t tell you, I would. I rang her and warned her I was coming.’

Jolie’s fingers were very warm, her skin clammy. I pulled my hand back but I could still feel her flesh on mine. I thought of Emily begging later for the headache pills. A ruse to get me out of the room? It seemed so.

‘What did you do?’

‘She fucking begged me not to tell you.’ Jolie wore such a strange look on her face. Not quite triumph, perhaps, but a near relation blazed there. ‘She said she’d have done anything.’