A Question of Identity (5 page)

She felt safe in the car. But when they turned into the street she began to shake. Her stomach turned over.

‘This one, is it?’

‘Next . . . it’s one up. Thank you . . . thanks a lot.’

‘All right, I’ll see you in.’

‘No,’ Lynne said, scrambling out and almost falling as her foot hit the pavement. ‘I’m fine. Thanks.’

She had to hop up the path. The copper had got out and he stood there, his torch following her all the way.

‘Thanks.’ But she whispered it, terrified he would hear, waiting for the light to go on.

The radio started to gabble and the copper was inside and the car was slewing round. They had had a call and they didn’t pause and that had to wake him, the racket of the engine and the tyres. She waited, hand on the wall. There were no lights on, downstairs, next door, opposite. Nobody to hear. Not that anyone ever heard anything.

Her foot was throbbing. She just wanted to get in, take some aspirin, lie down.

She slid the key into the lock almost silently, used to doing it. Crept into the hall. If she could get the tablets from the kitchen cupboard without waking him, she’d lie down on the sofa. That drove him mad but she’d face him in the morning, tell a story about coming home late, Hilary giving her a lift, not wanting to disturb him.

Her heart was pounding so hard it hurt her chest.

The kitchen was just as she’d left it that morning, her tea mug in the sink. Nothing else.

The flat had the empty silence she had grown used to during the months he had been in prison waiting for the trial. She sensed it. Felt it.

She went carefully across the hall, listening, listening. Opened the door of the bedroom. He had heard her, she knew, but not let on, stayed in the dark, waiting, waiting. He had done that before.

He was not asleep because there was no snoring, no puff of breath in and out. Nothing. She edged the door open. The last time he had been behind it, waiting for her. Waiting.

It was ages before she dared reach out to the switch.

The light blazed into the empty room.

LAFFERTON, 2012

JUDITH HAD TOLD
Richard she thought the funeral would be small. ‘Not many people here knew Marie-Elise – she’d only been in Lafferton a couple of years.’

She was wrong. There were three undertakers’ cars behind the hearse leaving her old friend’s terraced house in the Apostles and starting the slow crawl through town and out onto the bypass to the crematorium. Several people driving their own cars followed.

It was a bitterly cold day. Snow was lying along the verges, but the sun shone out of an enamel-blue sky. The early-afternoon light was brittle. Another hard frost tonight then.

The hearse turned carefully out onto the Old Bevham Road and stopped at the red lights.

Judith was remembering summers in the Lot Valley with Marie-Elise and her family when Don was alive, holidays with their children swimming in the lakes and picnicking every day, drinking wine at a table on the veranda. They had never lost touch, and after Marie-Elise’s husband died she had first come to visit and then, later, to live in Lafferton. It had seemed a strange choice, a new life in an unfamiliar place, and perhaps it had been a mistake in some respects because, almost from the start, Marie-Elise had been unwell. But she was a stalwart woman, and made friends as easily as a young child. Before
long, she had a wide circle of people around her. Judith had loved meeting up but never had to worry that Marie-Elise might feel upset if they didn’t for weeks at a time. One thing her friend had never done after the first couple of uneasy suppers was visit Hallam House when Richard was there. They had disliked each other from the start and Marie-Elise had solved the problem once and for all by telling Judith as much. ‘I come to see you and only you, Judith. We do not see eye to each other’s eye, your Richard and your old friend. It happens. N’importe.’

Richard did not like many people. For a time, after their marriage, he had tried to be accepting and pleasant to Judith’s friends but hadn’t kept it up and she had understood, knowing that at heart he was not unwelcoming or antisocial, simply a man who preferred his own company, or hers and sometimes that of his family.

The traffic lights were slow. Judith caught a glimpse of Marie-Elise’s son and daughter sitting in the hearse, Simone black-veiled.

Just then, a cyclist appeared from nowhere and dashed across as the lights were changing. As she did so, she glanced to her left, taking in the hearse. In a panic, she stopped and tried to turn back. But the traffic was already moving forward. The hearse, going at only a few miles an hour, managed to avoid running into her and the rest of the funeral procession remained stationary. Any other driver would have had the car door open and been shouting abuse at the cyclist. The hearse driver merely sat and waited. By this time, the inner lane of cars as well as those moving southbound were speeding up. The cyclist stood frozen, terror on her face beneath her blue helmet, and then Judith saw that it was Molly, Cat’s medical student lodger. There was clearly something wrong and she wondered if she could safely get out and help her. Molly seemed unable to move in either direction but stood holding her bike and staring white-faced at the hearse, the driver, the coffin.

A van coming fast up to the junction seemed to startle her into a dash to the pavement, where she stopped and leaned over the saddle as if her stomach was hurting her.

The crematorium funeral was an even more dismal event than usual, mainly because the two hymns chosen were French, which few of them knew, and the officiating priest had not known Marie-Elise or apparently made any effort to find out much about her.

Judith left the gathering as soon as she could, not to go into town, as she had planned, but out to the farmhouse to see if Molly had arrived back in one piece.

There was a meeting of Emma’s reading group that evening, and it was Cat’s turn to host, so Molly usually made the cake and then put Felix to bed, helped Hannah with homework or watched television with her, so that Cat was free.

Emma’s bookshop in the Lanes had been a success but would not have been so without initiatives, in the form of reading and creative writing groups, author visits and talks. Now, she had plans for a book festival over one weekend in the spring and Judith was brainstorming ideas with her and being co-organiser of the event itself. As she drove now she had ideas for both another potential visitor and a competition, and tried to keep them in mind until she could stop and write them down. If the festival was a success, perhaps they could extend it to a long weekend the following year.

‘It’s what Lafferton has been waiting for,’ she had said to Richard, coming home from the first meeting.

‘I doubt it.’

His lack of interest and support, in this as in other things, made her unhappy. She thought he had changed, always fought his corner, especially when Simon criticised him for coldness and lack of interest in whatever activities and occupations Meriel, his first wife, had had. When Judith and he had married, he had at least made a show of enthusiasm in what she was doing, even though that had not been very much, outside of home and her life with him. In the past few months, even that had gone.

The car dashboard already showed minus four and the brightness was draining out of the sky as she pulled up in the drive. The winter had been too mild. Now, in February, it had caught up on them with a week of snow and blizzards which had mainly thawed in a single day, but given way to bitter cold. Judith
pulled on her coat and scarf even for the few yards to the front door. The house was in darkness, Cat’s car not in the drive. It was half-term so there was no school run and Sam was away for the week.

Wookie the Yorkshire terrier had already heard her and was yelping with delight. Judith took out her key, but the front door was unlocked. She went in and through to the kitchen to switch on the lights. Mephisto opened half an eye from his deep slumber on the sofa, took her in, and closed it again.

There were no preparations under way for the evening ahead, no cake cooling on the rack, no chocolate shortbread under cling film, no coffee pot and mugs set out. Molly had always made a start by this time, conscientious as she was.

Judith went into the hall and listened but the house had the oddly hollow sound of one that was empty.

She went back to the kitchen and put on the kettle. Cat had not been expecting her of course and had probably taken the children somewhere, but what about Molly? Where was she?

Judith went to the side door and looked across the yard. Molly’s bicycle was propped against the log shed.

‘
IT’S TIMES LIKE
this, you know?’

Cat had got out of her car and was watching Hannah who had flung her arms round Judith and was shouting something in her ear. Felix was still strapped into his seat playing an intricate game involving a plastic box, a tiny silver ball and nine holes on a painted golf course. Games of this demanding kind were now his passion and his skills were better than those of anyone else in the family by a mile. He was privately hoping that his presence would be overlooked and he would be left in the car all night to play this one.

Judith unwound herself from Hannah’s embrace. ‘Slow down, slow down . . . something amazing has happened and I can’t make out what.’

‘I’ve been asked to go
back
.’

‘Back?’

‘For a second audition. For the part in the
film
, duh.’

‘Hannah!’

‘Sorry.’

‘The film? Do I know about this?’

‘No,’ Cat said, leaning into the car to unbuckle Felix, who squealed in protest, flailed his arms and dropped the game. Cat watched it slide under the car out of reach.

‘I’ll get it, I’ll get it, the more good deeds I do the more I’ll get the part.’

‘Doesn’t work like that, I’m afraid. But thanks.’

Judith took Felix’s hand, and they went into the house. ‘What was it you said? “Times like this . . .”?’

‘Times when something good happens, even a small something, and I still want to rush home and tell Chris. Madness.’

‘No. Perfectly normal and understandable. You’re so hard on yourself.’

‘I thought you were at a funeral. Marie-Elise?’

‘I was. I went.’

‘Upsetting?’

‘Not exactly. But I couldn’t face the bun fight.’

Cat took out the cafetière.

‘Besides, it looks as if you’re going to need help for tonight.’

‘Oh?’

Judith told her. ‘I was just going to investigate upstairs in case she was ill.’

‘It would be seeing the hearse,’ Cat said. ‘I’ll go up in a minute.’

‘I can –’

‘Thanks but it had better be me. She talks to me.’

Hannah came in triumphantly with the game and handed it to Felix who rushed off to the den with it.

How tall she is, suddenly, Judith thought, tall and slender and no longer really a child.

Hannah’s eyes were bright with excitement. ‘OK, listen, some film people came to drama class and asked some of us if we wanted to audition, people they picked out, and I was one, only loads of us were. We went into the side room and did some stuff and they talked to us and they said they’d let us know if they wanted to see any of us again and I forgot all about it and today we got the letter and they want to see ME ME ME ME again. I have to go to an audition room, in a hotel, next week.’

‘That’s fantastic, Hanny! Well done!’

‘Yes, though of course nothing might come of it, I’m not getting my hopes up.’

Judith heard Cat’s warning words being repeated.

‘So what’s the film?’

‘
A Christmas Carol
. I’d be one of the Cratchit family. Have you ever heard of it?’

Cat left them making preparations for last-minute baking to feed the book group, and went upstairs.

A thin line of light showed under Molly’s door.

‘Can I come in?’

A moment’s pause, then a murmur.

Molly was curled on the bean bag, wrapped tightly in a fleece, although her sitting room was warm. The previous year Cat had rearranged the west side of the farmhouse so that Molly could have a sitting room, bedroom and bathroom which led from one another. The original thought had been that when her boyfriend Rob, now a junior doctor, came to stay, they needn’t feel they had to be part of the family house. But Rob had found it difficult to cope with the change in Molly since the attack on her by Leo Fison, now known locally as ‘Dr Death’, and he had broken up with her just before Christmas. ‘Trust a man not to do things by halves,’ Cat had said in fury. But Molly had shrugged. ‘Who can blame him? Look at me.’

She glanced up as the door opened, but did not move.

‘What happened?’

‘God, just when you think it’s OK, just when you think you really have turned a corner, something happens . . . life just chucks stuff at me, Cat, and I can’t deal with it.’

‘Judith saw you. She was driving behind the funeral cars. Panic attack?’

Molly turned her head away. Her post-trauma and anxiety state embarrassed her. Anything could trigger it – reading about a violent crime, or seeing something connected with death, like the hearse today. She had nightmares about being murdered, about lying on a bed waiting to be given a lethal syringe, about being locked in a room. Ambulances unloading bodies, bodies on slabs, bodies in freezer drawers, bodies found lying in fields and by the roadside. It had been clear that she couldn’t take her final medical exams and she’d been given a year’s deferral without penalty. Privately, Cat doubted if she could ever continue, unless the anxiety and its accompanying depression went away for good. Medicine demanded, among other things, a lifetime of familiarity with the dying and dead. Meanwhile, Molly was having regular counselling, talking to Cat if she needed to and helping to organise the
Deerbon household, without giving her future profession much thought. That could come later.

‘I’ve been so much better. I really thought I was beginning to crack this. It’s so bloody unfair.’