Mindsight (34 page)

I parked the car a few yards before Beldon House, cut the lights, and killed the engine. My heart continued to race and I put my elbows on the steering wheel, my hands to my face, and tried to slow my breath.

It was the oddest feeling. As I came back to myself everything slotted into place and at last I knew the whole truth. I remembered everything from before and since the accident, yet it was as if the nightmare of prison and the turmoil of the past few weeks had happened to someone else. I was myself again, the real Clare.

I jerked back to some sense of where I was and what was happening here and now. My world had turned inside out, but I had no time to think about that. I had to get to Tom.

I left the car and walked towards the house. The rain had eased, but it felt cold after the heat of the car and I shivered in my damp clothes. The country road was dark, just a faint glow coming from Beldon House. My feet sounded loud as they crunched on the gravel drive and, when I got to the front door and took out my key, I was very aware of the silence inside.

The lower hall was dimly lit; everywhere else seemed to be dark. There was a strange smell, like petrol.

I ran up to Tom’s bedroom and flung open the door. The room was empty, the bed still neatly made. I looked into each of the other rooms – all empty – then walked slowly downstairs.

‘He’s not here, Clare.’ Alice’s voice from the kitchen. She was sitting at the table with a mug in front of her, the only light coming from over the cooker. It was so strange seeing her with my new/old eyes.

The blood drummed in my ears, but I made myself stand still and talk quietly. ‘Where is he?’

She smiled. ‘Staying with Mark. There’s no one else here.’

‘So why the phone call?’

A little head shake; the light gleaming on her blonde hair. ‘I needed to see you, Clare. I can’t go on like this.’

I sat, trying to slow my breath. ‘It was you, wasn’t it, in the other car, not Lorna? I’ve remembered seeing you there.’

She stood and poured me a mug of coffee. Her hand shook as she pushed it across the table to me. ‘Yes, and I’m so, so, sorry.’ Tears filled her eyes before she looked down. ‘I was drunk, didn’t know what I was doing. At first I just thought I’d wait until you were well enough and then I’d tell you, but I’d lied to the police, you see, and I didn’t know how to get out of it. We might both have gone to prison and Tom needed one of us to look after him.’

A tear ran down her cheek and she pressed the back of her hand against her mouth. I waited and eventually she said, ‘And I paid Downes to keep quiet.’

When she reached out for me I moved my hand back and she bit her lip, twisting her pale sweater between her hands. ‘Clare, please, I’m sorry, what more can I say?’

‘But why did you drive back?’

‘Like you said, I realised some capsules were missing and remembered how you’d been behaving. Knew you couldn’t be drunk so the only explanation was that you were high.’

I stirred my coffee. ‘If Lorna had nothing to do with it, why kill herself?’

‘I don’t know.’ It was a whisper.

I took Lorna’s letter from my pocket and smoothed it out on the table, then looked into her eyes. ‘I’ve read this over and over, because something never seemed right.’ She was watching me steadily. ‘I could never believe Lorna would do something like that, but this seemed to prove it.’

Her eyes were very bright, as if with fever.

‘But it wasn’t a suicide note, was it? Lorna was a letter writer of the old school, a trained secretary,’ I said. ‘She would never have begun a letter like that. Just
Clare
– no
Dear Clare,
or anything. And the word, Clare, was followed by a full stop, not a comma. A comma at the start of a letter would have been automatic for someone like her.’

‘So what are you thinking?’

‘That Clare wasn’t the first word of the note, but the last word of a sentence from the page before; part of a longer letter.’

‘One she didn’t send you mean?’

‘Oh she sent it all right.’ It almost hurt to bring out those words.

Her shining eyes widened. ‘But you never saw it?’

‘No.’

I could see her brain ticking over. ‘So that must mean … ’

‘That someone saw how that section could be turned into a suicide note. And used it.’

Her eyes moved from my face to the shadows behind me and she spoke slowly. ‘I don’t understand.’

We looked at each other and my voice was there on a shuddering breath. ‘This letter wasn’t written to me. I assumed it was because she called Dad,
your father
. But it was written to you.’

She made no attempt to speak, her hands flat against the table, as I read Lorna’s words.
“I can’t keep this secret to myself any longer. Guilt is a corrosive emotion, I know that very well, and in the end the only solution is to face up to what you’ve done.”

‘She’s trying to tell you she understands how you must have been feeling all these years and she wants you to admit what you did, isn’t she, Alice? And I think she was saying she would have to tell me herself if you didn’t. That’s what she means by: “
I hope you can accept that this is for the best.”’

Her eyes were closed, the lashes flickering on her cheeks.

My breath stalled; my throat on fire, but I knew I had to keep going. ‘Lorna told me she would think about the night of the accident, and she must have worked out the truth and written to tell you.’

She was absolutely still.

‘You were all drinking together at the hotel that night,’ I said. ‘But when Sylvia arrived, without Toby and Steve, you came back to try and stop me driving. Lorna must have realised you’d taken your car out. Perhaps she even saw you come in again, very late, but didn’t make the connection at the time.’

I held up my mug. The coffee was nearly cold. I hadn’t touched any of it. ‘Did you put something in her coffee, like you did with me at the reception?’

She rubbed the back of her hand across her mouth, wiping away the tears. ‘What do you remember?’

‘Everything. I know it was your car I saw that night, and you standing there when I crawled out of the wreckage. That’s what I couldn’t bear to know all these years.’

‘I’m so sorry.’ It was a whisper.

‘But I also know I didn’t take the stuff from your bag or get it from anyone else. I didn’t take anything willingly. I was happy that night. Dad had said nothing about being my real father. He must have been intending to do it next day. I was happy and I loved Steve and my boys so much.’

I was crying too. I had known somewhere deep inside that this moment would come, but now I wanted to run away. To pretend I didn’t know. But I thought of Tom. ‘But
you
weren’t happy, were you? And it was easy to slip the stuff into my coffee.’

‘Clare, I’m your sister.’ I could hardly hear the words.

‘And you’ve known that for a long time, haven’t you?’

With a sudden movement that made me jump she stood and turned away, staring into the dark outside and shaking her head. ‘Yes, he told me a couple of days before the wedding. He was going to tell you the morning after the reception, but he wanted me to know first. He expected me to be thrilled.’

I watched her standing there, her hair shining, her shoulders stiff. ‘So you planned to humiliate me: show him his precious daughter was still a junkie,’ I said. ‘I saw you on the DVD, sitting with me. I bet you kept me talking so I wouldn’t notice anything odd about my drink.’

When she turned her face looked almost ugly. ‘You still don’t see, do you? I didn’t plan anything. It was just an impulse. You were so beautiful, so happy, you had everything and you hadn’t worked for any of it. I just wanted to show Dad you hadn’t really changed. I had the amphetamines with me because I needed them myself. I was working and studying day and night. Trying to be a brilliant doctor: to make him proud. And it was never enough. Because I wasn’t you.’

‘And you hated me for that.’

She laughed. ‘Oh no, I
adored you. Always have. I would have given anything when I was young to know you were my real sister. But you left me. With them. It was me who had to put up with the arguments. With Mum telling me she was going to kill herself. I was scared every time I came home in case I found her dead. And all I wanted was someone to talk to, a big sister to share things with.’

She was pacing, her hands clenching and unclenching. ‘And I was happy when you came back after she died and you promised to stay with us so we’d be a real family. But then there was Steve: the first man to come along. You didn’t give me one moment’s thought, did you? Didn’t care how I felt.’

She came close, her eyes slivers of blue ice, every word clipped hard. ‘You’re so like Dad. He betrayed Mum and lied to everyone. Do you know he said I should never have kids because they might inherit Mum’s instability? And when I told him how much I hated working at the hospital, he said I’d better get used to supporting myself, because he was going to destroy the firm and there’d be no money left. You both thought you could get away with hurting people. I just wanted you to know what it feels like to be hurt.’

‘And you did hurt us,’ I said. ‘But what about the others? Steve? And Toby. Alice, what about Toby?’ My voice broke, thinking of my little boy, hating her for what she’d done.

Her fist was in her mouth and she turned to press her face against the wall as a groan burst from her. Her shoulders shook in great spasms and when she spoke her voice was a strangled croak. ‘I didn’t want anyone to die. That’s why I came back to stop you driving. I loved Toby so much and I’ve hated myself all these years. But I’ve tried to make it easier for Tom and to help you too. There was no more I could do.’

She looked back at me, her face so distorted it was like an old woman’s. ‘If only you’d left it alone, we could all have been happy again.’

I forced myself to go on. ‘But you murdered Lorna.’

She groaned and turned away again. ‘I begged her … Told her there was no point in raking it all up: it would spoil everything. But she wouldn’t listen.’ She leaned against the wall as if she couldn’t stand without support. ‘I didn’t want to do it, you have to believe me.’

It was my turn to look away. I couldn’t bear to see her. Our breathing was loud in the silence.
Keep going.
‘And when I started raking it up, you tried to frighten me. You had a key to the flat so it was easy enough for you to turn on the shower and the rest of it. I suppose you thought I might see something on the DVD too. Were you scared I’d remember, or did you just want to make me doubt my sanity so you could keep Tom?’

She faced me again and the silence vibrated between us as I looked into her clear eyes. And, in spite of everything, I felt a wave of pity for her: my beautiful little sister who should have had everything, but was going to be left with nothing at all.

I walked to the back door, but it was locked and when I got to the hall, the front door was bolted. She must have done it when I was upstairs.

I heard her come out of the kitchen and stop beside the little hall table at the bottom of the stairs. As if too weary to stand, she half sat on it, making Mum’s big copper vase sway. The flowers were orange dahlias today.

Alice’s hand curled slowly around the heavy frame of Mum and Dad’s photograph. I swallowed, but forced myself, not to flinch. Forced myself to look away from her hand and into her eyes. ‘It’s no good, Alice.’

She shook her head, then, very carefully, placed the frame back on the table. I breathed again and bent to pull back the bolts. Something hit me hard on the side of the head. It must have been the photo frame and I grabbed at the door to stop myself falling, but my feet slipped and I went down onto my knees. Through the haze of pain I felt Alice grab my arm. She was holding something small and shiny – a syringe. I thrust her back and the syringe fell at our feet. I reached for it, but she kicked it out of the way.

I headed for the stairs to shut myself in one of the bedrooms. But, as I reached the landing, the fire alarm began to shrill and I remembered the petrol smell.

Alice must have started a blaze in the kitchen.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I turned for the nearest bedroom, but as I reached for the door handle Alice was behind me. She grabbed a handful of my hair, yanking it so hard my head jerked back. I kicked out at her catching her shin, and when she let go of my hair, I lurched against the balustrade.

I was still dizzy and I swayed over the rail looking down at the tiled floor in the hall below. Smoke was pouring around the kitchen door and running like a dark river over the ceiling. The alarm shrieked on, but I could still hear the rasp of my own breathing and Alice’s too, as she stood watching me. There was a smudge of dirt on her cheek and she looked like our mother in one of her cold rages.

Her hand was behind her back. Did she still have the syringe? She must have planned to leave me unconscious in the house; to make my death look like an accident. Then no one would ever know what she’d done.

I swallowed down a mouthful of acid. ‘Don’t do this, Alice. Think about Tom.’

She walked towards me. ‘I am thinking of him. He’ll be better off without you. You were never a proper sister to me and you’ve never been a proper mother.’

‘I know I was selfish and I’m sorry. But we need to get out. Then we can talk. We’ll find a way through this.’ As I spoke I was moving along the balustrade, trying to get to the top of the stairs.

She saw what I was doing and snatched at my waist, but I kicked out at her and she stumbled to her knees, pulling me down with her. I kicked again and again, but she held tight and we were half sliding, half tumbling, downstairs.

At the bottom we crashed into the hall table sending the vase of orange flowers toppling onto the tiled floor. I scrambled to my feet and pushed Alice away.

The smoke was getting thicker and I was coughing hard, my chest tight. I had to get out. I skidded on the muddle of stems and water and slammed hard into the front door. Dark spots flashed in front of my eyes, but I managed to drag back the bolt. It still wouldn’t open: the deadlock must be on, and without the key I had no chance. I pressed my face to the wood for a moment, hot tears stinging my eyes.