loud now, even though I’ve been told not to shout, not to give Mummy a headache, but I can’t help it and I can’t stop myself crying. ‘Mummy!’
Mum takes a long ages, but then she pushes open the door and suddenly she’s screaming and crying and pulling Amy away from me, out of the water. This is bad, this is really bad, and I’m crying lots now, but Mummy doesn’t even tell me to shut up or stop whingeing and I wish she would just yell at me or send me to bed and I wish Amy would cry or be a nightmare just like the other days. Then Mummy is on her phone and she tells me to get out of the way – only she uses one of those naughty words that Daddy doesn’t like and is always telling me not to use – and I run away into my bedroom and climb into the bottom of my wardrobe where I sit, naked and cold and being a cry-baby until my daddy comes to find me and take me to Nanny’s house for a little holiday. And Mummy and Amy aren’t there any more and Amy never comes back again and I know it’s my fault.
74
Bea
Bea entered the bar area and scanned the room for Adam. She eventually found him huddled into the corner of one of the pub’s private booths, staring at the table, his face a mottled grey.
‘Oh Adam.’ She slid into the booth and wrapped her arms around her best friend’s husband, who sat rigidly while she squeezed him tightly.
‘I shouldn’t be here,’ he muttered. ‘I should be with the boys.’
‘Are they with your mum? How are they doing? If you need anything …’ She trailed off, knowing how empty the platitude sounded. If there’s anything I can do … if you need any help … She couldn’t be a mum or a wife, and that was what they needed – the only thing they needed.
‘They’re doing awful. Toby hasn’t spoken since I picked him up from school that day, and Noah hasn’t stopped screaming. We’re staying at Mum’s because I can’t bear to go back to the house, but we can’t stay there forever. What are we going to do, Bea? What will we do without her?’
For the third time that day, hot, angry tears sprang to Bea’s eyes, only this time she didn’t sniff and wipe them away, just let them fall. She’d barely stopped crying herself in the two days since the call had come from Eleanor’s mother, who had been barely coherent as she’d broken the news. Bea had tried to call Karen the minute she put down the phone, but there had been no answer; she’d taken a taxi to her house and there had been only darkness. Karen hadn’t been to work and they would tell her nothing – or they knew nothing. Bea was hurt, confused and angry; it felt as though she’d lost two friends in the space of a week. She had no answer to Adam’s question. She didn’t know how they were going to cope; she didn’t know if any of them would be okay ever again.
‘Do they have any idea who was responsible?’
Adam laughed, a hollow sound with no humour. ‘I was prime suspect number one. Luckily I was in the office all day rather than travelling; there’s no way I could have gone home. They don’t think it was a robbery, as nothing was taken. The neighbours heard her arguing with someone. The police are questioning Karen – did you know?’
‘Karen?’ Bea was confused. ‘Why? Wouldn’t she have been at work too?’
Adam looked at her, and for the first time she took in the red rims and the puffiness around his eyes. He looked completely broken. ‘She’d been suspended that week. I thought you’d know.’
‘We had a fight.’ Bea was ashamed to admit it; it all seemed so insignificant compared with their lives now. ‘About Michael. Surely …’ She couldn’t bring herself to say Eleanor’s name. ‘Surely you knew that?’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Eleanor had been acting really strange, and not just new-baby strange. We barely spoke, and when she did speak to me it was to snap at me about how little I did, or how little I understood.’
Bea sighed. ‘We found out that Michael is married. Eleanor didn’t take it well – you know how she felt about that kind of thing, the sacred family unit and all that. She