Am I Guilty? Read online

  I’d met Flora ages before she worked for me, of course – she often did the school run with my middle child Millie’s close friend, Nell. Nell, Thea Ashfields’s daughter. I’d actually been a little wary at first about taking Flora on, after what had gone on at the Ashfields. I am anxious by nature, but I’d been silly, really, in retrospect. It had been a sort of superstitious thing, I suppose – the thought that maybe the terrible thing that had happened might cling to Flora somehow, like a fine dust, and that traces of it might end up here, in my beloved home. Stupid, I know.

  And it really had been stupid, because Flora had fitted right in pretty much straight away. She’d been a bit reserved at first, still was a little quiet at times – not surprising, really, after what she’d been through at Thea’s – but it hadn’t taken long for her to come out of her shell. The children loved her, even Oliver, who at eleven was at the age where he didn’t much like anyone or anything, except his skateboard and games console.

  Flora Applegate … the children even adore her surname, I thought, as I stacked plates neatly side by side and slotted knives and cereal spoons into their basket, then reached up to the shelf for a dishwasher tablet and turned the machine on. Cute name, cute face. A wellspoken Surrey girl, she’s twenty-five, but looks years younger, her dark brown hair cropped into a pixie cut with a wispy fringe sweeping across her forehead, green eyes sparkling with intelligence and humour. Not beautiful, but definitely very attractive, her petite frame strong and boyish, her skin smooth and blemish free, other than a little scar on her right wrist from some childhood accident.

  I like the way she dresses too – sporty, but stylish. Sports-luxe, I think they call it. Completely the opposite to me – I am more of a maxi dress and florals kind of person – more than a decade older and half a foot taller than Flora, blonde hair falling in loose waves past my shoulders. Willowy, my husband Greg likes to call me. His ‘willowy blonde’ wife.

  I smiled at the thought, then grinned widely as shrieks of laughter drifted down the stairs from Flora’s room, where I knew Sienna had sneaked off to a few minutes earlier. She was normally at nursery on a Monday morning, but it was closed today for urgent maintenance, and with the other two at school and Flora off duty today, I’d decided to take the day off too and spend some quality time with my baby. She’d be at school, too, come September, so I needed to make the most of these last few precious months.

  Sienna is obsessed with animals, birds in particular, and once I’d tidied up I was planning to take her to Birdland, the wildlife park in Bourton-on-the-Water, about half an hour’s drive away. We’d look at the birds, grab some lunch in one of the picturesque village’s numerous cafés and be back in plenty of time for the afternoon school pick up, I thought.

  I rinsed my hands under the tap, dried them on the towel on the hook by the sink, then wandered into the hallway.

  ‘Sienna!’ I called up the stairs. ‘Flora, can you send Sienna down? We need to go in a minute.’

  There was a faint yell from three floors up, then the sound of a door opening and footsteps thundering down the stairs. Moments later Flora appeared, still in her red and white striped pyjamas, hair tousled, a laughing Sienna perched on her back, legs wrapped around Flora’s waist, her cheeks pink.

  ‘Sorry, Annabelle! This little monster wouldn’t come down unless I carried her. I’ll go and get dressed in a minute. Right, you, off you get.’

  Flora smiled at me then twisted sideways so that Sienna slid gently to the floor, where she lay in a giggling heap, one hand still clutching onto Flora’s leg.

  ‘Gosh, that’s fine, thanks for putting up with her on your day off,’ I replied, and she shrugged.

  ‘I don’t mind. Have fun at Birdland. Now let go of me, trouble. I’ll see you later.’

  She reached down and peeled Sienna’s fingers from her calf, and my daughter stuck out her bottom lip.

  ‘Awwww! Come with us, pleeeeeese!’

  ‘Sienna, leave Flora alone, it’s her day off,’ I said warningly.

  ‘Oh, it’s OK. I don’t mind,’ Flora said again. ‘Go with Mummy, Sienna. I’ll see you later. Maybe I can read you a story before bed; sound like a plan?’

  Sienna nodded, her petulant expression turning into a beaming smile.

  ‘Yesssss!’

  ‘Good. Now get up, silly.’

  Flora poked Sienna gently with a bare toe then turned and darted up the stairs again, and I bent and pulled my daughter to her feet, smoothing her soft hair back.

  ‘Good girl. Shall we go and see the birds then?’

  ‘YES!’ she shouted.

  ‘OK, go and get your boots on, and I’ll get the coats.’

  She ran off into the kitchen, and as I turned to the heavily laden coatrack to find our warm jackets, I wondered for a moment if I should have asked Flora if she’d like to come too. So far, she’d appeared to have spent all her days off on her own, going for long runs or walks, shopping, watching TV. If she’d had friends when she’d worked in Cheltenham, she didn’t seem too interested in seeing them. I didn’t like to ask though, and she seemed happy enough. Maybe she was just one of those people who were happy with their own company. Or, more probably, maybe she just needed time alone to adjust, time to recover.

  We’d never really talked about it – I didn’t dare ask, not yet – but I knew it must have been horrendous for her, going through what she did in her last job. But I watched her sometimes, noticed that now and again when we were at work, at an event, a sudden stillness would come over her, a look of sadness flashing across her face, just for a few seconds, as if a memory had briefly surfaced in her mind. It never lasted long though, and within moments she’d be smiling again, filling glasses, flitting between tables, wiping up spills and charming the guests. It hurt my heart, imagining her pain, and I hoped that one day she might feel able to talk to me about it. Or that one day I might be brave enough to ask her about it …

  ‘Ready, Mummy!’ Sienna had reappeared, boots on and clutching her favourite soft toy, an overstuffed penguin with an incongruously bright pink beak.

  ‘Is Percival coming too? Great idea. He can meet all his penguin cousins there, can’t he?’

  I helped her with her coat, deciding not to issue Flora with a last-minute invitation after all. I didn’t want to put her in an awkward position – spending her day off with her boss and a toddler was probably the last thing she’d want to do, but she was so polite she might feel obliged to say yes. No, I’d leave her be. Maybe next time.

  I closed the door behind us and headed to the car, an excited Sienna scampering ahead of me, and hoped Flora would enjoy a peaceful day. But as I strapped my daughter into her car seat, I found myself thinking about Thea Ashfield again, as I did so often – Thea, who one day not so long ago had been having a normal day, just like this, with her family, her children. Thea, who fell asleep, and woke up in hell.

  4

  THEA

  ‘I don’t want to do it, Mummy. It’s stupid and boring and I don’t see the point.’

  Nell scowled at me, then slammed her pen down onto the polished wood of the dining table, her dark curls bobbing with the ferocity of the action. At the opposite end of the table, I sighed and closed my laptop.

  ‘The point, Nell, is that you need good grades at school to make a success of yourself in life. And yes, homework can be boring. Lots of things in life are boring, but we still have to do them, OK?’

  She scowled harder, her chocolate brown eyes narrowing to slits.

  ‘Well, help me then. Flora used to help me. You never do. You’re rubbish.’

  I flinched slightly, trying to stay calm. Fighting back never worked with Nell – it only wound her up more.

  ‘Flora doesn’t live here anymore, does she, darling? I do help you, when I have time, but I’m trying to work right now. And please don’t talk to me like that. What would Daddy say? And what would your baby brother think? Come on, let’s—’

  Nell stood up so suddenly th
at her chair tipped backwards and crashed to the floor behind her. Her eyes flicked to the pram in the corner of the room and back to mine, an expression on her face that I couldn’t read. Anger? Hatred? Something else?

  ‘Well, Daddy’s not here anymore either, is he? And who cares what my baby brother would think? Who cares what anybody thinks?’

  She slapped the table hard with both hands, her face contorted with emotion, then turned and ran from the room. I heard her stomp up the stairs and then a door slammed. I sat motionless for a moment, then sank my head into my hands. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. It was getting to the point where I just didn’t know how to handle Nell anymore when she was like this. What was I supposed to do, how could I help her? Had I ruined her life, as well as my own? She was eight years old, still a baby really, and yet in the past few months she’d changed so much, often seeming more like a raging, hormonal teenager than a sweet little girl. It wasn’t all the time, thankfully – I had no idea how I’d cope if this was a daily occurrence. But these outbursts were regular, and becoming more frequent, and it frightened me that I didn’t seem to be able to reach her anymore.

  I knew exactly what had caused today’s, too. I didn’t often do the school run these days, not since … well, not since. I’d tried to, at first, tried to keep everything as normal as possible for Nell. But I’d had to stop. Too many nasty comments, too many stares, especially in those early days. It upset Nell, frightened and confused her, and I couldn’t bear it. Now, some of the other parents took it in turns, had set up a sort of rota, to pick her up in the morning and drop her off at home again in the afternoon. I knew they were doing it for Nell, and not for me, but I was still deeply grateful. There was the odd day, though, where they couldn’t fit the detour into their schedules, and on those occasions, I’d have to do it myself. And sometimes, just like when I went shopping, it was fine. They always looked, of course they did, but I was used to that. I could cope with the sideways glances, with the mutterings – it was only really the shouts, the loud name-calling, the vile language, that made my heart pound and my head swim.

  But today, one of the fathers, one who’d been particularly abusive in the past, the dad of a little boy in the year below Nell, spotted me. My breath caught in my throat as I spotted him at the same time. I’d grabbed Nell’s hand, trying to steer the pram quickly out of the school gate with the other, get her away before he started, but it was too late.

  ‘Oi! Fucking evil cow! Look at her, the fucking weirdo. Should be locked up. Fuck off out of here!’

  I didn’t look at him, didn’t need to. I knew exactly what his expression would be like, his eyes narrowed with hate, his thin lips set in a sneer. I’d seen the same expression so many times, on so many faces, in the past few months.

  But Nell had looked, her eyes wide, face reddening, tears beginning to roll as I dragged her down the road, out of earshot. I’d asked her if she was all right, told her not to listen, told her not to worry about it, all the things I’d said to her a hundred times before, and she’d nodded and wiped her eyes, and started telling me about the art class she’d had this afternoon where silly Charlie Wilson had spilled an entire jar of dirty water down his trousers, but I’d known then. I’d known by the set of her jaw and the stiffness of her smile that sooner or later today we’d have another outburst, that she would punish me for what had just happened.

  I was making my daughter desperately unhappy, and the thought was almost unbearable. All I wanted to do was run upstairs after her, take her in my arms, tell her everything was going to be all right. But was it? Would everything ever be all right again? Or would that just be a lie, another lie to add to all the others I’d told her? I’m fine, Nell. I won’t drink today, Nell. It’s just water with lemon, Nell. People will soon forget, Nell. It’ll all be OK, Nell. Lies. All of it, lies.

  So no, I couldn’t go upstairs to comfort my daughter, not yet. She wouldn’t let me anyway, would hold herself rigid now if I tried to wrap my arms round her. I knew that if I left her alone for a few minutes she’d calm down, but she’d still be cagey with me for the rest of the day, refusing to let me cuddle or console her, and it broke my heart. I swallowed hard, trying to put her out of my mind for a few minutes, and opened my laptop again.

  I had to order some new stock, had to arrange a photo shoot, had to keep this business on track, had to concentrate. I’d been running Just Enfant for four years, setting it up after Nell started school, and I suddenly found myself with hours of spare time every weekday. I imported children’s clothing from all over the world, quirky, unusual pieces – mini kimonos from Japan, dresses with beautiful Masai beadwork from Kenya, little rhinestone-studded cowboy boots from Texas. I’d had some decent publicity when I launched – Isla had helped – and the business had taken off in a big way almost immediately. Within a year I’d needed to hire a small warehouse to house the stock and some casual help to pack the orders; by the end of year two I’d needed a full-time assistant, which was when Flora had come along. Those were the glory days – my life a whirl of work and motherhood and happiness. Not like now, when life was nothing but greyness and pain. Would I ever be happy again? And would Nell?

  Before she was born I’d worked full-time in London as a fashion buyer for Normans, the department store chain. I adored it – the travel, the trade fairs, the designers, the shows. But motherhood and that sort of lifestyle really weren’t compatible, and so just before Nell was born we left London and moved to the edge of the Cotswolds, to Cheltenham. Rupert’s company had offices in the town, and were happy to transfer him, and we thought it a reasonable place to live, a pretty Regency spa town with decent shops and restaurants and a seemingly never-ending stream of festivals – literature, jazz, food, science, horse racing. More importantly for me it was just two hours from London, my friends and social life a short train ride away. Of course, by the time Nell was born, I had new friends, mummy pals acquired during antenatal classes, coffee mornings, parenting groups. I’d grown to love it here, the town, my social network, the beautiful countryside just minutes away.

  But everything was different now. Most of my friends had drifted away, the stream of invitations to dinners and parties fading to a trickle and then stopping altogether.

  I stared at my screen for a moment then pushed back my chair, stood up and walked to the window. Outside, the street was quiet, the sky already darkening. A man bundled up in a padded jacket, a woolly hat pulled down low over his eyes, was half-walking, half-jogging on the other side of the road, a large black Labrador tugging at the lead he held in his outstretched hand. Even from this distance, I could see that he was smiling, saying something to his eager pet, and I felt a sudden pang of envy.

  Everywhere around me, people were going about their lives, feeling happy, enjoying the little things. The normal things. I wondered, would I ever be able to feel like that again? To take pleasure in simple, everyday tasks, without this gnawing pain, this overwhelming guilt, this grief that paralyzed me? Would I ever stop feeling this self-loathing, this disgust every time I looked at myself in the mirror? And what about Nell? How was I going to fix Nell?

  I turned from the window, wondering, not for the first time, if I should get her some professional help, a counsellor or something. I was seeing Isla later in the week, as usual – she’d probably know somebody. Isla knows everyone. But what if Nell refused to go? Could I make her? I sighed, my eyes drifting to the drinks cabinet under the mirror, the big one with the elaborate metal scrollwork that I’d loved so much when Rupert and I had spotted it in a junk shop when I was pregnant with Zander, just after the scan where we found out we were having a little boy. Rupert had bought the mirror for me straight away when I said how much I loved it, so excited about the new baby, so thrilled he was getting a son. If only he’d known then, how things were going to turn out. If only I’d known.

  My eyes flicked again to the drinks cabinet, then I resolutely looked away. I’d been doing so well, hadn’t had a drink for two days now
. Well, this was day three, so nearly three really, if anyone was counting. I took a deep breath. No, no drinking today. I could do this sober. I had to. I inhaled again, slowly, deeply, blew the air out forcefully, then walked out into the hallway and headed upstairs to Nell’s room.

  5

  ANNABELLE

  ‘Oh, that garden will be perfect for photos! Look Annabelle, how lovely it is!’

  Flora, who was standing at one of the three windows of the large drawing room, turned to me, her eyes bright with excitement. I put my notebook down on the arm of the sofa and went to join her. She was right.

  ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘It really will, won’t it?’

  We stood there for a moment, shoulder to shoulder, taking in the view. It was Wednesday morning, and we were on a site visit to a house near Wotton-under-Edge. It was owned by Elaine Gorton, a criminal barrister who worked in London during the week and spent her weekends in the Cotswolds, but she’d given me keys this week so I could come and check the place out, put a plan together for our next meeting.

  She was getting married in May, at nearby St Mary the Virgin church, and I was in charge of the reception, a relatively small affair for around sixty people, which would be held here at her home, an elegant, Grade II listed, Queen Anne-style villa set in an acre of beautifully landscaped gardens. From a paved patio area outside the window, steps led down to an expanse of lawn, ideal for the marquee I intended to set up, and bordered with shrubs, roses and fruit trees. A curved path led, via an archway covered in some sort of evergreen climber – I’m not bad on trees, but not great on recognizing plants – to a large, white, painted summer house, and behind that a walled ‘secret’ garden. It had been too wet to venture out yet this morning, but I knew from the photos Elaine had sent me that that would be the perfect spot for pre-lunch drinks, with wooden benches dotted around under magnolia trees, beautifully colour-coordinated beds of herbs and flowers, and a gently bubbling fountain.