When She Was Bad (11 page)

‘You OK, Anne?’

Ed had a hold of my elbow and was looking at me with concern from behind his glasses.

‘Sure. I’m fine.’

I broke away and carried on into the house.

There are some places that have their own kind of personal scent, just like people do, that gets into your nose and under your skin. Well, Laurie’s family house was like that. Although there was nothing in the hallway, with its polished wood floor and pale paintwork and the wooden stairs that curved around the walls, to say that anything bad had ever happened here, there was just this smell – this sour, stagnant, sad smell – that stoppered up my nostrils until I could hardly breathe.

‘You folks looking for anything in particular?’

Sergeant Cavanagh filled the hallway like a piece of outsized furniture. I wondered if he could smell it too, but he gave nothing away.

‘I think we’ll just have a general look around,’ said Ed. His voice sounded small and tinny.

‘Sure. Well, here’s the living room.’

We followed him through a door to the left of the hallway and found ourselves in a wide room that might have been pleasant if it wasn’t for the heavy drapes in the windows that, together with the screens, blocked out most of the daylight. There were two sofas, one a three-seater and one a two-seater, and a leather armchair with a footstool. All the seats faced towards a small TV in the corner. The sofas were a curious colour, almost two-tone, and it was only when I got nearer that I realized the original green upholstery had been covered in a sheer, dark-blue cover, almost like a fitted dust sheet. On the wall there was a framed family portrait, the type people have taken in a photographic studio and give prints of as presents to grandparents or have made into Christmas cards. There were only three people in the portrait.

I’d caught sight of pictures of Noelle and Peter Egan on the news, but I’d tried to avoid looking too closely at any of the coverage for fear of influencing my dealings with Laurie, so this was the first time I was seeing them up close. If you’ve ever had someone pull back the collar of your shirt and drip ice water down your back for a joke, you’ll have some idea how I felt looking at that picture. There was Laurie, a year or so younger than she was now. Still padded out with toddler fat with her hair pulled tight into two little braids that stuck almost straight out from the side of her head. To her left, her father gazed at the camera through close-set blue eyes. His mouth was stretched into a tight line as if the photographer had told him to smile but that was the most he could do, like a smile that had been ironed flat. I stared at the dip in his cheek where you could almost see a muscle moving, and at the long, hard line of his nose that ended nearly at a top lip so thin it was hardly there at all. I stared at his hand around his daughter’s chubby shoulder, the large, meaty fingers resting on her perfect creamy skin. I thought of what those fingers had done, and something bitter rose into my mouth.

At first glance, Noelle Egan was more pleasant-looking than her husband, attractive even, with high plump cheeks and a smooth forehead framed by dark, natural-looking curls. But closer examination revealed her skin to be caked with thick paste-like make-up that gave her a waxy appearance, and there was a plasticky gloss to her hair. She was leaning her face in towards her daughter and her mouth was cracked open in a wide smile that ended by her daughter’s ear as if she would gobble it up. But her eyes, with their coating of frosted blue and their thick black mascara’d lashes spiky as bee stings . . . I’m not someone who is inclined to be melodramatic. I wouldn’t get far in my job if I was – but Noelle Egan’s eyes were the deadest eyes I’ve ever seen.

‘Ya can’t imagine, can ya?’

Sergeant Cavanagh was standing so close to me I could feel the heat coming off his bulky body. I shook my head.

‘They just seemed like everyone else. That’s what the neighbours say and the teachers and the guys at the realtors where he headed up the billing department.’

Like they ought to have had crosses on their foreheads or horns or someone walking in front of them ringing a huge bell. But of course I didn’t say any of that.

We wandered into the kitchen, a large but curiously sterile room. The family had clearly been disturbed mid-breakfast by the police arriving, but even so the dishes left out on the table were orderly, no smears of strawberry jelly across plates, no crumbs on the polished wood surface. A cupboard was open as if someone had been in the act of retrieving something. Inside, the cans and jars were neatly arranged in height order, their labels uniformly facing out. The only outward sign of family life was a notice pinned to the refrigerator door by four round black magnets. It was immaculately typed and laid out as a table. When I got closer I saw that down one side were the days of the week and across the bottom were the initials N, P and L. Across the top, the words FEEDING SCHEDULE were typed in bold capitals and underlined.

‘Doesn’t look like the kind of household to have a pet,’ I remarked.

Sergeant Cavanagh made a snorting sound through his flattened nose.

‘There’s no pet,’ he said.

The dawning of truth was as sudden as it was sickening.

17
Amira

‘So you’d like me to consider you for the job?’

Rachel had one eyebrow raised in a gesture that instantly infuriated Amira, but she took a deep breath and tried to keep her voice neutral.

‘Yes, please.’

She still couldn’t quite believe she was doing this. Right up until a few seconds before, she’d been telling herself she could still change her mind. She could pretend she’d had another reason for requesting a few minutes with the new boss – booking holiday leave, asking for clarification on the new catering contract. Even when she opened her mouth she’d been half expecting something else to come out of it. Instead she found herself saying that she was, after all, interested in the deputy position. She hadn’t said the phrase ‘Paula’s job’, but they both knew that’s what they were talking about. Now everything inside her was screaming ‘traitor’.

It was all Tom’s fault.

When she’d come home on the day Rachel had sounded her out about being her deputy, she’d still been bristling with outrage, but instead of backing her up, Tom had been non-communicative and almost sullen. All evening it had been as if a dark cloud was shadowing him around the flat, and finally when they were in bed, she’d snapped.

‘What?’ she’d asked.

‘What do you mean, “what?”’

‘What’s up with you. You’ve had a face like a slapped arse all night. What have I done wrong now?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Bollocks.’

‘OK. If you must know, it pisses me off that I’ve got to go into work every day doing a job I hate, just so we can pay the mortgage on this place – that you talked me into, don’t forget – and even then it’s not enough. Do you know, I lie awake some nights just eaten up with worry about how much money we owe and how we’re ever going to keep up with all the bills and the Council Tax and the water – who knew you had to pay for water, for chrissakes – and everything else. And then you come home and say you’ve been offered a chance of a pay rise but your superior moral code won’t allow you to consider it.’

It had all come out in a rush of words, as if they’d been building up inside him until they had to burst free. They’d had a big row then, which had ended with her telling him that if it wasn’t for her he’d have wound up in ten or fifteen years just another middle-aged failed musician with nothing to show for himself.

The next day she’d felt awful and wished the words unsaid. Not that there wasn’t some truth in them, but she knew she hadn’t been kind, had said them just to hurt him. Worse than that, she knew he had a point. She had pushed to get the mortgage despite knowing they’d be financially overstretching themselves. Did she really have the right to turn down the chance of some extra cash just out of a sense of loyalty? Mightn’t loyalty be a luxury she couldn’t afford, especially in light of the store-card debts she’d run up that Tom had no idea even existed. In the end she’d apologized to him and promised to think about it.

‘It’s not as if Paula would ever know,’ he’d told her. ‘You could make it a condition of taking the post – that it has to look as if you were appointed after Paula left.’

‘Was pushed, you mean.’

But now she’d actually told Rachel she was interested, Amira felt grubby, and she had the feeling that Rachel knew that and was enjoying it on some level.

‘I’m happy to hear that, Amira. I’ll keep you updated as things progress.’

Amira’s stomach had lurched at that phrase, knowing that the thing that was progressing was Paula’s dismissal from the company, whatever form that might take. It wasn’t that she and Paula were best buddies. Though they got on well as colleagues, on a personal level they had very little in common. But they were part of a team. And team members didn’t stab other team members in the back.

As she left Rachel’s office, Amira took a detour around Paula’s desk, pretending to check the printer, just so she wouldn’t have to meet the older woman’s eyes. Knowledge of Paula’s impending fate was a hard, heavy stone in her gut. Her route back from the printer took her past Sarah’s desk and she was both relieved and disappointed to see that she had her head bent over some paperwork. Sarah and Amira were friends. Proper friends. She felt bad not telling her about Rachel’s offer. But as she passed, Sarah suddenly reached out and grabbed her arm.

‘Was she having a go at you? About being late yesterday?’

For a second, Amira contemplated lying. She knew it wasn’t fair that only Sarah had got into trouble for taking so long getting Gill’s present. But she realized that if she pretended she’d also been reprimanded, Sarah would want to know the details and it would all get too complicated.

‘No. Just going over the figures for March.’

Sarah’s expression froze and her hand dropped to her desk as if burned.

Amira headed back to her seat, feeling even worse than she had a few minutes before. She texted Tom.

Told R I was interested in job. Feel like crap

She waited for him to reply but no message came.

18
Sarah

‘Three dates. Is it too early to start redecorating his living room, do you think?’

‘Maybe wait until you know his last name?’

‘You’re so old-fashioned.’

Sarah couldn’t remember when she’d last seen Charlie this happy. It was as if someone had yanked the dial of the dimmer switch round, lighting him up from inside. Normal Charlie was an endearing if reserved mix of cynicism and kindness, warmth and resignation. Now he shone with an emotional energy so exposing you almost wanted to look away, as if you were seeing something you shouldn’t.

She was nervous for him, slightly afraid of the new-found enthusiasm that bordered on mania. Though Charlie had more friends than anyone else she knew, it didn’t stop him being lonely, and he’d told her so many times how much he envied her family life that she couldn’t bear to tell him that it sometimes swamped her, that she felt she was drowning in other people’s expectations of her, other people’s demands.

‘I assume he’s removed himself from Grindr now he’s met the love of his life?’

A shadow flitted across Charlie’s face and Sarah caught her breath. He’d made himself too vulnerable. She could already tell. His soft brown eyes looked suddenly uncertain.

‘It’s maybe a bit early to be exclusive, don’t you think?’ he said.

‘I’ll take that as a no then.’

‘I don’t want to push it. I don’t want to come over all jihadi on him:
You will deactivate your social media accounts and wear a veil at all times so other men cannot look upon you
. To be honest, Sarah, I don’t think I’m successful enough for him. He was a bit underwhelmed when I told him what I did. He’s after someone with a more impressive bank balance and job title.’

‘And lunchbox.’

‘Oi! Anyway, how are you? You’re looking a bit stressed, sweetie, if you don’t mind me saying. Is it the thought of that disciplinary letter?’

‘Yes. It’s really doing my head in. “Consider this a final warning.” It’s so apocalyptic. I feel like there’s a great big sword hanging over my head wherever I go.’

While this was the truth, it wasn’t the whole truth. But Sarah couldn’t tell Charlie what else was bothering her because that would mean articulating it in words, and once she did that, she’d have to deal with it . . . and the thought of
that
made her entire nervous system vibrate like a dentist’s drill. She was trying not to think about it, but the effort of not-thinking about it was making her jumpy and nervous. She envied Charlie his new-found passion and his lack of ties that meant he was answerable to no one but himself. If Charlie had been hit with a totally unfair and unwarranted disciplinary warning, he could choose to tell them where to stuff their job, but because she had Oliver and Sam and Joe to consider, she just had to suck it up.

Oliver had tried to be supportive about all the crap going on at work, but that deep vertical groove in his forehead that she’d only recently noticed had got even more pronounced, and she’d ended up reassuring him that it wasn’t as bad as all that. She hated seeing him worried. He looked so old all of a sudden.

‘She’s a piece of work, isn’t she, Rachel?’ Charlie said. He was leaning against the work surface in the office kitchen while they waited for the kettle to boil. One of his legs was crossed in front of the other so he looked shorter than usual, and he was hardly the world’s tallest man to start with. Sarah had an urge to step forward and give him a hug but she held back. He was a forty-two-year-old man. Dealing with toddlers was now so ingrained in her psyche that she waged constant battle with herself not to greet friends and colleagues by kissing the tops of their heads or wiping the noses of perfect strangers on the tube.

‘I can’t believe she stayed right up until the bitter end on Friday night,’ he went on.