She would call Saskia and ask her if the Johnsons had ever used a garage before to provide them with alibis.
Caroline’s head appeared round the door. ‘I’m having a nightcap – a brandy. Want one?’
Three brandies and several unanswered calls to Saskia later, she was feeling woozy and weepy and all she wanted to do was go to bed and cuddle her little girl and forget about everything else.
Caroline made her a hot water bottle and gave her a hug as they said goodnight.
She had thought she’d drop straight off, but she had restless legs and arms and had to get up in the end so as not to wake Beckie with all her tossing and turning. In the harsh light of the sitting room she paced, back and forward in front of the fireplace and round the coffee table with its half-finished picture of a flock of parakeets; to the darkened window and back to the door. What was Neil doing, five doors down? Was he sitting up waiting for something he knew wasn’t going to happen? Or had he just gone to bed?
She was going to find out.
The front door was locked and she didn’t know where Caroline kept the key.
Back door?
Fumbling on the wall for the kitchen light switch, she banged a shelf and something fell off it to the floor with a clatter.
Ten seconds later Caroline was in the hall in ninja mode, eyes wide, hair on end, feet spread ready for action. Flora giggled, and then found she couldn’t stop.
‘Sorry,’ she gasped, as Caroline flicked on the light.
‘God’s sakes, Flora.’
The polka dots of the pyjama top Caroline was wearing were doing funny things to Flora’s eyes. She looked away. ‘I need to go back to the house. Just for ten minutes. Can you let me out?’
‘You must have had more brandy than I thought. Are you drunk?’
‘No!’
‘What do you want to go home for? Can’t it wait till morning?’
‘I want to see if he really is sitting up.’
Caroline folded her arms with a stern expression. ‘Oh, right. So if he is, you’re going to give him a heart attack. If he isn’t, the two of you will have another row, and where will that get you? Both of you zonked out tomorrow and no use whatsoever to Beckie.’
Flora could only nod.
‘Sit down. I’m making you a hot chocolate. Okay?’
Sitting down suddenly seemed like a very good idea.
It wasn’t a nice table. It was one of those cheap varnished orangey pine ones, and there was a sticky patch of something under the palm of her hand. Caroline wasn’t what you’d call houseproud – better things to do with her time. There was dust all over the shelf in the bathroom and mouldy grout in the shower, although the loo was clean enough.
The smell of the hot chocolate made her feel sick, but she smiled at Caroline as she handed Flora the steaming mug and sat with her hands around it.
‘Ailish was right,’ she said. ‘I am MegaParentFail.’
Caroline spluttered into her hot chocolate. ‘Like a character in a cartoon. This is a job for MegaParentFail!’
‘No, but really – I lost it with Beckie this morning. I just lost it. As if things aren’t bad enough for her already.’
‘Give yourself a break, Flora. You’re a good person in a really difficult situation.’
‘But I’m not! That’s the whole problem – I’m not a good person, I’m –’ She stopped herself just in time.
‘You’re what?’ Caroline put her slim, elegant hand over Flora’s podgy one.
‘I – when I was young…’
But she couldn’t tell Caroline. She couldn’t tell anyone. If the Johnsons found out –
‘We’ve all done mad things when we were younger.’ Caroline made a face. ‘Don’t tell Ailish, whatever you do, but I’ve got a conviction for drunk and disorderly. Apparently I was actually dancing on the roof of this poor bastard’s car. In stilettos. Knickers on display. Can’t remember a fucking thing about it, but there is photographic evidence in a dusty police file somewhere. Whatever you did, it can’t be as bad as that? Can it?’
Flora stared at her, this wonderful friend she had somehow made. She felt closer to Caroline, already, than she’d ever felt to Pam. Could she tell her? If she swore her to secrecy?
‘Eh, Flora?’ said Caroline gently.
She shook her head. No.
She just couldn’t take that risk.
She made herself smile, and the lie came smoothly: ‘Well, no, nothing I did ever resulted in a conviction.’ She pulled her hand out from under Caroline’s and stood. ‘Sorry. You must be so sick of us and all our dramas.’
‘Don’t be daft. You can talk to me, you know, any time. If you want to. About anything.’
‘Thank you. You’re… I don’t know what we would do without you.’
Caroline stood too. ‘Everything seems a hundred times worse than it is at 2:15 in the morning. Look, why don’t you go and see your GP tomorrow and they can maybe give you something – just for now, just to help you sleep and stuff. I’m guessing you’ve not been sleeping much.’
‘Not much.’
‘You’re going to get through this, Flora. You’re –’ She stopped, staring past Flora’s shoulder.
Flora whipped round, scanning from window to door –
‘What?’
Caroline shot round the table to the back door, cupping her hands round her face to peer out through one of the glass panels in its upper section. ‘I thought… I thought I saw…’
‘Oh God. You saw someone out there?’ Flora went to the window, but all she could see was a reflection of herself, a madwoman with staring eyes in an old towelling robe. She pressed her face up against it, but it was too dark out there. The light from the kitchen illuminated only a few square feet of weedy concrete slabs.
She rested her palm on the cool glass: single-glazed, as all the windows in these listed old houses were. No protection at all.
‘Just something moving,’ said Caroline. ‘It was probably a fox. Little bastards seem to be making themselves at home in the jungle I call a garden.’ She expelled a breath. ‘God, what are we like? Jumping at shadows. Come on, back to bed with you. You don’t want Beckie waking and wondering where you are, do you?’ But Flora noted that she turned the doorknob and pulled at the door to check it, and then removed the key that had been left in the lock.
19
Flora was virtually certain that the yob sitting across the waiting room staring at her was a Johnson, or a Johnson’s minion. She knew she’d seen him before. He had a long neck and a little head and a big Adam’s apple like a turkey, and sharp little eyes fixed on her.
There were three other patients in the room, but they were all elderly women. They’d be no help if he went for her. And Sheena, the receptionist in the little office behind the glass window, probably had a non-intervention clause in her contract that meant she would sit there watching if one patient decided to attack another in front of her.
He was definitely looking at Flora.
Thank God Beckie wasn’t here.
Neil had driven Beckie to school while Flora walked to the Health Centre. She’d felt the need for exercise, the need to get rid of all the pent-up energy inside her. She had expected Neil to object, to worry that it might be unsafe for her to walk even three streets to the Health Centre in broad daylight.
But he hadn’t.
He’d just said, ‘Can you pick Beckie up this afternoon?’
And the energy was still inside her, still making her legs twitch, her heels jig up and down on the carpet as if she was some hyperactive child come for her Ritalin.