Page 51 of Cuckoo

I didn’t reply. My head hurt too much.

‘Fine. Be a horrible, selfish daughter. I’ll just have to try and do it all by myself, and then I’ll look awful at the party and it will beall your fault.’

She turned on her heels and slammed the door shut, but before doing so, she flicked the light switch on. A final parting punishment. The light hit me like a train and I vomited into the plant pot by my bed.

I wondered how Mother would like it if she felt as if she had shards of glass rattling around in her skull. I imagined my hands holding the sides of her head and shaking it violently, setting the sharp fragments dancing, so she could feel exactly how I felt.

I collect myself and Grosvenor sprays some sort of mist onto my face, meant to reduce redness and puffiness. It smells like talcum powder.

‘I thought it was good for the jury to see me looking pathetic.’ I sniff as she sprays me liberally.

‘Don’t worry, Claire. I assure you, you look pathetic! But you don’t need to be blotchy as well,’ she replies. I look up at her, surprised to find her giving me a small smile.

‘I didn’t know you could joke?’

‘Only on special occasions. We lawyers have a strict ten-joke-per-year quota to fill.’ She winks at me. ‘You ready?’

‘No.’

‘Tough luck,’ she replies, holding out her hand to help me up from my seat.

Chapter Forty-Five

12 June 2025

Dear Diary,

Noah and I have had our first proper argument. He was meant to be meeting Sukhi for the first time, she’s been dying to see him. So anyway, she booked for us all to go to dinner, Noah and me, Sukhi and her husband, Fateh. Sukhi and I headed to the restaurant after work together and met Fateh there. It was my first time meeting him, and he was lovely. Very polite and funny. He had this easy banter with Sukhi that I could tell came from all their time together. She was totally herself around him.

So we wait, and it’s getting later and later. We’ve ordered drinks because the waiter kept coming over to ask, and I’m calling Noah to no response. So then eventually he texts me and says he’s sorry but he’s got wrapped up in a work meeting and can’t make it after all– when we’ve already been waiting there for thirty minutes. I was mortified!

Fateh was so nice about it, but I could tell that Sukhi was unimpressed, although she was polite and said she was sure it was something important that was keeping Noah away. I had so wanted him to make a good impression on her, and for himto like my new friend. I’d sort of envisioned all of us hanging out as a four, doing double dates together. So I was fuming. I couldn’t even really enjoy the meal, and when I got home I told him as much. I said he’d embarrassed me and that I felt he wasn’t respecting my friends’ time, and that he should want to spend time with my friends and get to know them the way I want to get to know his.

To be fair, he looked like he felt guilty about it, and then I began to get a stress headache and had to go to bed with a wet flannel, and he came in looking even more sorry. He ran to the shop to get me painkillers and told me he understood why I was so upset and that he didn’t mean to put work before our relationship. He massaged my aching temples until I fell asleep, and in the morning I hadn’t the heart to continue being angry at him.

Claire

Chapter Forty-Six

Emilia Waterson

‘Next to the stand the prosecution calls forward Emilia Waterson,’ Dodgson announces.

I watch as a slightly built elderly woman with dyed red hair permed into ringlets steps up to the witness stand, holding on to the handrail and giving a nervous nod of her head to the judge. She avoids looking in my direction and exhales heavily as she sits down. She looks harmless, a little old lady, the sort I’d probably stop and offer my arm to if she was trying to cross a road.

‘Can you tell the jury your relationship to the victim, please?’

‘I’m her neighbour,’ Emilia replies. ‘I’ve lived in the house opposite Lilah for years, been there since the day she moved in. Lovely girl,’ she adds with a sorrowful shake of her head.

Lovely enough to steal my fiancé.Still, I shouldn’t think ill of the dead.

‘And where were you on the day of her death?’ Dodgson asks.

‘I was at home, gardening. Perfect weather for it, you know. I was sorting out the pebbles around my path andweeding the flower beds by the windowsill… Dratted weeds pop up there every year.’

This triggers a vague recollection of a flourish of red hair tucked between the bushes across the road when I approached number 48 to speak to Lilah.

‘Had you ever seen the defendant before that day? Did you recognise her at all?’

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