Page 99 of The Housewarming

Ava

‘He didn’t kill her with his car?’ I say, impatience rising. ‘What do you mean, he didn’t kill her with the car?’

Farnham drinks the rest of her tea and puts the mug carefully on the coaster.

‘The results of the post-mortem showed that Abi died of the head injury sustained in the trench,’ she says. ‘She was knocked unconscious by Johnnie Lovegood’s car but the car didn’t kill her.’ She glances up, her face soft and pained and sorry. ‘She won’t have suffered; she won’t have known anything about it.’ Another pause, as if it hurts her physically to carry on. ‘But you see, she was still alive at that point. If Mr Lovegood had reported it when he knocked her over, it’s entirely possible she would have lived. But he didn’t do that.’ She shakes her head. ‘He didn’t do that.’

‘She was still alive,’ I say.

‘I’m so sorry. In the end, the whole thing came down to seconds. Literally.’

Matt, whose arm is around my shoulders, pulls me close.

‘But don’t those cars have sensors?’ he asks.

‘They do,’ Farnham replies, ‘but if you’re listening to loud music or distracted… He wasn’t paying attention, that’s the bottom line. He wasn’t driving with due care. Many accidents aren’t caused by speeding as such but by manoeuvring the vehicle too fast in smaller operations such as three-point turns, reverse parking and, as in this case, pulling out of a garage. It really doesn’t matter what car you drive, to be honest. If you’re not careful.’

I close my eyes. Imagine Johnnie Lovegood, in his stylish clothes, sitting hunched in the back of a patrol car. I open my eyes to the man who is still legally my husband and the detective who has finally got her man. I wonder if she feels satisfied. Wonder how far removed you have to be from another’s pain to feel something as uncomplicated as satisfaction.

‘Protecting what’s ours,’ I say.

‘What?’ Matt is frowning at me.

‘That’s what this is all about.’ I look back at him, at the man who is still, for now, my other half, letting tears drop from my chin. ‘You lied because you were worried about losing me and Fred. Neil lied to save himself and Bella, and Johnnie lied to protect what was his. It’s just a question of degree, really.’ I look across to Sharon, who is listening, out of solemn respect or sympathetic indulgence it’s hard to tell. ‘Our daughter was murdered and her death kept secret because we stopped looking after each other. And if we don’t look after each other, we’re just hiding in castles, shooting arrows at our neighbours, aren’t we? If you see a hat on the ground, you put it on the wall because that’s what you’d like someone to do if they found your hat. If you hit a little girl, you call an ambulance because that’s what you’d like someone to do if they hit your little girl, do you see? That day, no one stopped to think she was everyone’s little girl… We’re all connected, that’s all, that’s all I…’ I am weeping into my hands, the sobs getting louder.

‘Hey now,’ Matt says, rubbing my back. ‘Don’t upset yourself.’

‘I’m not upsetting myself. Thisisupsetting. Somewhere along the line, we’ve been so busy getting and having and getting more and more and more again until we have so much we have to guard it at all costs. We’ve forgotten – we’ve completely forgotten – to look after each other.’

Matt’s arms fold around me. I feel his lips press on the top of my head.

‘What are we going to do?’ I sob into his chest.

‘We’ll be all right,’ he says. ‘We’ll be all right.’

Forty-Eight

Four months later

Two days ago, in diagonal sleet, we moved to a cottage in a village not far from my parents’ home. Unable to bear staying in our street, Fred and I have been living with them since a little after Abi was found, and now we are happy to be back under one roof with Matt. Matt has taken a lower-paid job with a firm in Manchester but intends to work his way back up. The houses are cheaper here, so I can have a separate room for my piano. I am quietly hopeful for this new start. I can live here safe in the knowledge that I won’t be bumping into people who know what happened every five minutes, not to mention Bella or Jen, and this has brought me a great deal of relief.

After the trial, Bella texted to say how sorry she was and to reiterate that she knew nothing until after the party. I replied that I believed her, and that I thought she was a brave and special person. I wished her well. And I did, I do. She is the one who understood where the line is drawn between self-preservation and the right thing to do, and I will always admire her for that. What I didn’t say, but what I suspect both she and Neil understand, is that we never want to see either of them again. The same goes for Jen, who posted a long and tenderly worded handwritten letter in her trademark purple ink, which Matt brought up on one of his visits. She and Johnnie are getting divorced. She was mortified by what happened and hoped I could find it in my heart to believe that she knew nothing whatsoever about her ‘ex-husband’s heinous actions’. I wrote back – the paper correspondence old-fashioned but somehow apt – that of course I believed her. I left out that this was only once I’d read her letter, because up until that point, I was unsure. But there the contact between us must end. I was fond of her, and I miss her, but I need this new start. We all do.

Neil was charged and convicted of prevention of lawful burial and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. He was sentenced to two years but will most likely serve one, we are told. Apparently he and Bella are still together and are planning on moving to Guildford, according to an old school friend of Matt’s.

Johnnie Lovegood was charged and convicted of manslaughter and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. He is currently serving the maximum sentence at Her Majesty’s pleasure in Wormwood Scrubs. I wonder how he finds the grey sweat suits, whether the cuisine is to his taste. He will, I know, find his punishment outrageous, a travesty.

‘Have you seen the bedside lamps?’ Matt asks, drumming on the living-room door jamb.

‘In the kitchen. In one of the boxes on the table. It’s marked “Bedroom Stuff”, I think. Shall we have a cuppa though?’

‘OK,’ he says. ‘I’ll make it.’

‘There are some biscuits in the cupboard by the kettle,’ I call after him. ‘Mugs are around there somewhere.’

From the box on the floor I pull out the framed picture of Abi, push the palm of my hand across it before placing it on the mantelpiece. We had a private family funeral for her a month after she was found. And whilst her life’s end sounded the saddest possible note, it was a note less maddening than the hanging devil’s chord, and I am able at last to sit with it and to hear it. My heart belongs to Matt and to my son, but it is still my daughter’s too, still enmeshed with hers as hers is with mine. She is still part of me: my body, my tissue, my bones. She will always be part of me. Her death cannot change that. Nothing can change that.

‘You can watch us from there, little monkey,’ I say to her now, not minding the tears that fall.

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