Silent Waters, page 23
FORTY-THREE
Claudia is not with Mark. She is alone and moving towards the quiet darkness of Oak House, having walked hours through the fields, through the woodland. She is here for her belongings, to retrieve everything she needs now before it’s too late, because from what she has seen on the news, there’s a question mark over whether Mark will be able to get to Paris, and she cannot lose her opportunity to get out.
The diving team are travelling on the Eurostar tomorrow morning, and all of them are due to stay the night in a hotel in London beforehand. There was supposed to be a big dinner with speeches, and press taking photographs and Claudia knows that Mark won’t want to miss it, even with this all hanging over his head. Her lips turn up into a sneer. She knows what he’ll be telling them in his speech.
You will stand on the edge of that platform, and take the moment to look at the water. Tell yourself you are here, that you can do this.
She reaches the garden fence panel and pulls at it, expecting it to come away like it’s always done, but to her surprise, there’s a resistance and then a ripping sound. She inhales sharply, realises as she tugs that the fence panel has been taped. Yellow and black with writing from films and TV dramas.
Do Not Cross. Police.
She steps between the strips of tape, heart hammering wildly in her ribcage. What do the police think happened here? She slips through into the garden, and her body starts to convulse with panic. The grass looks freshly cut – did she bleed there? Did Mark wash it out, cut out the stains? But the deckchair is still on the grass, the birdbath is filled with water, the flowers are in bloom, and everything looks hauntingly normal.
She lets herself into the house with the key that she told Bill was in the Welsh dresser, and walks through the boot-room and then into the kitchen. She can’t help but pause to touch the white quartz countertop, feel its cold smooth finish, catches the sparkles buried within the surface. As a girl, she used to gallop her toy unicorns over it, used to pretend that the sparkles gave them magic. Her mother always got cross with her for it – worried the little hooves would mark it even though they were plastic. Claaudia looks to the Aga, duck-egg blue, remembers that she used to stand in front of it when she came back from swimming, the lids both open and warming her damp hair. Above it is the huge oak beam that would have only the best Christmas cards tacked into it with pins. There are parts of the house that are built with old ship timber and so many times she wondered where her house had sailed. She would love it to grow wings now, enormous wings, and fly her up to the sky. She wonders where she would go, where she would feel safe.
She can’t take the house with her, of course. She must leave it and all its memories behind. She treads lightly up the staircase to go up to her and Mark’s bedroom. It used to be her mother and Henry’s room, has enormous glass windows overlooking the garden and woodland beyond, an en suite made of white marble.
She reaches for a suitcase from inside the wardrobe and she swiftly puts in some clothes that Mark won’t notice she’s taken, and some toiletries. Have the police done an inventory for her belongings? She hopes not. She’ll also take her precious shammy. She goes to the pillow, lifts it, sees that it’s there, folded like always. Her mother had started that tradition for her. To wish on it, see if her dreams came true, because Victoria was big on manifesting destiny. She had been a dancer, she understood discipline and rigorous training. She was always the one that took Claudia to the diving pool and never Henry. She was always the one to drive her – and Jen too – to the numerous competitions around the country, regardless of where they were held, or what time of day they were. She would sit in the gallery with a coffee and her sunglasses on.
‘She’s probably asleep,’ Claudia often said to Jen. ‘She’s only here for the outcome of possible glory so she can then go to the Ivy with all her friends and bask in their admiration.’
‘That sounds a bit harsh.’
‘It doesn’t. The cocktails there are really nice.’
‘I meant on your mum,’ Jen said.
‘Your mum and my mum are very different.’
‘Your mum remembers your name at least.’
‘But she doesn’t ever use it.’
But if Claudia thinks about it – really thinks – she can recall that there were occasions when she saw Victoria tilt forward and purse her lips into a thin line as Claudia walked to the edge of the dive platform. But as she surfaced from the water, Victoria would be leaning back again.
Maybe she did care. Maybe she just didn’t know how to show her love. Maybe Claudia should have tried to love her better. Maybe, maybe. Too late for any of that now.
There’s a noise from downstairs.
She stops dead and straightens, and waits, poised like an animal. Perhaps she misheard, but no, there’s another sound now. Slow footsteps on the staircase. The police? Mark?
Her head goes light with fear. No one can catch her here, not when she’s so close to getting away. She looks around wildly for a place to hide because she won’t be able to flee the room – the landing comes out where the stairs come up and she can’t jump out of a window this high up. She can’t hide under the bed because it has storage drawers, and can’t risk hiding in the en suite because it has no lock. Her only real resort is to hide in the wardrobe and will herself not to make a sound. She grabs the suitcase she was filling, puts it inside as noiselessly as she can and then follows it.
It’s awkward to stand; there are shoeboxes at the bottom of it and a couple of silky blouses that she’s now displaced from hangers. She buries herself deep within the coats, and covers her mouth with her hand and waits. If it is Mark, then why is he here and not with the team? Did he see her across the lawn? Has he called the police already? She stifles a cry and an empty coat hanger sways dangerously next to her and she grabs at it before it clangs. She hears the familiar creak of the bedroom door opening.
She slips her hand into her pocket to turn on the phone Bill got her and text him, or Jen, but as she twists it to take it out, it slips from her clammy fingers. It thuds on a shoebox, bounces, makes another thud as it lands on the wooden bottom of the wardrobe.
Silence throbs in her ears.
And then, the closet handle turns. Mark’s fingers curl around the edge of it the door and she could scream, she should bolt out, but she doesn’t have time to do either.
FORTY-FOUR
He yanks her out by the hair and the pain of it almost causes her to black out. He shoves her down to the floor.
‘I knew you were alive.’
Claudia cowers beneath him. ‘Please—’
‘Have you had a nice vacation?’
‘I don’t want any trouble.’
Mark laughs. ‘Really? Because that’s all you’ve been causing me since you’ve been away. What do you think would happen if I phoned the police and told them my wife is home and looking like she’s about to do a runner when her mother has been found dead only a mile from her house?’
‘I wasn’t. I came home to be with you.’
‘Liar. I found your new passport, Claudia. And an envelope with five thousand pounds in it.’
‘You need to give them to me—’
‘I don’t think I will.’
He steps towards her and she skirts backwards like a small animal into the corner of the room.
‘You sent that story about Bella Mitchell to the papers.’
‘What?’
‘It was suggested to my lawyer that I bow out of the dinner tonight and thank Christ I did. Because half an hour ago, your story broke. Can you imagine how that would have looked whilst giving my keynote speech about passion and love for diving?’ His eyes are like storms. ‘Is that what you wanted?’
‘I didn’t send—’
‘I have no choice now but to tell the police about what happened to Henry.’
‘Mark, I didn’t send it—’
‘And then I’ll tell them I know that you came back to Oak House on the night Victoria drowned.’
She startles. ‘What?’
‘I have a security camera app on my phone. I know you tried to come back to the house, but I had changed the lock.’
Claudia’s heart is in her mouth. ‘Have you . . . have you told the police that I came back?’
‘No. I deleted the app and I told them that the camera had broken.’
‘But – why? Why didn’t you tell them? Why did you delete it?’
‘Does it matter now anyway? You’re a murder suspect, Claudia.’
‘But I didn’t hurt her. I didn’t hurt Mum.’
‘But you always hated her.’
He moves closer and she is trapped in the corner. She thinks about jumping over the bed, but he would be quicker.
‘You wanted to sell the house and she came over to stop you and you pushed her into the river.’
‘Of course I didn’t! I didn’t know she would come back! I think she must have drowned—’
‘And I think that you’ve sat pretty the last few weeks whilst your mother has been underwater and you’ve said nothing.’
A white-hot fury floods her body. ‘I’ve sat pretty for years saying nothing about you. Predator.’
He comes at her then, with a roar that punches her eardrums, and for a moment she’s rigid from the shock of it, and lets herself be taken by the shoulders and shaken like a doll.
‘Take that back!’ he shouts. ‘Take it back!’
She tries to move her arms to struggle against him, but he’s pinned them against her body, and she can only close her eyes as he rages in her face, spit flying from his lips and onto her skin.
‘You bitch!’
The force of his shaking her makes her unstable. He stabilises her with a slap to the face and she opens her eyes.
‘Take it back! You think you’re better than me?’
‘Please—’
‘You’re a murderer!’
The word rings in her ears and she slumps. Because he’s right, she is a murderer. That day eighteen years ago, Henry hadn’t gone to walk to smoke at the barn and slipped like the police believed he had.
Claudia killed him.
FORTY-FIVE
At seventeen years old, Claudia got herself a secret older boyfriend – Mark Mason – and for months they managed easily to spend time together. Claudia would stay behind at practice, fooling both Victoria and Henry in telling them that she was dedicating herself to diving. They agreed to pick her up an hour after everyone else had left, none the wiser that Claudia and Mark would use those sixty precious minutes to touch each other, kiss in the water, or lie on the trampolines when they were practising jumps, talking excitedly about their glorious future together.
Until Henry had discovered the note in Claudia’s swim bag.
‘What’s this?’
Claudia didn’t look up, was painting her toenails in the living room, with the TV blaring Strictly Come Dancing.
‘Claudia? What’s this note?’
She’d glanced at him then, and when she saw the folded piece of paper in his hands, and her swim bag in his other, a cold dread stole around her throat. She dropped the nail-varnish brush, which rolled on the coffee table and dropped to the cream carpet. One of their dogs sniffed at it.
‘What are you doing looking in my stuff?’
‘I was putting the washing in the basket for the cleaners,’ he replied. ‘And this was very nearly washed with it.’
She snatched it away from him, heart hammering, and opened it. Mark hadn’t written his name in any of the previous notes he’d secreted inside her change bag, but what if this one was different? Her eyes scanned the bottom and relief coursed through her body. She looked angrily at Henry.
‘It’s private.’
‘I agree and I apologise.’
‘Did you read it?’
She glanced down at the first line.
All the places I can imagine my tongue – you are a forbidden fruit but I want to know the core of you.
She cringed, scrunched the note in her palm.
‘Don’t you think you need to be concentrating on diving now that you’ve been accepted by the board?’ Henry asked.
‘Don’t you think you should be minding your own business? It’s just someone from swimming.’
‘I thought your swimming team were all girls. This doesn’t sound like something from them.’
‘Course it’s not them. A boy. It doesn’t matter, OK?’
‘I didn’t think your coach allowed people to sit in and watch the training sessions.’
She laughed then. ‘He definitely doesn’t. It’s someone from outside practice. A guy I’ve been seeing for a couple of months. Don’t tell Mum, OK?’
Henry had narrowed his eyes.
As calmly as she could, she had picked up the nail brush, and gone upstairs, and then sat on her phone and giggled to Mark about it in a voice-note.
But, of course, the cogs of Henry’s mind had obviously started to turn. A month later, he came early to pick Claudia up, and the receptionist let him into the pool and he went to the viewing gallery. Claudia and Mark were on the platform, his hands on her waist when he stopped suddenly and pulled away.
‘This position,’ he said in a firm voice. ‘So you’re square, OK?’
She had laughed, utterly confused, but he’d pinched her and she quietened.
‘Excuse me, sir?’ he said. ‘Can you wait outside?’
She followed his eyes to see Henry.
‘Can you wait outside, Henry?’ she repeated.
After that, there was an added sense of danger, but that made it feel even more exciting. They continued their affair, and started to meet in other locations.
On the day of the fire, Claudia had asked Mark to the barn, the perfect place for them to be alone for a couple of hours. They climbed the ladder to the old hayloft, the squeak of the wooden rungs under their shoes, the remnants of dried mud beneath their hands. Mark was behind her, told her that he’d follow her anywhere if her perfect arse in tight shorts was the view. She laughed, and reached the top, took a moment to inhale the romance of the afternoon light through the cracks in the roof, the shafts of which cast a golden hue onto his lustful face as he lay beside her. He kissed her and she thought she was the luckiest girl in the world.
They had only been up there a little while when they heard a noise outside the barn – a scrape of the wooden doors and someone coming inside.
She tensed.
‘Who is it?’ Mark hissed.
‘I don’t know?’
They stayed still, heard the clang of the tractor door below them and then the zip of a lighter.
‘Who the fuck?’ Mark mouthed at her and she could only shake her head in reply, her heart beating furiously.
Her phone vibrated in her bag, made them jump. She glanced at it and then at Mark, found that he was already looking at her with dark, suspicious eyes, like she had deliberately trapped him.
‘I think it’s Bill,’ she mouthed to Mark. ‘Jen’s brother.’
He shook his head to mean he didn’t understand what she’d said so she turned her screen round to show him.
Come to the river and swim with us? We’re here now. Bx
‘Why is he here?’ Mark whispered and she could see he was angry. ‘Why is he asking you here?’
‘Sometimes we come here to swim—’
Mark’s fingers tightened around her thigh, his nails sharp in her skin. ‘Be quiet.’
She shut her mouth.
‘Do you think he’ll come up?’
‘I don’t know?’
There was laughter below, a low cackle, and Claudia’s stomach dropped. A trickle of sweat fell down her cleavage.
‘My mind is coming away from my body,’ Bill’s voice drifted from below them.
‘Is there someone else with him?’
She shrugged helplessly. They stayed rigid as minutes passed until they smelt the sickly-sweet smoke of weed below them. She offered Mark a smile, but he didn’t return it. His fingers were still clenched around her thigh, his knuckles white. She uncurled them, kissed the back of his hand. He didn’t look at her.
They heard a noise, the tractor door was opening again, and there was a thud.
‘Shit, you OK?’ Bill’s voice said.
Mark looked at Claudia. ‘He’s talking to himself? Who’s with him?’
‘He’s high. I don’t think anyone else is there.’
‘Jen?’
‘I don’t think so.’
They waited five minutes before they heard a clank of metal again, footsteps and the groan of wood. Claudia risked leaning out.
‘Has he definitely gone?’ Mark said quietly.
‘I can’t see him anywhere.’
He pulled her back and kissed her hard, so hard that she could feel his teeth behind his lips, and she kissed him back. She could feel his heartbeat hammering against her chest, was sure he could also feel hers. He slid his hand under the waistband of her shorts and she bit down on his neck, and they fooled around for a while enjoying the relief from the tension, before creeping back down the ladder.
‘Fuck me. That was too close, Claudia.’
‘I know,’ she grinned. ‘I’ll think of a better hiding place.’
‘There’s nowhere you could hide that I wouldn’t find you,’ he said and went to kiss her when suddenly he paused, as if stopped on a TV screen.
She pulled away, saw the horror on his face and turned to see Henry standing at the corner of the barn.
‘Mr Barton—’ Mark began.
Henry walked towards them, silenced Mark with a palm raised upwards. ‘I am taking my daughter away from here, away from you, right this second.’
Claudia swallowed a hard lump of emotion. Daughter. He’d never called her that before. Why now? she’d thought. Why now when he was obviously so angry, so upset?
‘It’s not what you think,’ Mark said.
‘And what story do you think I will buy after seeing that? After hearing what you just said.’
‘There’s nothing going on.’
‘Don’t take me for an idiot,’ Henry snapped. He looked at Claudia. ‘The note from your swim bag. From him?’
