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Chapter Five

~

Oxford, August 2014

‘What the fuck?!’

Philippa Stuart-Barnes has had a fondness for swear words for as long as Emily has known her. Her friend’s obscenities always sound at odds with her public school accent, to Emily’s ears, anyway.

Josephine sets the tray down on the coffee table a little harder than necessary, making the teaspoons jump as well as Pippa herself. She looks disapprovingly at Pippa over the top of her glasses.

‘Whoops. Sorry, Mrs Cavendish,’ Pippa says, clapping her hand over her mouth theatrically.

Josephine leaves the living room, her high-heeled shoes tapping on the wooden floor. Emily is suddenly cross that her mother wears shoes in the house. When she and Amanda were little, Josephine had always insisted that they remove theirs as soon as they came through the door.

Pippa takes the hand from her mouth to reveal a cheeky grin and tucks a wayward strand of her straight, dark hair behind her ear. With her other hand, she absent-mindedly rubs her pregnant belly.

Pippa’s flippancy annoys Emily, too. This is serious. For Emily, anyway. Then she reasons with herself. Pippa is just trying to provide her with a bit of light relief after the dramatic events of the last few days. But she is irascible today and Pippa will have a hard job lifting her spirits.

‘That’s like, weird, brah.’ This reaction is from Matt, who addresses everyone as ‘brah’, regardless of gender. He’s a handsome seventeen-year-old although his long, unkempt hair tones down his looks. He has striking, green-brown eyes. Emily can see they’re slightly bloodshot.

‘A message from Greg? That’s impossible!’ Amanda exclaims. ‘What did it say?’

Emily has the impression she’s observing this scene, rather than participating in it, and she doesn’t realise straight away that her sister is waiting for her to answer. ‘He said he didn’t know what was going on,’ she says. ‘He promised to get back to me as soon as possible.’

‘Weird,’ Matt repeats.

Emily turns towards her half-brother. ‘I know,’ she agrees.

‘What were the exact words? What time was the message sent?’ Amanda asks, pouring insipid tea from the pot into each of the four mugs in turn.

Emily notices her sister’s hands are unsteady.

‘Hang on, I’ll fetch my computer and you can see for yourself.’ Emily lifts Mr Mistoffelees off her lap and drops him to the floor, then pushes herself out of her armchair. She feels the familiar stabbing pain in her side. She winces.

‘I’ll go, Em,’ Pippa says. ‘Tell me where it is.’

‘In my bedroom. On the bookcase.’ Emily expects Matt or Amanda to offer to go as Pippa’s pregnant, but she has already left the room. Emily sits down again. She never knows whether to sit back in her chair or perch on the end of it; either way it’s uncomfortable. She opts for somewhere in between, although that’s no better.

For a while, no one speaks. The cat jumps straight back up and kneads Emily’s thighs with its claws as though punishing her for disturbing him before. Amanda hands out the mugs of tea. Emily catches Matt’s gaze sweeping her living room. She looks around the room herself, as if seeing it through his eyes. The flowers she has brought home from the hospital are wilting in a vase on the sideboard. Above it hangs a large painting, Blue Rotation, by a Hungarian artist whose work she adores. It provides the only colour in the living room.

Emily realises now with a start that it’s the only thing in the whole room she actually likes. It’s an inhospitable, minimally furnished room. There’s no TV set. There’s one in the lounge upstairs, but apart from a few series or dramas, neither she nor Greg ever watched much television. There are no books downstairs either, as Emily tends to read novels on her Kindle.

Amanda puts an end to the silence. ‘Mum, can we have some biscuits?’ she calls through to Josephine in the kitchen.

‘You didn’t say please, Mandy.’

Amanda can’t stand people using a diminutive of her name, which is, of course, why Matt always does.

‘Oh, shut up, Matthew,’ she growls, much to Matt’s amusement.

Similarly, no one ever calls Matt by his full name except Amanda. Their squabbling has always bewildered Emily. After all, it’s not as if they grew up together – Amanda had left home for university by the time Matt was born. Matt claims that it’s just good-natured bickering. Right now Emily finds their banter maddening. I really am in a foul mood. I must snap out of it, she thinks, reminding herself that they are here to support her.

A moment later, Josephine reappears, carrying a plate of biscuits that she hands to Amanda.

‘Thank you,’ Amanda says to Josephine as Matt leans over and helps himself to a chocolate Hobnob. Josephine leaves the room again without a word.

‘How strange!’ Emily says a few minutes later. She has booted up her Mac, which Pippa has brought downstairs for her, and she’s sitting with the computer on her lap. She can feel everyone else watching her as she stares in disbelief at the screen. ‘It’s gone.’

‘What’s gone?’ asks Amanda.

Emily looks up and meets her sister’s eyes. ‘The message on Facebook. The one Greg sent. It must have been deleted.’

‘Maybe you imagined it,’ Amanda says. ‘They were giving you some pretty strong medicine at the hospital. Perhaps it was hallucinogenic.’ She reaches over from where she’s sitting on the sofa, and pats Emily’s knee.

‘I was not hallucinating.’

‘Well, maybe the drugs were oneirogenic, then. Didn’t you say you’d fallen asleep on your bed?’

Emily thinks how much she hates it when her sister uses medical jargon, although she usually gets the gist. It goes with the job, she supposes.

‘Onner what?’ Clearly Matt hasn’t understood, though.

‘It’s from the Greek word oneiros meaning dream,’ Pippa explains. Matt looks vacantly at her. ‘Amanda means that Emily may have dreamt she received the message,’ she adds.

Emily is engulfed by a new surge of infuriation. Apart from Amanda, who seems to think this is all in her head, no one is taking her seriously. Emily looks from Pippa to Amanda to Matt. I want them to believe me. I need them to believe me. ‘It wasn’t a dream,’ she says, but she can hear her voice waver. She turns the laptop round towards her sister. ‘Look, here’s the obituary I posted.’

‘Well, the message isn’t there now, is it?’ Amanda says. ‘So you must either have dreamt it or imagined it.’ Amanda’s tone is soft, but her words seem harsh to Emily. ‘Anyway, Greg can’t possibly have sent you a message.’

‘He might have done,’ Matt says, his mouth full of biscuit. ‘Weirder things have happened.’

They all look at him. Emily thinks it would be just like Matt to suggest a message from beyond the grave. ‘What do you mean?’ she asks.

‘Well, it could be Greg, couldn’t it?’ Matt pauses, looking at each of them in turn and stroking his goatee. ‘What if he didn’t die?’

‘What the…?’ Pippa refrains from swearing this time.

But Matt has spoken the words Emily really wants to hear. She desperately wants to believe that there’s a chance her husband could still be alive. ‘Is that possible? I mean, I didn’t see his body,’ she says. ‘I was still in hospital on the day of his funeral.’ Thoughts race through her head. Perhaps Greg has just disappeared? Maybe he’s in some sort of trouble and has had to go into hiding?

‘Greg died, Em,’ Pippa says gently.

Emily’s heart and stomach seem to plummet inside her and it’s almost as if she has just found out about the accident all over again. She makes an effort to collect her thoughts. If Greg really is dead, then there must be a logical explanation for all this, she thinks to herself. But surely I didn’t imagine the whole thing?

As if reading Emily’s mind, Pippa turns to her. ‘Em, I think someone’s fucking with you,’ she says. ‘If that is what’s happening here, they’d need Greg’s password to access his Facebook account, wouldn’t they? How many people know his login?’

‘As far as I’m aware, only Greg and I know it.’

That gives Emily an idea and she logs out of her Facebook account and types in the password for Greg’s. She no longer has proof she received a message, but she can prove that Greg sent her one.

‘So, only one person knows it now,’ Amanda remarks humourlessly.

‘Wow, Mandy. A mathematician as well as a psychiatrist!’ Matt jokes, and takes another biscuit from the plate.

Emily tries to ignore them. She feels crushed as she sees there is no trace of a private message from Greg to her in his Facebook messages, either. She has nothing to show her best friend, her sister and her brother that there ever was a message. Nothing to make them believe her.

‘If only you were an information technologist as well, Mandy,’ Matt continues as Amanda scowls at him. ‘We might be able to solve this, then.’

‘Ooh, that’s a good idea. Why didn’t we think of that before?’ Pippa says. ‘Emily, why don’t you ask Charles? He’s good with computers, isn’t he? Maybe he can work out—’

‘I don’t think he knows any more about them than anyone else,’ Amanda interrupts. She looks at Emily. ‘What time did you say the message was sent, Em?’

‘It must have been around 5:15 p.m. It says here I posted my obituary at 5:13. It can only have been a minute or two after that.’

‘Maybe you should take a screenshot next time?’ Matt suggests.

Emily doesn’t want to admit that she has no idea what a screenshot is, let alone how to take one.

‘Are you sure it wasn’t a message that Greg had sent before his…the accident?’ Pippa asks.

‘No, I’m not a hundred per cent certain. The message came up when I logged in to Facebook. I thought it had just been sent, but maybe I was wrong. And now I can’t check.’

‘When was the last time you were on Facebook before then?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I think Pippa is asking if you’d already been on Facebook since Greg died,’ Amanda says.

‘Allegedly died,’ Matt mutters almost inaudibly.

‘No, I hadn’t.’

‘So, the message could have been sent by Greg before he died,’ Amanda says.

‘I suppose so,’ Emily concedes. ‘But I still don’t understand what it could possibly mean.’

‘The sender was definitely Greg?’

‘Yes, definitely.’ But she can hear that she sounds doubtful. ‘And anyway, he called me “Alice”. No one else has ever called me by my middle name.’

‘Yes, but all your friends know he called you “Alice” so that doesn’t rule out the possibility that someone is screwing with you,’ Pippa says.

‘What sort of friend would play mind games like that?’ Matt asks. ‘That’s, like, really sick. Maybe you should call the police.’

‘The police are calling on me this afternoon, Matt,’ Emily says, feeling nervous at the thought of their visit. She is worried about what they might ask her. ‘Maybe I’ll talk to them about it.’ But even as she says it, she knows that she won’t mention the message. They didn’t protect her when she needed protection before. They believed her when she lied; they won’t believe her now, she reasons, even if she tells them the truth.

‘Maybe you shouldn’t say anything about it to the police just yet,’ Amanda says. She lowers her voice so that only Emily can hear. ‘You know, without proof and everything… The last thing you want is for them to make you out to be psychotic.’

‘Perhaps you’re right.’ Emily knows that Amanda understands how reluctant she is to have anything to do with the police.

‘Why don’t you wait and see if you get another message first?’ Amanda suggests.

Emily nods.

Matt takes his mobile out of the back pocket of his jeans and glances at the screen. ‘It’s a quarter to two,’ he says. ‘I’d better go. I want to go into town, then I’ve got to get the train back to Devon this evening.’ He puts his mug down on the tray. ‘Laters.’

Emily gets up and follows Matt through to the hall. She wants to offer to take him into town, but the thought of being behind the wheel of a car terrifies her. Her handbag is hanging by its strap around the newel cap of the staircase. She takes out her purse.

‘Oh, no, Em. I didn’t come here to hit you up for money,’ he protests half-heartedly. ‘I came – we all did – to try and cheer you up a bit. That’s all.’

‘Take it, Matt. I know you’re strapped for cash.’

‘Story of my life,’ Matt says as Emily thrusts a fifty-pound note into his hand. ‘Thanks, sis. When I’m rich and famous, I won’t forget you!’

‘I know. Don’t spend it on dope, Matt, OK?’

‘I won’t,’ Matt promises, giving Emily a peck on the cheek. ‘Catch you on the flip side.’

‘You shouldn’t give him money, Emily,’ Amanda says. She has stepped into the hall and is standing behind her sister. Emily whirls round. Although she’s older than Emily, Amanda is slightly shorter.

‘You scared me!’ Emily hadn’t known Amanda was there. ‘Aw, he needs it, Amanda. I don’t.’

‘You might do now that Greg has died.’

‘I suppose I’ll have to look into all that at some point. I’m not up to it yet, though.’

‘Just let me know when you are, and I’ll help you.’ Amanda unties the cardigan from around her waist and puts it on. ‘Pippa will give us a hand too, won’t you, Pips?’

‘Of course I will,’ Pippa says. ‘Right. We need to get going. Rehearsals. Will you be all right?’

‘Of course,’ Emily says. ‘Mum’s here.’

‘In that case you’ll be fine,’ Amanda scoffs. She takes the scrunchie from her wrist and uses it to fasten back her mousy hair into a ponytail. Emily notices that her fringe has been cut. It’s a little too short and not quite straight. She wonders if Amanda has cut it herself.

‘Don’t be unkind,’ Emily says, nudging her sister, who grins. ‘Go and say goodbye to her.’

~

When the visitors have left, Josephine suggests that Emily should take a nap before the police come. Emily doesn’t feel at all tired, but she likes the idea of spending an hour or so alone, so she goes upstairs with her computer tucked under her arm.

Minutes later, all trace of her earlier bad temper has evaporated and instead she feels overcome with sadness. She finds herself curled up in a ball on her bed, crying uncontrollably into the pillow. From time to time she thumps the bed, punctuating her sobs. She hears her crying rise in a crescendo.

Eventually, Josephine knocks tentatively at the door, but Emily barely registers the sound. Her mother knocks again, then enters the bedroom uninvited. For a moment, she just stands in the doorway. Then she comes over to the bed and perches on the end of it, awkwardly. Finally, she takes Emily in her arms and holds her until she calms down.

‘It’s so unfair,’ Emily says.

‘I know.’ Josephine rubs her daughter’s back. Emily can’t remember her mother ever doing this even when she was little.

‘I feel so…so empty,’ Emily sobs, as much to herself as to her mother, ‘and I don’t even know if it’s my fault he’s dead.’

‘We’re all here for you, Emily,’ her mum says.

Emily wishes her mother would say it was an accident – that it was no one’s fault. But Josephine doesn’t say anything else. Does she blame me for Greg’s death? Am I to blame? Emily feels her shoulders tense. Is there any chance he’s still alive?

Emily cries for ages while her mother keeps patting her back to soothe her.

‘I’ll sleep now,’ Emily says at length, sniffing. ‘Will you call me when the police come?’

Josephine hands Emily a tissue and promises to tell her as soon as Sergeant Campbell and PC Constable arrive. She leaves the bedroom, closing the door behind her.

But Emily still has no intention of sleeping. She blows her nose, and then flips open the lid of her laptop and enters her password. Next, she logs in to her Facebook account. Many people have posted their condolences on her wall in response to her obituary. The first comment is from Will Huxtable. She hasn’t seen him for years – she hasn’t even spoken or written to him since that memorable day when he came to visit her. But they are virtual friends on Facebook. As she begins to read through his reply, the notification sound alerts her to a new message.

This time she checks the time and sender. There is no doubt. The sender is Gregory Klein and the message was sent at 14:17. About three minutes ago. Emily is aware her breathing has become shallow.

She reads the message twice. It doesn’t make any more sense to her than the first message Greg sent. And yet some intangible memory of a recent event seems to be materialising at the back of her mind. Before Emily can put her finger on what it is, she hears the buzzer. Seconds later, Josephine appears at the bedroom door to announce that the police officers have arrived. Emily closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. She snaps the lid of her laptop shut, gets up slowly and makes her way downstairs.

~

‘Good afternoon,’ PC Constable says, as Emily sinks into the armchair she vacated just an hour earlier.

Again, Emily can’t get comfortable. She tries sitting forwards, but she’s afraid of appearing too nervous, so she sits back but she thinks she must look too nonchalant. ‘Good afternoon,’ she says. She can hear her mother in the kitchen and realises she’s making yet more weak tea. Emily resigns herself to having to drink a lot of weak tea while her mother is staying.

‘Mrs Klein, we’ve come to ask you a few questions,’ Campbell says in her Glaswegian brogue by way of a greeting. ‘We have taken a statement from a member of the public who witnessed your car crash.’

Here, Campbell pauses. Emily wonders if she should say something, but Campbell hasn’t asked a question yet. The police officer runs her hand through her spiky red hair. Without taking her eyes off Emily, she unbuttons her breast pocket and slides out her notebook. Then, squinting at something written in it, she clicks her ballpoint pen on and off repeatedly. Emily remembers this habit of hers from the hospital. She wonders if it’s an OCD ritual or if she pen clicks absent-mindedly. Either way, it’s irritating.

Looking at her pad, Campbell continues: ‘This witness was walking his dog, a chocolate Labrador, along a cycle path near the Marston Ferry Road on August the first at approximately fifteen hundred hours. He saw you lose control of your vehicle, a blue Mini soft-top.’

‘Nice car. Lightning Blue Metallic?’ So it’s Constable who has asked the first question. Emily nods. ‘Great choice of car and colour. Good taste.’

Emily thinks that if Matt were here, he’d consider Constable to be playing the role of good cop. Campbell is clearly more suitable for the part of bad cop.

‘My husband bought me the car for my birthday last year,’ Emily tells Constable.

‘According to the dog walker,’ Campbell resumes, ‘you drove your car, for no apparent reason, off the link road at considerable speed straight into a tree at the side of the road. It was this man who rang for the ambulance.’

‘Mrs Klein, can you tell us how you came to lose control of your car?’ Again, the question has come from Constable, which surprises Emily.

‘I honestly don’t remember,’ she replies. ‘I know I was driving. That’s all I can tell you about the accident.’

‘So you can’t tell us if you swerved to avoid someone or something, or if there was a mechanical failure with your car, the brakes, for example?’

‘No, I really don’t know,’ Emily says.

‘Do you sometimes lose consciousness?’ Constable asks.

‘I pass out sometimes,’ Emily replies, not immediately understanding the point of his question. ‘If my blood pressure is low, or I feel dizzy, or if I have a shock, for example.’ Emily almost mentions that she fainted just the previous day, but she checks herself in time. That would mean having to tell the police about the Facebook messages. She definitely doesn’t want to do that. ‘It doesn’t happen often,’ she adds quickly.

‘Could you have fainted in the car?’

‘It’s possible,’ Emily says. ‘But I don’t think so. I wasn’t feeling ill.’

She does remember, however, having a shock. Something Greg said had shaken her to the core. Some sort of revelation. What was it? It’s somehow connected to the message he sent just a short time ago.

Sergeant Campbell’s first question is so unexpected and so extraneous to her introductory comments that it physically winds Emily.

‘Mrs Klein, have you been interviewed by the police before?’

Emily doesn’t know how to answer that. Is it a trick question? Of course she has been interviewed by the police before. She was interrogated as a teenager when she admitted to killing her father. Is that what Campbell wants to hear? Could Campbell possibly already know that? If she’s aware of this, there’s no point in Emily denying that she has been questioned by the police in the past.

Emily struggles to recover from Campbell’s blow. Her mother helps her unwittingly. With impeccable timing, Josephine enters the living room with her tray of tea and biscuits. When she has gone, Emily takes a deep breath.

‘I helped police with their inquiries when my father died,’ she says. She realises that the euphemism she has just used probably makes her seem as guilty as if she’d just confessed to the crime all over again.

‘How old were you when your father was killed?’

So Campbell does know.

‘I’d just turned fifteen,’ Emily says in a voice that is barely audible.

‘Let’s talk about your family,’ says the sergeant. ‘How many brothers and sisters have you got?’

It strikes Emily that Campbell’s questions are probably deliberately haphazard to try and unnerve her. It is working.

‘I have a sister, Amanda, who is two and a half years older than me. And a half-brother, Matt, who is seventeen years old.’

‘And Matt shares the same biological mother as you?’ Campbell’s intonation suggests a question, but she’s looking down at her notes and Emily isn’t sure that an answer is required. It occurs to her that Matt would probably reply: ‘Duh!’

Campbell continues: ‘Your mother’s the lady who just brought us in the cup of tea. Is that correct?’ Emily nods as the sergeant bores her emerald eyes into her. ‘The other day in the hospital, you mentioned that your mother had been unwell. Could you tell me about her illness?’

Emily glances uncomfortably towards the kitchen door. ‘Is this relevant to the car accident?’ she asks.

‘Mrs Klein, if it’s all right with you, I’m the one who usually asks the questions,’ Campbell says a little brusquely.

‘We’re just establishing background,’ Constable says, smiling his slanted grin.

‘My mother was an alcoholic for several years,’ Emily says. ‘She had treatment in a rehab clinic in Exeter, initially as a resident and then as an outpatient. She has been teetotal for about three years now.’

‘And do any other members of your family have an addiction problem?’

Emily knows that Matt has been in trouble with the police a couple of times for supplying cannabis. That doesn’t constitute an addiction, does it?

‘No,’ she replies categorically.

‘Who paid for your mother’s treatment, Mrs Klein?’

‘My husband and I.’

‘Your husband was obviously quite a wealthy man, Mrs Klein. He had a thriving antique business and was able to afford this house on the Woodstock Road. Did he have a life insurance policy?’

‘Yes,’ Emily says. ‘We both did.’

‘And can you explain the terms of those policies to me?’

‘As far as I know, they’re just standard life insurance policies.’

Campbell’s gaze remains fixed on Emily and the officer is silent, waiting for her to continue. Emily can see this is part of Campbell’s technique, but she feels compelled to add more information anyway.

‘I imagine I can claim for the funeral costs. The policy will probably cover the remaining mortgage payments on this house. I haven’t checked.’

‘Presumably you’re the designated beneficiary?’

‘Yes, I think so. I believe Greg stipulated spouse, then next of kin for both of us. But I really don’t know the terms of the policy.’

‘Next of kin,’ the sergeant says as she writes down the words in her notebook. Campbell’s handwriting is small and neat with pointed letters, Emily notices. ‘But you didn’t have children with Mr Klein, did you?’

‘No.’ Emily wants to pinch Campbell hard. Or, better still, slap her pretty face. She can’t possibly know about my child, too. Can she? Emily suddenly wants to cry.

‘Do you know if there is a lump sum to be paid out in the event of your husband’s death?’

‘I have no idea. I’m not familiar with the terms of the policy,’ Emily repeats. She can hear her voice quivering.

‘Mrs Klein, is there a clause pertaining to accidental death in your husband’s insurance policy?’

Emily feels her heartbeat quicken as she wonders what Campbell is inferring with this. ‘Do I need my lawyer present for these questions?’ she asks.

Campbell must sense her panic because she softens the tone of her voice. ‘It’s your prerogative, Mrs Klein, if you’d like a lawyer present. But at this stage, it’s not really necessary.’

‘After a serious road traffic collision, there’s always an investigation. It’s just routine.’

Emily nods. She finds Constable’s words more reassuring.

‘As police officers, we’re just trying to confirm that this crash was an accident and rule out any prosecutable offence,’ the sergeant adds. ‘You must bear in mind, Mrs Klein, that your husband lost his life when you crashed the car.’

Emily feels an even stronger aversion towards this woman and a wave of nausea sweeps through her. Tears spring to her eyes. Greg is gone, she thinks. What have I done? Did I kill him? What happened that day? Each time this alarming thought comes into her head, she tries to push it away. She feels a little spark of anger ignite inside her. She’s angry with Campbell, with herself, but also, a little, with Greg. He’d told her something. Something that had come as a bolt from the blue. What was it?

‘Mrs Klein, allow me to share our theory with you,’ Constable says, interrupting her thoughts. Emily looks at him. He has kind eyes and a nice mouth hidden slightly beneath his moustache. ‘We believe that you and your husband were having a disagreement in the car and that something your husband said – or maybe even shouted – caused you to have a moment of inattention, which in turn led you to drive the car off the road and into the tree at the roadside.’ He is enunciating slowly as if explaining something complicated to a child. ‘Do you think that might be a plausible explanation for this accident?’

Emily shrugs. She doesn’t trust herself to speak.

‘Mrs Klein do you remember anything about the topic of the conversation you had in the car with your husband?’ Evidently, it’s Campbell’s turn to ask the questions again. ‘Can you tell us about your argument?’

‘That might help us to complete our report.’ Constable says. ‘And then no doubt you can sort out your car with your insurance company.’

‘Has anything come back to you about your disagreement with Mr Klein? Anything at all?’

‘No,’ Emily answers.

But that’s a lie. Emily has finally remembered what Greg revealed to her in the car. Now she thinks she understands the message he sent her earlier. Part of their row still eludes her. She can’t work out what her father has to do with it all, either, and yet she gets the distinct impression that this part is vital. But she recalls the reason why she and Greg were fighting. And she also has an inkling as to why she crashed the car.