Читать книгу Am I Guilty?: The gripping, emotional domestic thriller debut filled with suspense, mystery and surprises! - Jackie Kabler - Страница 12

‘Right. Chairs laid out, wine chilled, glasses polished, food all plated up … what time is it, Flora?’

Annabelle looked up from the tick-list on her clipboard, tucking a blonde curl behind her ear. I pulled my phone from my pocket and tapped the screen.

‘It’s 6.20. Doors will open in ten minutes. We’re fine, Annabelle, don’t worry. I’ve had a peek out the window and there’s already a queue building. Jenny, the manager, is going to nip downstairs in a minute to man the door. Or woman the door, I suppose I should say …’

I smiled at her and she smiled back, although somewhat distractedly. She was always pretty tense just before an event – probably not the best time for my silly jokes.

‘And Ailsa’s just nipped to the loo but then she’s going to stand at the top of the stairs and greet her guests as they come up,’ I continued hurriedly. ‘Then there’ll be forty-five minutes of milling around with wine and nibbles before we start at bang on 7.15. The two waitresses are here and ready to circulate with nibble trays and top up the drinks, and the photographer and cameraman are just over there checking their equipment. All sorted, I think.’

‘Brilliant. Thanks, Flora. OK, well I’m going to go and make sure Jenny is all right and just check everything’s looking good downstairs. Back in a mo. Oh – could you just make sure there’s a glass of water for Ailsa on her table? And one for the interviewer?’

‘Sure, no problem.’

She headed for the stairs and vanished, and I crossed the room, manoeuvring between the long rows of chairs, heading for the drinks table. We were on the first floor of Waterstones in Cheltenham, where the stage was now set for Ailsa Levi’s book launch party.

The glamorous, Gloucestershire-born author had topped the Sunday Times bestseller list with both of her previous gory crime novels, and tonight’s event would launch her third book, a thriller set in 1940’s London.

We were expecting about a hundred people, and Annabelle had been on edge all week, knowing there’d be extensive coverage of the evening not only in the trade press but also in a number of celebrity magazines – the photographer hired for the evening was providing stills to Hello and Heat, among others. Ailsa, unusually for a crime writer, was also a bit of a party girl and tabloid darling, and the gossip mags loved her.

I didn’t think Annabelle had anything to worry about though. We’d worked hard on this event, and the place looked fantastic, with piles of Ailsa’s novel artfully arranged on side tables, ready for signing later, and delicious looking canapés and cupcakes decorated with edible, miniature replicas of the new book’s cover ready to be served. Even the two waitresses looked great, dressed in forties-style uniforms of simple black dresses with neat white collars and cuffs, finished with crisp, snowy aprons and little frilly caps.

There had been a slight blip earlier on – one of the waitresses had called me in a panic at five o’clock, saying that her childcare had let her down and that she would have to pull out of the job unless she could bring her young baby with her. Unwilling to add to Annabelle’s stress by asking her if it would be possible to find somebody else to step in at such short notice, I’d taken a gamble and told the woman to bring the child with her and that we would find a quiet spot to put it in, promising that I’d personally go and check on the baby every ten minutes or so while her mum was working. As I filled two crystal tumblers with mineral water, I wondered where exactly Jenny, the bookshop manager, had hidden the child, whose mum was now poised by the food table, ready to begin serving. I needed to start baby watch, so I put the drinks on the table at the front of the room where Ailsa would soon be interviewed and host a Q and A session for her guests, and did a quick tour of the first floor, peering behind bookcases.

‘Seen a baby anywhere, Gerry?’ I grinned at the photographer, who was snapping a few shots of a poster of Ailsa. He was a short, stocky man of about fifty, dressed in a black leather bomber jacket. He nodded and smiled back at me, showing nicotine-stained teeth.

‘Over there. Behind Sci-Fi,’ he said. ‘It’s fine, don’t worry – Mark just popped it out of sight for a minute, don’t want it in the shots. It’s sound asleep, for now … hope it stays that way, eh?’

‘Hope so!’

Mark was the videographer I’d hired for the evening, to get footage for the TV chat show at Isla Laird’s request. Thankfully, I hadn’t needed to speak to her to sort it out – her instructions to Annabelle about what she needed and how to get the footage to her afterwards had been pretty clear, which had been a relief, so all I’d had to do was drop her an email to confirm that all was fine. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Isla or anything – actually, I liked her quite a lot. She was a good laugh, interesting to talk to, and had always been a great friend to Thea, and after a bit of a shaky start, we’d ended up getting on really well. It was just that, at the moment certainly, I really couldn’t face talking to her, or to anyone who reminded me of last year. It was just too recent, too raw …

‘Oh God! Oh God!’

As I peered round the science-fiction bookshelf I gasped, my heart suddenly pounding, my legs wobbly. I grabbed onto a shelf for support and stared at the pram for a moment, then looked away and took a deep breath, trying to calm myself. For goodness’ sake, Flora, get a grip. It was only a pram. And, now that I’d seen it properly, I could see that it wasn’t even the same pram. It looked a bit like Thea’s though. Same make, Silver Cross. It had the same chrome chassis and herringbone fabric, but this one was in a deep berry shade, and Zander’s had been grey. Zander. I leaned forward and peered into the pram, gently pulling the soft fleece blanket back to get a better view. The baby, clearly a little girl in a pink dress with a polka dot collar, was indeed sound asleep, making a tiny snuffling noise with each breath. I tucked the blanket back into place and edged away slowly, back into the brightly lit central area of the bookshop, but suddenly in my head I was back at Thea’s, in her lovely Regency townhouse on Montpellier Terrace.

She’d started taking the empty pram out about two weeks after Zander died, back in September. I’d been on the phone in the dining room, where we often sat and worked, a gorgeous space with huge windows, Montpellier Gardens just across the road, the sound of children’s shrieks and laughter drifting in through the open window from the park’s play area. I’d just finished checking that a big delivery had been sent out, when I suddenly saw her, wheeling the pram past the door and down the hallway, leaning over it as she walked, talking quietly. I’d dropped the phone, run out into the hall and grabbed her arm.

‘Thea! Thea, what are you doing? Where are you going?’

She’d straightened up and looked at me for a moment, a peculiar expression on her face, the face that was still so beautiful, but so pale today, dark circles like painful bruises under her eyes. Then she dropped her gaze again, back down to the empty pram.

‘I’m just going for a walk. To the park. I need some fresh air. I’ve been in this house almost twenty-four hours a day for the past two weeks, Flora, and it’s driving me mad.’

Her voice was flat and expressionless, her soft Somerset accent barely discernible. She’d begun to move away but I grabbed her again, my hand moving down her arm to cover her hand as it gripped the pram handle.

‘I get that but … but why are you taking the pram, Thea? He’s … he’s gone. Zander’s gone, you know that, don’t you? Why … why are you pushing an empty pram?’

She took a little gasping breath, her eyes fixed on the vacant space under the pram cover.

‘I don’t know. I don’t know, Flora. I know it looks a bit mental but … I just … I just need to feel close to him, and … well … it sort of brings me comfort, I don’t know why. I did it yesterday too, when you were off? Just for a few minutes, down the road and back. It’s something to hold onto, and when I’m walking with the pram I don’t feel … I don’t feel so alone, I suppose.’

Tears had started to roll down her cheeks. She’d been drinking, I suddenly realized, a whiff of alcohol on her breath, even though it was barely midday. I stared at her for a moment, my heart twisting, unsure what to do, then I reached into my pocket and pulled out a tissue, pushing it into her hand.

‘OK. I’m sorry, Thea, I understand. If that’s what you need to do …’

She nodded, dabbed at her cheeks with the tissue and smiled a small, wobbly smile.

‘I’ll see you later. Thanks, Flora, I don’t know how I’d have got through the last couple of weeks without you.’

And so it had continued. She’d carried on taking that pram, that unbearably sad, empty pram, out with her, time after time. It was as if she’d lost the ability to walk without it, as if it supported her, as if the day she left it at home she would simply crumble. We were all horrified, mortified for her – me, Isla, Rupert, even Nell – but no matter what anyone said, whether we cajoled or shouted or begged, she would simply nod, tell us quietly that yes, she understood, and she knew it was weird and mad, but that she couldn’t stop, she couldn’t leave it at home, she needed that pram, that comfort. She didn’t even stop when somebody put a picture of her with the damn empty thing on Twitter, sneering at her, calling her all sorts of names, and it got retweeted and retweeted and practically went viral …

‘Flora! Everything all right?’

Annabelle had returned from downstairs, waving at me from across the floor. I waved back.

‘Fine! Just checking everything’s shipshape!’

I took a deep breath. It was, wasn’t it? Everything was shipshape. The past was the past. No looking back, I told myself. Onwards. Let’s get this party started.