Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner (read book txt) 📗

a photogenic bunch. And there was no reason for the photographer to know I was Rory’s sister, and such a close friend of Serena. I didn’t have a corsage, or a special dress in duck-egg blue. The photographer had also taken several of Serena in the morning, getting ready. The bridesmaids were all there, and Serena had given them all special pale pink dressing gowns. The pictures showed them clutching flutes of Buck’s Fizz with elegantly manicured nails, helping Serena tie the line of pearl buttons at the back of her dress.

The thing about Serena is that she somehow seems to collect female friendships, effortlessly, like the bangles she wears on both wrists. I think of that awful hen weekend in Cornwall again. There were friends from Serena’s primary school, secondary school, university, work, ‘hockey’ – I had lost count. How is it that some women amass such huge collections of people who love them, yet I can’t even go to an antenatal class and make one nice, normal friend?

As I place the photograph back, I notice something on the mantelpiece that wasn’t there before. A card, the same one that sits on our mantelpiece at home. DCI Betsky. Homicide.

I sink down into one of Serena’s sofas just as she returns. Serena places the tray onto the mango-wood coffee table. She pours fresh mint tea into the mugs and hands one to me. Then she drops two cubes of brown sugar into her own, wraps her slender fingers around it and then curls back into the sofa, looking as if she’s taking her place in a painting.

She has changed from her silk dress into jeans and a white jumper that drapes off one shoulder. Her eyes are still painted the same shimmery silver as the dress she was wearing. She leans back into the sheepskin throw around the back of the sofa. It seems to enclose her in its soft fingertips. Her sleeves are rolled up and I can see her forearms are brown from her holiday. I feel pale and self-conscious in comparison. I pull my own cuffs over my knuckles, my cardigan around my middle. It won’t go round the bump any more.

‘You’re so lovely and tanned.’

‘Italy was heavenly,’ she says. She leans forward, places the mug down. ‘But then we got home to find two detectives on our doorstep.’ She shakes her head in disbelief. ‘Which was somewhat surreal.’

Serena puts her hands on her knees as she stands. It’s the first time I’ve really noticed her seeming to feel heavier. ‘I’ll show you the card –’

‘I saw it – the same woman came to see us, too. DCI Betsky. I’m so sorry you had to go through all that.’

She turns to look at me, puzzled.

‘It’s not your fault, darling. Why are you sorry?’

My jaw tightens, my mouth feels dry. She is being kind. She knows exactly. I am responsible for all this, I think. Rachel was my doing. I brought her here.

Serena plucks the card from the mantelpiece, turns it over. ‘Rory said something about Charlie,’ she says. ‘Did you and him have some sort of row?’

‘He’s not speaking to me,’ I confess. ‘Or at least, he’s not returning my calls.’ I realise I’ve been fiddling with one of her Mongolian hair cushions, the strands knotted around my fingers.

‘Why not?’

I sigh. I’m sure she’ll find out sooner or later. ‘You won’t believe this. But Charlie knew Rachel from before I met her.’

Serena’s eyes widen. ‘Charlie knew her?’

I bite my lip and nod. I tell her about the photo of Charlie and Rachel that Katie found at the club.

‘Christ. Did you ask Charlie why he never told any of us that he knew her?’

‘I did more than that. I made him go to the police.’

As soon as Charlie admitted he’d known Rachel from before, I’d called Maja, asked her to pick Ruby up, so Charlie and I could go to the police. Maja and Bruce arrived within twenty minutes. It was obvious they’d been out for dinner; Maja’s hair was pinned up at the back of her neck, a woody perfume on her coat. Ruby’s eyelids barely flickered as Bruce gently lifted her from her bed, carried her down to their car.

‘Thanks,’ I said to Maja at the door. I hadn’t seen Maja in years. She looked great, her clothes more grown-up-looking, expensive. A few strands of grey in her hair. She’s not the sort to dye it.

Maja stared at me coldly, as if I was an idiot. ‘She’s my daughter, Helen,’ she said. Then she turned and followed Bruce down the steps, holding Ruby’s bunny by the neck.

It was only when I got Charlie to the police station that it occurred to me we’d picked the worst possible time. The plastic chairs in the waiting room were packed with Friday-night drunks, blokes with cuts on their heads, skeleton-faced drug addicts. I had to shout to be heard by the woman on the other side of the glass case. I assumed they’d be able to pick up the details, that the case would be on file somewhere. It had been on the news. Surely they knew what I was talking about? Instead, we were met with blank faces, shaking heads, flickering computer screens that yielded no information. We were told to wait.

So we waited. I sat down next to a homeless man who kept falling asleep, a balled-up coat wedged between him and the radiator. Charlie stood, pacing round the room, his fists clenched, pretending to read the crime prevention posters and look out of the window. Anything rather than speak to me.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, someone turned up, a brisk young detective with shiny shoes, and showed Charlie into a room. He held the door open for him with one hand, pressing his tie flat to his chest with the other, his spine soldier-straight. I was asked to wait outside. The door was closed before I could object.

I felt in desperate need of sugar. I