The Forever Home by Sue Watson

Chapter Thirty-Seven

The next few days were a blur; the children arrived and brought with them fresh sadness, but also some happy memories of their dad. Jake was a mess, but Phoebe was still surprisingly strong. I wondered if she was just hanging on and would collapse in a heap of grief at the funeral or after.

Interestingly, the memories they wanted to talk about were from way back, when they were very small, and I suspected there was a lot of rose tint to those memories. Meanwhile, the newspapers covered the story in style, lots of splashy headlines about his ‘amazing career’ and the ‘tragedy’ of his death. One particular in-depth piece that really seemed to get to the heart of the man was written by a journalist called Charlotte Cooper, who referred to him as ‘a good friend’, which I took to mean far more. The most surprising though, perhaps, was an interview in the Daily Mail with Gemma Hough, the lead groupie and yummy mummy who virtually accosted me at the hair salon. According to Gemma, she’d ‘enjoyed’ a ‘torrid’ relationship with Mark Anderson several years before, when they’d spent ‘whole days’ in bed together. I wasn’t surprised, but I knew Mark, and I doubt it was an affair, just a string of one-night stands with the same woman, and meaningless to him.

‘Disrespectful bitch,’ was my daughter’s comment. But I was past caring; this was just the tip of the iceberg. I was sure there were plenty more women ready to sell their stories to the tabloids. I hated the kids seeing it, but there was little I could do. I couldn’t stop that tsunami; even Estelle couldn’t staunch that flow, though, God help her, she’d try. She’d sent flowers, and a card, and would, I was sure, be firefighting and grieving all at the same time – it would be quite messy. Meanwhile, all this bad press would have Mark turning in his grave, I thought, and tried not to smile.

The days after someone’s death are a kind of limbo, waiting for the funeral, a veil of sadness over everything, and I just had to get through that, as I’m sure Erin did. Lara called a few times, but her sympathy didn’t stretch very far when it came to Mark.

‘It was the only way, we all knew where he was heading,’ was the closest she came.

Erin was, of course, at the wake, which I was happy to host at our home – our forever home. This was preceded by a service at the village church, where several unidentifiable blondes appeared on their own, accessorised by tears.

‘I wonder what number she was,’ Lara murmured in the cemetery, as one of them placed a rose on the grave.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw her, Charlotte Cooper, the reporter I was convinced Mark was seeing when he died. She was dressed in black, carrying a red rose, and tears were streaming down her cheeks. They had definitely been more than friends.

‘What the hell is she doing here?’ Phoebe hissed, under her breath, on the other side of me.

‘I think she was his final hurrah,’ I said.

‘Dad’s?’ Phoebe looked horrified.

‘Yes, she’s the journalist, Charlotte. Ryan’s brother saw your dad with a redhead in the pub the night Erin went missing.’

‘Oh Mum, that’s fucked up.’

‘I know, she’s very young.’

‘Not just that. You know that was Jake’s girlfriend, don’t you?’

I almost collapsed at the side of the grave. ‘No…’

She sighed. ‘Poor Jake, I hope he doesn’t see her.’

But looking at Jake’s face, I think he already had.

Later, when most of the guests had gone, we all walked down to the beach, where Phoebe, Jake, Erin and I scattered Mark’s ashes on the sea, watched by Ryan and Lara. The moon lit our way, and Erin said something about ‘an extra star in heaven tonight’, and Lara rolled her eyes and muttered, ‘More like it’s hot down below.’ I didn’t acknowledge this, but Phoebe had obviously heard. When we finally returned to the house, and Lara and Erin had gone home, just me, Ryan, Jake and Phoebe remained.

‘I can’t help but feel that Lara’s glad – about Dad,’ Phoebe said.

‘Well, she worried about Erin, and the baby – she saw Dad as an albatross around all their necks really. She never liked him.’

‘That’s not true – I remember her kissing Dad at one of our Christmas parties – with tongues,’ Phoebe added, and Jake nodded.

‘When was this?’ I asked, feeling the familiar thump of my heart when someone imparted a new story about my husband.

‘Years ago. I was only about ten, but I remember it really clearly. We saw them, didn’t we, Jake?’

He nodded, clearly uncomfortable, not wanting to hurt my feelings.

I just rolled my eyes and said, ‘Well, you know your dad, he was always kissing the girls.’ I then said I had to go to the bathroom and allowed myself to hurt over Mark’s betrayal for the very last time.

And later, after Phoebe and Jake had gone to bed, and Ryan and I were alone, he asked me how it made me feel to hear that about Lara.

‘It hurt,’ I said, ‘but I think I’ve probably always known, but chose not to see it – because, if I faced it, I’d have lost my best friend.’

‘Best friends like that, you don’t need enemies,’ he sighed.

He was right. ‘Now I know they had a fling, it makes sense now why she hated him so much. He obviously dumped her.’

‘Your husband and your best friend. That would freak me out,’ he said.

‘If I’d known at the time, it would have freaked me out too, but I trusted her. And you know what – I also think Lara was the one who put the petals on our bed all those years ago.’

‘What?’

‘Yeah, it wasn’t “a stalker”, as Mark had insisted. I had a feeling he’d overdramatised it to deflect from what was really going on. I guessed “the crazed fan” was actually just someone he was seeing, but he didn’t want me to know, and let’s face it, whoever she was, “a stalker leaving rose petals” made a great story for the tabloids.’

‘But what makes you think it was Lara?’

‘That night, I had the chance of showing my work at an art gallery in Devon. It was over the school summer holidays and had been booked for months. It meant a lot to me, and Mark knew that. So, when at the last minute he suddenly said he had to be on location and couldn’t stay home with the kids, I’d called the gallery and they’d said “bring them along”, so I did. I booked a little bed and breakfast and me and the kids were going to stay over. But Phoebe wasn’t well, so we didn’t stay over, we came back early. But when we got back, Mark was here; he said the shoot had been cancelled. I didn’t think twice and we all went to bed, but the next morning, we woke up, and I saw something on the duvet. At first, I thought it was bloodstains on the white cotton, but when I touched the red, it was fake rose petals. I freaked out, knowing someone had been there while we slept, and Mark immediately started saying it was his stalker, and called the police and everything. It was soon all over the papers, and that week the viewing figures went through the roof. I was interviewed by the police and the press and it was crazy. Lara had keys to the house then, we were best friends. I had my suspicions, but what could I say? But now I know he’d never been working, it was a lie, he and Lara had planned to spend the night together here, in our bed. And I ruined it by coming back early. He probably didn’t get chance to warn her, or perhaps he did and she came over because she thought he had someone else over instead of her? Either way, she’d come over during the night with the petals and love note and was about to lay them on the bed, or even get in with him, when she must have realised I was there, dropped them and ran. I think Lara came over late that night to check up on him, the way Erin came here to check up on him the night she went missing.’

‘They’ve both got a screw loose if you ask me,’ Ryan sighed.

‘There was something else too. When we met for a drink recently, we were talking about my thirty-fifth birthday and how Mark hadn’t been there with me. “I remember your thirty-fifth, he sent you a bunch of lilies,” she said, “and told you he was working late, couldn’t make it home. And all the time he was down the road, in this hotel with someone else.”’

‘Nice of her to remind you,’ Ryan murmured.

‘Thing is though, I’d never told Lara that he’d sent me last-minute lilies, and worked late on my birthday. I’d lied to all my friends, including Lara. I was embarrassed, couldn’t bear their sympathy, their assumptions that he must have been up to no good. So I made up this elaborate story telling them that after work he’d driven through the night, arriving home at four in the morning to give me a beautiful diamond bracelet. But somehow, Lara had forgotten my lie, and only remembered what really happened. She knew he hadn’t made it home that night – because the woman who was with him in the nearby hotel on the night of my birthday must have been her.’

‘Christ. That’s messed up, your best friend was shagging your husband?’

‘It isn’t unheard of.’ I gave a weak smile.

‘But what about her husband?’

‘Mmm, I’ve been thinking about that too. Steve killed himself not long after the rose petals incident. Lara told me when we met recently that she’d hurt Steve, and that he always felt like a loser next to Mark. Well, he would, wouldn’t he, if Mark was sleeping with his wife? It would explain why she suddenly hated Mark so much and couldn’t bear it when he tried to comfort her at Steve’s funeral. Steve must have found out about Mark, and his wife. He adored her, probably couldn’t take the pain, and walked into the sea.’

‘Wow!’ Ryan said under his breath. ‘Are you going to talk to her about it?’

I shook my head. ‘No, I’ve lived with it this long, no point raking it all up. Lara’s suffered enough, and if there’s such a thing as karma – the fact Mark hooked up with Erin just a few years after he’d been having an affair with her was probably punishment enough.’

‘All these people and their secrets,’ he said, pouring the remainder of a bottle of wine into both our glasses. ‘So,’ he said, moving round to face me fully, ‘what secrets are you keeping?’ He was looking at me in a strange way; his eyes were cold.

‘What?’ I said, smiling.

‘I think you’re keeping a really big secret… that Mark’s death wasn’t an accident.’