The Happy Family by Jackie Kabler (electric book reader txt) 📕

‘With pleasure,’ she says.

And so she does. She’s on a roll suddenly, the words spilling out of her. There’d been rumours locally at the time apparently, gossip about the big age gap between my parents, about them falling out of love, about Mum being unhappy for a long time, according to Saffy. She’d been happy to share everything she’d heard, giving Alison what she needed to make the story she came to me with as convincing as possible. She had to invent certain things of course because nobody knows where my mother went when she left, but she stuck mainly to the truth about her own life and her work, knowing that the fewer lies she told, the easier it would be not to slip up. She’d been hugely relieved, she said, when she heard that Dad had never really looked for Mum after she’d gone.

‘That made it so much easier,’ she said. ‘I could kind of say anything after I knew that because who would know if I was telling the truth or not?’

And, after all, she only needed to fool us all for a short time, didn’t she? She started her ‘campaign’, as she put it, as soon as possible after I’d accepted her into my home, subtly making me self-conscious about my weight, buying me a top a size too small, starting to play with my mind. She made me distrustful of Robin, of everyone. She paid Mike to hang around (it was him. I knew it, I knew it! He lied to me on the phone – of course he did) to make sure I saw him talking to my friends.

‘How did you manage that? How did you get him there just at the right time, every time?’ I asked, remembering how he kept popping up wherever I happened to be.

‘He knew what all your friends looked like from when he was tracking you down for me initially,’ she said. ‘After I moved in with you it was easy. With Robin, that was the day you were looking for your keys, and when Mike texted me to say he was about to nab Robin in the street – he’d been lurking, waiting for her to arrive for work – I told you to go out and check the driveway and the bit round the bins, to see if you’d dropped the keys there, remember?’

I did.

‘At the surgery he just waited until he saw you come out to talk to your homeless friend and made sure you spotted him. And with your neighbours, well, that was the night we went out for pizza. I just texted him when the taxi arrived and he made sure he was still chatting to those two stupid women when you came out. He wore different clothes each time, made sure he changed his appearance a bit – one day a gardener, one day a plumber, you know – so you wouldn’t be quite sure. Screwing with your head again. Nice touch, wasn’t it?’

She grins widely, clearly pleased with herself, but I don’t react.

‘Oh, and those missing keys … that was me too,’ she says. ‘I nicked them. Twice actually, but the second time was just for fun. You only gave me a front door key, you see, and I needed to get a full set of keys copied …’

‘Why?’ I ask.

She keeps on talking then, telling me everything, explaining it all until my face is hot with anger, my body so tense I’m starting to ache. And then, finally, she’s done. I can tell she’s struggling now; exhaustion is etched on her face.

‘Can you call a nurse, please?’ she says. Her voice is weak and I remember that this is not just a very sad woman but a very sick woman, and I feel ashamed all over again.

‘Yes,’ I whisper, and stand up. I’m just about to press the call button when the door opens and the two police officers from last night walk into the room.

‘Mrs Holland, hello. We need to speak to you urgently. And actually, I believe you need to speak to us too? We’ve just had a call from your ex-husband. Something about some sort of fraudulent behaviour, about your mother not being your mother after all? The line was bad and we got cut off unfortunately, but that seemed to be the gist of it.’

The male officer looks from me to the bed and I curse silently.

Bloody Jacob. Couldn’t you just have left this to me?

I glance at Alison but her eyes are closed now, her breathing fast and shallow. I know I need to call somebody, quickly. I turn back to the police officer, suddenly feeling oddly protective.

‘It’s complicated, but it’s not a police matter. I mean, we still need to find out who attacked her, but, well …’

The policeman interrupts me, waving a piece of paper he’s carrying in his hand.

‘Well, if she’s not your mother, it helps explain something we’re getting very confused about. We already have the initial forensics report, you see,’ he says, and turns to his colleague.

‘We do,’ says the female officer. ‘And the good news is that we have some of the perpetrator’s DNA and fingerprints now, from the lamp that was used as the weapon. It’s not a match to any on the police database unfortunately, so it wasn’t left by anyone with a criminal record. But … well, this is the strange thing. You’ll remember we took a DNA sample from the victim last night, and you kindly gave us a sample of your DNA and fingerprints too, both for elimination purposes?’

I nod. Last night seems like a lifetime ago, a blur really, but I remember a swab in my mouth and touching my fingertips onto an electronic tablet. It was some sort of digital scanner and I remember feeling surprised by that, having expected an inky pad like I’ve seen on so many television crime dramas.

‘Well, Ian at the lab – he’s a bit