The Bad Mother

by Isabelle Grey

Genres: Women's Fiction; Domestic Thrillers

Synopsis

"Recently divorced, Tessa Parker runs a successful Bamp;B in a seaside town. During a surprise visit from Australia, a long-lost aunt lets slip a family secret that unsettles her fragile world. Balancing her own turmoil against the demands of parenting, Tessa"

Release date: May 9, 2013

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 368

Sample

A neat sign fixed to the fresh white stucco of the Victorian terrace read ‘Seafront B&B’. Ed Fowler glanced up at the house number over the front door, one of those modern transfers that looked like etched glass, and rang the bell. He turned for a final look out to sea. It was an idyllic summer evening and the view could not have been prettier. He hated these calls. Most missing person enquiries were quickly resolved, but as he’d left the office his inspector had reminded him of the ACPO guidelines: If in doubt, think the worst.

The guidelines meant that for the next hour he’d have to be both reassuring and suspicious. It had happened in enough cases across the country that the worried parent – or more often step-parent – who reported the kid missing turned out to be its killer. It was important to take nothing for granted.

The door was opened by a tired-looking man in his early sixties. ‘Mr Parker?’ asked Ed.

‘No, Hugo Brooks,’ the man said, clearly encouraged by the sight of a police uniform. ‘Tessa Parker is my daughter. Thank you for coming. We didn’t know what else to do. We’re all downstairs.’

Ed followed him to a large basement kitchen where Hugo made the rest of the introductions. ‘My daughter Tessa. And Mitch’s father, Sam Parker.’ Ed noted that Hugo declined to identify the father of the missing boy as Tessa’s husband. ‘This is my wife Pamela,’ finished Hugo, taking a seat at the big pine table beside a thin, colourless woman.

Ed turned to Tessa Parker; she was probably in her mid-thirties, dark brown hair cut to frame her face and direct grey eyes that contrasted with her delicate features. ‘It’s your son, Mitch Parker, who’s gone missing?’

‘We’ve not seen him since yesterday evening.’

‘How old is he?’

‘Seventeen.’

‘Has he gone off like this before?’

‘Never.’

‘He’s very reliable,’ said Hugo. ‘Very conscientious.’

‘Do you know what his plans were when you last saw him?’ Ed picked up on the guilty looks exchanged by Tessa and her presumably estranged husband. It could be that there’d been a row and the kid had run off – happened all the time – but he’d have to wait to see it proved before he could relax. Meanwhile Tessa Parker was taking just that bit too long with her reply.

‘He was upset,’ she said. ‘A problem with his girlfriend. He ran off.’

‘Then he’ll probably be back any minute,’ Ed suggested with deliberate optimism. ‘Have you tried phoning him?’

‘His phone’s turned off.’

‘Have you spoken to his girlfriend?’

‘She left for America yesterday.’

‘Is she American?’

‘No, English. But her mother’s working over there.’

‘Could Mitch have tried to follow her? Teenagers do sometimes get crazy ideas. Have you checked to see if he’s taken his passport?’

The brightness in the mother’s eyes made Ed hope, too, that this one was just a runaway, but he could also see from the father’s unease that he was burning up with shame over something. Sam Parker didn’t look the type to be violent – a boyish sort of man – but Ed knew enough never to trust appearances. The grandparents seemed to be in shock, but at least they weren’t the interfering type: they sat mutely together at the end of the table, watching and listening.

Ed took a closer look around. The rear windows of the half-basement were wide open, and warmth seeped out of the Aga, but it wasn’t a homely room; this was a place of business, filled with stainless steel machines, labelled storage boxes and efficiently stacked bulk catering packs. On one wall was a whiteboard with names listed beside room numbers and boxes ticked to indicate choice of newspaper or vegetarian options. There were no fridge magnets, family photos, school projects or even postcards. ‘What about your guests?’ Ed asked. ‘Are you able to give me a list of who’s been staying recently?’

‘Yes, of course. It’s all on the computer upstairs.’

‘Was Mitch particularly friendly with any of them?’ Ed asked.

‘No.’

‘Any regulars who took an interest in him?’

‘No.’

‘Do you mind if I take a look around, Mrs Parker?’ This was always a tricky moment, when it first dawned on families that, however genuine the police officer’s concern, they might also be considered as suspects.

‘No,’ she said weakly. ‘No, of course not.’

‘I’ll need to search the guests’ rooms as well,’ he told her.

‘Most of them have gone out for dinner, I think.’

‘Perhaps you could go up ahead of me and check who’s there? Let them know?’

But Tessa sank into the nearest chair, and Ed watched as Sam, the husband, went to her, was about to touch her shoulder, but then rested his hand on the back of the chair instead.

‘I’ll go,’ said Pamela, the grandmother of the missing boy.

As she slipped out of the room, Hugo also got to his feet. ‘I’ll show you around,’ he offered.

Ed followed Hugo from room to room. Next to the kitchen was a laundry room with massive machines and wooden pulleys on which hung white sheets and pillowcases. He rather liked the dry smell, thought it evoked order and cleanliness. Next were a storeroom, a larder, and then what Hugo described as the ‘snug’ – a dim, cheerless little place with a battered couch and shelves of folders and box files.

Upstairs, four light and airy double guest bedrooms and an interconnecting family suite occupied the first floor, where it became clearer how the three terraced houses had been knocked into one, the space once occupied by staircases now taken up by additional bathrooms. The three front rooms looked directly out to sea, and all were decorated in misty blues and greens. All were occupied, suitcases, clothes, shoes and magazines strewn across beds and chairs. Ed searched thoroughly but as swiftly as he could, while Hugo remained each time in the doorway, answering any questions but offering no distraction. Only once, as they passed a landing window, did Hugo remark that it would be getting dark again soon.

The low-ceilinged attic flat bore no traces of bloody confrontation, and Mitch Parker’s narrow room seemed typical enough for a teenager, as did his sister’s. The kitchen arrangements up here were rudimentary and the family’s living room, though tidy and bright, was little more than a couch, easy chair, coffee table and television. Ed never ceased to be amazed by what he learnt from people’s homes. Sometimes it was squalor, with dogs all over furniture that wasn’t yet paid for and kids with no sheets or blankets on their beds. Here it was as though the family had neatly squeezed itself into as small a space as possible in order for the business to thrive. All the best rooms, decked out with obvious love and care, were for visitors – the rest didn’t seem important.

He completed his search on the ground floor – reception area in the wide hallway, office and guests’ breakfast room – finishing in the guests’ pleasant lounge. The bay window looked out to sea and the blue walls drew the last of the evening light inside. Beside the empty fireplace stood a substantial wooden doll’s house. Ed went to open it but discovered that two small padlocks secured its hinged door. He turned to Hugo, who seemed to understand immediately. ‘I’ll go and ask Tessa for the key,’ he said, and disappeared.

Ed felt rotten. He knew it was ridiculous to insist, but evidence such as murder weapons had been hidden in more bizarre places, and it was his job to check. The front of the doll’s house had been painted to replicate the windowed facade of a wide Victorian terrace identical to the house in which it stood. Ed squatted on his heels to peer in through the miniature windows, and could make out a staircase with tiny spindles and a curved and winding balustrade. Three and a half rooms on each floor, one above the other, led to an empty attic. Opposite the front door a woman’s coat lay over the banister; on the floor beside it sat a white vanity case small enough for a mouse.

Expecting a quaint Victorian stage set, Ed was surprised that the immaculately detailed furnishings were at once both modern and old-fashioned. He failed to understand why anyone would go to such trouble over the kind of dull, second-hand stuff his grandparents had, but though his spying gaze felt oddly intimate, he could see nothing significant or unpleasant inside. He became aware of Tessa Parker behind him and, as he straightened up to take the tiny key from her, knew he must look as foolish as he felt.

‘I found Mitch’s passport,’ Tessa told him. She looked dejected at the elimination of a possible explanation.

‘Right. We’ll circulate his details on the Police National Computer.’ He forced himself not to avoid her anguished gaze. ‘Juveniles are automatically assessed as Medium Risk and all cases reviewed after forty-eight hours,’ he went on, desperate to offer her something to cling to. ‘The vast majority are quickly resolved.’

Ed opened up the doll’s house as swiftly as he could, double-checked, then gave her back the key. ‘I’ll leave you to lock up.’

‘It belonged to my grandmother,’ she told him. ‘She tried to pretend that life could be kept tidy and in order like that. But it can’t, can it?’

‘I’m sure he’ll be home soon.’ Ed tried to sound reassuring, but she shook her head.

‘If something terrible has happened, then it’s my fault.’

‘Is there anything you’d like to tell me, Mrs Parker, while there’s no one else present? Anything that might help?’

She stared at him in obvious torment. ‘Whatever’s happened, I’m the only one to blame.’

‘Why? Do you know of anyone who might have harmed your son?’

She nodded. ‘Me. I’m responsible,’ she said. ‘I’m his mother, and I failed him. Now he’s gone, and it’s too late. I don’t know how to bring him back.’

Four months earlier

Each snowy cotton pillowcase was the size of a postage stamp, the frilled edging almost invisible. The satin coverlet on the tiny double divan had to be nestled back under the pillows, never over them. The padded fabric on the scalloped bedhead – a replica, Grandma Averil had told her, of one she’d admired in a Doris Day movie – was held in place by twenty-six microscopic fabric-covered buttons. Tessa knew this because she had begun trying to count them before being taught her numbers properly at school.

The annual spring-clean of Grandma Averil’s doll’s house had been a special event ever since Tessa could remember. Her mother had seldom joined in, making Tessa’s own initiation into the ceremony all the more special. To her knowledge, no ‘people’ had ever occupied the house, but nevertheless it contained a haphazard selection of their possessions. The only piece she hadn’t been permitted to touch was the white vanity case in the hallway, but over the years Grandma Averil had told her the history of every piece, from the coloured plastic bathroom suite she had bought at a special fair, to the white-painted wooden cradle on its delicate rockers that she bought when she was pregnant with Pamela, years before there was a doll’s house in which to put it, to the horn-handled carving knife, smaller than an old-fashioned bodkin, that had arrived anonymously in the post, presumably from a guest who had peeked in at the imaginary rooms. One of Tessa’s favourite games had been to chant a list of random things that weren’t there (a cake tin, school books, a violin), then listen as Grandma Averil patiently enumerated the reasons why their presence was unnecessary. As a small child she’d loved the despotic logic of this tiny universe, and found such arbitrary authority satisfyingly absolute.

Nothing had been added or moved for nearly four decades and never would be now. The story went that Averil had declared the doll’s house complete when Tessa was born, though even as a child Tessa had accepted this compliment as a partial fiction. As she replaced the delicate cradle in its exact spot, she sighed with a mixture of satisfaction and irritation: she knew she would never abandon this duty, yet was aware that the annual dusting, washing or polishing of these rather ugly and outmoded toy furnishings contained a fetishistic element that was also tawdry and ridiculous. Her own daughter, Lauren, often begged to have the doll’s house in her bedroom, and to be allowed to help look after it, but Tessa remained in two minds about passing on the questionable ritual to another generation.

Stiff from kneeling and stretching into the back of the doll’s house, she rolled her neck, taking a contented look around the refurbished room. When she had inherited the bed-and-breakfast after Averil’s death two years ago, she had felt no guilt about the speed with which she had immediately swept aside her grandmother’s red carpets and gilt-framed mirrors, replacing them with seagrass flooring, duck-egg blue walls and squashy armchairs with loose covers in off-white linen. Tessa knew with utter certainty that despite their very different styles they had shared the same quiet passion, and that what Averil would most want was for her only grandchild to make a new generation of guests comfortable.

One thing was missing: Sam’s return. When Tessa had married Sam, straight out of college and already pregnant, Averil had willingly vacated her attic flat and even declared herself content to ‘retire’ and hand over the day-to-day running of the B&B. It had been fun at first, but Averil never did let go of the reins, and although she bought a tiny bungalow where she washed, dressed and slept, she continued to spend all her days keeping an eye on things from her lair in the basement snug. For years Tessa and Sam had felt stifled and stir-crazy, unable either to afford a place of their own or, from enforced gratitude, to rebel. Both longed to make something of their own, so when, soon after Averil’s death, an old college friend had offered Sam experience in a Michelin-starred kitchen in London, Tessa had encouraged him to spread his wings and go. Sam was a wonderful chef, and it had been right to accept such a prestigious offer, but now that he was back in Felixham their arrangements were threatening to slip out of control and end up dangerously adrift.

The doorbell rang just as Tessa closed the doll’s house door and was about to hook it shut. In the hallway she glanced at her watch – 2.15. Guests were encouraged to arrive between five and six o’clock; even those staying more than one night were not permitted to remain in the house between eleven and three. She opened the front door and made a quick assessment of the woman on the threshold: well dressed, in her mid-fifties, with stylish blonde hair, scarlet lipstick and glitzy jewellery. The woman smiled and took a step forward, already peering eagerly over Tessa’s shoulder into the hallway beyond.

Like all her fellow Felixham proprietors, Tessa was vigilant about strangers on the doorstep and only ever accepted confirmed bookings or occasional recommendations from colleagues who were fully booked. She shifted sideways to block the open doorway. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked pleasantly.

‘I’m hoping you might have a room free?’ The woman spoke with a discernible Australian twang.

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘And tomorrow night?’

Tessa shook her head. ‘It’s coming up for Easter. We’re fully booked. I expect everyone is.’

‘Are you Tessa Parker? It gave your name on the website.’

‘Yes.’ Tessa waited for the woman to introduce herself, but while she continued to gaze at Tessa, she offered no name.

‘Well, might I take a look at the rooms anyway, for future reference?’

The woman took another step forward, once again glancing over Tessa’s shoulder. Tessa stood her ground, leaving little personal space between them. As the woman backed off, Tessa noted that her handbag was expensive and her smile professional, and decided it might be politic after all to give her a quick tour; for all Tessa knew, she might be a scout for a new holiday guide, someone it would be best not to offend.

‘Come in,’ she said with a welcoming smile. ‘I’ll fetch you a brochure.’

‘Great. Thanks.’

When Tessa came back out of her office with the brochure the woman was standing motionless in the doorway to the guests’ sitting room. There was something about her stance that made Tessa pause, but the woman, feeling herself observed, gave a quick smile and followed Tessa upstairs to be shown one of the bedrooms.

‘So it’s across three houses now?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ said Tessa, surprised. ‘Why, have you stayed here before?’

‘Oh, a lifetime ago!’ The woman walked further into the room, running a hand along the back of a chair then going to look out at the view. ‘The beach hasn’t changed. It’s just like I remember.’ She turned and sank down on the window seat. ‘You’ve done a fabulous job,’ she said, her eyes on Tessa rather than the decor.

‘I’m sorry that we can’t accommodate you,’ Tessa responded politely. ‘Let me show you the breakfast room.’ She moved encouragingly towards the door, but the woman continued to sit and take in her surroundings. ‘All our food is organic and locally sourced,’ Tessa added, taking another step backwards. This time the woman rose and followed her.

The breakfast room, in neutral creams with classic chintz curtains, was big enough for one large and four small tables with twelve matching chairs, all modern and the least ostentatious Tessa had been able to find. Although the woman’s gaze travelled approvingly around the room, Tessa again had a sense that her thoughts were elsewhere. Perhaps, Tessa thought, she was remembering some family holiday here long ago and this visit was not professional after all, but merely nostalgic.

‘Our email is on the brochure and the website. Do get in touch if you’d like to make a future booking.’ Tessa spoke briskly, glancing deliberately at her watch.

The woman gave a deep sigh. ‘Thanks, but I’m only over for a few days.’ She nodded to herself, and then led the way back to the front door. There she turned and held out her hand. ‘Nice to meet you, Tessa.’

Noticing her expensive fashion rings and varnished nails, Tessa shook the offered hand but avoided the slightly searching gaze. ‘Goodbye. Have a safe trip home.’

Tessa closed the door with relief. She doubted the woman had truly wanted to stay here, imagining rather than she had rung the doorbell on a passing whim. Repeat business was good, but one of its hazards was that people often wanted to share their memories – of first meetings, honeymoons, long-dead parents, grown-up children. At least the woman hadn’t produced photographs over which Tessa would’ve had to fake some interest. She remembered she hadn’t shut the doll’s house properly, and went to fix the little padlocks top and bottom that prevented any curious guest from rearranging its contents. With a final satisfied glance that everything was properly in order, she resumed the tasks of her busy day.

As the nearest road bridge was several miles inland, it was almost as quick for Tessa to walk to her parents’ house as to drive. The next morning she set out along the footpath that led to the narrow metal bridge over the river. The sea, a distant freshness, lay to her left; she’d noticed as she left the house that the tide was on the turn. She’d lived by the coast all her life, growing up half a mile inland in her parents’ Edwardian semi but always adoring Grandma Averil’s seafront terrace. She had been surprised, during her few years away at college, by how much she missed the sea’s constant and pervasive presence. Even indoors a quick glance out at the sky, the gulls, the wind animating garden hedges and bushes, and she could predict the colour of the water and the size and appearance of the waves. Out of doors she could tell by the smell and dampness of the air when a storm was brewing miles out to sea.

Her grandmother’s attic room, in which she used occasionally to sleep as a child, now belonged to her son, and she was pretty sure that Mitch loved it as much as she had at his age. When he was a baby and she’d needed to feed him during the night, she’d loved to sit there enclosed in the darkness with him in her arms listening, even in the wildest weather, to the familiar sounds of the sea. And even now, when he was at school and she had a little time to herself, she would sometimes rest on the window seat, stare out at the mesmerising waves and clouds and allow herself to be soothed.

As she walked, Tessa’s thoughts once again became occupied with the conversation she needed to have with Sam. When had they stopped truly sharing their lives? She had to admit that it was probably some time before Grandma Averil had died. In her will Averil had, with Pamela’s full approbation, left everything to Tessa, and while Sam was in London Tessa had been excited to pour her energies into a complete makeover of the B&B, cherishing the house she’d always loved and finally making real all the ideas that Grandma Averil had dismissed as unnecessary. On Sam’s irregular visits home it had seemed easy enough to ignore their lack of physical intimacy; after all, they’d been married fifteen years by then. Equally committed to building on their talents now they had the freedom to do so, they’d simply never questioned that each passionately supported the other’s potential. And yet something had been lost.

On Sam’s eventual return to Felixham, Tessa’s inheritance had enabled him to secure a mortgage on an abandoned joinery in the High Street. It had always been his dream to open his own restaurant, and she wholeheartedly applauded his decision. The town centre needed a bistro-diner that would please both locals and weekenders and draw those tourists attracted by Felixham’s retro chic, and the synergy of recommending his brasserie to her guests for lunches and dinner was perfect. She and Sam had even insisted to their sceptical kids that he’d rented the studio flat only to avoid getting drawn back into the day-to-day running of the B&B and to be next door to the joinery while he concentrated on its conversion. But she had been foolish to believe in the fiction they’d spun to everyone else. The brasserie was due to open in a matter of weeks, and it was time to put a stop to the pretence and get their marriage back on track.

Leaving the estuary marshes, Tessa now turned onto the lane that served the ribbon of sixties houses that fringed South Felixham, picking out her parents’ driveway by the clump of pampas grass in the middle of their lawn. Hugo and Pamela had moved into the small detached house soon after Hugo’s retirement. He’d worked all his life for the local brewery, ending up as a senior manager, and Tessa suspected that he still missed the company.

She spotted a pile of discarded twigs on the lawn and Pamela’s grey head bobbing about behind a flowering shrub where she was cutting away dead winter wood.

‘Hi, Mum,’ she said, returning Pamela’s preoccupied wave as she made for the front door.

Hugo responded swiftly to the chiming front-door bell. ‘Hello, Tessie,’ he said. ‘Come on in. Got something for you to try, a new bread recipe. Used a different sort of flour this time, and …

He petered out, and Tessa turned to seek the reason for his distraction. A local taxi had drawn up by their driveway and inside it Tessa could make out the blonde woman who had wanted to look around the B&B yesterday.

‘Who is that?’ she asked, faintly annoyed. ‘What is she doing here?’

‘Don’t know,’ said Hugo, peering short-sightedly. ‘Must have the wrong house.’

But the woman paid the driver and got out of the car. She wore a smart pink tweed suit and gold earrings, and her nails were the same scarlet as yesterday. Catching sight of Tessa standing beside Hugo, she looked almost as if she might retreat. But the taxi drove off, so she settled her handbag firmly over one arm and came forward, an uncertain smile on her face.

‘Hello again,’ said Tessa.

‘Hello,’ she replied. ‘I didn’t expect to find you here.’ The woman turned to Hugo, who stood mystified beside Tessa. ‘It is Hugo, isn’t it?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Do I know you?’

Pamela emerged from behind the shrubbery, staring at the woman, who smiled tentatively back. Pamela dropped her secateurs and handful of cuttings and ran forward. ‘Erin!’

Hugo and Tessa both looked more sharply at the woman.

‘Aunt Erin?’ Tessa asked.

Erin, abashed, nodded in confirmation. Pamela pulled off her gardening gloves and threw her arms around her sister.

‘Oh, Erin! My God, you gave me such a shock!’ she cried. Tessa had never before seen her mother so elated. ‘When did you get here? You never said you were coming! Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Last-minute decision.’

Seized in her sister’s embrace, Erin closed her eyes and held tight for a long, long moment.

Tessa kept her eyes on Hugo, who turned ashen and took a step back, unconsciously clenching and unclenching his hands. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked as soon as the women finally let go of one another.

‘Hugo, I promise you I’m not here to upset anyone,’ said Erin. Tessa could see how nervous and pale she was under her suntan and glossy hair. ‘I only came to … I had a chance to come to London on business,’ she recovered herself, ‘and I wanted to see Felixham again. I didn’t plan on disturbing any of you. I really didn’t.’

‘Disturbing us?’ interrupted Pamela, clearly hurt. ‘Oh, Erin, don. . .