Chapter 12

TWELVE

The following morning, a nurse had just been to do her checks and they were waiting to see the doctor when DC Lineham arrived.

Joanna had had a terrible night's sleep. Waking every hour from around 2a.m. with guilt and fear whispering in her ear like gossiping gargoyles. All the arguments she'd had with Charlotte about Freddie replaying in her mind like reels of torture. How should she have handled it differently? What should she have said? Each time she rolled over in bed, she pulled another layer of blame over her with the duvet.

At 6a.m. she'd given in and had a shower. After that, she'd been catatonic on the sofa doomscrolling until Sally got up and forced her to eat some toast and scrambled eggs. From 8.45a.m., they were standing outside the doors to Charlotte's ward, ready to enter as soon as visitors were allowed in at nine.

At ten on the dot, DC Lineham knocked on the doorframe before stepping inside Charlotte's room. ‘Hi, Mrs Woodley. I hope it was okay to come straight through?'

She was pleased that they were being so proactive. ‘Of course. And call me Joanna. Please.'

DC Lineham smiled. She had the most perfect teeth Joanna had ever seen. ‘And I'm Abbie. Do you want to talk in here or shall we go and get a coffee?'

Joanna glanced at Charlotte. She didn't like to leave her, but she wasn't sure how much she could hear and this conversation might not be the most positive thing. Sally came to her rescue. ‘She'll be fine with me, Jo. And you can bring me back a latte.'

The coffee shop was directly inside the main entrance; they must've just missed the morning rush because it was very quiet. They ordered a coffee and took the sofas in the far corner. Abbie's tone was kind. ‘How is your daughter?'

That was the million-dollar question. She gave the same response she kept getting from the nurses. ‘She's stable.'

‘That's good. My main reason for wanting to see you in person again was to give you an update on the case.' She paused. ‘We've formally arrested Freddie Knight-Crossley in conjunction with the attack.'

Relief flooded through Joanna that at least this meant he couldn't turn up at the hospital. Last night, her 4a.m. thoughts had included him storming the ward, demanding to see his girlfriend. At least that was one thing she wouldn't have to think about. ‘So you know he definitely did it?'

In the wake of her relief, anger surged through her. Among the maelstrom of thoughts and worries and regrets plaguing her last night, she'd had a creeping fear that maybe she'd been too harsh on Freddie in the last few months, even that she'd jumped to conclusions too quickly. But now the police had arrested him, her anger returned with the force of a tiger that's been caged.

However, Abbie's response was less certain than she'd hoped. ‘The situation is that we don't currently have a huge amount of evidence other than circumstantial, but if we don't charge him, we would have to let him go. We went in front of the magistrate this morning and it was a fight to prevent him being bailed. As I'm sure you can imagine, he presented a very clean cut image in court. But the family has a second home on the continent so we were able to argue that he might be a flight risk. Thankfully the magistrate agreed and he's been remanded in custody.'

In Abbie's tone of voice and raised eyebrow, Joanna was sure that the detective knew of old the type of entitled rich boy they were dealing with. It gave her hope. ‘I'm glad you've got him locked up.'

Abbie inclined her head but didn't comment. ‘The next step is to gather enough evidence to build a case. We've been trying to track down anyone who might've seen the two of them on Sunday, to build up a picture of what prefaced the altercation between them. We know from the apartment above that there'd been some shouting heard. Do you know if this was ordinary behaviour?'

Joanna's face burned. Did she know whether it was usual for her daughter to be in the kind of relationship where they screamed at one another, loud enough for their neighbours to hear? This was not the way Charlotte had portrayed their relationship. She'd always taken great pains to tell Joanna how calm and kind Freddie was. What could have made them yell at one another like that? Was it something to do with the pregnancy? ‘I don't know. I haven't spent a lot of time with them as a couple.'

Abbie paused. ‘But they've been together since she was twenty? And they live together? Did you not approve of the relationship?'

Not approve was the understatement of the century. She'd tried the first time they were together. Bitten her tongue as often as she could while unloading her concerns to her patient husband. But after he'd betrayed her, it'd been agony watching Charlotte – her beautiful confident girl – struggle to come to terms with their break-up. Compounded by the knowledge that – when they finally told her about Steve – there was so much more pain to come for her darling girl, that summer had been the biggest struggle of her life.

‘To be honest, no. I didn't feel that he was an appropriate partner for my daughter. And yes, they did meet when they were twenty. But he broke up with her for several months. A few months before her father died.'

Abbie's eyes widened, but she continued to make notes in her small black book. This was what Charlotte hadn't been able to understand. When she and Freddie got back together, she'd expected Joanna to accept him, forgive him, believe that he wouldn't hurt her daughter again. How could she do that? How could she trust him with the most precious thing in her entire world when he'd proven that he could throw it away on a whim when it didn't suit him?

Abbie flicked back in her notes. ‘When we last spoke, you mentioned the bruises on your daughter's arms. Have any other instances or suspicions come to mind?'

She looked expectant. If only Joanna could reel off a list of things that they could use to bolster their case. None of the suspicions she had were anything more than that; a gut feeling that Freddie Knight-Crossley was bad news. ‘I'm sorry. I can't think of anything.'

‘That's okay. As I say, we've been trying to build a picture of what happened that day. We've tried to speak to neighbours but, unfortunately, we haven't had much luck so far. They're very high-end apartments for such a young couple. I'm assuming they had some help with the deposit? Neither of them have a high income from what I've seen?'

Joanna could feel her cheeks burn. ‘The apartment belongs to Freddie's family. Charlotte moved in with him several months ago. You said the neighbour upstairs had told you about the argument they heard?'

‘Yes. They did. We'll speak to them again. But, in the meantime, are there any friends of Charlotte's who might've spent the day with her or at least heard from her on Saturday? Or Friday night?'

That was a much easier question to answer. ‘She has two really close friends, Rachael and Lucy. They're in a band together. She's known them since school. I can ask them if they've seen her in the last few days?'

She should've called them anyway to tell them about Charlotte being in hospital. Pretty soon she'd have to start thinking about all the other people she needed to call. She'd hoped that Charlotte would've been awake by now. But maybe her friends coming might be the stimulation she needed. Everything she was reading online suggested talking to the patient. Sally had been wonderful, but maybe her friends would be even better.

Abbie smiled. ‘That would be great. The other thing I wanted to ask you about was whether your daughter had a mobile phone? There was no mobile on her person or at the flat. We checked whether there was a phone in her name registered to her address, but there was nothing. I'm just checking because it's quite unusual for someone of her age not to have a phone.'

That was really strange. ‘Yes. She definitely has a phone. She used to get statements about it delivered to our house but then I assume it all went online. Maybe she didn't change the address?'

Abbie nodded and made a note in her pad. ‘Great. We'll look into that, then. If you can give us the number, we might be able to get a lead from phone records even if we can't locate the phone.'

It was curious that they hadn't been able to find Charlotte's phone. It was usually welded to her hand. ‘Could Freddie have taken it? Might there have been something on it he wouldn't want you to see?'

Abbie's face betrayed nothing. ‘We can't speculate, but it would obviously be very useful if it came to light.'

After she'd said goodbye to Abbie, Joanna ordered a latte for Sally and, while she waited, scrolled through her own phone to find the numbers she needed. Charlotte had been friends with Rachael and Lucy since she was at school, so she knew their mothers well enough to have their telephone numbers for the teenage sleepovers where the girls would be awake giggling until the small hours. On the way back to Charlotte's room, she called both and told them – very briefly – what had happened, asking if they could break the news to their daughters and have them contact her. Both mothers were very kind and, obviously, shocked to hear about Charlotte's accident.

Beside Charlotte's bed, Sally was in the middle of a conversation on her phone and took the coffee from her gratefully. Pointing at her phone and mouthing ‘work', she backed out of the room.

She'd only been gone for about two minutes when there was a gentle knock on the door and Freddie's mother, Annabelle, appeared, carrying a brown paper bag. ‘Hi. It's only me. Just popping in to see how Charlotte is.'

She was the last person Joanna wanted to see. Her designer fitness clothes had been eschewed in favour of a Breton top and cropped trousers. Navy pumps squeaked on the floor and a trail of strong perfume caught in Joanna's throat. Around Charlotte's side of the bed, she pushed the bag towards Joanna.

It was heavier than she'd expected. Joanna peered inside. It was full of small pots and packets: olives, houmous with carrot sticks, thick-cut crisps, pastel-coloured cans of Kombucha. ‘What's all this for?'

‘For you, of course.' She strode around to the chair on the other side of Charlotte's bed. ‘Provisions to keep you going.'

Joanna could barely manage a slice of toast at the moment, but the thought was unexpectedly kind. ‘Thank you.'

Annabelle's scarlet fingernails waived her gratitude. ‘No problem at all. Any updates on Charlotte's condition?'

Joanna hid her awkwardness – in trying to avoid being recognised and the fact she'd just been speaking to the police about Freddie – by taking her time in slipping the bag of food onto the tray table by the side of Charlotte's bed. ‘No change at the moment. But that means she's stable.'

She was clinging to this word like a drowning man might cling to a shipwreck. No worse was a good thing. Charlotte just needed time for her brain to recover.

There was a pause before Annabelle spoke again. ‘I've had a conversation with Freddie.'

Joanna kept her eyes on Charlotte, not wanting to betray to Annabelle the hatred she was sure must be in them. ‘Have you?'

‘You know they've actually arrested him for this? I'm distraught about the way he's being treated as if he were a common criminal. He should be here. He's going crazy worrying about Charlotte and the baby.'

Joanna swallowed, kept her eyes on her daughter. What was unbelievable was that her daughter was lying here. ‘I knew that, yes.'

‘But he didn't do it, Joanna. I know my son and he doesn't have a bad bone in his body. There's no way he's guilty of this.'

Joanna wasn't sure that this woman would know the difference between a good bone and a bad one. She didn't want to argue with her, though. ‘Well, that'll be for the police to investigate.'

‘The police?' She looked as if the word was poison in her mouth. ‘I have lost all faith in them. The way they spoke to Freddie was absolutely awful. My poor boy is an easy target for them.'

The more she spoke, the more anger bubbled in Joanna's stomach. How dare she come here – to Charlotte's bedside – and talk about ‘poor Freddie'? Her anger made her brave and she turned to face Annabelle's hard stare. ‘Well, I trust them to do their job.'

Annabelle narrowed her eyes. ‘Well, I'm sure our family lawyer will do what's needed to ensure justice is done.'

Joanna gripped the sides of her plastic chair, but kept her lips tightly closed and merely nodded. Hopefully, the less she said, the sooner this woman would leave them alone.

After a few moments, Annabelle spoke again – this time her voice calculatedly gentle. ‘That's something I wanted to talk to you about actually. I wondered if you could speak to the police. About Freddie and Charlotte. Tell them how much they were in love. How she wouldn't have wanted them to suspect him.'

Joanna couldn't help her mouth falling open, like something from one of the comics Charlotte used to like as a little girl. ‘Me? Tell them to go easy on him?'

She couldn't believe the arrogance of her request. The entitlement. This was the Annabelle she'd known at school, expecting the world to revolve around her. She spoke and others ran around to do her bidding. That's what Joanna had liked about Jacob. He hadn't been like the other rich privileged kids at school. In the first weeks they were together, she hadn't even realised how wealthy his parents were. While Annabelle and the other girls had looked down their noses at Joanna's background, he hadn't cared. At least that's what she'd thought. She'd believed in him. The way Charlotte had believed in Freddie. She'd been wrong, too.

Annabelle's tone was so saccharine sweet it made Joanna's teeth hurt. ‘I just want you to tell them that he loved Charlotte too much to possibly hurt her.'

Acid gathered in the back of Joanna's mouth. ‘I don't know that. I hardly saw them together.'

Already poker straight, Annabelle sat even taller in her seat. ‘Well, I saw them together all the time and my son doted on her. Once they found out she was pregnant, he treated her like a crystal glass.'

Jealousy twisted Joanna's stomach at the reminder that, not only had Annabelle spent time with Charlotte, she'd known about the pregnancy. Had maybe spoken to Charlotte about being a mother. All the things that would've happened for her if it hadn't been for her own stubborn refusal to tolerate Charlotte's choice of partner. ‘I'll have to take your word for that. But I cannot tell the police that when I don't know it.'

Annabelle got louder. ‘Well, I know it. And I keep telling you. He didn't do it.'

‘You can't possibly be sure of that.'

‘I know my son. There's no way he'd do this on purpose. If he did do it, it would've been an accident.'

There it was. She knew as well as Joanna did that Freddie had pushed her daughter. Probably in anger. Whether or not he meant her to hit her head was neither here nor there. She had. And now he had to pay the consequences. ‘I don't want to have this conversation with you. I think you should go.'

Annabelle's face fell. ‘I'm sorry. I didn't mean to raise my voice. I'm just frightened for my son. This baby is part of my family as much as yours, Joanna. And you need to consider something. If it isn't going to have a mother, at least we should make sure it has a father.'

Joanna sat frozen in shock for minutes after Annabelle left, having listened to her strident footsteps as they receded down the corridor.

How dare she ask Joanna to speak to Freddie? And how could she be so cruel as to suggest that Charlotte wasn't going to make it? Furious tears sprang to Joanna's eyes and she wiped them away before leaning in to Charlotte. ‘Don't listen to that awful woman, sweetheart. You're going to get better soon and we're going to look after that baby of yours and make sure that that family don't get anywhere near her.'

Sally reappeared, out of breath as if she'd hurried back. ‘So sorry about that. I'd completely forgotten that I had a meeting scheduled this morning.'

She couldn't bear the thought of Sally leaving her yet. ‘Do you need to get back for it?'

‘No, it's okay. I made my apologies. But there's another one this afternoon that might be trickier to rearrange. It's only an hour away. I could go, do the meeting and be back in three hours. Do you mind?'

‘Of course not. Do what you need to do. And I love having you here, but you don't have to come back again straight away. Go and spend the night at home if you need to?'

Something unreadable flashed across Sally's face. ‘No, it's fine. Graham and Harry can spend some time together. I want to be here. I'll be back as soon as I can.'

She picked up Charlotte's hand and kissed it, gave Joanna a hug and left. Shortly afterwards, Joanna got a text message from Lucy to say that she and Rachael would come to the hospital that evening to see Charlotte.

The police needed evidence to make sure that Freddie didn't get away with what he'd done. Hopefully, the girls might be able to provide that. After all, they'd lived through those months when he let her down before and probably knew a whole lot more about what'd happened than she did.