But not tonight. Caroline had forfeited her spot next to Ellie because of her behaviour. And this party would forever be tainted for her, spoilt by the unfortunately timed explosion of pent-up and pressured resentments. It was no wonder Ellie had sidelined her. She didn’t want her own memories spoilt too.

  She should go home, she decided. She didn’t have the boys to worry about and Max was now happily talking to a group of men, laughing at someone else’s tale, pint glass in hand. No one needed her. She would slip away quietly and with no fuss. She could send Max a text, rather than interrupting his night. That was the best thing to do. Then he would know where she was, but wouldn’t feel obliged to leave just because she had wanted to go. And Ellie would understand. Caroline would ring her in the morning, explain that she hadn’t felt well and so had left without any fuss. Ellie probably didn’t care whether she was there or not, to be honest. Not after what she’d said.

  She edged her way along the wall towards the exit, back under the entrance arch thing, which was truly beautiful, to where the cloakrooms were. The girl on duty looked surprised that she was asking for her coat so early and Caroline muttered something about the babysitter having called. A lie. Where was her precious integrity now?

  The taxi rank wasn’t far from the venue and soon she was whizzing her way home, composing a text to Max as she went.

  The house was silent, but she had left a number of lights on to deter burglars so the place felt welcoming when she opened the door and let herself in. She stood in the hallway, not quite knowing what she wanted to do. It wasn’t even eleven o’clock. Regrets flooded through her. What had she been thinking, leaving the party so early like that? Was it too late to call another cab and go back?

  But that was a ridiculous idea, she knew it was. She would have one more glass of wine and wait for Max to come home. There was a bottle of rosé open in the fridge. That was just what she needed. Something crisp and cold. Unsteadily, she made her way into the kitchen, poured herself a large glass and took it through to the sitting room to drink.

  This was all the money’s fault, she thought as she sat there, glass in hand. If she hadn’t found it, then none of them would have argued and she would still be at her best friend’s party in her rightful place at her side instead of sitting at home on her sofa alone.

  Maybe the others were right. Maybe it was her point of view that was suspect, and they should just share the money out between them and move on. Caroline’s fuzzy brain tried to concentrate on that idea for a moment. But even through the fog of alcohol she knew she wasn’t wrong. Tony had been up to his neck in God knew what. That much was obvious. Why else would you stick that much cash in a suitcase under a bed? There was something off-colour about the whole thing. And therefore, it was as plain as the nose on your face that they shouldn’t take it. It was theft by association, or whatever the term was. She wasn’t sure of the exact legalities, but really that didn’t matter. The important thing was that it felt wrong and that was surely deterrent enough.

  She should just get rid of the money. That was the sensible thing to do. Getting rid of it would stop all this aggravation, and then they could just get back to how things were before, how things were meant to be with their two families being best friends and without all this sniping at each other.

  The solution was so clear to her now, and it was up to her to fix things. She was the one who had spoilt everything by finding the money in the first place so she should be the one to sort it out.

  And she would.

  Feeling more decisive than she had in a long time, Caroline drained her glass and made her wobbling way upstairs. On the landing, she opened the trap door, pulled the attic ladder down and then, swaying slightly, grabbed hold of the steps with both hands and hauled herself up. She giggled quietly as she nearly missed her footing, even though the house was empty and there was no one to hear her.

  ‘Oops-a-daisy,’ she muttered. ‘Don’t want to come a cropper, Caroline. That would never do.’

  She pulled herself up into the space and flicked on the light. There was the case, hidden in plain sight with all their others. It would be a bit tricky getting it back down through the trap door on her own, she thought, but not impossible.

  Once she had retrieved it, she got down on her knees and lowered the case through the hole, making sure that she didn’t lose her rather precarious balance. Then she let go of the handle and the case fell on to the landing with a bump. Caroline giggled again. She felt like a particularly noisy cat burglar.

  She edged her way back down the ladder and soon she was on the landing next to the suitcase, which seemed to have survived its adventure intact.

  Caroline carried the case down to the kitchen, poured herself the dregs of the rosé and got what she needed for her mission. This was the obvious answer to the problem and she wasn’t sure why she hadn’t thought of it before.

  When she opened the back door, it wasn’t quite dark, being the longest day of the year, so she didn’t need a torch or the outside lights to see. That was good. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself.

  With a strong sense of purpose, she took the suitcase out on to the back lawn. The night was so quiet and still, without a breath of wind. She knelt down on the cool grass with the case next to her and opened the lid. The cash had shifted as the case had been moved about and had all settled at one end. Caroline took a long look at it. A quarter of a million pounds. A quarter of a million little digs and needling comments and uncomfortable looks. A quarter of a million lies.

  She took the box from her pocket and lit a match, shielding it with her cupped hand. Then she nestled the tiny flame beneath a curling twenty-pound note at the bottom of the case and sat back to watch.

  57

  VALERIE

  I always knew Tony Frost was a bad lad. He was the kind of man your mother warned you about, all big, wide smiles and twinkly eyes. In the end, he even managed to charm my mother, which was more than I ever did, although that’s another story.

  We met in the queue for the cinema. Jaws – Christmas 1975. I was with my then best friend Jill. Tony and his best friend Peter were behind us and, of course, we got chatting. I later learnt that Tony would chat to anyone, anywhere, but at the time I felt special, as if he was bestowing all his attention on me and me alone.

  He was completely relentless in his pursuit of me, never once giving us the chance to drift back into two pairs. By the time we got to the kiosk to buy our tickets, it had been decided that we would all sit together. Tony made a beeline for me. I remember that Jill was a bit put out because, whilst Peter was great company, he was no looker. Fortunately, he was quite shy with it, so the most he managed during the film was resting a nail-chewed hand on her knee.

  Tony was a completely different matter. Chief Brody had barely found the first shark-mangled body and Tony had already managed to get his hand into my bra. I’m still not sure how he did it from that position. He must have had double-jointed wrists. Or, more likely, it was just years of practice.

  Anyway, it was the perfect film for what turned out to be a first date. Every time there was a jumpy moment I screamed and he wrapped his arm closer around me. When the final credits rolled, he had saved me from danger so many times that I was perfectly happy to let him kiss me. It only seemed fair.

  Seven months later, Max was conceived and three months after that we were married in a small registry office service that my parents refused to attend because of the improprieties, although, as I said, my mum came round to the idea eventually.

  So I should have known from the start that I was getting myself into deep water. Just how deep remained shrouded in darkness at that stage as I didn’t have a crystal ball handy. There would have been nothing that I could have done, though, even if I had known where we were heading. I got sucked into his orbit like a meteor into a black hole.

  Now, don’t get me wrong. Tony Frost was a great bloke to be married to. He was the life and soul of any room that he chose to wander into. People were drawn to him like moths to a flame. If there was ever a table that seemed to be having more fun than all the others, you could bet your bottom dollar that Tony was sitting at it. It was a talent, I suppose, making people feel at their ease.

  And to start with I was more than happy to be a part of it. I mean, why wouldn’t I be? I was one half of the most popular couple on the circuit, and because Tony knew everybody, it was a pretty big circuit. After we were married, it was a never-ending round of cheese and wine parties and safari suppers. We were rarely at home, even after the children arrived. We must have spent a fortune on babysitters and they loved to come to us because Tony was so generous with his tips. I didn’t know anyone else who tipped their babysitter, but Tony did.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. When Max was born, a bit of a surprise as I said, we just absorbed him into our life with no difficulty. He was an easy child, passive, happy to go with the flow, and we dragged him along to parties with us. He’d sleep where we left him and was always content to be settled by anyone who gave him a kind smile.

  Ellie was born about two years later. She was very different. It was all about her right from the moment she arrived. She demanded attention and screamed the house down if she didn’t get it. She used to run me ragged and our social life took a nosedive for a while whilst I got her into a routine that suited her.

  I’d given up work by this point. Tony had insisted and I could see that it made sense for me to stay at home with the kids. Money seemed to be no problem and it was the seventies so there were plenty of other women at home to spend time with. I joined clubs, we went to toddler groups and that kind of thing.

  It was okay, but my friends from before I was married seemed to drift away. I lost touch with Jill somehow, something I could never have imagined happening before. I suppose it’s quite common really, people floating away in different directions, and at the time I didn’t really think much of it. I was busy with the children and my new life. Looking back though, I can see that Tony just didn’t encourage any part of my life that didn’t include him. He was too wrapped up in where he wanted to go and it was my job to go along with him.

  Nathan was another accident. Well, maybe it’s fairer to call him a surprise. We had worked out what caused babies by then, but what with Tony’s spur-of-the moment attitude to life it was easy to get caught out. Ellie was six and a half and already at school and we thought our little family was complete with two children, one of each. What could be more perfect? I was even thinking of going back to work and regaining a bit of my independence, but finding out I was pregnant again put the kibosh on that idea.

  I sometimes wonder if that was my last chance to get out from under Tony’s smothering. If I could have gone back to work, I’d have had the chance to stretch my wings, cut out a little bit of life for myself, away from Tony and the kids.

  Now, please don’t misunderstand me, I wasn’t unhappy then. Far from it. Life was exciting; there were always people at the house, parties, laughter, Tony holding court. But I was very much Tony’s wife. Some of the more obnoxious of Tony’s acquaintances even called me Mrs Tony, like I had no identity of my own. Either that or I was of so little significance to them that it wasn’t worth the effort to remember my name. So I would have relished the chance to break free, just for a bit. Then it would have been less irritating to be referred to as ‘Mrs Tony’ at home.

  But Nathan coming along was the end of that plan. The freedoms that came with both Max and Ellie being at school were snatched away from me and I was sent straight back to the beginning – an elaborate and rather cruel game of snakes and ladders.

  And then Tony got his first seat on the council.

  I can remember when it started as if it were yesterday, although I had no idea at the time what it all meant or where we would end up. Tony had moved up from the local council to the district one by then. It was an obvious move for him. He was a big fish and he needed a bigger pond to swim in. He didn’t work for the council as such, he had an uninspiring job in an office, but he liked to feel that he was in the middle of things, influencing how they worked. That was why he concentrated on the town planning and development side of things. He used to say it would be his legacy, shaping the town the way he thought it should be.

  Anyway, Max was thirteen and his life revolved around football. He was a huge Liverpool fan, I think mainly because of the romance of the team more than anything else. His bedroom walls were plastered with posters of players. He seemed to know everything there was to know about them and talked about little else.

  One day Tony came home from work grinning like a Cheshire cat. After a fair bit of winding Max up, Tony finally told him that he had managed to get his hands on a pair of tickets for the Sunday match against Manchester United, and not only that but that they were in the directors’ box at Anfield. I had no idea about football, but even I knew that was a pretty big deal.

  I thought Max was going to burst, he was so excited, and Tony was delighted to have done something that brought his son so much pleasure. He was buzzing with it for days and I remember thinking that it was lovely to see them both so happy.

  The tickets came with a sit-down lunch before the match, and so we had to buy Max some smart trousers to wear because he couldn’t go in his Liverpool tracksuit. Apart from that expense, we apparently didn’t have to pay a penny for the tickets. I queried that with Tony, asking him how much they had cost. I wanted to make sure that Ellie and Nathan didn’t miss out; it was important, I thought, to keep everything nice and even between the three of them.

  But Tony said he had mentioned what a big Liverpool fan Max was to some bloke he knew, and that he had been able to call in a favour and get the tickets for free. I had no idea just how big a favour that was at the time. It just never occurred to me that there was anything amiss.

  Anyway, Liverpool won four–nil and they were both as high as kites when they got back. Max talked about nothing else but his day out for months.

  And that was how it started. There was nothing big, nothing that would cause questions to be asked. The odd ticket here, the odd night away there. I honestly didn’t think anything of it. It all seemed perfectly legitimate. Tony told me that the treats were a perk of the job and I just took what he said at face value. I had no reason to do otherwise.

  It was the conservatory that first made me suspicious. I really wanted one. The woman next door had had one built on the back of their house, and I have to admit that I was envious of it. I must have mentioned it to Tony because the next thing I knew he brought a bunch of brochures home. These were for something altogether more flash than she had next door, all ornate metalwork and a fancy roof. When I questioned it, Tony gave me some guff about only wanting the best for his Val and I fell for it. I mean, I was getting the fanciest conservatory on the street; why would I object to that?

  But I think in my heart I knew there was something off about the whole thing. Tony was earning a good salary, but this wasn’t really in keeping with what the conservatory must have cost.

  After that, we seemed to have more disposable income than we’d had before. Instead of a self-catering holiday on the Costa Brava, we were doing posh hotels in the smart bits of Majorca, and then going more than once a year. Our friends started to joke about Tony’s perma-tan and he used to laugh it off, saying that he just had the kind of skin that held on to colour. But I knew it was all the free trips to Praia da Luz.

  Then someone said something at one of those interminable dinners we had to go to. It was when Tony was mayor, and I was in a cubicle in the ladies’ loo when I overheard a conversation going on by the washbasins. I didn’t know who it was, I didn’t recognise the voices, but I knew they were talking about Tony before they mentioned his name. Something just clicked, all the levers falling into place.

  But of course, I’d known there was something wrong before then. There was no way Tony could be earning the money we seemed to have from just his job. Men used to come to the house, often late at night. Tony would usher them into the dining room and close the door. I’d hear the hushed voices, but not what was said. You couldn’t tell me that it was all above board. I knew it wasn’t; how could it be?

  But I just didn’t want to know. What Tony got up to was his business, I decided, and the less I knew about it the better. The kids never gave it a second’s thought. They had grown up with a busy house, so late-night visitors didn’t even tickle their radars. If they heard the whispered, sometimes desperate, tones of the conversations that took place in our dining room then they never asked me about it, but I suspect they were all totally oblivious. Just like I pretended to be.

  There were always rumours of untoward goings-on at the council – I bet there are about most public bodies – but they stayed as just rumours. I lived life on a knife-edge, always assuming that any knock at the door would be the police and that Tony would be caught and publicly shamed. I became a nervous wreck, not daring to go out in case someone accused me of something.

  But the knock never came. As far as I know, no one ever suggested anything directly to Tony’s face, and there was never any suggestion of police involvement. I could feel people staring at us sometimes on the rare occasions we went out together, conversations that hushed as we walked into a room. I think that either there were suspicions that couldn’t be proved or the whole scandal was too big and cut too deeply for anyone to try.

  It was a bit like living with a man who is having an affair. You might spot the telltale signs, but unless you actually catch them in flagrante, you can just pretend you’re mistaken.

  That’s what I did. The trips and the favours and the extra money and the stream of anxious-looking men at my door late at night. I ignored the lot and steadfastly refused to see what was staring me in the face.

  My way of dealing with what was going on around me was to try to make myself invisible. If Tony was larger than life then I would be smaller, so small, in fact, that no one would notice I was there. I ran a perfect house. I made sure everyone had everything they needed and I stayed firmly in the background where I hoped no one would catch sight of me.