If They Knew: The latest crime thriller book you must read in 2018. Joanne Sefton

Darren, not the new, arm’s-length, polite-chat-about-the-weather Darren who made her skin crawl. It wasn’t that she thought he’d have all the answers, just that she wasn’t used to having no one to share things with. They’d met at school and grown up together as an ‘us’. Suddenly Helen had to work everything out as ‘me’. And everything was bloody tough.

      At first, her mind had tricked itself – he was on a business trip, or working late – God knew she was used to not having him around. But now it was more than six weeks, and the reality, the permanence, of his absence was becoming undeniable. All the more so since that awful call with her dad. The old Darren might not have been around when the au pair was sick or when she needed to decide on a holiday booking, but she could be confident that if the world fell apart he’d be there to catch her. Now it had and he was content to see her in free fall.

      Gradually, the lumpy shadow-scape revealed itself as her assorted bits of luggage, strewn with clothes and toys and everything else that she’d not had the will to try to tidy up. The green dizzy dreams and the clawing rat seemed to shrivel in the light. It was too bizarre. To be looking at the fresh baked-bean-juice stains on her dressing gown, or the cascade of children’s books erupting from a Gruffalo backpack, and thinking that somebody out there was happy her mother could be dying, that somebody out there wanted Barbara to suffer.

      Error, as the laptop would say. Switch it off and on again. If only she could.

      She kept coming up with improbable explanations – the note was a prop from a murder-mystery party, or a handwriting test, or Barbara had written it herself as some sort of weird displacement activity. But why the mention of cancer? And why had it been on the doormat when Helen arrived? There was no simple answer to explain that away.

      Finally she heard Alys start up her morning whimper, which, in her usual way, would soon become a chatter and then, shortly after, a wail. As Helen quit the stale bed and pulled on the bean-juice-stained dressing gown, the demons scuttled back to their dusty recesses. She pushed the curtains back, then, still fumbling with the belt of her dressing gown, she headed upstairs.

      *

      Helen found the blue dress later that morning, when she was going through some stuff in her old room. She’d hoped that one of the dusty boxes stashed under the bed would hold something that might keep the kids occupied for a while.

      Of course, she’d packed for the journey in a hurry, with no real idea of how long they’d be staying, and the flaws in her organisation – no charger for Barney’s tablet, DVD boxes missing their discs, and Jess the Doll’s tragically deficient wardrobe – were now becoming woefully apparent.

      It must have been twenty years since Helen had seen that dress. She knew the story of Neil buying it for Barbara on honeymoon in Glasgow and the shimmer of blue – more eastern Med than western Scotland – was instantly recognisable. She found the straps and held it up, letting the layers of satin and chiffon swing free. There were details she hadn’t noticed before, or didn’t remember: the old-fashioned label, sewn in by hand, the slight discolouration under the arms. Was there a breath of Barbara’s perfume, or was that just Helen’s imagination?

      ‘Alys!’ she shouted, after a moment or two. ‘Come and try on this princess dress.’

      She knew Barbara wouldn’t mind a bit. After all, Helen herself had spent a good year around the age of six tripping around the house in its gauzy layers, the spaghetti straps nicely set off against her utilitarian white M&S vests. She’d called it her cocktail dress. As a child, Helen had liked to imagine Barbara’s youth had been spent swishing around sophisticated parties. She had a vague fantasy that Barbara had come down in the world when she married Neil and renounced a life of leisure and glamour and quite possibly even cigarette holders for love, a red-brick semi and her baby girl. She didn’t actually have any evidence for this exotic former life, but, in the absence of evidence of anything more prosaic, it was an attractive fantasy.

      Alys duly trotted upstairs, but when Helen held up the dress she looked sceptical.

      ‘Which princess?’ she asked.

      ‘Not a Disney Princess. Another Princess. Princess Alys.’

      ‘Daddy buy me Belle dress.’

      ‘Did he?’ Helen was genuinely puzzled. Alys adored Belle from Beauty and the Beast and Helen couldn’t imagine she could have received such a prize and not been full of it for days.

      The girl looked sad and a little confused. ‘I get it next time, he say, next time, but …’ She faltered, and her big eyes welled with tears.

      At home, Helen had had to tell her over and over that Daddy didn’t live with them any more. Each time, it cut her up inside and the tears that she managed to hold in when she was with her children spilled out with interest after bedtime. Eventually, Alys seemed to have understood, on some level at least, but the visit up here could only have confused her.

      ‘Blue is for boys, Mummy.’ As ever, the three-year-old’s train of thought chugged on at pace.

      Helen racked her mind for some Disney Princess assistance. ‘Cinderella wears blue,’ she said, encouragingly.

      ‘Not that blue, Mummy – that’s boys’ blue.’

      Helen looked down at the dress, as if noticing its colour for the first time. ‘Oh! You mean I should give it to Barney to wear?’

      She loved her daughter’s laughter, which bubbled thick and sticky in her throat like liquid fudge. Alys liked the joke of her brother wearing the dress and her chortles brought Neil to the door.

      ‘Good morning, ladies,’ Neil said, making Alys giggle even more.

      ‘Alys thinks Barney should dress up in Nana’s honeymoon dress. What do you reckon, Granddad?’

      She expected Neil to laugh along. Instead, he reached out, groping like a blind man. His fingers touched the fabric, but then it slipped out of his grasp and the dress slithered to the floor. He sat down heavily on the bed. Helen cursed inwardly. Of course, she should have realised the dress might upset him. But a moment later he was smiling again and had pulled a toffee out of his pocket for Alys.

      He turned to Helen. ‘I came to tell you there’s a phone call for you, love.’

      ‘Darren?’ she mouthed it silently over Alys’s head, and he nodded.

      ‘Now, young Alys.’ His grasp on the dress was firm this time, and the wet sheen on his eyes had been blinked away. ‘The thing you have to know about this dress is that it belonged to a mermaid once. That’s why you can see all the colours of the deep blue ocean in it – in fact, I’m sure I once saw a tiny golden fish flickering through just about here …’

      The phone handset sat like a grenade on a chest of drawers on the landing.

      ‘Hello?’ She kept her voice low, going into the spare room.

      ‘Hi, Hels. How’s your mum doing?’ said the voice on the line.

      ‘She’s okay. We went to the hospital on Friday. They’re going to operate next week. We’ll know more then.’

      ‘I was gutted to hear it, really I was.’ She could picture him shaking his head, sorrowfully, rubbing the back of his hand against his designer stubble in that way he had. ‘Give her my best, yeah?’

      ‘Yeah,’ she agreed, knowing she’d say nothing.

      ‘I’ve been trying your mobile.’

      ‘I know you have. It’s not the easiest time, Darren.’

      ‘Yeah, I understand that. But the kids’ll be missing me.’ As he spoke, she tried to push away the image of Alys’s perplexed face, talking about the stupid Disney costume. ‘I’m not saying you shouldn’t have taken them up there, and we both wanted to deal with access informally, but …’

      Bastard. Always trying to come across as Mr More-Than-Reasonable. He should be here with his family