Am I Guilty?: The gripping, emotional domestic thriller debut filled with suspense, mystery and surprises!

‘Of course. And it was lovely to meet you. I’m glad you enjoyed it.’

I reached into the back pocket of my jeans where I always kept a few business cards when I was working, pulled one out and handed it to the small woman in front of me with the elaborate hairstyle and the rather freakishly smooth face. She must have been at least sixty, judging by the appearance of her hands and neck, but from the chin upwards her skin was tight and shiny, the lips smeared with bright red gloss plump and pouting.

‘Not a good advert for this place,’ Flora had hissed at me as we’d passed in the crowd earlier, and I’d suppressed a giggle, raising my eyebrows at her in agreement. I was, it seemed, one of the few women in the room who was over thirty-five and still had the ability to raise an eyebrow. It was Thursday afternoon, and we were just finishing a relocation party for what the owner Sylvia described as a ‘cosmetic enhancement clinic’ in the centre of Cheltenham. With business on the up, she’d left her small premises on the outskirts of town and taken over two floors of a stately Georgian building on Regent Street. The reopening event was taking place in the reception area, a grand room with enormous windows, beautifully polished floorboards and white leather sofas, framed ‘before and after’ shots of people – mostly women, I noted – who’d been treated with Botox, fillers and various other injectables and procedures dotted around the walls. The changes were impressive, and when Flora and I were setting up, laying out rows of champagne glasses and trays of dim sum, I’d found myself squinting into one of the large, gilt-framed mirrors that also decorated the space.

‘What do you think, Flora? Bit of filler here? Botox here?’

I poked at the fine lines across my forehead and the little creases – did they call them marionette lines? – that ran downwards from the corners of my mouth, frowning. I was thirty-eight. Nearly forty. Was it time to start a little – well, maintenance? It was OK for men … Greg looked better and better as he aged, but …

‘Oh shut up, Annabelle! You’re drop-dead gorgeous! Don’t even think about putting that stuff in your face, you don’t need it!’

The horror on Flora’s face made me snort with laughter. I turned away from the mirror and grabbed her free hand – the other was balancing a wine bucket – and squeezed it.

‘Oh Flora, you do make me feel better about myself. Thank you.’

She reddened slightly, pulling her hand free, but she looked pleased.

‘Only speaking the truth, boss. Now stop looking at yourself and come and help me with the ice; we have six buckets to fill yet.’

She headed towards the little kitchen area off the main reception and I followed, smiling. I loved it that she clearly now felt comfortable enough to speak to me like that – at first, she’d been quieter, more deferential, but I could see her confidence growing daily and I was enjoying the gentle banter that went on between us when we were working.

‘OK, OK, slave driver,’ I groaned, and she laughed. I thought how good it was to see her happy today – I’d been worried, after last night, she would be low, but she’d bounced downstairs this morning with a cheery greeting and a wide grin.

We’d spent the evening before together in a restaurant – as planned, I’d left Greg with the kids, and Flora and I had gone for dinner in Cirencester, taking a taxi so we could both have a couple of glasses of wine. It was a little Italian place I liked, family-run, producing delicious meat and fish dishes along with perfect pizza and pasta from a tiny kitchen out back.

At a little corner table near the open fire we’d sipped Pinot Grigio and chatted about work for a while, giggling about an incident the day before when an extremely grumpy man had managed to get stuck in a toilet cubicle at the opening of a new fashion boutique in Chipping Norton.

But once our starters – bruschetta and a fresh insalata tricolore – had been devoured, and the mains of penne arrabbiata for Flora and some salmone con spinaci for me had arrived, I took a deep breath.

‘Flora … look, I haven’t asked you about this, not really … I didn’t want to upset you, not when it was all so fresh. But now … well, it’s been a few months, so I wondered … do you feel able to talk about it? That day at Thea’s, when … when the baby died?’

Flora, who had just speared a piece of penne with her fork, moved it slowly to her mouth, chewed and swallowed, then put the fork back on her plate.

‘I … I suppose so. Yes. What do you want to know?’

‘I’d just like to know how … well, how it actually happened, I suppose. How things unfolded that day. It’s a while to the trial yet, when it will all come out, and it’s just that there’ve been so many rumours, you know? So many different stories flying around, for months. And all the abuse Thea gets … I mean, I know Greg and Millie were there, but they aren’t even sure exactly how it happened – Millie was upstairs playing with Nell, and Greg was out in the garden with Rupert, so they were never able to tell me much, just how horrible and sad and scary it all was. I’d like to know the truth, Flora, so at least then maybe I can put people right if I hear them talking rubbish about it …’

I was looking at her warily, nervous that I’d overstepped the mark, that she’d close up and retreat back into the shell she’d often seemed to be in when she first joined us. But to my relief, she looked back at me, nodding slowly.

‘I get that. That’s nice of you, Annabelle. And no, I don’t mind talking about it, not really.’

And so, she told me. In a low voice, conscious of the other diners, even though the restaurant was half empty and there was really nobody within earshot, she told me the whole, horrible story. Told me how, that day, the fourth of September last year, the weather had been hot, really hot, one of the hottest days of the summer, and unusually hot for the time of year. I remembered it – the fourth had been a Monday, and I’d been rushing around town in the heat, buying pencil cases and lunch boxes, white ankle socks and navy PE shorts, sweating over the last-minute back-to-school buys before term started for Millie and Oliver on the Wednesday.

Thea had been out for lunch in Charlton Kings with Isla Laird, and they’d taken Nell and Zander with them, Flora said – an end of summer holidays treat for Nell, who liked doing grown-up things, a lovely long lunch in the sunshine outside that restaurant out on the London Road, the one with the big garden out back, a nice place to sit in the sun, and enjoy good food and an excellent wine list.

They’d sat there for a couple of hours, Isla and Thea knocking back champagne, celebrating some big interview Isla had landed for her chat show.

‘Thea wasn’t a big drinker normally, unless Isla was around … well, not back then anyway. She drank a lot more afterwards, to forget, I suppose,’ Flora said. ‘But Isla … well, I like her, you know? I’m not saying I don’t. But she … well, she wasn’t a great influence on Thea sometimes, not when they were out together. Isla loves to drink, and she can really put it away, and Thea sometimes just got carried away with it. And well, it’s nice, isn’t it, sitting in the sun, drinking champagne … I suppose you can understand why she might have had a bit too much?’

I nodded, reaching for my glass of wine and taking a sip, but secretly thinking: No. No, not really, Flora. And I don’t think you think it’s understandable either, you’re just being diplomatic. Because it’s not OK, is it? Not when you have a young daughter and a baby son with you. Getting drunk in the sunshine, when your kids are there? I can’t understand that at all.

She ate another piece of pasta then continued, telling me how Thea, Isla and the children arrived home around three o’clock, Thea driving, despite having been drinking heavily.

‘I didn’t know that, of course, at the time – that she’d driven, or even that she’d been drinking so much. I only realized that later, when Isla told me, after … after … Anyway, I didn’t actually see them come in – I was upstairs, in my room where it was a bit cooler, because I’d kept the curtains drawn. I was sending some emails and sorting some deliveries that had arrived that morning, and I wanted to get it finished so I could go out for a run a bit later on, when the temperature had dropped. But I heard them get back – Isla and Nell came in first. They were both shrieking and giggling, yelling that they were desperate for the loo and racing each other. It made me laugh … Isla isn’t that fond of kids, she sort of tolerated Nell as opposed to really getting on with her, you know? Didn’t normally pay her much attention. But they seemed to be having fun that day.’

Flora stopped talking, a little sigh escaping her lips. She gazed down at her plate for a moment, then lifted a corner of the white linen napkin that lay on her lap, twisting it around her fingers. Then she took a deep breath and carried on.

‘I heard the door slam a minute or so later and assumed that was Thea, bringing Zander in. I didn’t come downstairs for about another half an hour, and by then Thea and Isla were crashed out in the sitting room. They’d opened a bottle of wine, and it looked like they’d already downed most of it. Isla was nodding off, just barely awake, and Thea was already sound asleep, all sprawled out on the sofa. I popped my head in, but Isla just opened her eyes for a minute and hissed at me to sssssh. So I took Nell out of the room and told her to go and play quietly upstairs, leave them to it. It didn’t seem right, her sitting there with two drunk women.’

Flora stopped speaking again, her fingers plucking at the napkin. My insides had begun churning as I listened, my appetite for the delicious meal in front of me rapidly waning. I knew the outcome of this story, but hearing it unfold like this, step by step, was proving to be harder than I had expected. I suddenly wanted her to get to the end, for this to be over, but I stayed silent, not wanting to interrupt as she relived the nightmare.

‘Rupert came home a while later, just before five, and I told him not to disturb them – Isla had totally conked out by then as well, and I thought it might be best to let them sleep it off. The kids seemed fine – Nell was up in her room and … well there was no sound from Zander, so I assumed he was asleep in his pram … I … well, I just did. Isla had gestured towards the pram when she was sssshing me, so I just assumed …’

She swallowed hard, even though there was no food in her mouth, her eyes fixed on her plate, then she dropped the crumpled napkin, her left hand moving to her right wrist, rubbing the small scar she had there as if it had begun to ache.

‘Flora, honestly …’ I started to speak, wanting to say something, to reassure her, to tell her she didn’t have to go on if this was too difficult, but she held up a hand, silencing me. My mouth was dry, my fingernails digging into my palms now, my heart pounding, and suddenly I desperately wanted this story to have a different ending to the one I knew was coming, a horror movie with the inevitable imminent shock playing out in front of me.

‘Then Greg and Millie arrived. That must have been about five thirty, I reckon. I think Millie and Nell just wanted a quick catch-up before they went back to school – see each other’s new shoes and school bags, something like that?’

‘Yes, they did,’ I said, remembering.

Millie had begged Greg, who was on a half day from work, to take her round to Nell’s that day, and he hadn’t minded.

‘I haven’t seen much of her recently,’ he’d said. ‘We can have a catch-up in the car, and then I can wait for her out in their garden. It’s nice and cool out there on a day like this.’

I repeated this to Flora now, and she nodded.

‘That’s what happened. I’d come down to get some papers from the dining room, so I said hi, and I think Millie ran up to join Nell in her room, and then Rupert took Greg straight out into the back garden. It was still really hot, and it was always cooler out there under the big oak tree than it was in the house. They took a couple of beers from the fridge and went out … they shouted out to me to join them, but as I said I wanted to get my work finished and then go for a run, so I said no …’

Her voice tailed off and she took a deep breath, her fingers still massaging the scar on her wrist, eyes flitting around the room, looking from one occupied table to the next. I followed her gaze, but nobody seemed to be listening. At a window table, an elderly couple were having a semi-heated discussion in hushed voices – a mild dispute over something in their garden, I had gathered, from the odd audible phrase – and a few tables away, a group of six middle-aged women were chatting and giggling over bottles of red wine, engrossed in their gossip. The only other diners were a young couple in the far corner, holding hands over a shared, extra-large pizza.

‘It’s OK. I’m pretty sure nobody can hear us,’ I said quietly.

Flora looked back at me and nodded.

‘Well, anyway, that was it, for a while. I finished off what I had to do, then came down to the kitchen to get a cold drink. It was after six by now, but still ridiculously hot. I remember hearing raised voices and looking out into the garden – Greg and Rupert seemed to be having a fairly intense discussion about something, but I couldn’t hear what. Probably just football or something, knowing them.’

She gave me a slight smile, and I tried to smile back. Gosh, this was torture. Come on Flora …

‘Anyway, I went back to the dining room to file away the papers I’d been using, and that’s when I heard somebody shouting out on the street. I went to the window, just being nosey really, and there was a couple … well, I don’t know if they were actually a couple, but a man and a woman, standing next to Thea’s car – she’d managed to find a space right outside the house for once. Doesn’t always happen. Anyway, they were sort of peering into the car, into the back window. And the man kept looking round, and shouting “Whose is this car? Who owns this car?”, all frantic and kind of scared sounding, you know? And he was waving his arms around …’

She waved her own arms in the air, eyes wide now, as if she was replaying the scene in her head, then continued, her voice low and urgent.

‘I had a sudden sick feeling in my stomach. All I could think was, why are they looking in the back of the car? And I sort of knew then, you know? I just knew that it wasn’t going to be good, when I went out there. I started running … I grabbed the car keys from the hall table as I went … and then I got to the car, and I just pushed past them, the couple – I was shouting something, I don’t know what, but I think I was just screaming at them to get out of the way probably – and then I saw it too. I saw what they were looking at. I don’t even remember opening the car door, but somehow I did it, and then I was fumbling, my hands wouldn’t work properly, fumbling with the seat belt, trying to get him out … and I knew. I knew straight away. It was obvious …’

There were tears in her eyes now, and I suddenly felt dizzy, my chest tightening. I gripped onto the edge of the table, wanting to stop her, not wanting to hear the end of this, the horrific outcome of Thea’s day out, but I couldn’t speak, and anyway she was still talking, the words pouring out of her, as if it was a relief, as if she’d been holding all of this inside her for too long, and now the dam had finally broken and the torrent of pain and anguish and emotion was unstoppable.

‘I pulled him out, and I shook him and called his name over and over, but he was completely limp, Annabelle. His eyes were wide open, his little face was bright red, and he looked like a doll, a little floppy doll, not like a baby at all. And he was … he was so hot. His skin was hot to the touch.’