Page 32 of Guilty Mothers
Within minutes, Tony and Toyah reappeared with an overnight bag.
‘Try and get some rest and we’ll talk later,’ Kim said as Tony guided his sister out the door.
Once they were out of sight, Kim gave Keats the thumbs up for removal before heading upstairs.
The first door on the left was clearly the master bedroom. A quick glance around confirmed it to be the room of the deceased.
There was a small television as well as a large bookcase and a reading nook in the corner. The single bedside cabinet held a lamp, a couple of books, reading glasses and a phone.
The covers were thrown back and the pillows piled on one side, indicating that Andrea had most likely been sitting up, reading and waiting for Toyah to come home.
A small en-suite bathroom was tidy and functional.
The next room was filled with a desk and shelves holding boxes of crafting materials. On the worktop were stickers, a guillotine, crafting wire and paints. There were models and card-making projects at every stage of the journey scattered around. Although crowded, it looked organised and well used.
The next room was clearly Toyah’s.
Perfume bottles and make-up cases cluttered the dressing table, and stuff had been slid, hid and wedged into every available spot, giving the impression of a clutter-free zone unless you looked too closely.
It was a room being outgrown, Kim thought. Toyah was in her early twenties and she had accumulated a lot of stuff in that time that she didn’t seem eager to part with.
Kim closed the door behind her and smiled at the sign.
Entry by Appointment Only Unless You Bring Food.
So far it looked like a perfectly normal household. A mother who had her own interests and hobbies, a daughter who was on the cusp of grasping her own independence.
She opened the last door. The junk room. The space filled with boxes and bags of things that were no longer needed but hadn’t yet made it to the tip either because of time, motivation or emotional attachment.
Such boxes revealed the whole history of a family.
Kim started opening the lids of boxes that hadn’t been disturbed in years. The ones at the back held wedding memorabilia and photos, packed away when the marriage had ended presumably, baby clothes, books, toys, shawls, blankets, stuffed toys. It was a history lesson of their past, an era represented in each area of the room.
Kim had the sudden thought of Andrea’s boxes coming to join them. Hours ago, she had been a vital, busy woman, living and enjoying life, and now in the not too distant future she would be consigned to a box, a selection of worldly possessions chosen as a representation of her life.
Kim shook away the maudlin thoughts, knowing they had gathered because this death was untimely. Andrea shouldn’t have been joining the family history for decades.
Just a couple of boxes remained, nestled between board games, old school uniforms and certificates.
Kim opened them, wondering what on earth was left.
‘Aww…shit,’ she said as she flipped back the lids.
The crowns and sashes were just stuffed inside. This was nothing like the shrine at Katie’s old house.
This was a memory box of a time that had come and gone. It wasn’t worshipped or relived or even remembered, as Kim had seen no clue anywhere else around the house.
Kim closed the box and left the room.
With a second murder linked to the world of pageantry, this case had just got a hell of a lot bigger than she’d first thought.
TWENTY-THREE
The rest of her team filed into the office within a minute of each other.
They all looked to the board, which had been updated since they’d last seen it the night before.
By the time she’d returned home, it was almost four and not worth the extra steps to the bedroom. She and Barney had napped on the sofa together for a couple of hours before the early morning walk and breakfast routine had kicked in. Given the disturbance to his sleep routine, Barney would be out for the count until Charlie collected him at lunchtime.