He went on to these funny instructions, marked ‘Copy to’, which worried him. Send a copy of this shit to Peter Friel? What was she on about? That courtroom had been stuffed with copies of everything.
What was perfectly, glaringly clear from that note, though, was that Marianne was going to write a book, maybe had written it already or was getting someone to write it. And the Lover had put ticks on a list of what he was supposed to do, which included sending a whole lot of stuff to H Joyce, addressed to Angel’s parents’ place. Whoah, what was this? So that was where everything was. A lot, a very expensive delivery, a vanload, maybe.
Rick sat back and remembered that house. Sitting there and being interviewed by that stupid old dad who didn’t think anyone was good enough for his slag of a daughter. Not good enough for Angel? Angel wasn’t halfway good enough for him; Dad got it the wrong way round. He deserved far better than Angel and Angel only got what was coming to her. As far as Rick Boyd knew he had never done anything wrong in his life, it was the others. That stuffy room with a fire, everything ordered and tidy; Angel’s anally retentive dad talking about his storage place; he had even offered Rick a job in it. Who did he think he was?
Yeah. Dad puts everything we don’t need in storage, Angel said. He hates clutter and he’s got the space.
Better go and get it. See what was in it, before anyone else looked, but how to get in? That’s just what Marianne would do out of spite. Send it all to Hen Joyce, get her to run with it, the way she had run Angel. Put it together with what she had and get him put inside again.
Maybe not take Frank. Maybe just leave him here, covered in DNA. Frank’s worth a fortune and Frank does dirty work. I don’t make him, he just does it, it’s not my fault. And Frank still thinks he’s got a serious rival for the old inheritance. If he goes apeshit with her, so what? I run away and let him. Fucking H Joyce had obviously got together with Marianne Shearer somehow. Plotting behind his back like she did with Angel, using what was his to make another case against him, writing that book. Rick went back and looked at Frank. Frank could drive, and he had access to cars. He would have to do. In the meantime, he would give Frank another pill and settle down to think in this dirty chair.
Think of a plan. Where to first? He couldn’t go to her place alone, it scared him.
I’m sorry, my brother has developed pneumonia.
Are you caring for him?
I care for everyone in my charge. They do not always appreciate it. They don’t always know what’s good for them.
Peter was tired. It was akin to the tiredness of a week in court, when he would burn the midnight oil between the days, working up to a fatigue that would create bad dreams in which he would see himself a naked laughing stock unable to speak. He was heavy with sadness when he needed to be optimistic, and the anxiety which afflicted him was nothing to do with himself. He wanted to see her, needed to see her in situ, while on the way he was working out how to ration the information, spare the pain and the surprise, and yet wanting her to suffer it. Hen might be lovely, but she was also crafty. If he rationed information with her, kept anything back, it would only be revenge for her doing the same thing to him, to her parents, to everyone else involved with Angel, doing harm in the name of doing good. As he walked down her street, he decided against withholding anything. Repeat verbatim, spare nothing, keep nothing back. Wherever it was going to go with her, that was the way it was going to be with him. He was too tired for subterfuge anyway, too shocked to manage it. He would be calm, truthful and precise, and tell her to lock her doors. If there were any questions, they would be asked and answered one at a time.
Instead, he stumbled into her arms and wanted to cry. She held on to him, with her arms round his back, holding him tightly. She was so small, so bitterly strong. You need food, Peter, she said. Come and eat. He could hear her mother’s voice, and was glad of it. The mother who raised her, the one she thought she knew.
Yes, Hen said, she taught me to cook, too.
Up those stairs, to sit in that kitchen he liked. So different from the seaside house, a palette of bright, primary colours, clashing together joyfully, without any of the harmonious forethought of that other place. Tunes in his head, a mind full of interiors.
He ate what was put in front of him: a casserole with unidentifiable ingredients, hot and strong, with crumbly tomato bread.
Ate. Talked. Repeated, verbatim, as if he was making a comprehensive report on the last twenty-six hours. As accurate and complete as if he were a shorthand writer preparing the transcript for the next day of a trial.
An honest and impartial witness, omitting nothing, except his own emotional reactions. She followed his example, remaining silent until he had finished, although her face registered shock, surprise, anger and sorrow, even a smile when he described her mother’s hospitality, and by the end, she had crumbled her half of the loaf into very small pieces which she rolled between her fingers, as if trying to make them disappear.
‘Then I came here,’ Peter ended. ‘That part you know.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. She raised her glass. ‘Let’s drink to the dead. And to lovers everywhere. May they do a little better than those two. And to adopted children everywhere – the lucky ones.’
She was too controlled, he thought, wishing he could stop analysing and simply watch. Too controlled because she has had to be so. Like me, in a courtroom, and I am sick of it. We should all be shouting and screaming, dancing with outrage and staging some sort of riot, joining in a lynch mob, instead of waiting for the due process of law and rational thought.
‘Rick Boyd,’ she said. ‘I feel Richard Boyd right in the middle of this. Especially the bit about the broken glass. What you lot would call similar fact. Rick Boyd, a man without a centre, put on earth to mess up lives. Not worth analysing, because there’s nothing there. Not worth punishing, because he would never understand why, but eminently worth destroying. I should have killed him when I had the chance.’
She brushed her hands through her hair, blinked repeatedly. This was no point to cry or to blackmail him with tears. It simply wasn’t fair. Nothing was bloody well fair. He was looking at her differently, as if the knowledge of her parentage and her parents’ opinions made her pitiable. Let him try.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘This is the time you walk away. This is the time you should walk away. Give up the job with Thomas Noble, get the poison out of your life, forget that damn trial and everything else, especially Marianne Shearer. And me. I shouldn’t think less of you if you did, I’d still think you’re the best thing to come out of the whole business. Give up thinking you’re in some way responsible for that trial. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To make up for a personal failure. I don’t want you contaminated any more. I don’t want you in our kind of danger.’
‘Yes, I do feel responsible, I am responsible. And if I say I can’t walk away, even if you pushed me, can’t, don’t want to, I’m not going anywhere and I’m insulted by the suggestion that I should, what would you say then?’
She considered it, frowning. Peter took off his spectacles and rubbed them assiduously with the linen napkin she had left on the table, suddenly realising he had seen it before. It was the one he had given her. Oh, the magpie. He had an absurd desire to see Hen unpack that trunk full of clothes. It might be like a child with a dressing-up box.