Guy shrugged. ‘Went home, I suppose. Watched the nine o’clock news myself.’
Tears sprang into Mel’s eyes. ‘You were with a girl, weren’t you?’
‘Of course not,’ said Guy. ‘I wasn’t with a girl, Mel.’ He spoke slowly and steadily and looked her straight in the eye. I watched him. He was convincing. Totally convincing. I found myself wondering whether I had really seen him with the redhead that night. Maybe he was an actor after all.
Mel hesitated, her certainty shaken for a moment. Then she renewed her attack. ‘I called you. You weren’t in. You were with a girl.’ She turned to me. ‘Wasn’t he, David?’
I shrugged.
Guy shot me a look of the ‘Cheers, mate’ variety. But he wasn’t too worried. He knew Mel knew. She must have known for a while. But she still stayed with him. He was toying with her.
‘And what about the Friday before?’
‘Let me see...’ said Guy.
‘Was it the same girl?’
It had been a different girl. It was always a different girl. But I couldn’t tell Mel that.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Guy.
‘Do you think I’m stupid? Do you? Do you!’
Mel stared at Guy. Ingrid was upright now, watching her.
Guy was just a little too drunk. The corner of his mouth twitched up. Just a smidgeon. Just enough to send Mel over the edge.
She slammed her glass down on the table. ‘You sit there laughing at me! Treat me like some stupid tart who’ll keep a bed warm for you when you can’t find anything better. Do you ever wonder how I feel? Do you know what it’s like to sit at home, waiting for you to come, never knowing whether you will or whether you’ll have picked up some schoolgirl at the local Burger King?’
‘Schoolgirl?’ said Guy, as though insulted that he had been accused of underage sex.
‘You’re just as bad as your father!’ said Mel. ‘Worse!’
‘I guess you’d know,’ said Guy, quietly. Dangerously.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You’d know how I compared to my father.’
‘How can you say that?’
‘How can I say that?’ Guy said, his anger finally rising. ‘You say you don’t like the way I treat you. I didn’t seduce your mother. You want respect, but how do you expect me to respect you after what you did with my father?’
‘That’s unfair,’ Mel said. ‘I’ve told you how much I regretted that.’
Guy shrugged and reached for his glass.
‘And anyway, what about what you did in France? Your little secret deals? Your cover-ups.’
Guy looked at her sharply, his glass an inch from his lips.
‘Don’t act all innocent, Guy. I know.’
Guy didn’t look at all innocent. He looked shaken. And worried. He put his glass down without taking a drink.
‘Like I said. You’re worse than your father.’ There was a note of cruel triumph in Mel’s voice. She knew she had hit home.
‘Mel,’ said Ingrid, reaching a hand unsteadily towards her.
‘You keep out of this. I saw you falling all over him!’
‘We were only mucking around,’ said Ingrid.
‘You’ve had your eyes on him the whole time, you slut!’ Mel sneered.
Ingrid withdrew her hand. She looked genuinely hurt.
‘That wasn’t fair,’ I said to Mel.
‘I don’t give a shit.’ She stood up. ‘I’m getting my stuff and I’m going to stay somewhere else tonight. And I’ll make my own way back to London tomorrow.’
She stormed out of the bar and up the stairs to her room.
We exchanged glances, stunned. Ingrid swayed unsteadily and looked as if she was going to cry. Guy grinned weakly. I got up to follow Mel.
Guy and Mel were sharing a room. I found the door open and Mel zipping up her bag.
‘Where are you going to go?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. Anywhere.’
‘But we’re in the middle of nowhere!’
‘I don’t care. I’ll walk all night if I have to. I just have to get away from those two.’
‘You’re imagining things,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing between Guy and Ingrid.’
‘You show me a woman that isn’t after Guy and I’ll show you a lesbian,’ muttered Mel.
‘That’s not true.’
She stood upright, a tear trickling unrestrained down her cheek. ‘I was right about him though, wasn’t I? About last Friday?’
Her eyes were burning, looking straight into mine. I couldn’t lie to her. I nodded.
‘And other times?’
I shrugged. There was no need to nod.
She grabbed her bag and pushed past me down the stairs. She was marching past the front desk when I called after her. ‘Hang on a minute, Mel.’
She paused.
‘They’ll need your key.’
She handed it to me. I asked the manager behind the desk whether there was a bed and breakfast nearby that Mel could go to. I told him she had had an argument with her boyfriend and her room at the hotel would still be paid for. He understood, reached for his telephone, and had a brief conversation with a Mrs Campbell. He directed me to a place half a mile down the road.
‘I’ll walk with you,’ I said to Mel.
I handed the key to the manager, picked up her bag and walked out with her into the dusk. Although it was late, it wasn’t dark yet at this latitude. The birds were noisily preparing for their brief sleep. There was no traffic on the road. On one side was the sea, with the Scottish mainland clearly visible over the sound, on the other a mountain. We trudged along in silence, silence apart from intermittent sniffs from Mel.
She mumbled something.
‘What?’
‘I said, I probably deserve it.’
‘No you don’t,’ I said.
‘After France. And his bloody father. I probably deserve it.’
I put my arm around her and squeezed. She needed comfort. She deserved comfort. ‘Not because of that,’ I said. ‘Never because of that. That’s best forgotten.’
‘I try to push it out of my mind. And I can for a while. But only for a while.’
‘I know,’ I said. Remembering Dominique. Her body. Making love to her. The ridiculous euphoria afterwards. And then learning about her death. And the guilt. The guilt.
That week had left its scars on all of us: Mel, me. And Guy.
‘Back there you said something about Guy,’ I said. ‘About his secret deals. His cover-ups.’
‘That was nothing.’
‘It must have been something,’ I said. ‘It seemed to worry the hell out of him.’
‘You’re right, it was something.’ We walked on as Mel gathered her thoughts. Then she spoke. ‘You know why the gardener ran away?’
‘Yeah. He’d killed Dominique. He didn’t want to hang around and get caught.’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘No. He was paid to run away. By Hoyle and Guy.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I overheard them talking. They were in the dining room and I was just outside.’
‘I remember,’ I said. ‘I found you there.’
‘Did you? I don’t remember that. But I do remember what they were saying.’
‘What?’
‘They were talking about how they would pay the gardener five hundred thousand francs to disappear. Apparently Owen had spied on him having sex with Dominique, and the idea — Guy’s idea — was to tell the police this. Then once he had gone they would be bound to suspect him of killing her. Especially since the jewellery was missing.’
‘Bloody hell.’
‘Sure enough, that afternoon the gardener disappeared. And the police never found him.’
‘Until this year.’
‘What?’
‘Yeah. Didn’t you know? Actually, I’m not surprised Guy didn’t tell you. They found him a few weeks ago in a dustbin in Marseilles.’