‘Cat—’
I look at Ross. The hairs along both of his forearms are standing up straight, like his spine; it’s as if his whole body is at attention. ‘That was it, wasn’t it? The night they died? September the fourth? We were escaping. El and I. And you and Mum knew. You and Mum were helping. That was THE PLAN. Wasn’t it? For us to escape him. Here. For us never to come back.’
Ross sags. Turns his hands palm upwards to curl his fingers around my wrists. ‘Of course it was.’
I hear a sound. Above the batter of the rain and the rattle of the wind. Eerie, long and low, like the hoot of an owl.
We stood in this kitchen, just a few feet from this table, moonlight streaming across the floor. Uncertain, impatient, frazzled by nerves, dazzled by excitement, terrified by Mum’s furious urgency. Even then we didn’t know what was happening. Any of it. We had no concept at all of what escape meant.
An owl hoot. A heartbeat in which I looked at El and she looked at me. Mum’s frown. That slow slide of suspicion reserved only for us.
‘Someone’s helping us,’ El said.
Someone we can trust, I wanted to say, but didn’t. Because Mum believed handsome Prince Charmings were sly. Never ever to be trusted. Because Ross had always been our secret from the very start.
‘The owl hoot means Danger, Mum! It means Run!’
And so we did.
‘You were the lookout,’ I say.
Ross has gone pale. He glances out at the black wet night – so different from the eerie moon-bright calm of September the 4th, 1998 – and then he stands up. His shoulders are rigid. I can see the veins in his neck, the tic inside his jaw. He won’t look at me at all.
‘I tell you that I love you. That I want to live with you, be with you. I expected you to want to talk about El. And all you actually want to talk about is this house and your fucking loony grandpa.’ He marches towards the door. ‘I’m going upstairs. When I come back, we’re going to have a normal fucking conversation, all right?’
And then he’s gone. His footsteps stomping their way up the stairs.
A rumble of thunder makes me jump. The window frame rattles, lifts, and thumps back down. My thigh starts to vibrate, and when I realise it’s my phone, my shaking fingers struggle to reach it. By the time I do, the caller has hung up. I don’t recognise the number, but there’s a text. Phone me when you get this. Rafiq. And when I listen to the voicemail, she says exactly the same thing, but the tense, terse order of it alarms me. She sounds like a DI Kate Rafiq I haven’t met yet. She sounds worried. Maybe even afraid.
I should call her back. But I feel so close to the edge of something. And I’ve already looked down. I want to fall. It has to be tonight.
There’s an unread email in my inbox. From ProfessorCatherine Ward@southwarkuni.com. The kitchen light flickers as it downloads, and I stare at the buffering symbol, trying to ignore my hammering heart, my slow muzzy thoughts.
Dear DI Kate Rafiq,
Many thanks for your email. I’ve only just returned from a three-week Arctic cruise, but when I heard about your investigation, I had already resolved to contact you even before receiving your email. My colleagues (through no fault of their own, I hasten to add) were incorrect when they told you that Dr Ross MacAuley did not leave the conference until it finished at 4 p.m. on April 3rd. He did, in fact, leave on the evening of the 2nd. Specifically, at 5:45 p.m.
I am certain of the time because my Bergen flight had been brought forward due to predicted bad weather – I had only a few hours’ notice to leave the university, pack, and get to Gatwick. I saw Dr MacAuley loading his suitcase into his car and driving out of the car park exit. I know Dr MacAuley by sight; last year, he presented a paper at the BPS Symposium held in Glasgow.
Many apologies that this account should come so late in your investigation. I saw on the news that the missing woman had tragically been found, but that her death was not thought to be suspicious. It is my hope, then, that my omission so late in the day matters little, although I am, of course, available should you need me to be. My personal and office contacts are below.
Kind regards,
Catherine Ward
She’s right, of course. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean anything. Another rumble of thunder rattles the window frame. I swallow. It means he lied. To me. To the police. It’s exactly why I emailed her in the first place. It’s exactly what I worried she might say. It’s exactly what I expected her to say.
Lightning turns the kitchen white and bright like a flare, and I blink. Imagine that I see something in the garden, something wrong, something out of place, before the window returns to darkness. The house groans, restless and awake. I can hear Ross moving around upstairs; old floorboards creaking as if in warning.
I stand up. Stumble against the table, suddenly light-headed enough to see black dancing spots. My head rolls forwards, too heavy, and the accompanying dizziness is bad enough that I grab for my chair. When it falls, the crash it makes is muted, as if I’m underwater. Only when I bang my hip hard against the table do my ears recalibrate with simultaneous pops, and the sounds of the weather and the house roar back in. I set my palms on the table, steady my breathing, lean against the wood until enough of its solidity transfers to me.
I look across at the Shiraz. It’s red like old blood in the dull flickering light. It occurs to me that I’ve felt like this, strange and slow and leaden, for many, many days. I think of all those twelve-hour sleeps. All the drinks that Ross has made me while standing in front of the Poirot. The bottle of vodka on the kitchen table. The tea he always makes fresh because the pot is stewed. El’s tox screen after she died. All those pills. It’s probable that they contributed to her death, one way or another. PSYCHOACTIVE DRUGS: THE EFFICACY OF THERAPIES VS SAFE RATIOS.
I stagger over to the sink, pour out the wine, and then drink straight from the tap, tepid swallow after swallow until my stomach feels hard and full, and my head clearer. Another flash of lightning, the rumble of thunder this time scant seconds behind. I look back at the window. The thick hardwood Georgian bars and panes too small for even a child to fit through. The long, crooked nails set into its sill. Ross’s I didn’t mind them too much. Thought they would help keep El safe when I wasn’t here. And El’s everything bought, everything put back in place, made my prison smaller, more secure. Maybe they aren’t the same nails Grandpa hammered into the old scarred wood after all.
I look at those tiles in front of Mum’s Kitchener and, for the first time, I see the blood running fast and dark between them, pooling in the cracks of grout.
The floorboards creak overhead. Danger. Run.
I do. The rest I’ll think about later. Including whether or not running is a mistake. I sprint through the hallway, ignoring the warning rattle of the bird plates. In the entrance hall, I snatch a quick glance back at the staircase. Another flash lights up the empty hallway, the stained-glass window. I run for the front door.
It’s locked.
I waste stupid moments pulling back on the night latch over and over again, but I know it’s useless. I know there’s only one deadlock key.
I run back through the hallway, casting another look up to where the stairwell curves into darkness before I race back into the kitchen, ease shut its door.