‘Of course I did,’ he said, sounding impatient now. ‘It was in all the papers a few months ago. It’s a meaningless statistic.’
‘Meaningless? Doesn’t it make you think?’
‘It makes me think the poorest half of the world should get their act together.’
‘Really?’ Rachel stared at him, looking for traces of irony, reluctant to believe that he could actually mean what he was saying. She was forced to conclude that he did. ‘I’ll never understand you, or people like you. What … gives you pleasure, exactly? What do you live for?’
‘I’ll tell you what turns me on,’ said Freddie, although this wasn’t quite the question he’d been asked. ‘Youthful outpourings of political naivety. I find those incredibly exciting. In fact the only thing that’s more exciting is when they’re delivered in a Yorkshire accent.’ He looked around, and gestured with his eyes towards the toilet at the rear of the cabin. ‘Come on, this is our chance to join the mile-high club. On a private jet! When are you going to have an opportunity like this again?’
Rachel reminded him that there were children on board, and to emphasize the fact, she spent the rest of the flight sitting with them.
*
The Mercedes was waiting for them again at Battersea helipad, but, unusually, Faustina was there too, sitting in the car with her husband. On the drive home, she placed herself between the girls on the back seat, with Rachel in the front. Freddie took a taxi home. Faustina kept both arms around the girls and hugged them tightly. Neither she nor Jules talked very much. The atmosphere was tense, uneasy.
‘Is something wrong?’ Rachel asked, when they reached the house. Faustina took the twins straight up the front steps, almost pushing them along. Rachel and Jules took their usual route around to the back.
‘I’ll show you.’
Instead of using the staff door that opened onto the little kitchen, he led Rachel up the steps and into the garden. It was filled with builders’ junk, as always, and there were illuminated warning barriers fencing off the massive pit at its centre.
Jules took Rachel right to the eastern wall and then pointed at something on the ground. It was a scrap of tarpaulin, covering what appeared to be some sort of animal shape.
‘Mortimer,’ he said simply.
‘Oh no …’ Rachel knelt down, and reached out to touch the motionless bundle. ‘Not Mortimer.’ Her voice cracked and tears started to well up.
‘Don’t touch,’ he said. ‘Don’t look. It’s terrible.’
‘Why?’ said Rachel. ‘Why, what happened?’
‘Something attacked him. We heard terrible noises in the garden. By the time we got there, he was dead.’
‘But what could have attacked him? A fox? No, he could win a fight with a fox, surely?’
‘Bigger than a fox. Must be. Don’t look!’
Rachel had been about to raise the tarpaulin in spite of herself.
‘It’s terrible. His face — all gone. Half his body — gone. Eaten.’ He took Rachel by the arm and helped her gently to her feet. ‘Come on. Come inside for a drink. We’ll tell the girls in the morning.’
14
Later, Rachel would tell the doctors that was the day — the Sunday she went to Lausanne, the day Mortimer died — that everything started to fall apart, and the horror began.
On Tuesday she had booked her visit to see Alison in Eastwood Park.
Rachel had never visited a prison before and had no idea what to expect. It was in a rural setting and involved a long bus ride from the nearest railway station, alongside passengers who all wore the same closed, mask-like but apprehensive expressions. The gateway to the prison looked more like the entrance to a suburban housing estate than anything else. Rachel had brought every piece of ID that she possessed and this was a good thing because she had to show all of them before she could be admitted to the waiting area. Here, she and the other visitors were held for more than twenty-five minutes before a bell sounded and they were led into the hall.
Rachel had not seen Alison for five years or more, and their week together in Beverley back in the summer of 2003 seemed a lifetime ago. She was looking thin and her hair was cut shorter than Rachel could ever remember seeing it. It was not clear that she was especially happy to see her old friend. The visiting hall was full, and the tables were closer together than Rachel would have imagined. They both felt uncomfortable, at first, and their conversation was stilted, consisting mainly of Alison’s answers to questions about prison routine.
‘It’s so boring,’ she kept saying. ‘Thank God we’ve got TVs in the cells because otherwise we’d go mad. Mind you, they only let you have those because lock-up’s cheaper than letting you out and having to keep an eye on you.’
‘Do you have classes and things?’
‘Yeah, they’re pretty crap, but they give you something to do. I’ve been giving a few art classes myself. Weekends are the worst. We get locked up at five fifteen. Fuck, that gets depressing.’
Rachel reached across the table and clasped her hand.
‘It’s so good to see you again. You will come and see me when you get out, won’t you?’
‘Yeah, if you want me to,’ said Alison, uncertainly.
‘Of course I do. I’ve missed you. We shouldn’t have left it so long.’
Alison hesitated a moment, and said: ‘Well, that wasn’t exactly my fault.’
Rachel frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You know what I mean,’ she answered; and now, as she looked across at Rachel, there was a challenge in her eyes.
‘Alison, I wrote to you. I phoned. I texted. You never answered. Why not?’
‘Why not?’ Alison gave a quiet, disbelieving laugh. ‘Because … Because why would I want to stay friends with someone who judged me, and disapproved of me?’
‘I never did that.’
‘Didn’t you? I seem to remember that you called me a pervert.’
‘What? I never did that.’
‘You implied it.’
‘How? How did I imply it?’
Alison lowered her voice, but her tone was still emphatic as she said: ‘By saying that incest was “right up my street”.’
Rachel stared at her, staggered by this allegation. ‘When did I say that?’
‘Just after I wrote to you to say I was gay.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Rachel. ‘I really don’t.’
Alison leaned forward, more insistent than ever. ‘We’d just started using Snapchat, remember? And I messaged you, asking if you’d got my letter.’
‘That’s right. I was at Harewood House, with my brother.’
‘And you wrote a message back. It said you were “doing the incest thing with him”.’
She sat with her arms folded, waiting for a response.
Rachel thought hard; tried to think back to that evening, sitting with her brother in the late-summer sunshine on the terrace. She and Alison had only just started using Snapchat, and she had barely used it since. She pictured herself writing with her forefinger … She couldn’t remember the message she had written, exactly, but a possible explanation began to dawn on her. A smile spread across her face, slowly, grew broader and broader, and then she put her face in her hands and rocked forwards, her body shaking. After a few seconds she looked up and said: ‘I think there’s a chance, you know— just the smallest chance — that I said I was doing the nicest thing.’ Alison’s mouth was half open in astonishment, so she repeated: ‘The nicest thing, Al. Nicest, not incest. Why would I have said incest?’