Relief broke over him, lightening his expression. ‘Leanne. It’s Leanne.’
‘The devious, twisted bastards,’ Stephanie said, sounding almost admiring. ‘They’ve been plotting this ever since Scarlett told Leanne I was going to be Jimmy’s guardian. She’d grown to love him. She was desperate to keep him. And the selfish, greedy bastards figured out a way to do it that means they get access to a chunk of the money as well, with Simon set up as the doctor in the house. With Simon and Marina controlling the trust fund, I bet Simon and Leanne are sitting pretty out here in their castle in the woods.’
Nick stood up. ‘Thank Christ I didn’t go to Essex police with our theories about Leanne being murdered. I’d have been a bloody laughing stock. Nick the Greek with egg from head to toe.’
‘They’re still criminals, Nick. They abducted Jimmy and, like you said, they must be living high on the hog off the back of the TOmorrow trust. We’ve got as much leverage against Simon and Leanne as we had against Simon and Marina. We can still get Jimmy back.’
Nick’s answering smile was grim. ‘Damn right. I’m ready when you are.’
Fifteen minutes later, they set off up the short paved driveway. Nick had insisted they wait, sitting in the car with the doors open. ‘Don’t close the door. The click of the lock, that’s the kind of artificial sound that really carries in places like this. We’ll give them a little bit of time to settle into their normal routine. That way they’ll be nice and relaxed and not expecting the shit to hit the fan.’
Then he had a better idea. ‘Let’s push the car across the gateway. That way, if they decide to make a run for it or call reinforcements, they’re fucked.’
And so he let off the handbrake, and with scarcely a sound, they pushed the tinny little car forward until it completely blocked the entrance to the house. To get through themselves, they had to treat the car itself as a kind of passageway they had to scramble through.
Nick must be able to hear the thudding of her heart, Stephanie thought as they approached the house. It felt like wading through a fairy story. The house gleamed with recent maintenance, its shutters immaculate, its stucco spotless, its metalwork rust free. Window boxes filled with flowering bulbs perched on every sill and balustrade. Warm light glowed through the blinds in the ground-floor windows. The Brothers Grimm meet a TV makeover show.
They climbed the four steps to the porch as quietly as possible. Then, ignoring the doorbell, Nick hammered with his torch on the heavy wooden planks of the door. They heard no footsteps approaching, so closely did the door fit its frame. Without warning, it swung back on its hinges. The woman who answered it wasn’t facing them. She was looking over her shoulder, laughing at something someone inside had said or done.
Stephanie thought she was going to throw up.
The woman turned to them and all the animation and colour drained from her face. Lot’s wife must have looked a lot like that, Stephanie thought irrelevantly. Time itself seemed to slow as she struggled to make sense of what – or rather who – she was seeing. ‘Hi, Scarlett,’ she said. She heard Nick’s sharp intake of breath behind her. ‘Aren’t you going to ask us in?’
8
Stephanie’s words galvanised Scarlett into action. She tried to slam the door on them, but Nick was too fast and too practised for that. His arm shot out and he leaned his whole weight against the edge of the door for maximum leverage. Scarlett was forced to give ground. As she skittered backwards, Stephanie and Nick pushed their way inside.
‘How could you?’ Stephanie said, her voice scarcely above a contemptuous whisper.
The sound of chopping came from a brightly lit room to the right, followed by Simon’s voice. ‘Who is it, love?’
Stephanie carried on into the warm kitchen. Simon stood at a wooden butcher’s block dicing onions. Seeing her, he stopped in mid-action, the knife clattering to the board, his mouth flapping like a panicked goldfish. At the same moment, Jimmy saw her and clambered out of his chair, hurtling across the short distance between them. ‘Stephie,’ he shouted happily. ‘I love you.’ He threw his arms round her legs, laughing and whooping. ‘Are we going home soon?’ he added, oblivious to the stunned and horrified faces around the room.
‘Steph’s just come to visit, to make sure you’ve settled in,’ Scarlett said, sweeping past Stephanie and grabbing Jimmy. In one seamless motion, she handed him off to Simon. ‘You go and play upstairs with your Lego with Simon. I’ve got things to talk about with Steph.’ Her smile was as convincing as an octogenarian’s toupee.
‘I’ll go with the boys,’ Nick said, following Simon.
‘Stephie,’ Jimmy’s voice was sharp with longing as he was carried out of the kitchen, arms stretching over Simon’s shoulder.
‘Later,’ Scarlett said, shutting the kitchen door behind them. For a dead woman, she appeared in remarkably good health. She was lightly tanned and looked fit, eyes sparkling and skin smooth. Her hair had grown back, a thick and multi-shaded blonde that spoke of expensive visits to a good hairdresser. Probably not in the local village. It was loosely fastened with a silver hairclip. She spread her arms in an invitation to embrace. ‘I am so sorry, Steph. You have no idea how much I hated keeping you in the dark.’
The warmth of Scarlett’s approach almost wrong-footed Stephanie. Almost, but not quite. Struggling to speak, the blood pounding in her ears, she finally found her tongue. ‘How dare you? After what you’ve put Jimmy through. How dare you try to shrug this off like it’s no big deal?’
Scarlett took a bottle of Prosecco from the big American-style fridge and calmly popped the cork. ‘Jimmy’s fine. You saw that for yourself.’ She reached into a glass-fronted cupboard for a pair of champagne flutes. As she poured, she shook her head in a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger way. ‘You know better than anyone how bloody impossible my life was, especially after the cancer. I couldn’t go anywhere, do anything without a pack of paps on my tail. I couldn’t live like that. Nobody could. I’d had it up to here, Steph. The stress made me ill. Literally, they nearly killed me.’
Sweat prickling the back of her neck, Stephanie was struggling to find an even keel in this conversation. Scarlett was so matter-of-fact. Offhand, almost. Not like a woman who has been caught out faking her own death and abducting her own child a continent away. And her own emotions were swinging wildly between relief that her friend was still alive and rage at what Scarlett had done. ‘You could have retired from public life. Moved abroad where nobody knew who you were.’ Stephanie gave a bitter little laugh. ‘Somewhere like bloody Transylvania. I bet you can shop here no trouble without being mobbed.’
Scarlett held a glass out to Stephanie, who waved it away. Scarlett put it down on the counter close to her instead. ‘As it happens, I can. And we did think about that. But it was complicated. A doctor like Simon doesn’t make a lot of money in Romania. And even though it’s cheap to live here, it still cost us a bomb to do this place up. Then there’s other things that don’t come cheap. Satellite Internet, multichannel TV, that kind of thing. And if you want anything better than the basic shit, you have to pay through the nose. So we needed to make sure the money kept coming in. I earned the right to a decent life, Steph. But those fucking jackals were robbing me of it.’
There was something shocking about Scarlett’s complete lack of shame. ‘So you set up the terminal cancer and the Swimathon to make sure the TOmorrow Trust would keep you in the style to which you’ve become accustomed?’
Anyone else would have flinched at Stephanie’s bitter sarcasm, but Scarlett merely smiled and tipped her glass towards her former friend.