“You broke my heart,” my mother said. “You break my heart whenever I think about you.”
“Got it,” I said. “It’s just a shame that none my therapists has managed to change my memory to what you prefer. None of them: Jennifer, Lauren, Caroline, Moira, Annabel, Eilish, Stacey. Have I forgotten anyone? Oh right, of course, you wouldn’t know. You’ve never been. You don’t need to because you’ve nothing on your conscience, and you won’t come with me because you don’t owe me a thing.”
She didn’t answer, just sat there praying, with her needles clicking away as fast as ever. I was summoning the courage to stamp all over my dreams.
“What was his name?” I asked her. “This old friend who came to you?”
“Gary?” said my mother. “Gavin? It started with a G, anyway.”
“Gus,” I said as the walls came down on me. He’d been to my mother months ago and asked about me.
“Could have been Gustav,” my mother said. “Gus for short.” Which didn’t seem likely although, as she said it, something like a faint smell was beginning to distract me. A breath of an idea, far away.
I did my breathing. In for five out for six, in for six out for eight. So none of it had happened. Not really. We hadn’t chanced on each other. He hadn’t forgotten the day with the cakes. He’d tracked me down after that day and found my mother. Why? He hadn’t understood, like some super hero, the first time I told him. He’d been mugging up on it for months. Of course he had. Where? Probably in the library. That’s when he learned where my flat was too. I could feel the tears gathering. How many times had I told myself it was far too good to be true? But the kids were true, and what a great dad he was, and Pram was true even if House and Shed were… if Steve was right. And why? What was the point of it all? It wasn’t as if it was random. He had set me up. He’d laid a plan and he’d put it in motion the day that Becky die-
I shook my head.
“What?” said my mother.
No way. Becky didn’t kill herself. No way. Everything was coming clear now. The diary was hers but the writing on the note, like the writing in the workshop, was his. Gus had snagged me that day in Marks and Spencer’s. I was part of the plan.
“What?” said my mother again.
“I can’t believe it!” I burst out. “How can someone fool you so completely?” He was acting the whole time, pretending to understand, pretending to love and care and-He made some mistakes, though. No one could have got over Becky so quickly. That was sick. And no one would have let a stranger take his daughter to school the day after her mum died. No one would have sent his daughter to school. What was that all about? And he should have wanted to know where Ros had gone to. Where the hell had Ros gone to? And where exactly did I come in? What part of the plan was I? All of a sudden, I knew.
I was his alibi. I was to hear him talking to her, in the food hall, and I was to drive him home. He knew I was the type, after the day with cakes. He knew I was interfering (inappropriate, unprofessional). I was to drive him home and persuade him to call the police. And I was to find the note too. I was supposed to be with him from before Becky died until the police started searching. It was only when it all went wrong that he came up with that mad story about talking to a voice-mail. And that was only because the hill walker found the car so quick. Oh my God! The hill walker. Gus had asked him to come to the funeral. I leapt to my feet.
Then I sat down again. No, no, that was crazy. He only wrote last night. He told me he was asking him to the funeral. Actually he was just making contact. If he was going to “‘pay back” the hill walker, it would be another long slow plan he put together, like the one he’d put together for me.
I really needed to keep calm and try to see which bits of this hall of mirrors were real and which bits were Gus’s stories, as borrowed and fake and stupid as the famous sculptures he said were his that only someone as dumb as me wouldn’t have heard of, like Steve had.
So what was true? Gus killed his wife. Tricked me. Ros disappeared.
And all of a sudden I knew where she was. Knew why Gus couldn’t face the workshop too.
He wouldn’t be there. He wouldn’t dare. Not after we’d told him that the cops were onto him. I warned my mum not to let him in if he turned up at her door-it didn’t take much persuasion: all I had to say was drugs and she couldn’t get me out fast enough to get the chain on at the back of me. I took the farm track instead of the lane through the caravan site, stopped in the farmyard, and waited for the workers to come over and tell me I shouldn’t be there.
“A week past Tuesday,” I said. “A week yesterday. That was the day that really got you pissed off, eh?”
“Coming and going all bloody day, the pair of them,” said the fat one. He hawked and spat the way men do. Some men.
“Were they really?” I said “Coming and going? Both directions?
“You were there,” he said. “What you asking me for?” He sniffed back hard again and then stopped before he spat.
I’d never get them to think carefully enough. Maybe the police would have more luck when it fell to them, but I’d bet anything that one car left and then another car left hours later and nobody came back in between times. Not driving anyway. Because the only way that Gus could have done it would be to take his car to somewhere nearby and leave it there. Get a bus back and walk the footpath home. Then take Becky in her car, send it over the cliff, and come to town on his own to pick up Ruby, go to Marks and Spencer’s, and meet me. And all the time Dillon was in his cot in his sodden nappy.
“Never mind,” I said to the farm guy. “You better gob that out before it chokes you.”
I trundled on down the track to the back of the house. My charger was in my bag. I got out at the back porch, unplugged the washing machine, plugged the charger in, and hooked up the dead phone from the basket. With my own mobile, I started to call Gizzy’s number. I’d ask her for Ros’s number and I’d ring it and then I’d know. But I didn’t need to. Once the battery started charging, Ros’s phone lit up like Christmas. Missed calls and voice-mails. Texts and e-mails. Gizzy’s number was there. Her sister’s number in Poland too. And so it was true.
I turned my feet towards the rough path over the turf that led to the workshop, and the brick grave he’d built inside, and to whatever was left of her in there. The sun was sinking in one of those mad splashes of pink and orange that would look hellish anywhere else but a sunset, and the sea was calm, just rippling in without a hint of foam. It was heaven here. Just heaven. And everything I’d asked myself about Becky-asking what was wrong, what did she want for, living like this?-was true of Gus now. All his talent and his wife and his kids and this beautiful place. What was wrong with him to carve out this evil from life and throw everything precious away?
I think I saw him out of the side of my eye quite a while before my mind took in what I was seeing. There was no jolt anyway, when I turned round and looked full on. He was sitting with his back against the workshop wall, facing out to sea. He’d changed his clothes again, long shorts with pockets on the legs and thick walking boots. Better boots than the ones he’d worn to the funeral. He had put on jewelry too, strands of coloured string and shells on leather round his neck. And Jesus, he’d cut off all his hair. It was sticking up like a brush. He watched me approach him without turning his head. I could see the glitter of reflected light as his eyes moved in their sockets.