Neil was lying on the bed.
As if from another time, Beckie’s muffled voice burbled on: ‘And I suppose toast. When we were making that salad there was like nothing to put in it, and I mean nothing.’
His face was huge and purple.
There was a chain, a big metal chain, digging into his neck and his eyes were open and red. His legs were drawn up and over to one side.
This couldn’t be what she was seeing.
Everything had to go back a second. Stop and go back.
‘Not even lettuce,’ said Beckie’s voice.
Now Flora was on the bed, wordless sounds at the back of her throat, her fingers pulling at the chain, his eyes staring through her.
Vital signs vital signs vital signs.
She clutched him and put a hand to his awful purple neck to feel for a pulse, repeating, stupidly, the whole time: ‘It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right.’ Repeating it even as she felt the coolness, the slight stiffness under her hands.
Rigor mortis.
Just the first signs of it.
Oh no no.
No no no no.
‘Alec,’ she said, and put both hands to his swollen face; willed his eyes to look back at her. ‘Alec. I’m here. I’m here now.’
Beckie’s steps on the landing. ‘Mum, can I –’
She had never done anything as hard as leaving him, as taking her hands from him, as going to the door, getting the other side of it and pulling it shut. Meeting Beckie’s eyes. ‘Can you what, darling?’
The evening light was a hot, elongated rectangle stretching across the landing carpet. Beckie stood half inside it and Flora found she couldn’t quite focus on her, she couldn’t make her eyes rest on Beckie or anything else; her gaze was darting about the landing, to the window with its sunlit green vista of tree canopies, to the Greek key-patterned cornice, the Victorian table with a vase of roses on it, and a blue and white Chinese lamp, and a bowl of marble eggs.
It was as if there was something important she had to find, something that would anchor her to the old reality and stop this from happening, stop everything sliding away.
No no no Alec.
This can’t be, you can’t be in there dead with a chain round your neck you have to come back and what happened, the Johnsons came and one of them grabbed you and you couldn’t fight them, you’re just like you say a ‘weedy wee guy’, you’re not strong enough and they –
What did they do?
And you must have been thinking Ruth and Beckie and you were all alone when –
‘Can I just give her this?’ Beckie held out a colourful booklet with a photograph of broccoli, a tomato, a carrot, an aubergine, an orange and grapes on the front and the title Ten Tips for Healthy Eating in big green letters. ‘I got it from the Health Centre, remember that time I had that funny thing on my tongue but we had to wait like an hour or something before Dr Swain could see me?’
When she’d sat with Beckie in the Health Centre waiting area – and meanwhile Alec had been in a lecture theatre or a student laboratory or his own research lab, setting up an experiment or analysing data, or making coffee for himself and his fellow geeks in the grubby kitchen, or cracking some appalling, esoteric joke only another biologist would appreciate, and at the same time managing to send Flora twenty text messages reassuring her that he was a hundred per cent sure it was just an ulcer, but at the same time bugging her to let him know what was happening as it was happening.
‘Mum?’
I won’t let them hurt her I’ll never let them hurt her.
‘Yes, good idea,’ Flora said brightly. ‘Why don’t we go round to Caroline’s and give it to her now, before she starts her dinner?’
Beckie looked doubtful. ‘Like, right now this minute?’
‘And you can take an inventory of her fridge and cupboards.’
‘And I can be vicious but fair?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Okay!’
In fact it was possible to pretend, it was possible to stay bright and upbeat and respond normally to Beckie as they left the house and walked the few steps down the street to Caroline’s. It was possible right up to the point Caroline opened the door and looked at her.
‘Thanks, Beckster!’ Caroline took the booklet Beckie was brandishing. ‘Right enough my eating habits need healthied up!’
‘Can we do an intratory… an invertary of what’s in your cupboards and your fridge? Then we can see what stuff you need to get.’
‘Okay-doke, I’m up for it. You go through to the kitchen.’
As soon as Beckie was out of earshot, Flora said, ‘Alec’s dead. He’s dead.’
Caroline just stared at her.
Then: ‘What?’
‘He’s dead.’
Still staring at Flora: ‘You carry on for a minute there, okay Beckie? Me and your mum are doing boring grown-up stuff.’
‘Okay!’ came Beckie’s voice from the kitchen.
Caroline shut the sitting room door behind them. ‘Flora, what –’
‘I found him just now, he’s lying on the bed with a chain round his neck, he’s been – strangled – he’s –’
‘He’s definitely dead?’
‘Of course he’s definitely dead! Do you think I would fucking be here if he wasn’t, do you think I would have left him –’
‘Okay –’
‘I was a fucking nurse, of course I know he’s fucking dead! The Johnsons have killed him! They’ve waited till we let our guard down and then they’ve – they’ve killed Alec, Caroline! They’ve killed Alec.’
As the words were absorbed into the fabric of the room, Flora stood staring stupidly at Caroline.
‘They’ve killed Neil.’
Here was where Caroline had to laugh and say, Don’t be ridiculous, Flora. Because it was ridiculous. Because it couldn’t be true.
But instead:
‘Oh God, no. Oh Flora… And they’ve left him on your bed?’
All she could do was nod.
‘Oh Christ – to incriminate you?’
But Flora couldn’t summon the energy to care. She couldn’t do anything, she found, but sink to her knees on the carpet, sink to her hands, to all fours like an animal, and No no no no no repeated in her head, and Caroline had her by the shoulders and was speaking to her but what did it matter, what did anything matter now and –
I’d do anything to keep her safe.
It was Alec’s voice in her head and as waves of loss rushed through her they brought him, they carried him to her and she was screaming in her head at him to fight, fight, even as she knew it was over, his fight was over, Alec’s fight was over except in this one way, in this one thing, in the strength that he had always given her.
She pushed herself up, got herself to her feet, shakily, a hand on Caroline’s shoulder, and straightened. She stood straight and said, ‘Yes. Yes. To incriminate me – That’s why they – they strangled him. If they’d used a knife or a gun, the pattern… the forensics would clear me, because there’d be no blood on me, but… Using a chain to strangle him with, there’ll be nothing to clear me, and I touched it –’
‘Whoa. Let’s just call the police and ambulance, first off, and then –’