‘How are you feeling?’
‘Bored. I lie in bed. I listen to the radio. I watch TV. I stare out the window, counting birds on the telephone wire. I force my mind to go blank.’
‘Don’t you have assignments?’
‘They’ll never let me be a lawyer.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘Yes, I do.’
He scratches the hair above his navel. ‘You’ve never asked me about that night.’
‘I was there.’
‘You probably remember more than I do. It felt like someone else was doing those things. That’s why it took me so long to acknowledge what happened. I wanted to blame everyone else – the doctors, Mum and Dad, the drugs. That’s what people do, isn’t it? Blame everybody else because you don’t want to deal with their guilt and their pain.’
‘Yes.’
‘For years I blocked it out. I pretended it was someone else – a different version of me. An alter ego, or a split personality.’
‘What changed?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe it was the drugs. Maybe it was something in my mind. One day I had a sort of epiphany and started talking to people. Listening. Remembering. Forgiving.’
‘Who do you have to forgive?’
‘Myself.’
Elias must see the shock on my face.
‘If I don’t forgive myself, the remorse will consume me,’ he explains. ‘I was nineteen when it happened. I’ve had twenty years to learn that if you hold onto the pain and guilt it just keeps growing.’
He makes it sound so easy. For as long as I can remember, I have felt a vast weight resting on me, a sadness that has always been part of me yet doesn’t belong to me. That’s how I feel when I’m lying on the bench in the basement, holding the steel bar and weight plates off my chest so I can breathe.
Forgiveness and revenge are not opposing strategies or binary choices. Revenge can be empowering if the person who hurt you did so on purpose. But Elias didn’t understand what he was doing. If I can forgive him, I can cast aside the weight, just like he has.
The doorbell rings again. This time I check the spyhole. My neighbour, Mr Gibson, is on the doorstep.
‘Hello, Brendan. You’re up early.’
‘So are you,’ he says. ‘Going for a run?’
‘Still deciding. Has Poppy been barking again?’
‘No. Nothing like that. We had a visitor just now – a reporter from the Daily Mail. He said that Elias has been released from Rampton.’
‘He’s here for a few days.’
‘Under guard?’
‘He’s recovered. A mental health tribunal has released him.’
Mr Gibson glances over his shoulder. Mrs Gibson is probably watching from their front window. She’s a curtain twitcher, who seems to scowl disapprovingly at even the slightest change in the streetscape.
‘As convenor of our neighbourhood watch, I think I should have been informed,’ says Brendan.
‘Why?’
‘He’s a … he’s a … He’s a convicted killer.’
‘No. He was never convicted.’
‘He killed your family.’
‘His schizophrenia led to their deaths. A state of acute psychotic distress.’
‘He was out of his mind.’
‘Exactly. And now he’s well again.’
Brendan begins to argue, saying residents should have been consulted. ‘There are laws,’ he says.
‘No, there aren’t,’ I reply. ‘You have no rights to be informed or to even ask about Elias’s record or his health status. He isn’t a sex offender or a paedophile. He’s a schizophrenic and he’s fully medicated.’
‘Hello,’ says a voice from behind me. ‘What a lovely morning.’
Elias appears. ‘Mr Gibson, isn’t it? Lovely to see you again. I’m Elias.’
He holds out his hand and smiles disarmingly. The older man seems unsure of what to do. Prejudice clashes with politeness and the latter wins out. They shake hands.
‘Your garden looks wonderful,’ says Elias. ‘I can’t wait for the spring. What have you planted along the side fence? It looks like a climbing rose.’
‘The Pippin,’ says Brendan. ‘It has a double bloom.’
‘What colour?’
‘Warm pink, with just a hint of orange on the petals.’
‘I was only saying to Cyrus that I’d love to get a cutting.’
‘Are you interested in gardening?’
‘I did quite a bit at Rampton. They had a lovely garden. But I’m nowhere near as knowledgeable as you. I’d love to do something with our back garden. Perhaps you could give me some pointers.’
I can almost see Brendan’s chest puff out.
‘Having a dog doesn’t help, but I could offer some suggestions.’
‘That would be wonderful. I’m only here for a few days, but when I come back.’
‘Yes. Right. Of course.’
‘Give my regards to Mrs Gibson.’
‘I will.’
The door closes. Elias grins at me. ‘That went well,’ he says.
Yes, but there will be more reporters coming and more neighbours knocking or gossiping. More rumours. More ghost stories. How long before local children are daring each other to ring the doorbell and run away?
Boo Radley has come to live with me.
54
Evie
The film crew has set up outside the Little Drummer. There are guys with hipster beards and girls in low-slung jeans and baseball hats, who spend a lot of time clipping lights onto tripods and hooking up cables that snake across the footpath. Each scene takes forever to set up and only seconds to shoot.
They have taken over the bar for the evening, filming indoors and outdoors, which must annoy Brando. I haven’t seen him since he fired me.
Cyrus says this reconstruction is important because it might trigger people’s memories and encourage them to come forward with information. He says that sometimes small details that seem inconsequential can prove to be the most crucial. I wanted to say that I’m a small detail and I’ve never been important, but he’d have some perfectly reasonable argument that made me feel selfish and even smaller.
DCI Hoyle is also here, walking around with a straight back and clenched buttocks like he’s got a stick up his arse. I’ve noticed that he doesn’t make eye contact with women when he talks to them. Instead, he looks past them, or over them. It could be nervousness or contempt.
A female police officer has been dressed up to look like Daniela, but the wig looks stupid and she’s forty pounds heavier. If I ever go missing, I want them to choose someone hotter than me for the reconstruction. I know that sounds vain, but I don’t want to look like a meth-addict or a baby-shaker. Cara Delevingne would be good, or that girl from Emily in Paris.
The police have found traffic-camera footage of the car, a stolen silver Prius, which was filmed about four streets from the bar. A day later, it was found burned out in a layby in Gedling. According to Cyrus there are more than two hundred CCTV cameras in Nottingham, filming intersections and public spaces. He said the local council hires people to sit in a room and watch them all day. I could do that. It couldn’t be worse than those TV shows about room renovations, or fat people trying to lose weight.