Then there was just total supposition based on all of this information. I suspected that Simon and Janine had lived completely separate lives, probably for a long time. This wasn’t just because of the Monaco situation （though it obviously bolstered the theory – who spends most of the year away from their partner if they don’t need to?）， the gossip had long been that Janine had grown tired of Simon’s constant infidelities and had finally taken action to protect herself and her stake in the business. The rumour （backed up by Tina, who reiterated it in an excited whisper one day when I met her for a drink after work） was that the kicker came when Simon was discovered to have kept another yacht for his mistress and had been using a speed-boat to ferry him between the two when the family were on holiday. Threatening to divorce him and take half his money, Janine played a blinder and somehow managed （with the help of a truckload of accountants who she must’ve been paying handsomely） to persuade Simon that there was another option. No divorce or loss of assets, but he had to sign the business over to her. Simon must’ve done the maths, realised that this deal kept him Janine’s prisoner, and still signed the papers. Better to be a rich prisoner than suffer the indignity of the tabloids raking over your private life and having to hand over a hefty chunk of cash to boot. There was an upside – Janine living in Monaco meant that he would no longer pay tax. Rich people see tax the way some people see climate change – it’s a social justice issue worth taking to the streets for. The very rich mainly live under the impression that they earned their money. They have no time for any theoretical argument about whether it’s truly possible for anyone to deserve such an individual accumulation of wealth – once they have it, they turn Gollum-like, ferocious in their protection of their goods and wealth.
So Janine had lived a nice life in Monaco, where lunches took weeks of planning and there was much complaining to be done about the responsibilities of staff, and Simon was free to do whatever he wanted back in London. Bryony wasn’t involved in the equation at all really. She was their daughter, in that she held the family name and provided the bridge between her parents, but it didn’t seem like she was playing Monopoly round the fire at Christmas with them. It didn’t feel like the kind of family you would recognise – either functional or dysfunctional. Instead their unit felt like one which had all the bearings of something enviable, with none of the emotions which would actually make it so.
Maybe I was wrong. The problem with doing all of this from a distance was that I could never really know these people and their innermost thoughts. Then again, I thought I understood Jimmy inside and out and he’d surprised me. His betrayal made him 5 per cent more interesting at least. Maybe Janine and Simon really did love Bryony in a very deep and real sense. I could only go on what I glimpsed. Not that it mattered, I wasn’t trying to absolve myself or hope that it wouldn’t hurt Simon to lose his daughter. I’d have killed him first if I wanted to spare him that pain. No, obviously the sequence in which I murdered his loved ones was crucial. That’s why he came last. He had to experience it all. The reveal would be the thing that broke him.
*
I knew it was a long shot – I couldn’t rely on such a sloppy approach – and yet something in me couldn’t shut it down without even trying it out, albeit from a slightly different tack. I wouldn’t waste any time on it – it was a one-time attempt and it had to be done fast, without too much thought. I took myself off at lunchtime to buy six luxury beauty products in cash from a few different department stores. I bought a range of face creams, one with peach seed extract. When I got back to the office, I locked myself in the disabled toilet, spread them out on the floor and got to work. The most expensive bottle contained a facemask made from pearls （is there anything now that brands won’t add to a beauty product to make it more desirable? At some point, a clever marketing manager will suggest using antimatter in a night serum and the rich women of London, Moscow and New York will lap it up） and I hazarded a guess that Bryony would, if she bothered even to open the box, have an eye for the most high-end product. This was the bottle I was staking it all on. It was a tree to be hidden in a forest – hence the other products ready to be packed beside it in a fancy box. All nice stuff, but she’d have tried most of it already. And there’s nothing as alluring to a vain Instagrammer as a new product promising a level of luminosity not seen before.
The facemask and the cream which contained the peach-seed extract were made by the same company. That was important for any future investigation. The other products were a mishmash of brands. I decanted four drops of the cream into the facemask bottle using a pipette I’d bought at a veterinary surgery a few weeks back （for my poor dog’s eye condition. Animal lovers are always mad to talk about ailments, and I had to work hard on my feet to explain the fictitious dog’s weepy eye to the weedy-looking nurse who seemed to find this condition completely fascinating） and shook the bottle vigorously. Opening it again, I sniffed the liquid. If it smelt like peach I’d be in trouble. It pretty much smelt like any generic face lotion. Sweet, but not identifiably fruity. I needed a little more reassurance though, and added one drop of the almond essence you add to cakes to be certain. That stuff overpowers anything else in a recipe. One more shake and I sniffed it again. Success. The liquid now reminded me of a bakery, warm and reassuring, which, given my intent, felt pleasingly inappropriate.