‘—died?’ I offer.
‘Yeah, and after that Dad moved in with Alfred and Mitzi at The Hydes and they did Krampus Night there for him and his friends. Then we came along, and Mom and Dad did it for us at The Hydes. Then Oliver had kids and now it happens at their place. It’s just kept going. It’s fun, I promise you. Weird, but—’
‘How weird?’ I chip in again.
He laughs. ‘Pretty. But… mostly just harmless fun. Hide and seek, parlour games, scary masks and costumes. Kids love it. Well, it terrifies them, but you know what I mean. It’s character building. That’s why Dad kept it going for us and why Ollie does it for his kids. Maybe one day we’ll do it for our—’
‘Woah there!’ I interject quickly. ‘Let’s just get through one Krampusnacht before we start making sweeping statements, okay?’
‘Okay,’ he says, with a shrug of acceptance.
‘Great. Now, why exactly do I need a torch?’
* * *
As I lie in bed that night, not for the first time, I try to imagine the bizarre childhood Edward and his siblings must have had. I picture Robert as their father, how he must have been with them, how he must have wanted to share a piece of his own childhood with them. And then my thoughts move to Eleanor, the woman holding the whole family together, her old-world connections and diplomacy capable of anything but discussing death with her own children. The Holbeck siblings sent off to their respective psychiatrists and the gap Bobby left filled with other things. The day Bobby died, all of the expectations and responsibilities heaped on him fell to Edward. No wonder things have been hard between Edward and his family; this was never his birthright. All of this duty should never have been his to bear; I can’t blame him for running scared from a family that ostensibly killed the last guy who had the job before him.
I wonder if Robert mentions any of this on his tape. If his story is a memoir or a thriller, or if that was just a joke. I didn’t have a chance to listen to it as I had hoped when I got home earlier, but I could listen now with Edward sleeping beside me. I feel a jolt of that illicit thrill, at the idea of hearing Robert’s voice, but I’m not sure I could stand the shame if Edward found out what I was doing beside him. No, best to wait until he’s out tomorrow. Edward stirs in the sheets beside me as if my thoughts had seeped into his dreams and I can’t help wondering if I am a bad person.
But I know the answer to that: I am a bad person. Good people don’t do the things I have done. There are no mitigating circumstances. What I did was not in self-defence, or in the heat of the moment, or by accident. I did what I did in cold blood. My pulse was steady and I was thinking straight, and that is how I know I am a bad person.
Edward loves me, but he wouldn’t if he knew what I was capable of, what I did on the side of a road on a cold morning twenty years ago. We all have something inside us that we fear would repel the world if it ever came out. But for most people, that thing is something that the light of day would only render harmless. My secret would put me in jail for the rest of my natural life.
I shake off the thought and tell myself I am not that person anymore. We change, we grow; I will never be her again. Though I know that’s not true. I feel her inside me down dark alleys and late at night when things get scary and I know she is there in the shadows with me. I know she has my back; our back.
I try to imagine what Robert Holbeck would think if he really knew who his son was marrying. If he knew he’d chased away so many perfect partners and ended up letting me slip through the net.
Unless of course he does know.
That thought hits me hard. I look at the digital clock on the bedside table beside me. It’s 3 a.m. This is insomnia, this is anxiety, this is PTSD. Robert Holbeck does not know. He might have a sense for people, he might have a feeling about me, but he cannot read minds. No one was there that day. You could call it a perfect crime except it wasn’t perfect; it was horrific.