‘So he found out where you worked. Christ, Lu, he must have followed you from here all the way to your office.’ Nick subsided onto the massive L-shaped sofa in the sitting area. He put his head in his hands. ‘I’m sorry. God. What was I thinking?’
Lulu sighed, and walked back to him, and put a hand on his shoulder. The muscles of his shoulder, his neck, were knotted like ropes.
‘I really don’t think he’s a stalker. He just wanted to come clean. I’m okay.’ Gently, she pressed the knots with her fingers. ‘But you need to talk to me, Nick. Please. You need to work through why you worry about me so obsessively, for no good reason. I know it’s to do with what happened to your family.’ And she left a space.
Normally, he’d fill this space with humour. Say something like, ‘Are you charging me by the hour for this?’
Now, though, he just mumbled, ‘I can’t lose you too.’
Here was where Lulu had to be tough. She sat down next to him and took his hand. ‘The only way you’re going to lose me is if you carry on like this. I can’t live this way, Nick. You’re smothering me, laying down rules, not letting me have any time to myself.’
‘Oh God, Lu, I’m sorry! I won’t any more!’
‘I know you don’t mean to do it. But I think the only way you’re going to be able to stop is if you address why you’re like this. Talk to me, Nick. About your family. Please.’
He let go her hand and stood, and walked to the TV that was set into the wall, and turned to face her, as if standing on a stage giving a lecture. She often found that her clients physically moved away from her when they first started to open up. It was as if they needed space around them to feel safe.
‘They had gone,’ he said, staring at her. ‘They’d just disappeared, all three of them, into thin air. When I got back home that day . . . I’d been in Edinburgh doing museums and galleries and stuff with my friend Andy and his mum. I was looking forward to telling Dad all about it. Then the house . . . the house was in darkness, and they’d gone. The police decided there were no suspicious circumstances and they’d left of their own accord, and it wasn’t a police matter. I was sixteen and theoretically an adult, so it wasn’t a case of child abandonment. But no way would Dad have done that to me!’
He turned towards the river, then towards the marina, and then he suddenly walked off into the corridor and came back with one of the framed photos, the one of him and his dad with their arms round each other.
‘Look at us!’ He thrust it into her hands. ‘Dad and I – we were really close. I loved him so much, and he loved me. I know he did. He would never, ever have just gone off like that, leaving me all alone. Leaving me not knowing what had happened.’ He choked on a deep breath.
‘You can see how much you love each other,’ Lulu said quietly, touching the glass over the photo with gentle fingertips.
‘It was like the Mary Celeste, Lulu! Nothing was disturbed, which is why the police presumably ruled out violence. But it didn’t add up. They hadn’t taken their passports or withdrawn any money from their bank accounts. I know the breakfast things were cleared up before I left that morning, so why were there three mugs and three bowls and three spoons on the table, when it was just the two of them in the house, apart from Isla? One of the rings on the hob was on. There was a pan of water and oatmeal next to it, as if Dad had been about to make some porridge when . . . whatever happened happened.’
‘You think your stepmother did something to your dad and your sister,’ she prompted.
‘There’s no other explanation that makes sense.’
‘But does that explanation make sense?’ Lulu made her voice gentle. ‘She was a small woman, wasn’t she? Could she really have done it?’
‘She could have had an accomplice – hence the extra mug and bowl and spoon. Or maybe she was trying to set me up for it, make it look like I was there when it happened. She’d been a young offender, for God’s sake – convicted of GBH. She was violent. I was scared of her, this tiny woman . . . When we were alone together, she used to stare at me, like she was . . . I don’t know. Like she wanted me gone. And she did things like trample a set of plastic spoons she had and try to blame me. She used to call me a wee bastard, a wee fucker . . . Okay, I was an annoying brat, and I definitely went out of my way to push her buttons, but I can see now that she really overreacted to that. She was scary, Lulu.’