The key to the garage door was kept in a safe fixed to the side of the building, but Lulu knew the combination. Nick had kept going on about how ridiculous it was that Yvonne had chosen the date the house was built – 1889. Presumably, this made it easy for the guests in case they forgot it, because the year 1889 was carved in a stone panel above the front door.
Lulu twiddled the combination lock to 1889, opened the safe and removed the key. She unlocked the garage door and slipped inside. Then she rootled around in the inner compartment of her bag for the spare car key. She’d remembered last night, as she’d lain in bed trying to sleep, that one of the random keys in her bag was the spare one for the Audi, which she’d started carrying around after locking herself out of the car for the second time.
The engine starting sounded horribly loud. Wincing, she eased the Audi out of the garage and crept to the fork in the drive. Then she cut the engine and coasted down the avenue to the public road.
Carol and Steven Jardine lived in a modern bungalow in a little hamlet by the River Esk, one of a scattering of houses amongst tree-lined fields. The bungalow was set in a large garden that had probably once been a field too and was given over mainly to lawn. Carol, a solid woman in jeans and a floral top, seemed delighted that Lulu had looked her up, and kept staring at her and saying, ‘Nick’s wife! You’re gorgeous! You must make such a handsome couple!’
They sat in the conservatory watching sheet after sheet of rain sweep across the garden, sipping tea and demolishing an amazing gingerbread cake that one of Carol’s daughters had made, as Carol talked about Kathleen, Nick’s mother, who had been her best friend.
‘I still miss her.’ She sighed. ‘Even though she’s been gone over twenty years. We used to have such a good time together. Kathleen used to joke that it was a shame shopping wasn’t an Olympic sport because the two of us would be definite contenders. We used to haunt the local auction houses for fixtures and fittings for Sunnyside, and all the sales in the posh interiors shops in Edinburgh.’
‘Sunnyside is a beautiful house,’ Lulu felt obliged to contribute.
Carol beamed. ‘Isn’t it? In a terrible run-down condition, though, when they bought it. Duncan’s elderly uncle had been living there and really let it go. Renovating the place stretched Duncan and Kathleen’s budget to breaking point. A real money pit. I didn’t like to ask, because maybe the truth was that they couldn’t have any more kids, but I used to wonder if maybe that was the reason Nick was an only. Early in their marriage, they were – what’s the phrase? Asset rich, cash poor. They maybe felt more kids wasn’t an option financially, especially given all the money they spent giving Nick the best of everything – activities, holidays . . .’ She sighed again. ‘Kathleen used to say she worried Duncan spoilt him, but Nick was a great kid. I’m so glad he’s made a good life for himself.’ And she smiled, but rather sadly, at Lulu.
‘He has, but he’s never really got past what happened. It’s still affecting him quite badly, to be honest.’
‘Of course it is.’ Carol’s eyes filled with tears. ‘That poor boy.’
Lulu had already told Carol on the phone about the PTSD therapy she was using with Nick, and now, when she started to list the things he had said he remembered about the kitchen, Carol nodded. ‘That’s right. One of the rings on the hob was on. There were three mugs of half-drunk tea on the table, and three bowls and three spoons – no one knows why there were three of everything and not two, but I don’t suppose it’s important. Isla’s rabbit was on the floor.’
Lulu sighed in relief. ‘So the memories he’s accessing are real. Sometimes they’re not.’
Carol cupped her hands round her mug. ‘You know, it’s silly, but I still think about that little rabbit. About what happened to it. It’s probably sealed in a police evidence bag somewhere, forgotten in the archives.’
‘What do you think happened to them? To Duncan and Maggie and Isla?’
‘Oh, goodness.’
Lulu waited.
‘The police think they went off somewhere, voluntarily,’ Carol said carefully.
‘But you don’t believe that?’
Silence. Then: ‘No. I don’t. Duncan would never have gone off like that and left Nick. And Isla’s rabbit . . . If they’d decided for some reason that they needed to disappear, they wouldn’t have left Isla’s favourite bunny behind. They doted on that child. My husband thinks it was one of the young offenders Duncan used to mentor – which would explain the third mug and bowl and spoon. He thinks they invited one of them for lunch and the yob went psycho. Or maybe it was one of Dean Reid’s relatives. The boy who was murdered? Has Nick told you about that?’