Now, Maggie fixed Lulu with a hard stare.
‘You didn’t know he had done it,’ she said in a low voice. ‘When you arrived at Rose Cottage. You couldn’t have known that Nick killed Duncan. He’d set it up that carefully. The ruse with the text message, telling you Duncan had messaged him saying I’d gone psycho – you couldn’t have known he was lying. He was dead convincing. And he was your husband, for fuck’s sake.’
Lulu considered what to say. ‘I was pretty sure.’
‘Aye, but even so. You were taking a massive risk, eh, accusing him in front of the police, when you could have been wrong? You could have been condemning an innocent man, and not just any innocent man. Your own fucking husband that you fucking loved, God help you. There was more to it, aye?’
Maggie was sharp all right.
‘It was a test,’ Lulu admitted. ‘Denouncing him like that was a test. I knew how obsessed he was with Duncan. And he was obsessed with me too, wanting me all to himself like I was his possession. When he found out that Duncan wasn’t dead, that you hadn’t killed him like he thought – it turned his world upside down. The fact that his beloved dad had abandoned him, rejected him, betrayed him, as he saw it . . . it was completely devastating for him. I thought, if the only other person he loved betrayed him in the same way . . .’
‘If you rejected him the way Duncan had done, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself going for you?’
‘That was the test,’ Lulu agreed. ‘If he was innocent, if he hadn’t killed Duncan, he wouldn’t react that way. He’d be shocked and upset, but he wouldn’t –’
‘Try to kill you.’
‘He couldn’t control himself.’ Lulu shuddered. ‘He snapped. I guess he just couldn’t understand what he had done to deserve such treatment from the only two people he had ever loved.’
Maggie, she realised, was holding onto her composure by a thread.
‘You’re a fucking psychologist,’ she said tightly. ‘Oh, you’re full of all the answers now. I’m sure you’ve analysed it half to death. Just like that daft psychiatrist we took Nick to right before he murdered Dean and tried to murder Isla. Oh, nothing to worry about, Mr and Mrs Clyde. Nick’s only problem, as far as I can see, is the common wee bint he’s got for a stepmother.’ Maggie nodded. ‘That was the gist of it. I’ve emailed that bastard Jamie Stirling-Stewart, going on about how I’m going to report him for professional negligence, and I’ll maybe go to the press and all.’ She smiled grimly. ‘Emailed me right back grovelling – oh aye, full of apologies now, but he didn’t think to try and contact me, did he, when Nick was all over the media? Thought he’d got away with it, the fucker.’
Lulu felt a momentary pang of sympathy for the psychiatrist.
Maggie focused her attention back on Lulu. ‘How come you didn’t rumble him sooner? You were in denial, I suppose, like Duncan was. Love does that to you, eh?’ And her face changed. ‘Fuck. Sorry.’
‘It’s okay,’ Lulu said wearily. ‘That’s all gone. It’s all gone as if it never was, what I felt for him. That Nick wasn’t real. He was playing a part, I think, right from the start. I think he must have seen me in Ithaca and for some reason fixated on me. Apparently, it was a lie, what he told me about stuff going missing from that guest house, about the owners being dodgy. One of my brothers emailed the police there to ask about it. There’s never been any trouble there before. We think Nick must have broken into my room and stolen all my stuff. Then he lay in wait and followed me around as I tried to find a police station; followed me to the taverna. Threw himself into the role of my knight in shining armour.’
None of it had been true, she supposed. He didn’t have her weird sense of humour. He hadn’t made up stories about people when he was a teenager. He probably didn’t even like falafels.
‘Aye, that sounds like the Nick I know.’
Lulu swallowed. She still found herself thinking Nick would love this if something entertainingly surreal happened. She’d never admit it to anyone, but part of her still loved that Nick, the mirage, and missed him like crazy. But she had to stop thinking like that. The mirage had been so dangerous in so many ways. ‘And the one I know, now. Now I’m seeing him clearly. Now I’m seeing –’
‘The psychopath,’ Maggie supplied.
‘Yes. I suppose so. Everything he said, everything he did – I can see behind it, now. Like his obsession with the Romans, who were so civilised and yet so savage. So inventively savage. He used to talk about what they did to people in the arena. I think he enjoyed all that.’ She swallowed. ‘Although – in my defence, he’s not a classic psychopath. Karla, one of my old professors at uni, she’s been very supportive, but she’s also . . . well, to tell the truth, she’s alarmingly enthusiastic about the fact that Nick could represent a rare psychopath subtype.’ Lulu smiled. ‘She can’t help herself. She wants to write a paper with me when I’m back in Australia.’