The penthouse apartment had been sold, and Lulu had netted just over three million in the divorce settlement. For the moment, she was renting a cottage near Maggie and Isla in Wales. Better for a dog than London. Lulu had gone straight to the dog shelter after Nick’s arrest and got Milo out of there. He had been so pathetically glad to see her, wriggling around her legs like he didn’t know what to do with himself. She had picked him up in her arms and wept.
Maggie and Isla had fallen in love with him too, and he was spoilt rotten. He adored their smallholding, particularly the hay barn, where he spent many happy hours snuffling around attempting to look like a proper country dog – but if a mouse or, as on one memorable occasion, a rat happened to show itself, Milo was out of there like greased lightning, much to Isla’s amusement.
But best of all were the long winter nights when Milo and Lulu snuggled on the sofa in front of a roaring log-burner in her little cottage, often with Maggie and/or Isla for company – and for a few days before the trial had started, her whole family had descended, squeezing themselves into the room with much hilarity. Mum said the cosy scene had almost converted her to bad British weather.
The plan was for Mum to stay with Lulu after the trial until she’d had the baby, and then Mum, Lulu, baby and Milo would return to Leonora. ‘Plenty galahs in Leonora need therapy, love,’ as Dad had put it.
Milo would love Braemar Station.
She hoped he was okay now, staying for the duration of the trial with a friend of Maggie’s. The friend had an assertive cat which despised poor Milo.
‘A rare subtype?’ Maggie repeated sceptically.
‘Rare because he can form attachments. He genuinely did feel something approaching love – for Duncan, for me. Only, it was warped. It was all about him.’
‘Then it wasn’t love, was it?’ Maggie looked off, and Lulu knew she was thinking about Duncan. ‘Real love is all about the other person.’
Lulu nodded slowly. ‘When he was so worried for my safety in London, at Sunnyside, he kept saying he couldn’t lose me too. You’re right. He wasn’t thinking of me, he wasn’t worried for me. He was worried for himself and how my death would affect him. The emotion was all about him. Maybe there was no actual empathy involved.’ Part of her, the scientific, objective part, felt a little surge of enthusiasm of her own, wondering if Karla had thought of that and hoping she hadn’t, hoping this could be her own insight.
‘Spot on,’ said Maggie. ‘What he felt for you, for Duncan – it was all about him and getting what he wanted. Duncan spoilt him rotten, so Nick latched onto him – had a warped obsession with him, aye. But is that really attachment?’
Lulu hesitated. But Maggie needed to hear this. ‘Karla thinks he could represent a particularly dangerous subtype of psychopath, because of the attachment thing. The combination of complete self-centredness and deep emotion . . .’
Maggie suddenly turned away from Lulu, gripping the strap of her shoulder bag, and Lulu reached out to her; took her into her arms. For a moment, Maggie was stiff in Lulu’s embrace, and then she slumped against her.
‘You’ve carried so much,’ said Lulu quietly. ‘You’ve been so strong.’
Maggie soon recovered herself, pulling away and adjusting the front of her jacket. ‘Aye, well, I’ve had to be.’
‘He’s going to prison. Probably for the rest of his life. For multiple counts of murder. He can’t hurt any of us now.’
Maggie looked at her. ‘Don’t kid yourself, Lulu. Wherever he is, even if they lock him up in maximum security and throw away the key, none of us will ever be safe while that man is alive.’
Epilogue
Nick - July 2020
It was a good photograph of Lulu, who looked a million dollars even in that simple white shift dress. A good photograph, and a recent one, judging by the size of the baby sitting on her lap. Christopher Duncan Tidwell, she’d called him, without any consultation whatsoever, although this was his fucking son.
She’d gone back to her maiden name.
He’d found that out at the trial.
But this was his son.
He had the photo pinned to the cork board above his bed, and, in the fifteen minutes before lights out, he had got into the habit of lying here looking at it and running things over in his head.
But the time for planning was past.
He reached up to touch her lovely face.
‘See you soon, Lu.’
His son was a fine-looking baby, sturdy and confident, beaming gummily at the camera, which would have been wielded, he supposed, by one of Lulu’s Neanderthal family. The two of them were sitting out on the verandah at Braemar Station with a scruffy small dog at Lulu’s feet, and although they were in the shade, the boy had a little sunhat on and the light beyond the verandah was fierce, even though this would be their winter.