For the past four months, she has been at the centre of my life. She was my Girl Friday and my best friend and my stalker and my Siamese fighting fish and it all happened so slowly that I didn’t notice until it was too late. I understand why Mallory Hopper took her own life; why she felt trapped and unable to escape.
Fairbairn emerges from the building. He jogs across the road and I force myself to meet his eyes as he opens the door and leans inside.
‘Are you OK?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I talked to the paramedics. They said you did everything you could.’
Tears blur my vision.
‘What were you doing here?’ he asks.
‘Tempe sent me a text message. She said goodbye. I was worried.’
‘I thought you hated her.’
‘I never wished her dead,’ I say, but the words get caught in my throat. I wipe my eyes. ‘Did you have someone watching her?’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘She was a suspect. I thought you might have set up surveillance.’
Fairbairn gives me a grim smile. ‘Why? We weren’t watching you.’ His face softens and he sighs. ‘We had a team on her yesterday, but it wasn’t round the clock.’
He motions for me to move over and he sits down next to me.
‘She left a note.’
‘I saw it.’
‘Not the one on the laundry door. Upstairs. She confessed to killing Goodall. She said you had nothing to do with it.’
‘Was it typed?’
‘Sitting on her printer. Why do you ask?’
‘No reason.’
He expects me to have more questions, but I don’t know where to begin.
‘You should be relieved.’
Is that how I should react, I wonder. I’m not sure what I feel, apart from guilt. I’m not angry any more. I guess that’s something.
Fairbairn is still talking.
‘I spoke to her psychiatrist yesterday, who told me about her history.’
‘She wasn’t obsessed with Goodall,’ I whisper.
‘She was obsessed with you. That’s why she killed him. In her twisted mind, you had saved her when she needed help, and now she wanted to save you. She didn’t expect you to be charged with his murder. She thought your joint alibi would be enough to save you both.’
‘Why would Goodall let her into the house? Why would he let himself be handcuffed to the bed?’
‘Clearly, she could be very persuasive,’ says Fairbairn. ‘She photographed you naked in her bed.’
I feel my cheeks colour.
‘We got the lab results back on the dress you wore to the nightclub, the one you vomited on. They found traces of a date rape drug called Gamma Hydroxybutyrate.’
‘GHB.’
‘Class C. Odourless, colourless and tasteless. It also leaves the body within a short amount of time, making it hard to detect. We also found the Uber driver. He remembered you.’
We sit in silence, watching dappled sunshine shift on the pavement as a breeze shakes branches and rustles leaves.
‘You planted someone in my cell who made up lies about me.’
Fairbairn exhales. ‘That wasn’t my idea.’
‘Who then?’
‘You have made a lot of enemies in a very short time.’
We study each other, both with questions, both with secrets.
‘Am I free to go?’ I ask.
‘We’ll need a statement, but it can wait till tomorrow.’
65
My paternal grandmother has an epigraph on her gravestone, which is written in Gaelic that translates as: Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.
I have only visited the grave once – when I was eleven and we went to Ireland for The Gathering, a McCarthy clan reunion at Blarney Castle in County Cork. I remember climbing the steps and kissing the famous stone, which according to legend endows a person with the gift of the gab. Perhaps it worked on my father, who has always had a way with words. He will need them now.
I find him in the garden doing his daily walk around the pond. He has added a new leg to the journey, crossing the meadow and following the path along the river, past a pony paddock, and an overgrown tennis court, almost hidden in the beech trees. He walks with more purpose now, and barely raises a sweat. I fall in step beside him and we walk in silence until we reach the blackberry bushes that are growing wild over the stone ruins of a crumbling wall.
He stops and begins eating berries.
‘They’re sweet this year. We should make jam.’
‘Did you have her killed?’ I ask.
His eyes are large and clear and brown. ‘That’s a brutal question.’
‘Answer me.’
‘I don’t think I will.’
He looks at me in that familiar way, lowering his chin, observing me beneath his drawn brow. ‘I did not create this situation.’
‘And what am I supposed to do?’
‘Accept your good fortune. Get on with things.’
‘You took a life.’
‘I saved one.’
‘That’s bullshit. That’s wrong.’
I want to be angry and disgusted, but I made this happen. I let this happen. I might as well have forced Tempe’s hand as she typed that suicide note, or put the noose around her neck, or kicked the steps away.
Heavy raindrops have begun falling. We turn back towards the house, arriving as a fierce summer storm blurs the landscape and gurgles in the downpipes.
My father is being fussed over by Constance, who is drying his hair with a towel. I go upstairs to my bedroom and find a familiar sports bag resting on a chair beside the bed. There is a note attached from Uncle Finbar.
I’ve been meaning to give you this. Someone took it out of the Fiat when we were spray-painting. Hope you didn’t miss it.
Unzipping the bag, I sort through my karate gear and find the missing white trainers that Fairbairn had fixated upon. Their absence proved my guilt, he said, convinced that I destroyed the shoes after fleeing the murder scene. But I hadn’t lied to him. The bag was in my Fiat, until someone unwittingly took it out.
I add more clothes, and collect my other suitcase.
‘Where are you going?’ asks Constance as I carry the bags downstairs.
‘Home.’
*
Someone is in the house. I sense it as soon as I cross the threshold and stand motionless in the hallway. I smell food cooking. When I drop my keys onto the table, Henry pokes his head from the kitchen. He’s wearing a frilly apron and has a smudge of tomato sauce on his chin.
‘What are you doing here?’ I ask.
‘I’m making my world-famous spaghetti bolognese.’
‘It’s not actually world famous.’
He gives me a hurt look.
‘There are seven bolognese sauces that are better than yours and that’s just in Italy,’ I say.
‘So, mine makes the top ten.’
‘In London, in Clapham, in Marney Road, definitely top ten.’
He wraps his arms around me in a bearlike hug that makes me feel safe and warm and loved, and as I press my pelvis against his, I get a sign that perhaps life can be mended, or remade.
He whispers into my hair. ‘I’m sorry for those things I said.’
‘Does that mean you still love me?’