The Day She Died (28 page)

“One of the Moseses is all, ‘Get back to Israel, get back to Israel,' that's what matters to him, right? And the other one is like, ‘Okay, so the deal is we wander the earth but we stay off the seafood? That'll do me.' It's not the same guy, Mum! And whoever was writing the story must have known it because the only way it hangs together is make him live for five hundred years. It's worse than Bobby in the shower. It should have got fixed in the edit.”

And as for Jesus? One of them was all poverty and humility and foot-washing and he was great. But the other one was
Son of God, get me! I'm eternal, I'm fantastic
. It wasn't the same guy. Couldn't be.

“It's just like Winston Churchill and Brangelina,” I said to her. She stuck her needles back in her yellow knitting and folded her arms, ready to fight the good fight of faith. “If you hear a kind of bogus slogan about keeping secrets and eating nettles, you think, ‘oh that was probably Churchill, eh?' I bet he never said half the stuff he gets the credit for. And if you hear some Hollywood couple's brought out a line of vegan cupcakes with a flavour named after each of their children and you want to tell someone, you're going to say it was Brad and Angie, aren't you? So any old tale about some preacher round about that time, round about that place … you know?”

“Tale?” she said. “Tale? Great is the truth, Jess, and mighty above all things.”

“Finally,” I said. “Something we agree on. Great is the truth, Mother. You're right there. So this friend of mine. Did you tell him the great mighty truth about what
you
did when I was five?”

“I?” said my mother. “I protected you. I kept quiet. Never breathed a word.”

“You breathed plenty to me,” I reminded her. “You basically stuck a knitting needle in my ear and scrambled my brains for me.”

“Why do you say such ugly things?”

“Fair enough, I'll say it pretty. You kept quiet about how I wrecked granny's quilt and how she came in and saw and was so angry that she had a stroke and died on the floor right in front of me begging me for help and how I did nothing, for no reason at all. For two days.”

“Jess, what is the point of going over it and over it?” she said.

“And how, worst of all, I concocted a crazy story about how I was tied to the bed, and you tied me.”

“I was punishing you for killing my mother! I was following God's teaching and training you up in his ways. That's how much I still loved you. After you killed my mother!”

“I was five,” I said. Shouted really. “Even if she
had
dropped dead over a few fucking feathers, I was
five
. But she didn't, Mother. She died when she saw what you had done to me. She died of disgust when she saw what you were. You killed her. Not me. Because it matters what order things happen in. It
matters
what caused what and what came later.”

“You broke my heart,” my mother said. “You break my heart whenever I think about you.”

“Got it,” I said. “It's just a shame that none my therapists has managed to change my memory to what you prefer. None of them: Jennifer, Lauren, Caroline, Moira, Annabel, Eilish, Stacey. Have I forgotten anyone? Oh right, of course, you wouldn't know. You've never been. You don't need to because you've nothing on your conscience, and you won't come with me because you don't owe me a thing.”

She didn't answer, just sat there praying, with her needles clicking away as fast as ever. I was summoning the courage to stamp all over my dreams.

“What was his name?” I asked her. “This old friend who came to you?”

“Gary?” said my mother. “Gavin? It started with a G, anyway.”

“Gus,” I said as the walls came down on me. He'd been to my mother months ago and asked about me.

“Could have been Gustav,” my mother said. “Gus for short.” Which didn't seem likely although, as she said it, something like a faint smell was beginning to distract me. A breath of an idea, far away.

I did my breathing. In for five out for six, in for six out for eight. So none of it had happened. Not really. We hadn't chanced on each other. He hadn't forgotten the day with the cakes. He'd tracked me down after that day and found my mother. Why? He hadn't understood, like some super hero, the first time I told him. He'd been mugging up on it for months. Of course he had. Where? Probably in the library. That's when he learned where my flat was too. I could feel the tears gathering. How many times had I told myself it was far too good to be true? But the kids were true, and what a great dad he was, and Pram was true even if House and Shed were … if Steve was right. And why? What was the point of it all? It wasn't as if it was random. He had set me up. He'd laid a plan and he'd put it in motion the day that Becky die—

I shook my head.

“What?” said my mother.

No way. Becky didn't kill herself. No way. Everything was coming clear now. The diary was hers but the writing on the note, like the writing in the workshop, was his. Gus had snagged me that day in Marks and Spencer's. I was part of the plan.

“What?” said my mother again.

“I can't believe it!” I burst out. “How can someone fool you so completely?” He was acting the whole time, pretending to understand, pretending to love and care and—He made some mistakes, though. No one could have got over Becky so quickly. That was sick. And no one would have let a stranger take his daughter to school the day after her mum died. No one would have
sent
his daughter to school. What was that all about? And he should have wanted to know where Ros had gone to. Where the hell
had
Ros gone to? And where exactly did I come in? What part of the plan
was
I? All of a sudden, I knew.

I was his alibi. I was to hear him talking to her, in the food hall, and I was to drive him home. He knew I was the type, after the day with cakes. He knew I was interfering (inappropriate, unprofessional). I was to drive him home and persuade him to call the police. And I was to find the note too. I was supposed to be with him from before Becky died until the police started searching. It was only when it all went wrong that he came up with that mad story about talking to a voice-mail. And that was only because the hill walker found the car so quick. Oh my God! The hill walker. Gus had asked him to come to the funeral. I leapt to my feet.

Then I sat down again. No, no, that was crazy. He only wrote last night. He told
me
he was asking him to the funeral. Actually he was just making contact. If he was going to “‘pay back” the hill walker, it would be another long slow plan he put together, like the one he'd put together for me.

I really needed to keep calm and try to see which bits of this hall of mirrors were real and which bits were Gus's stories, as borrowed and fake and stupid as the famous sculptures he said were his that only someone as dumb as me wouldn't have heard of, like Steve had.

So what was true? Gus killed his wife. Tricked me. Ros disappeared.

And all of a sudden I knew where she was. Knew why Gus couldn't face the workshop too.

He wouldn't be there. He wouldn't dare. Not after we'd told him that the cops were onto him. I warned my mum not to let him in if he turned up at her door—it didn't take much persuasion: all I had to say was
drugs
and she couldn't get me out fast enough to get the chain on at the back of me. I took the farm track instead of the lane through the caravan site, stopped in the farmyard, and waited for the workers to come over and tell me I shouldn't be there.

“A week past Tuesday,” I said. “A week yesterday. That was the day that really got you pissed off, eh?”

“Coming and going all bloody day, the pair of them,” said the fat one. He hawked and spat the way men do. Some men.

“Were they really?” I said “Coming
and
going? Both directions?

“You were there,” he said. “What you asking me for?” He sniffed back hard again and then stopped before he spat.

I'd never get them to think carefully enough. Maybe the police would have more luck when it fell to them, but I'd bet anything that one car left and then another car left hours later and nobody came back in between times. Not driving anyway. Because the only way that Gus could have done it would be to take his car to somewhere nearby and leave it there. Get a bus back and walk the footpath home. Then take Becky in her car, send it over the cliff, and come to town on his own to pick up Ruby, go to Marks and Spencer's, and meet me. And all the time Dillon was in his cot in his sodden nappy.

“Never mind,” I said to the farm guy. “You better gob that out before it chokes you.”

I trundled on down the track to the back of the house. My charger was in my bag. I got out at the back porch, unplugged the washing machine, plugged the charger in, and hooked up the dead phone from the basket. With my own mobile, I started to call Gizzy's number. I'd ask her for Ros's number and I'd ring it and then I'd know. But I didn't need to. Once the battery started charging, Ros's phone lit up like Christmas. Missed calls and voice-mails. Texts and e-mails. Gizzy's number was there. Her sister's number in Poland too. And so it was true.

I turned my feet towards the rough path over the turf that led to the workshop, and the brick grave he'd built inside, and to whatever was left of her in there. The sun was sinking in one of those mad splashes of pink and orange that would look hellish anywhere else but a sunset, and the sea was calm, just rippling in without a hint of foam. It was heaven here. Just heaven. And everything I'd asked myself about Becky—asking what was wrong, what did she want for, living like this?—was true of Gus now. All his talent and his wife and his kids and this beautiful place. What was wrong with him to carve out this evil from life and throw everything precious away?

I think I saw him out of the side of my eye quite a while before my mind took in what I was seeing. There was no jolt anyway, when I turned round and looked full on. He was sitting with his back against the workshop wall, facing out to sea. He'd changed his clothes again, long shorts with pockets on the legs and thick walking boots. Better boots than the ones he'd worn to the funeral. He had put on jewelry too, strands of coloured string and shells on leather round his neck. And Jesus, he'd cut off all his hair. It was sticking up like a brush. He watched me approach him without turning his head. I could see the glitter of reflected light as his eyes moved in their sockets.

I stood right in front of him, cutting out the sunlight, and his skin that had seemed orange in the blast of light looked dark and dirty now.

“Gus,” I said.

“Who the hell are you?” he said. “Was that you I spoke to on the phone?”

And it wasn't Gus's voice. It was similar, but not the same.

“Where's Gav?” he said. “Where's Becky? That was just Gav being Gav with the funeral crap, right? But where are the kids? Who
are
you?”

“Jessie Constable,” I said. “And you're the sculptor who made that pram, aren't you? Jesus Christ, a
twin
pram. You're the other one. That's what Steve said. The other one. You're Gus King.”

I turned and watched the sun slip down into the long ribbon of cloud on the horizon. It was easier to talk once the light was low.

“Where have you been?” I said at last.

“Thailand,” he said. “Idiot. I couldn't stay here after Dave died. I thought ‘Thailand for me!' Nothing but a load of wee girls on their gap year with their daddy's gold card. Still. Gave Gav and Becky a break, house-sitting for me.”

“Oh Jesus,” I said. “It was more than that. Gav's been life-sitting for you.”

“Eh?”

“I met ‘Gus King' a week ago. He even showed me round his studio.”

Gus put his head in his hands and groaned. “He's harmless,” he said. “Never going to win the husband of the year award, mind you. Poor Becks. But she loves him. She talks about leaving, but she'll never do it.”

“Not now she won't,” I said. “But I think she was going to. She had a friend, a lawyer, that was going to help. You might even know her. Ros, from the caravan site?” He shook his head. “Anyway, I'm sorry to have to tell you that Becky really did die last week. Car crash. It's down as suicide—”

“She'd never leave the kids.”

“But—I'm really sorry to say this about your brother—I think he might have … ”

“Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me,” said Gus. “Jesus, wee Becky.”

“You said he was harmless!”

“Harmless as long as Becky stayed, and I thought she'd never leave. I knew if she walked, anything could happen. He must have totally flipped.”

I sat down beside him. Not too close. It was frightening to see that familiar face, tanned brick-red but otherwise just the same, and to hear that nearly identical voice.

“He didn't flip,” I said. “He planned it for months.” I saw him turn to stare at me. “He stalked me. He built that thing in there. At least, I'm assuming he built it. It wasn't you?”

“What thing?” said Gus.

“Breeze block,” I said. “A … crypt, I suppose you'd call it. I think Ros's body's inside.”

“In there?” He had sprung to his feet. “Seriously? There's a body in there?”

“I think so,” I said. “I haven't got a key.”

But it only took him a minute, four or five good kicks, to burst the hasp free of the wood and get the door open. He gazed at the wall in front of his face, looked from side to side.