Lasting Damage (13 page)

‘Why did you tell your family about seeing the woman and the blood?’ Alice says eventually.

‘Kit asked me the same thing. ‘‘Why tell them?’’ he said. ‘‘They’ll give you a hard time and make you feel a hundred times worse.’’ I knew he was right, but I still went round and put myself in the firing line.’

‘You often describe your parents as suffocating.’ Alice remembers every word I have uttered in her presence since we first met, without the help of notes. Maybe the pink butterflies are hiding some kind of recording device. ‘Why did you go round to be suffocated, on no sleep and after the worst shock of your life?’

‘I had to tell them. A detective came to interview me. It was . . . too big to keep from them, too important. I can’t be involved with the police and hide it from my family.’

‘Can’t?’

No secrets between people who love each other
. I’ve had it drummed into me all my life. I’m not sure it’s possible to explain that sort of programming to someone who hasn’t experienced it.

‘Yet you’ve kept quiet about the other big, important thing in your life at the moment,’ says Alice. ‘The problem that’s been preoccupying you since January.’

I laugh, though I feel like crying. ‘It’s not the same. That might be nothing. It probably is.’

‘The dead woman you saw might be nothing, if you imagined her.’

‘I didn’t. I know I didn’t.’

Alice takes off her glasses, drops them in her lap. ‘You didn’t imagine what happened in January, either,’ she says. ‘You don’t know what it means, but you didn’t imagine it.’

‘I can’t tell Mum and Dad that I’m afraid Kit might have a whole other life that I don’t know about,’ I say, loathing the sound of the words. ‘It’s just not an option. You don’t understand. I might have changed my surname, but I’m still a Monk. Everything in the Monk family is nice and normal and happy. That’s not a coincidence, it’s a rule. There are no problems, ever, apart from Benji not eating his sodding broccoli – that’s the worst thing that’s allowed to happen. It’s out of the question, absolutely forbidden, for there to be anything weird going on – really bad weird, I mean. Weird funny is okay, as long as it makes a good anecdote.’

I wipe my face, try to compose myself. ‘The only thing worse than bad-weird is uncertain. My parents don’t accept ambiguity of any kind – literally, as soon as it dares to make an appearance, they show it the door in no uncertain terms. And, yes, I said that deliberately. Everything Mum and Dad do, they do in no uncertain terms. Uncertainty is the enemy. One of the enemies,’ I correct myself. ‘Change is the other. And sponta-neity, and risk; there’s a whole gang of them.’

‘No wonder your parents are scared,’ says Alice. ‘You said it yourself: they’re being persecuted by a gang.’

Is she going to give me the same remedy she gave me last time? Kali Phos, it was called. For people who have an aversion to their own relatives. Kit threatened to steal the bottle for himself when I told him that.

‘Kit’s so unhappy,’ I tell Alice. ‘I’ve
made
him unhappy. He can’t understand why I don’t believe him. Neither can I. Why can’t I accept that strange things happen sometimes, and put it behind me? I
know
Kit loves me, I know he’s desperate for things to go back to normal. I’m all he’s got, and . . . I love him. It’ll sound crazy, but I love him more than ever – I feel outraged on his behalf.’

‘Because he’s probably innocent, and his own wife doesn’t believe in him?’ Alice guesses.

I nod. ‘How can I tell Mum and Dad, and Fran, and make them suspect him too, when there’s no way to end that suspicion,
ever
? Haven’t I made him miserable enough already?’

‘So it’s for Kit’s sake that you’re keeping it from your family?’

‘His and theirs. Mum and Dad couldn’t live with it – I know they couldn’t. They’d try not to allow me to live with it. They’d hire a private detective . . . No, that would mean admitting they were mixed up in something unsavoury, if they did that. I know what they’d do.’ It feels like a revelation, though on one level I know I’m making it up. ‘They’d put pressure on me to leave him and move back to Thorrold House. Just in case. They’d say, “If you’re not a hundred per cent sure he’s trustworthy, you can’t stay with him.” ’

‘Is that such a stupid thing to say?’

‘Yes. I’d rather have the rest of my life ruined by suspicions that achieve nothing than leave a man I love who’s very probably done nothing wrong.’

Alice puts her glasses back on and leans forward. Her leather swivel chair creaks. ‘Explain something to me,’ she says. ‘You say there’s no way for the suspicion to end, ever, but in the next breath you mention the possibility of hiring a private detective. You might not want to do that, and I’d understand if you didn’t, but wouldn’t that be one way to find out for sure if Kit’s lying?’

‘Are you saying you think I should hire a detective?’ If she says yes, I’m never coming back here. ‘Wouldn’t it be dangerous for someone as paranoid as me to imagine that I can pay for certainty whenever I need it? Wouldn’t I be better off trying to cultivate trust? What if the detective followed Kit for a month and found nothing? Would I finally accept that nothing’s going on, or would I worry that the detective had been slapdash and missed something?’

Alice smiles. ‘And yet only this morning, you told a detective all about seeing a dead woman on the internet. He might be slapdash – he might miss something.’

‘Then I’ll go to Cambridge and find a conscientious detective, and make him listen to me,’ I say fiercely.

‘Because you want to find out the truth.’

‘It’s not about me, it’s about the woman I saw, whoever she is. Someone murdered her. I can’t just—’

‘You want to find out the truth,’ Alice says again.

‘All right, then, yes! I saw a dead woman on the floor in
that
house. Wouldn’t you want the truth, in my position?’

‘Connie, can I speak frankly? When it comes to the dead woman, your truth-seeking energy is really strong. I can feel it – it’s tangible in this room. Normally, that would help to attract the truth to you. When we focus on something we want with all our energy, believe we’re going to get it one day and pursue it with great determination, resolved that we will never give up, usually what we’re seeking comes to us – it’s just a matter of how long it takes to reach us. In your case, there’s a complication: in another area of your life, you’re terrified of finding out the truth, and you’re transmitting an equally strong truth-
repelling
energy.’ She folds her arms, waits for my reaction.

‘Kit, you mean? That’s not fair. You know how hard I’ve tried.’

‘You haven’t,’ says Alice gently. ‘You’re lying to yourself if you think you have.’

I must be quite exceptionally convincing, in that case. ‘What, so you’re saying that the contradictory energies are getting mixed up and sending out a muddled signal? That my fear of finding out the truth about Kit is repelling
all
truth?’

Alice says nothing.

‘So, whoever’s in charge of all this energy and attraction stuff, up there in the cockpit of the universe – God, or Fate, or whatever you want to call him – he’s short-sighted, is he?’ I say irritably. ‘He can’t
quite
read the shopping list – item one: truth about dead woman; item two: no truth about possibly treacherous husband. They blur together, do they, so that he doesn’t know what exactly he’s supposed to deliver? Can’t he focus really hard and attract a decent pair of reading glasses? As the all-powerful controller of the universe, that shouldn’t be beyond him.’

‘Nothing has blurred together,’ says Alice. ‘The two items were never separate. They’re linked by an address: 11 Bentley Grove, Cambridge.’

I feel as if I’m going to throw up.

Kit didn’t kill her. He can’t have. He’s not a killer. I wouldn’t love a killer.

‘Do you want only part of the truth, or do you want all of it?’ Alice asks. ‘What if it was all or nothing? Which would you choose?’

‘All,’ I whisper. My stomach twists.

‘Good. Your phone’s ringing.’

I didn’t hear it.

‘Nothing like an immediate result to convince a hardened sceptic,’ Alice says.

‘Do you mind if I . . .? Hello?’

‘Is that Connie Bowskill?’

‘Speaking.’

‘Sam Kombothekra.’

‘Oh.’ My heart jolts.
Kombothekra, Kombothekra
. I try to remember the name.

‘Can you get to Spilling police station by nine thirty, Monday morning?’

‘I . . . Has something happened? Have you spoken to Cambridge police?’

‘I’d like to speak to you face to face,’ he says. ‘Monday morning, nine thirty?’

‘All right. Can’t you even—?’

‘I’ll see you then.’

He’s gone.

Alice raises her water glass in what looks like a toast. ‘Well done,’ she says, beaming at me. I have no idea what she’s congratulating me for.

*

POLICE EXHIBIT REF: CB13345/432/21IG

D,

Don't forget to nip to supermarket and buy:

Pitta breads, passata, bag of salad, lamb mince, feta cheese, cinnamon, chargrilled artichokes
(
in oil in jar, from deli section
–
NOT a tin of artichokes from canned veg sectio
n
)
new pencil case for Riordan, something for Tilly so she doesn't feel left out
–
Barbie mag or something. Ta!

E xx

Chapter 6

19/07/2010

‘Okay. You’ve put your house up for sale . . .’

‘No, I haven’t,’ said Gibbs.

‘Suppose you have. You want to move, and you’ve put your house on the market,’ said Sam. ‘Why might you go and stay in a hotel?’ For the past ten minutes, he’d been orbiting Gibbs’ desk – glancing at him occasionally, then looking away, as if he had something on his mind but wasn’t sure how to broach it.

Gibbs had been waiting for him to spit it out, whatever it was. ‘If I fancied a holiday, and self-catering felt like too much effort . . .’

‘No, not a holiday. You wouldn’t choose a hotel within walking distance of your house, would you? Sorry, I’m not explaining myself very well.’

You’re not explaining yourself at all.

‘Why would you decide to go and stay in a hotel while you waited for your house to sell? However long that took.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ said Gibbs, annoyed that Stepford was his skipper and therefore couldn’t be told to piss off and stop wasting his time. ‘I’d stay in my house until it sold, and then I’d move to my new house. Isn’t that what most people do?’

‘It is. Exactly.’

‘Even if you were lucky and your house sold quickly, you’d be looking at minimum six weeks, I reckon. Six weeks in a hotel’d be unaffordable for most people – it would for me, anyway.’

‘Let’s say you could afford it – you’re a high earner, or you’ve got private wealth.’

‘I still wouldn’t do it. No one would. Why not just stay in your house?’

‘What about if you couldn’t stand the thought of prospective buyers and surveyors getting under your feet all the time, traipsing in and out while you were trying to entertain friends, ringing the doorbell at 9 a.m. on a Saturday when you were hoping for a lie-in? Mightn’t it be more convenient to shift to a hotel?’