“Did Mary mention anything about her background?” I prompt.
“Well, she had grown up in the children’s home. She always said that she was in some sort of fire before that. There was a burn up her right arm, and she often wore long sleeves to cover it up. She said her parents died in the war, but she couldn’t remember much before she got to the children’s home. The uncle would visit every now and then.” Maeve pauses. “She was very pretty and sweet, and… loyal, but—” She shakes her head a little and sighs. “Didn’t have much up-top. They told her in the home that she’d been hit on the head with something. Falling debris or whatnot in the war, you know? Whatever tragic accident she was in hurt her head, and her mind never recovered. She forgot her own name, so she said. Had to learn everything all over again. She’d wake up in the morning and be confused for a while. Even after she married my brother, she’d forget things. She was terrible for numbers and dates. I don’t think she even knew how old she was.”
So that was why Abigail never went back to George and his dad. She couldn’t remember them.
“Do you know the name of her uncle?” Mark asks.
Maeve shakes her head. “I’m sorry, I can’t remember. Most of the time, Mary just called him ‘my uncle’. I’m sure I was introduced at the wedding, but he left early.”
“Do you have any photographs of Mary?” Mark, with his hands on his knees, still clutching the small piece of paper with the phone number, is flushed pink, with watery eyes.
“I have. Sophie, the second drawer in the bedroom cabinet.”
“On it.” Sophie unties her apron and makes her way out of the room.
A few minutes later, she arrives back with two large leather-bound photo albums. “Which one, Maeve?”
“The one with the maroon binding is the oldest. Maybe that has a few from when Mary was young.”
I find a spot to perch on the chair next to Mark, awkwardly bumping knees and elbows. From my pocket I produce the photograph George kept for all those years of the woman he assumed to be his great-aunt, the young girl who disappeared in such mysterious circumstances.
“I think the wedding is in that one,” Maeve says. “Go to about halfway through. That should be Mary and Bobby’s wedding from there.”
Mark skips through the album until we reach Mary’s wedding just like Maeve told us to, and there, smiling in her white dress, clutching a bouquet of roses, is the girl in the photograph.
“Abigail,” Mark says softly.
I have to take a deep breath to quell a sob as we finally know what happened to her all those years ago. Then I reach across and place my hand on Mark’s arm.
“George will be elated to know that his sister went on to live a full life.” I nod at Mark, but he’s staring at the photograph in the album on his knee. “What is it? Is something wrong?”
“Yes,” he replies. “That man, standing behind Mary, is that her uncle?”
“Yes, I believe it is,” Maeve says. “My eyes aren’t what they used to be, but I remember the photograph well.”
“That’s my great-grandfather,” Mark says. “The man who raised grandad. That’s him.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
“Do you want to talk about it?”
The silence hangs between us, thick and suffocating. Mark hasn’t spoken since we got back in the car and began our journey home. The sight of his great-grandfather has confused and upset him, and I know why. How are we going to tell George that his own father knew Abigail’s location the entire time? How can we break that kind of news to him?
“No,” Mark says at last. “Let’s talk about something else. Tom. What are you going to do about Tom?”
“I’m going to try to find him.” What else can I do? I can’t leave him out in the world, alone and upset. He might play at being an adult, but deep down I know he isn’t. “Even though he says he doesn’t, I think he needs me, and I suppose I have to hope that I’m right.”
“Well,” Mark says, “if you need a friend to help you, I will. God knows I owe you a favour.”
“Thanks.” I pause. “It was Tom’s eighteenth birthday yesterday.”
Mark turns to me. “Really? And you heard nothing from him?”
I shake my head, trying hard not to cry.
“Why did he do it?”
“Tom? He left because of what he found out,” I reply. “The truth about our father and… me.” My face flushes red. I told Mark everything while I was in the hospital, but even now it’s difficult to bring up.
“Oh,” Mark says. “Sorry, I didn’t… I was talking about my great-grandfather.”
I shake my head, embarrassed. “Yes, sorry. Of course.”
“I just don’t get it. From what Grandad has said, his father loved his mother very much. Why would he kill her in a fire? And why would he make Abigail disappear? I just don’t get it. We’re missing something.”
He’s right. But I can’t figure out what we’re missing.
*
It’s a week later, and I wake up to the sound of the sea near my little bungalow. I wake in my bed, in the deep blue room that I love. There hasn’t been an instance of me sleepwalking since Isabel was captured, and even my usual anti-psychotics are making me feel much better. The grogginess is finally fading away, and I feel sharper than ever. There’s an ache in my belly and the scars on my back itch, but apart from that, Isabel is far from me today.
She’s never gone, you understand, but she’s far away. Right now, at least.
And today is a good day, because I’m going to Ivy Lodge for what might be my last time. And, no, I refuse to feel sad about that, because this visit is a happy occasion. It’s a celebration.
I’m halfway through a slice of toast when the doorbell rings. I hurry towards the door, chomping the last half before I get there. Mark greets me, appearing slightly dishevelled but excited.
“All set?”
“Let me just lock up.” I grab my coat from the rack behind the door, shove my keys into my bag, and slip into a pair of pumps, chewing on the last bit of crust as I get myself out of the house and lock the door.
Mark walks with me down to his car, sounding slightly out of breath. “Mum is already there. I took her before I fetched you. But she’s under strict instructions not to let anyone in until you’re there.”
“You didn’t have to—”
“No, I did,” he insists. “We can’t start without you. That’s the rule.”
I have to admit I’m relieved. After all our hard work, I want to see how it all ends. And for the second time in a few weeks, I have the good kind of nerves that tickle at your stomach and tell you something wonderful is about to happen. I’m beginning to enjoy those nerves.
When we arrive at Ivy Lodge, Susie is waiting patiently in the reception area with a group of people milling all around her.
“Leah!” She calls me over, and I lean down to hug her. “It feels strange calling you by your real name. But it suits you much better than Lizzie.” She pinches my cheek affectionately before gesturing to a woman standing to her right. What strikes me immediately is the fact that this woman has the same Hawker eyes I’ve become accustomed to. “This is Valerie.”
“It’s really nice to meet you.” I take her hand and shake it limply.
“You must be the good Samaritan who managed to track me down. Who would have thought that I’d find new members of the family in my forties? It’s amazing. You must meet my family.” Valerie takes me around the family, introducing me to her children, her daughter’s husband, and her son’s girlfriend, as well as the baby sleeping soundly in his pram. And then, though I promised myself I wouldn’t, I feel sad about the family George has never had an opportunity to know.
At least he’ll know them now. He’ll know Abigail was happy, and that’s what counts.
There’s more that I know, but I won’t tell George any of that. I haven’t even told Mark yet, though I will when I think the time is right. That isn’t today.
“Is everyone ready?” Mark asks, reacting to the chorus of “Yes!” followed by tentative laughter. He leads the way, pushing his mother’s wheelchair along the corridors.
I quickly say hello to the nurses, wave at the patients, and enjoy the tickle of butterflies in my stomach. This is what it feels like to know something good is going to happen. I want to hold on to this feeling, because I don’t know how long it will last.
Mark opens the door to George’s room, and everyone piles in. “I have some people to meet you, Grandad.”
That’s when I begin to cry.
*
Throughout the course of the afternoon, there are photographs taken, photographs shared, jokes, smiles, and tears. In the midst of it all, George watches happily. He holds the baby, ruffles the hair of the children, holds hands and tells tales, while I sit sniffling in the corner, overwhelmed and unable to take much of it in.
Then, partway through the meeting, when everyone has grown quiet for a moment, George finds me across the room with his roaming gaze. “This is all you, Lizzie.”
I haven’t explained who I am to him yet, but somehow it doesn’t matter.
“That’s right.” Mark puts a hand on my shoulder. “This is all because of you. You’ve brought family to us and helped solve a mystery that has upset my grandad for too long.”
“What a guardian angel you are,” George says.
But not for my own family, I think. Not for them.
You’re a killer, Leah.
I’ll never forget what I am.
*
These are the things I know:
After we arrived back in Clifton-on-Sea after our road trip to Dover, I received a new email from Francesca about her family. She’d taken our conversation to heart and had gone through a number of old boxes containing all sorts of belongings from the Pierces. It was in one of those boxes that Francesca found a diary belonging to Clive Pierce. In that diary, all the details of Abigail’s abduction were laid out, except that the kidnapping was actually an arrangement. George’s father, Anthony Hawker, had reached the end of his tether when it came to threats from his wife’s ex-husband. Not only that, but he was well aware that Simon was Abigail’s real father. According to the diary, both of George’s parents agreed it would be best to get Abigail away from Simon, and they thought that faking her death in a fire would be the best thing to do. Clive Pierce would look after her for a few weeks while her parents sorted out the mess from the fire, got George, and met them in a safe location.
But none of that happened. In the chaos, Claire Hawker couldn’t find George. It was George who had left his room in the night to go to the bathroom, and it was George whom Claire ran back to find. When he told me the story of that night, he must have been mixed up, inserting his anxieties about Abigail from the night she disappeared.
Not only did George’s mother die in the fire, but Clive Pierce found Abigail much more difficult to take from the house than he’d thought. When she continued to scream, he hit her over the head to knock her out, stupidly giving her brain damage in the process.
Anthony, reeling from the backfiring of the plan, told Clive Pierce to take Abigail to a children’s home, claiming that he couldn’t take care of her if she had special needs. Abigail couldn’t even remember her own name at this point.
Francesca sent me the excerpts of the diary in the Pierces’ own handwriting, so I had no reason to doubt the events they recalled, strange though they were. But I couldn’t help but be stunned by what I was reading.
The photograph from Leeds was the result of Mary going on a short holiday with Anthony, still posing as her uncle. He sent the photograph to George because George missed his sister very much. I’m still not sure what Anthony’s reasoning was, because to me it seems more cruel than anything, after letting George search for his sister for so long. Perhaps he thought that if George thought Abigail was happy and well somewhere he’d drop the whole thing and move on. The action smacked of desperation. Given the terrible organisation of the crime itself, I’m not at all surprised that Anthony handled the aftermath with the same disorganisation. Poor George.
Coming from a violent home, I always assumed that bad blood flowed from one generation to the next. I know I have it, and I think Tom does too, as much as I hate to admit it. But I always assumed that George’s father had been a good dad to him. Now I knew he wasn’t. The plan might not have been meant to cause anyone harm, but it was still a reckless and outright stupid thing to do, resulting in the pointless death of Claire Hawker.
Yet no one has a bad word to say against a man like George. Maybe it is possible to be a decent person despite coming from dirt.
These are the other things I know:
Isabel is psychotic, relentless, smart, and a murderer. She’s still in hospital recovering from the injuries I inflicted upon her. DCI Murphy informs me of her progress daily. She is never out of the sight of the police, yet I still worry, and I will until she is locked away.
Isabel has also admitted to the murder of Alison Finlay, even though she told me the opposite. Why would Isabel do that?
She called me a killer.
On the night Alison Finlay died, I left my bed, and I cannot remember where I went.
I could have killed Alison. It could have been me.
I could be a killer.
I could do it again.
I should turn myself in.
But I can’t. Because of Tom.
He’s out there, and I don’t know where he is. I’ve been to visit his friends from the chip shop, his manager, his old school friends—if you could call them that—and his foster family. No one has heard from Tom, least of all me. I don’t know where he is, but I know he needs me.
Maybe I’m afraid, and that’s the real reason I haven’t told anyone about my fugue state on the night Alison Finlay was killed. Maybe my motivations are purely selfish and I’ve tried to convince myself otherwise. Some days, I just don’t know.
If it was me, will I ever do it again?
I don’t know.
*
Pye the cat jumps out at me as I walk down the path to the front door. I step across the top step in one big stride, avoiding bad memories, and knock loudly. The door creaks as it opens, still sticking a little despite the many times it has been fixed, but it opens quickly, and there he stands.
“You’re back.”
I nod. “Yes.”
“Tea?”
“Yes.”
And I walk in.
There he is, filling the kitchen with his size, moving with those calm, languid motions. The room hasn’t changed except for the large tub of butter left out on the table and the dirty mugs in the sink.
“You live here now, then?” I ask. “They told me at the house.”
“It was sitting empty, so…” He shrugs.
When he turns away from me, I realise that my abdomen is throbbing, but it isn’t from the healing laceration below my ribs. I hadn’t realised I missed him this much. I place my hand on his forearm, and he freezes.
“Forget the tea,” I tell him. And my arms swing up around his neck.
Clifton-on-Sea almost felt like home, but it was missing one vital ingredient: Seb.
EPILOGUE
TOM
You should be here, Leah. You’d love it. The sun rose an hour ago, and now the fields are bathed in an orange glow. Is this why Yorkshire is God’s own country? Maybe it is, if God exists, which I’m not sold on, I have to admit.
There’s a lot I need to tell you, but I won’t be telling you any of it for a very long time. One day, I will sit you down and explain to you how it’s all your fault. I didn’t used to think that. I thought you were a victim, but that version of me was weak. You see, the moment I stuck a knife into flesh, I realised that I was changed forever, and at first I wanted to fight it, but then I changed my mind and decided to embrace it, because I discovered that my blood is tainted.
How can I be anything but bad, given how I came into thi
s world? I overheard you, Leah. Do you remember that time in Newcastleton when I was supposed to pick you up from the therapist? I actually turned up a few minutes early. The receptionist at the office was on the phone and not paying attention, giving me an opportunity to listen at the door. I heard everything.
Tom is my son. He’s my son and my brother. Sometimes I look at him and all I see is our father raping me, and there are times I wish he’d never been born, because then he wouldn’t have been through everything we’ve been through. Our parents. Isabel. So much violence. I can’t stand it. I pity him.
The truth was finally laid out before me. For the first time, I knew who I was, and I hated myself. But what you don’t know, Leah, is that I knew I was bad anyway. I’d been fighting it harder and harder every day, but at last I knew I could embrace it because of who I was. You see, ever since I killed David Fielding, I’d imagined doing it again. Killing David Fielding was the one time in my life that I felt any power at all. It was the one time in my life that I managed to change this world somehow. Before then, all I could do was watch as our father killed my mother—my grandmother, I suppose now—and as the bullies picked on me at school, and as you tried to claw our way out of poverty. And as Isabel tortured you.
I finally did it. And I wanted to do it again.
But I realised that I couldn’t just go up to a person and stab them. If I was going to do it, I had to do it right. I had to do it in such a way that I wouldn’t get caught. That’s when I came up with the idea.
There was a murderer on the loose. Owen Fielding was in prison for killing Maisie Earnshaw, but after the kidnapping and torture of me and you, it was pretty well-established that Isabel had had some sort of hand in Maisie’s killing. Of course we knew the truth, because she’d confessed to us. The public suspected she’d done it, too. Which means if a young woman turned up dead with bird wings carved on her back, they would assume that Isabel was the murderer.
Two For Joy (Isabel Fielding Book 2) Page 21
