Using his free hand, he pulls his phone out of his pocket and sets it down on the table. ‘I’m going to record this. It’s good to have it all stored, for the official record. In case one day I write my story.’ He grins. ‘Who lives, who dies, who tellsyourstory, Beth?’
His eyes flit up and down as he sets the phone to record. They’re never off me or the gun in his hand for long enough to give me a chance.
‘Recording,’ he says, looking at Flora. ‘On your marks, get set, go. Let’s let Judge Beth decide.’
‘He said I had to go,’ Flora says in a dull voice. ‘Far away from all of them. Lose my family. He would pay for my new life, but it had to be somewhere where there was no danger I’d bump into any of them by chance. First he sent me to Scotland. Until the job opportunity here came up, and he made a different plan: to put me back in the house where he …’ She chokes on the words. Starts again. ‘Where it happened. And keep me there. He’d keep an eye on me, he said, to check I was coping. He didn’t care what happened to me, but he pretended to. That’s what he does: pretends or uses the truth as it suits him, so that I never know what to expect. Him keeping tabs on me was a control thing. That was how the phone calls started. The Daily Responses.’
‘Beth won’t know what those are,’ says Lewis wearily, as if Flora’s a toddler who’s testing his patience to the limit.
‘She knows.’
‘And if you didn’t go to Scotland, and then back to Wyddial Lane, if you didn’t do his sick phone ritual every day, what did he say he’d do to you?’ Hearing myself ask the question, I realise I’m not as scared as I was at first. I don’t know why not. Lewis still has a gun pointed at me. Maybe burning hatred flowing through you for long enough makes you braver. ‘Did he threaten to tell Thomas and Emily that Georgina’s death was your fault? That you’d been a bad mother and killed her?’
Flora nods. ‘My parents too. It would have destroyed them. They’d have believed me over him if I’d told them everything, but I couldn’t risk it because he’d threatened something far worse than exposing me as a killer, even if he hadn’t stated the threat in words.’
‘If I didn’t say it in words, Flora, how could I have made the threat?’ asks Lewis.
‘Innuendos, suggestions,’ says Flora. ‘You know how you did it, and I knew exactly what you meant: if I didn’t keep my mouth shut and obey you, always, in every detail of what little life you’d left me, then you’d kill someone else I loved. Thomas and Emily, probably. Or my parents. Maybe all of them. There’s nothing too evil for you, and you don’t care about anyone apart from yourself.’
‘That’s not true.’ Lewis looks angry. Insulted.
I watch his face carefully, not quite believing what I’m seeing.
‘I cared about my family. You corrupted it beyond repair,’ he tells Flora.
‘Even if you cared once, that changed,’ she says. ‘Your obsession with making me suffer took over. You got addicted to it at some point. I’m not sure when. Maybe when the Florida job prospect came up and you realised you could force me to live—’ Flora stops with a strangled sob. ‘Live inthathouse again – the last place I’d ever want to go back to. The house where you killed Georgina, the house you make me live in.’
‘Who are Kevin Cater and Yanina?’ I ask.
‘Is that a trick question?’ Lewis sneers. ‘They’re Kevin Cater and Yanina. Yanina Milyukov. Kevin Cater used to work with me years ago, when we all still lived in Cambridge. Yanina’s his girlfriend. I’m glad you brought them up.’ There’s an edge of grim determination to his voice. ‘They’re the people I pay to keep things running smoothly. Flora’s not reliable these days, as you can see for yourself. She has two young children, whom she’d be incapable of looking after properly on her own. When I say “pay”—’ He breaks off and laughs. ‘“Through the nose” is the only way to describe it. I pay Cater and Yanina a fortune, in fact. Not that I mind – they’re worth it. Most people would ask awkward questions, or want a say in what happened in the house. Not them. They do as they’re told.’
‘And they don’t know the rest. They have no idea how much they’renottold,’ says Flora. ‘I’ve always been too frightened to say anything. They don’t know you’re a murderer. They don’t know that every time you pop back from Florida you … you …I hate you!’ She screams at him, bending double as if someone’s snapped her in half. ‘I wish you were dead, I wishIwas dead,’ she sobs.
As if nothing has happened, Lewis says to me, ‘I pay Thomas and Emily Cater’s school fees too. They’re not cheap. I do all of this so that Flora can have a second chance. A new family.’
‘Pretending to be Kevin Cater’s wife?’ I say. ‘That’s her second chance? While his girlfriend pretends to be the nanny?’
‘Flora’s a mess,’ Lewis says dismissively. ‘No one would have believed in her as the nanny. Plus, I wanted her to be able to play Mummy again. Yanina’s got a Russian accent, as nannies often do. It worked better that way.’
I look at Flora. ‘How could they go along with it?’ I ask her. ‘Are they monsters too?’
She shakes her head slowly, woodenly. There’s a puzzled look in her eyes, as if she’s searching for the right word to describe Kevin and Yanina.
‘You’ve never had a really large amount of money, have you, Beth?’ Lewis says. ‘Life-changingly large, I mean. Cater and Yanina have. I’ve never explicitly told them that Flora’s drunken binge caused Georgina’s death, but I know it’s what they both think happened.’ He looks pleased with himself. ‘Remember, Flora has also “gone along with it”, as you put it. All these years. She could have walked away from that house any time she chose to. She could have gone to the police if she thought what I was inflicting on her was so terrible. But she never did, and she never will. That ought to tell you something.’
‘Because I know you’d kill my children,’ Flora tells him. Like an everyday wife reminding her husband of the bad thing that will happen if they don’t both take care to avoid it. I know what I’m hearing, yet part of me is still thinking, ‘Is there anything else that this could all mean? It can’t mean what I think it does.’
‘You’re making that up.’ Lewis sneers at Flora. ‘I’ve never said it.’
‘Why are they called Thomas and Emily?’ The gun in his hand is no longer pointed at me. I didn’t notice him lowering his arm, which is now by his side. If he fired, the bullet would hit the floor.
‘Who?’ Lewis asks me. His face breaks into a grin. ‘Thinkabout it,’ he says.
‘Thomas and Emily Cater. I know they’re both yours,’ I tell him.
‘Of course they’re mine.’ He looks impatient. ‘Who else’s would they be?’
I wait.
