Enough of that. She’s involved in someone else’s tragedy now. She follows Rachel as she leads them straight through the house. She opens the back door and ushers them outside again. The garden isn’t lit, but there’s sufficient light from the back of the house for Lucy to see how long it is – and how overgrown.
‘Neither of us have green fingers,’ Rachel says. ‘It’s Gabriela who was the gardener.’
Lucy’s blood runs cold at the idea that Rachel lives in the house in which Gabriela was killed.
‘You live in the same house?’
‘Edgar didn’t want to move,’ Rachel says.
Lucy squints into the darkness as they walk down the garden; there’s a shrub covered in yellow flowers in the middle of a flower bed struggling to hold its own in the mass of weeds and overgrown grass, piles of dead leaves banked up everywhere.
‘I did try when I first moved in,’ Rachel says, half-laughing, ‘but it was far beyond my skills.’
They’re at the end of the garden now. There’s a wooden fence with holes in it here and there, through which Lucy can see nothing but darkness.
‘What are we looking at, exactly?’ Anna says. She sounds out of breath, grumpy. Scratch that – tired.
‘This,’ Rachel says, gesturing at a large shed. It must once have been a smart structure, more like an outdoor office than merely storage for garden tools, but its timbers are stained and cracked, its windows filthy, draped in spiders’ webs. Rachel switches the torch on her phone back on and waves it round – Lucy sees flashes of foliage, green paint, before the light is switched back off.
‘What?’ Anna says.
‘This was Gabriela’s. She loved gardening, kept all her tools in here.’
Another crash of exhaustion. Lucy could quite easily curl up in the sheltered corner, wrap her scarf around her head, sleep for a week. She knows she’s about to hear something she doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to be told, doesn’t want to be made her responsibility in any way. It’s unstoppable, though, the tide of revelation that’s overwhelming her. Anna looks overwhelmed, too, her brows furrowed in concentration.
‘No one has been in since she was killed,’ Rachel says. ‘Edgar locked it up – too painful for him. He couldn’t bring himself to demolish it, though that might have been better.’
Edgar. So much pain swirling around him, thick in his wake. At the mention of his name, guilt grips Lucy’s stomach, the heat of shame burning up again in her cheeks. A flash of his face above her, bearing down on her . . . Not now.
‘Victor’s come up with a theory that it’s where Marie was hiding.’
Lucy looks again at the shed. It’s practically derelict, the space full of nettles. There’s a chill in the air; a chill in Rachel’s voice. Lucy shivers, wrapping her arms closely around herself.
‘Hiding? What does that have to do with now?’ Anna says. ‘I mean, it’s awful. But why do you think it’s relevant?’
‘She hid out here. Watching the house before she killed Gabriela,’ Rachel says. She’s speaking so quietly now that both Lucy and Anna have had to stand very close to her, a small huddle, though one from which Lucy derives no warmth. They stand in silence for a while before Rachel speaks again. ‘I don’t know. But when he turned up at the house, Victor seemed incensed. He was desperate to talk to Edgar about something. He always used to talk about how she must have planned it all out, how he thought she must have been camping out somewhere, spying on them.’
‘I don’t understand what difference it makes, though,’ Anna says. ‘I mean, she was convicted of the murder. What does it matter if she was spying on the house or not?’
‘Because of how Edgar reacted,’ Rachel said. ‘These criminologists – they’re desperate to forgive, to see the best in people. Victor wanted Edgar to understand that what Marie did wasn’t on the spur of the moment. It wasplanned. She watched the house. She thought it all out. And that makes all the difference in the world. Victor wanted to make sure the parole board knew, too. Marie’s release on licence will be coming up for consideration soon. Rehabilitated or not, Victor didn’t want her getting out. He wanted to make everyone understand that it was premeditated. Even Edgar wouldn’t be able to forgive that. He’ll take a lot, but when he turns on someone . . . I saw him lose his temper once – it was terrifying. He intervened when a man was hitting his wife but put it this way, he didn’t hold back at all. He was lucky the other guy didn’t want to press charges.’
46
They go back inside the house. Anna glances at Lucy – the girl looks as if she’s freezing. Anna is cold too, though not sure if it’s the temperature or the fact that exhaustion is now threatening to shut her down completely.
Once they’re in the kitchen, Rachel tells them to sit down before excusing herself and leaving the room. Anna hears her tread as she walks upstairs, the sound of water running from a tap. Then a cry. Anna and Lucy both run out of the room immediately to find Rachel halfway down the stairs, her face panicked.
‘Edgar’s gone. He’s taken Rowan, too.’
‘Gone where?’
‘I don’t know.’
They join Rachel on the upper floor. The doors along the landing are all flung open – except for one, which is secured with a padlock. Anna peers over Rachel’s shoulder to see an empty cot in the corner of a small bedroom, an empty baby sleeping bag cast on the floor.
‘Edgar never does this. He’s terrified of being left in charge,’ Rachel says. ‘This makes no sense.’
Anna moves past Rachel into the room. There’s a piece of paper on the windowsill. She picks it up. Rachel’s name is scrawled on the outside. She hands it over and stands back while Rachel reads it, before wordlessly handing it back to Anna.
