Gail enters his office, sits opposite him and slides the coffee towards him, weaving the cup around the mounds of papers strewn across his desk.
‘I’m not just the bearer of gifts; I’m also the bearer of news.’
He takes a sip of his coffee. ‘Good or bad?’
‘Jury’s still out on that one.’
‘Go on,’ Ian says. ‘Hit me with it.’
‘Tomlinson was declared DOA when they got to the hospital.’
‘No surprise there, I suppose. What the hell happened?’
‘Don’t know. There will be a post-mortem, obviously.’
‘Let’s hope they find something – some underlying health condition – so we can’t be blamed for his demise,’ Ian says.
For a few seconds, they sip their coffee in silence. Then Ian asks Gail the question he’s asking himself. ‘So what happens now?’
‘Beats me,’ she says.
What does happen now? Is that it? Case closed? End of story? That would be good news for the Ashfords. He pictures the headline in theNorth Devon Echo: PRIME SUSPECT IN JOSHUA KNOLL’S MURDER CASE DIES IN POLICE CUSTODY. But Ian doesn’t believe this is the end. Not by a long shot.
Chapter 35
Iris
THEN
Iris would look back on events, like the Pink concert or Josh’s eighteenth birthday party or Millie’s end-of-term party or the local round of the Cross-Country Schools’ Cup. She could remember she and Josh weren’t on speaking terms for these occasions. But, for the life of her, she couldn’t remember why. It was like there was like there was a loose connection in her brain. Was there something wrong with her? Was she too young to get early onset dementia?
She got totally paranoid about her memory. It had become unreliable. Even when she and Josh were together, her memory seemed untrustworthy, especially when they made up after their rows. Her interpretation of what had happened was often so different from Josh’s version of events. Like she’d misremembered it all. Then, once they’d split up, there were things Iris realized she’d completely forgotten. Things that Josh had tried to sweep under the carpet that she’d simply erased from her mind.Trauma-induced memory loss, Melanie called it.
But the memories started to resurface. Gradually and in fragments; hazy and unpleasant. She’d hear a song or smell something – food or a perfume – or someone would say something, and she’d be reminded of something she’d conveniently forgotten while they were in a relationship. Iris wrote down all the memories so she wouldn’t forget them again.
A lot of what Iris remembered was petty, so childish that to begin with, she thought she must be reading things into the situation that weren’t there. She recalled one Saturday, for example, when she’d had too much homework to hang out with Josh and he didn’t reply to any of her messages all weekend. She’d been convinced he was ignoring her, punishing her, until the Monday morning at school, when he told her he’d dropped his phone in the toilet and had to dry it out in a bowl of rice.
Then there was the time Mum had taken her all the way to the cinema in Barnstaple the day after she’d defended one of Josh’s little brothers – jokingly – against Josh’s jibes. Josh was supposed to meet her there. She waited for over an hour – the film was well underway – but Josh was a no-show. He was supposed to drive her home. She had to ring Mum to come back and pick her up. Josh – when she finally managed to get hold of him – told her she’d got the wrong day.
Josh had a great excuse or plausible explanation every time. He was so convincing that Iris ended up doubting herself. But she always gave him the benefit of the doubt. It was only when Iris considered all the recollections together, instead of individually, that she began to see clearly. She began to see through him. Things that were obscure before suddenly seemed obvious in hindsight.
What made her finally doubt him instead of herself was the image she had of him in her head. When she’d defended his brothers. When she’d told him on FaceTime she had too much homework. And on so many other occasions. Always the same expression. His eyes refusing to meet hers, his lips pursed in a thin line, his jaw set in a determined look. Like he was struggling to keep calm and hide the anger festering inside him like an infected wound. Like he was thinking:you’ll pay for that.
After Josh died, the memories resurfaced more quickly and more clearly. They burst into Iris’s head, assaulting her, when she least expected it – when she was reading a book or taking a shower or watching TV or eating dinner. Some of these memories were more serious, more traumatic. Like the time he threw a glass at her in the kitchen at Hilltop House. He missed – afterwards, he said he’d missed deliberately – but the glass shattered against the wall behind her and a tiny shard embedded itself in her neck, just below her ear. Or like the time he’d belittled her music tastes in front of his schoolfriends, saying she was an intellectual who only liked classical music and rolling his eyes.
‘It was a joke,’ he insisted later. ‘My mates laughed, didn’t they? Oh, babe. You shouldn’t be so sensitive. You should learn to take a joke. You need to chill.’
It hadn’t been funny; it had been humiliating and hurtful, but Iris resolved to chill.
She remembered good things, too, but viewed them through a different lens now that he was gone, so that the past came to mean something completely different in the present. Like all the gifts he bought her. T-shirts she didn’t really like, and that were too small, but that she wore to make him happy. Or that damn necklace he gave her after she had sex with him for the first time. Or like all the attention he would lavish on her or the text messages, the way he would blow up her phone with texts and voice messages when she was busy or with her family. She’d thought the gifts and the attention were loving at the time, sweet, even if it was over the top. She thought it showed he cared about her and was thinking about her. But after they split up, she wondered how much of it was manipulative. And after his death, she wondered if Josh had ever acted innocently or lovingly, or if every single thing he’d ever done had been calculated.
Iris thought Josh’s death might bring some relief. Josh could no longer hurt her – or anyone else. She expected some form of closure, but it didn’t come. She’d seen his dead body, but he was very much alive in her head, in every memory that came back to her. She could still hear his voice. He haunted her, night and day.
‘How do you feel?’ Melanie had asked during their first session after he’d been killed.
Iris suppressed a laugh. It was, like, such a cliché, a therapist asking that question. She didn’t know what to say.
‘It’s normal to feel happy, or even euphoric, after the death of an abuser,’ Melanie continued. ‘On the other hand, maybe you feel sad. Perhaps you’re grieving. After all, Josh showed you his best sides before you saw the worst in him. It’s completely normal if you feel sad, too.’
