“Good-bye, Ruby.”
The door slammed shut behind him.
110
He marched away from the cell, muttering obscenities. He passed through the second door, then turned down the left-hand corridor toward the third and final door. Unlocking and then relocking it, he climbed the ladder back to the ground floor.
The house was even more of a mess than usual and it fitted his mood perfectly. His brain felt scattered. His head throbbed violently. He kicked the kitchen chair savagely; then before he knew what he was doing, he’d picked it up and hurled it against the wall. It broke into several pieces, but he felt nothing. Just a crushing emptiness.
Already he could feel the darkness creeping up on him again. Those familiar feelings of desolation. And deep, deep loneliness. He had been cursed since birth—he knew that. Born to a whore of a mother in bloody degradation, he would never have survived infancy had it not been for Summer. He had always worshipped her—for herlove, her patience, her kindness. Now he bitterly regretted her charity—why hadn’t she left him to die? Why had she consigned him tothis?
Was their love a curse? She had been ever present in his life, teaching him to navigate life’s many dangers, teaching him to give and receive love. Latterly she had been absent of course, but she always came back to him. In the end, she always came back.
As he snatched up the shattered pieces of the chair, ramming them into the already overflowing kitchen bin, which belched some of its contents onto the floor, he felt the full extent of his foolishness. Why was he so easily duped? She was out there, always so close to him that when one of these girls drifted into his life, purporting to be her, he fell for it. Hebelieved.But he couldn’t have got it wrong again, could he? He had watched this one for months, seen the emptiness in her life, witnessed the arguments with her so-called family. They didn’t know her, didn’t understand her, but he did and he’d seen her searching for him. Searching for her missing half. But what if hewaswrong? He had been so sure...
This thought took all the strength from him and suddenly he sank to the floor. Curled up in a ball amid the broken wood, rotting food and dirt, he started to cry. Henevercried, but today he couldn’t help himself. He cried for all the disappointments and anguish over the years. For all the false starts and false idols. And for the girl he had loved and lost.
111
Emilia Garanita stabbed the Off button on her computer and picked up her bag. She was already late—the household would have descended into merry chaos by now, no doubt—and she had spent an unsatisfactory day trying to rehash the “Bodies on the Beach” story to make it look like there were fresh developments.
She was halfway to the door when her desk phone rang. She was very tempted to ignore it—today had been a dead loss—but old instincts die hard. For a journalist a phone call is just a story waiting to happen. So she crossed the room and snatched up the phone.
“Garanita.”
“Got a phone call for you. From a woman. About the bluebird tattoo.”
Emilia’s mood descended still further. Since putting this story in theSouthampton Evening News, they had had no end of loonies,chancers and wannabe detectives jamming their line with dead-end “leads.” Each was as deluded as the last—Emilia had ended up regretting agreeing to help Helen Grace with this one.
“Put her through,” Emilia barked, keen to get this charade over with.
“Hello?”
The voice on the other end of the phone was cracked and tremulous.
“Emilia Garanita. How can I help you?”
“Are you the journalist?”
“That’s right.”
“Asking about the bluebird tattoo?”
“Yes.”
A pause, then:
“Is there a reward?”
Emilia sighed inwardly. This conversation was developing in a depressingly familiar way. “Only if the information provided leads to a conviction.”
“Yes or no?”
The voice had a sharpness to it now that made Emilia pay attention. “Yes.”
“How much?”
“Twenty thousand pounds.”
