I saw Simon frown, but he didn’t say anything.
Scrabble, they decided on, in the end. Elsie wasn’t there, and I don’t think for one second she’d be particularly disappointed to have missed out. There were four of us, people I didn’t know or had never spoken to, all sitting round the big table, staring at letters spread out in front of us on a little rack. Simon and Miss Ambrose and Gloria all walked around the table, leaning over our shoulders and rearranging the letters and making suggestions. I didn’t know why they couldn’t just play the game themselves, and let us go back to staring into a television set.
They had arguments about which words were allowed and which weren’t, and when the woman from number seven asked why some letters were worth more than others, it led to a debate that went on for fifteen minutes. I just looked across at the chair Jack used to sit in. No one had used it since. It felt like trespassing, even though we all knew he’d never sit there again. I suppose when someone finally did, it would be the end of a chapter, because it would mean we’d all moved on, and he had been left behind in the past.
‘You’ve got some good letters there, Florence.’ Simon looked over my shoulder. ‘Have you found any words, yet?’
I hadn’t even looked at the tiles.
‘Car, star, acts,’ he said.
He reached over and moved all the tiles around. ‘You’ve got a six, look: tiaras.’
Simon seemed very pleased with himself.
‘Oh, I think we can do even better than that, young man.’
It was Ronnie. I could feel his breath on the back of my neck. I wanted to turn around, but I couldn’t, because if I did, he’d see the fear in my eyes and then he’d know straight away that the game was over.
‘I can’t see a seven,’ said Simon. ‘Is there a seven?’
I could hear Ronnie smiling. ‘There is, but I think it’s best if we let Florence find it for herself, don’t you?’
I felt Ronnie’s hand rest on my shoulder.
‘Don’t think I’m going to help you,’ he said.
‘What?’ I spoke without turning. ‘What did you just say?’
‘I said,’ his breath was a little closer, his voice just short of a whisper, ‘don’t think I’m going to help you.’
The room felt very far away. Miss Ambrose talking to someone, and the scream of the television set in the corner, and Jack’s empty chair, waiting to be used again. It was as if I was watching it from the ceiling, or the next room, or somewhere in the future. A tangle of colour and light, and confusion, that didn’t seem to belong to me any more, and so I stood.
‘I don’t want to play this game now,’ I said. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’
‘But you’ve only just started,’ I heard Ronnie say. ‘Don’t give up before it’s over.’
‘Sit down, Flo.’ Simon straightened the tiles. ‘You’re doing really well.’
‘I don’t have to play. I can do whatever I want, and I want to leave now.’ When I turned, I caught the edge of the board, and all the letters scattered to the floor.
‘Now look what you’ve done.’ Simon crouched down and started collecting them up. ‘They’ve gone everywhere.’
When I looked up, I was staring right into Ronnie’s eyes.
‘It was you,’ I said. ‘Wasn’t it?’
He didn’t reply.
‘I knew it was. I knew it was you.’ I think I was shouting, because Simon stood and frowned at us both.
‘You’re right, Florence. It was me,’ Ronnie said. He glanced at Simon, who was frowning at us even more. ‘I caught the edge of the table, I was the one who upset the board.’
‘Right.’ Simon put the tiles back on to the table. ‘I see. Although I think you’ll find it was actually Florence.’
‘It might look that way.’ Ronnie reached out and patted my shoulder. ‘But it’s just a case of mistaken identity,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it, Florence?’
‘I really wish you’d stay, Florence.’ Miss Ambrose had picked up the last of the tiles from the carpet. ‘I’d feel much more comfortable if you were over here, with us.’
‘I want to go back. I don’t want to be in this place any more.’ I pulled the coat around my shoulders. ‘I’ve had enough.’
‘I can’t force you,’ she said. ‘But we’re all here, if you change your mind.’
I wasn’t going to change my mind. I’d had a bellyful of small conversations and side plates, and games of Scrabble. I looked for Elsie on my way out, but she was nowhere to be seen, and so I left Miss Ambrose and the sound of people carrying on with their lives, and I started walking down the corridor towards the courtyard.
I knew he was behind me.
I knew before I even looked.
‘Haven’t you got time for one more game?’ he shouted.
I stopped. I turned. I walked back until I was so close to him, I couldn’t take even one step more.
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ I said. ‘All of it.’
He smiled, and the scar at the corner of his mouth disappeared. ‘Was it?’
‘The binoculars. The Battenberg. Even ordering the pizzas and the taxis. All of it was you.’
‘Don’t forget the elephant, Florence. Imagine the irony of forgetting an elephant.’
‘You killed Gabriel Price, didn’t you? You were the one who pushed him in the water.’
‘You were the last person I expected to see on that riverbank, Florence. I was waiting for Gabriel. I had it all planned. I needed an identity to borrow, a name I could steal without too much fuss being made.’ His expression never changed, even as he said the words. ‘Things were getting a little too complicated.’
‘You were waiting for him?’
‘I knew he’d take a shortcut back to his digs. Then you popped up. Perfect timing, Florence. Strangely enough, because of you, becoming someone else was so very much simpler. If anyone would have kicked up a fuss and dug around, it would have been you. But you were hardly going to say anything under the circumstances, were you? You just underestimated how easy I found it to swim back to the bank and carry on with the job I’d set out to do in the first place.’
‘And the police didn’t suspect anything.’
‘I became a missing person. A few weeks later, a body washes up. Similar build, similar age. I knew it might happen, but by then Gabriel was unrecognisable. None of this DNA identification nonsense in those days, the police just used their powers of deduction. Lucky for me they managed to deduce incorrectly.’
‘And no one missed Gabriel. No one thought it might be him?’
‘Of course not. He was a traveller. A nomad. People just assumed he’d moved on to the next town. Being missing generally relies on someone bothering to notice you’re not there any more.’
‘And you just took his place. You stole his ID card and became a whole new person.’
Ronnie simply smiled.
‘I’m going to tell them,’ I said. ‘I’m going to tell them everything. Right from the beginning.’
‘And do you really think they’ll listen?’
‘People have always listened to me. My whole life. No one has ever doubted anything I’ve said.’
‘Florence.’ He leaned forward and the words tiptoed into my ear. ‘When are you going to face up to it? You stopped being the person you used to be a long time ago.’
I could still feel the breath of his words on my face, even as I walked away.
When I got back to the flat, Elsie was sitting at the table, waiting for me.
‘Where did you get to?’ I knew I shouldn’t have shouted. ‘Why weren’t you there?’
‘Whatever’s happened, Flo?’ She shrank back in her seat and made herself very small. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘It’s Ronnie,’ I went over to the window and drew the curtains. ‘He pushed Gabriel Price in the water. He waited for him by the river, and he killed him. He confessed it to me, just now, when we were playing Scrabble.’
‘Scrabble?’
‘He swam to the side and got out. He was down there waiting, planning to drown Gabriel Price. He said me coming along just made it easier for him, because it meant I wouldn’t stir up trouble.’
When I turned back, she had gone.
‘Where are you now?’ I said. ‘Where have you got to?’