‘I don’t know.’ Kate’s face is suddenly wary. She pulls her hand away from Fatima and draws up a chair to sit opposite the sofa. I have a sudden image of her as a plaintiff and us as a panel of judges, grilling her, passing sentence. ‘Why don’t you tell me?’
‘Kate,’ I force myself to speak. It was me who brought my suspicions to the others – the least I can do is say them to her face. ‘Kate, I met Mary Wren on the way to the station earlier. She – she told me something that the police have discovered. Something I didn’t know.’ I swallow. Something is constricting my throat. ‘She – she said …’ I swallow again, and then force myself to say it in a rush, like ripping off a bandage, stuck to a wound. ‘She said that the police have discovered heroin in the wine bottle Ambrose was drinking from. She said that the overdose was oral. She said they’re not looking at suicide but – but –’
But I can’t finish.
It’s Thea who says it finally. She looks up at Kate from beneath the curtain of her long fringe, and the lamplight throws her face into shadows so that it looks so much like a skull, gleaming in the darkness, that I shudder.
‘Kate,’ she says bluntly, ‘did you kill your father?’
‘What makes you think that?’ Kate says, still in that oddly calm voice. Her face in the circle of lamplight is blank, almost sur-really so, compared to the naked pain on Fatima’s and Thea’s. ‘He overdosed.’
‘An oral overdose?’ I burst out. ‘Kate, you know that’s ridiculous. It’s a stupid way to commit suicide. Why would he do it when he had his works right there, ready to inject? And –’ and here my heart fails me, and I feel a stab of even greater guilt at what I’ve done, but I force myself on. ‘And there’s this.’
And I take the note out of my pocket, and throw it down on the table.
‘We read it, Kate. We read it seventeen years ago but I didn’t understand it until today. It’s not a suicide note, is it? It’s the note of a man who has been poisoned by his own child, and is trying to keep her out of prison. It’s a note telling you what to do – to go on, not to look back, to make his final action worthwhile. How could you, Kate? Is it true you were sleeping with Luc? Is that why you did it, because Ambrose was splitting you up?’
Kate sighs. She shuts her eyes, and puts her long slim hands to her face, pressing them against her forehead. And then she looks up at us all, and her face is very sad.
‘Yes,’ she says at last. ‘Yes it’s true. It’s all true.’
‘What?’ Thea explodes. She stands up, knocking over her glass so that it smashes on the floor, red wine seeping across the boards. ‘What? You’re going to sit there and tell us that you dragged us into covering up a murder? I don’t believe you!’
‘What don’t you believe?’ Kate says. She looks up at Thea, her blue eyes very steady.
‘I don’t believe any of it! You were fucking Luc? Ambrose was sending you away? And you killed him for it?’
‘It’s true,’ Kate says. She looks away, out of the window, and I see the muscles in her throat move as she swallows convulsively. ‘Luc and I … I know Dad thought of us as brother and sister, but I barely remembered him. When he came back from France, it was like … it was like falling in love. And it seemed so right, that’s what Dad couldn’t get. He loved me, he needed me. And Dad –’ She swallows again, and shuts her eyes. ‘You would have thought we really were brother and sister from the way he acted. The way he looked at me when he told me …’ She is looking across the Reach, towards the headland, beyond which lies a tent surrounded by police tape. ‘I’ve never felt dirty before. And I felt it then.’
‘What did you do, Kate?’ Fatima’s voice is low and shaking, as if she can’t believe what she’s hearing. ‘I want to hear it from you, step by step.’
Kate looks up at that. Her chin goes up, and she speaks almost defiantly, as if she’s made up her mind, at last, to face the inevitable.
‘I bunked off school that Friday, and I went home. Dad was out, and Luc was at school, and I poured the whole of his stash into that red wine he kept beneath the sink. There was only one glass left in the bottle, and I knew Luc wouldn’t drink it – he was out that night, in Hampton’s Lee. And it was always the first thing Dad did on a Friday night – come home, pour himself a glass of wine, throw it back – do you remember?’ She gives a shaking laugh. ‘And then I went back to school, and I waited.’
‘You dragged us into this.’ Thea’s voice is hoarse. ‘You got us to cover up a murder, and you’re not even going to say sorry?’
‘Of course I’m sorry!’ Kate cries, and for the first time her weird calm cracks, and I get a glimpse of the girl I recognise beneath, as anguished as the rest of us. ‘You think I’m not sorry? You think I haven’t spent seventeen years in agony over what I made you do?’
‘How could you do it, Kate?’ I say. My throat is raw with pain, and I think I may sob at any moment. ‘How could you? Not us – him. Ambrose. How could you? Not because he was sending you away, surely? I can’t believe it!’
‘Then don’t believe it,’ Kate says. Her voice is shaking.
‘We deserve to know,’ Fatima snarls. ‘We deserve to know the truth, Kate!’
‘There’s nothing else I can tell you,’ Kate says, but there’s an edge of desperation in her voice now. Her chest is rising and falling and Shadow patters over, not understanding her distress, and butts his head against her. ‘I can’t –’ she says, and then seems to choke. ‘I – I can’t –’
And then she jumps up and walks to the window overlooking the Reach. She steps out with Shadow at her heels, and slams it behind her.
Thea makes as if to go after her, but Fatima catches at her arm.
‘Leave her,’ she says. ‘She’s at breaking point. If you go after her now, she’s liable to do something stupid.’
‘What?’ Thea spits. ‘Like throw me in the Reach too? Fuck. How could we be so stupid? No wonder Luc hates her – he knew all along. He knew, and he said nothing!’
‘He loved her,’ I say, thinking of his face that night when we saw Kate standing at the corner of the stairs – the mix of triumph and agony in his eyes. They both turn to me, as if they’d forgotten I was there, huddled in the corner of the sofa. ‘I think he still does, in spite of everything. But living with that – with that knowledge all these years –’
I stop. I put my hands to my face.
‘She killed him,’ I say, trying to make myself believe it, understand it. ‘She killed her own father. She didn’t even try to deny it.’
We are still sitting there much later, when there is a noise from the window, and Kate comes back inside. Her feet are wet. The tide has risen, covering the jetty, and the wind has picked up, and I see that her hair is speckled with rain. A storm is coming.
Her face, though, is back to that unsettling calm as she clicks the window shut behind her, and puts a sandbag against the frame.
‘You’d better stay,’ she says, as if nothing has happened. ‘The walkway has been cut off, and there’s a storm coming.’
‘I’m pretty sure I can wade through two feet of water,’ Thea snaps, but Fatima puts a warning hand on her arm.