Daisy in Chains(103)

‘You’ll like this one,’ he promised. ‘There’s a pool where Arthur and Guinevere’s wedding rings were thrown hundreds of years ago. The rock grew around them and all you can see now are two small rings of gold in the rock face.’

She’d gone willingly, after that, because who can resist a tale of enduring love. Or heartless betrayal. The legend could be read both ways.

Twenty years ago, he turned the cave into a fairy grotto with dozens of tiny, sparkling lights. She’d sat on the rug and watched in wonder as this beautiful man went to so much trouble for her. She’d known in that moment, for better or worse, she would love him until the day she died.

She hadn’t known then, of course, that it was going to be so very much for the worse.

The narrow rock passage sweeps down low and she must too, but she knows he is waiting on the other side.

The vaulted chamber is much darker than she remembers from that first time. He has had neither the time, nor the opportunity, to collect tea lights. All he has is a small torch and a travel rug, both of which are probably from the plane.

He is sitting, his back to the river, watching her approach.

‘Hey, gorgeous,’ he says.

She draws closer, reaches the rug and sinks down beside him. He is too pale, even in this weird absence of light, too thin. So much older than the boy she fell in love with, and yet so completely the man who has been in her head every waking moment for two decades. Only the sadness is different. The sadness at what she has become.

‘How long have you known?’ She asks the question, and yet knows the answer before he gives it.

‘Almost from the first,’ he says. ‘Someone planted that evidence. It didn’t take me long to realize you were the only one clever enough.’

Of course. He’d known that Maggie Rose and Daisy Baron were one and the same, long before that first Parkhurst visit. She would have seen any gleam of recognition in his eyes, any sudden, sharp realization of the truth. He has been playing the game for as long as she. Only he has been playing it better.

He tries to smile, doesn’t quite make it. It will cost him dear, this knowledge of what he has turned her into.

‘And the only one who hated you enough,’ she says.

He is so very, very sad. ‘Still?’ he asks her.

She shakes her head. ‘No.’

‘Well, that’s something, I guess.’

Twenty years ago, on this very spot, he’d barely been able to keep his hands off her. Now, he sits apart. She reaches out and traces her index finger along the back of his hand. He glances down at it.

‘Seriously?’ she says. ‘I was the first person you thought of? After all this time?’

His hand turns and, after a moment’s hesitation, takes hold of hers. ‘The whole cave business more or less convinced me.’ He looks around. ‘Especially when Myrtle was found in here. Then you sent my mother those books. Did you think I’d forgotten you were called Margaret? That I never knew your middle name? The books clinched it. You never did get the hang of participles, did you? And it’s not, “too young an age”, it’s “too early an age”. How many times did I tell you that?’

She edges closer. ‘Don’t tell me you’re still a grammar fascist.’

‘What happened to Sirocco?’ he asks her.

She doesn’t reply and he sees what has happened to Sirocco.

‘You knew that,’ she says quickly. ‘You knew when you chose to involve her. When you sent her with that last letter.’

He doesn’t argue. The darkness that seeped into her all those years ago has found its way into him too.

‘The police will get to my house soon. They’ll find her. They’ll work out that I killed the other three. They’ll know you’re innocent.’

‘Jessie, Chloe, Myrtle,’ he says, as though their names are seldom off his tongue. ‘Did there need to be three?’

‘Two could be coincidence,’ she says. ‘Three makes a serial killer.’

He nods slowly and she thinks she will have to work hard to chase that sadness away. But that’s OK. They have plenty of time.

‘Odi and Broon? Did she see you coming in here? Is that why?’

Maggie is getting bored, talking about dead people. This isn’t why she came. ‘Who knows? Odi was scared of me, but then again she was scared of everything. I just don’t like loose ends.’

‘Looks like I’m a free man.’ His face brightens, but the look of levity is forced and false. ‘Although, technically, I could still be charged with stealing a plane.’

She smiles too. ‘Can’t help you with that one, I’m afraid.’

‘So, what was the plan? Leave me there to rot? When the police found that office you hired, that computer, that frigging pen with my fingerprints on it – how did you do that, by the way? – I thought that was it. That I’d have one last visit, you’d smile your little cat-like smile and I’d never see you again.’

His gaze holds hers and doesn’t falter.

‘It was the pen you signed my contract with,’ she says. ‘I just changed the ink and removed the cap. And, no, I would never have left you to rot. I thought perhaps we’d fall in love, that I’d become a prison wife, devoted, loyal, working tirelessly for your release but never quite managing it.’