Let Me Lie(48)

‘A brick?’ A couple browsing the forecourt look up, and he lowers his voice. ‘Christ alive … Is Ella okay?’

‘She was still downstairs with us. She sleeps with us at the moment anyway, but we could have been changing her, or put her down for a nap, or … It doesn’t bear thinking about. The police came straight away.’

‘Do they think they’ll be able to find out who did it?’

‘You know what they’re like. “We’ll do our best, Miss Johnson.”’

Billy made a dismissive sound.

‘I’m scared, Billy. I think Mum and Dad were murdered, and I think whoever killed them wants to stop us finding out more. I don’t know what to do.’ My voice cracks and he opens his arms and wraps me in a bear hug.

‘Annie, sweetheart, you’re getting yourself in a state.’

I pull away. ‘Do you blame me?’

‘The police looked into your mum and dad’s deaths – they said they were suicides.’

‘They were wrong.’

We look at each other for a second. Billy nods slowly.

‘Then I hope they know what they’re doing this time.’

I point to a black Porsche Boxster in pride of place on the forecourt. ‘Nice wheels.’

‘Picked it up yesterday. Wrong weather for it, of course – probably won’t shift till the spring – but I’m hoping it’ll pull in the punters.’ There’s a worried look in his eyes.

‘How bad is it, Uncle Billy?’

He says nothing for the longest time, and when he eventually speaks, he keeps his eyes trained on the Porsche. ‘Bad.’

‘The money Dad left you—’

‘Gone.’ Billy gives a bitter laugh. ‘It paid off the overdraft, but it didn’t touch the loan.’

‘What loan?’

Silence again.

‘Billy, what loan?’

This time he looks at me. ‘Your dad took out a business loan. Trade had been slow for a while, but we were doing okay. You have to ride the rough with the smooth in this game. But Tom wanted to do the place up. Get the lads using iPads instead of carrying clipboards; smarten up the forecourt. We had a row about it. Next thing I know, the money’s in the account. He went ahead and did it anyway.’

‘Oh, Billy …’

‘We fell behind with the repayments, and then …’ He stops, but I hear the rest of his story in my head. Then your dad topped himself, and left me with the debt.

For the first time in nineteen months, Dad’s suicide starts to make sense. ‘Why haven’t you told me this before?’

Billy doesn’t answer.

‘How much is the loan? I’ll pay it off.’

‘I’m not taking your money, Annie.’

‘It’s Dad’s money! It’s right that you have it.’

Billy turns so he’s standing square on to me. He puts his hands on either side of my shoulders and holds me firmly. ‘First rule of business, Annie: keep the company money separate from your own money.’

‘But I’m a director! If I want to bail out the business—’

‘It’s not how it works. A company needs to stand on its own two feet, and if it can’t … well, then it shouldn’t be in business.’ He cuts across my attempts to argue. ‘Now, how about a test drive?’ He points at the Boxster. Our conversation is over.

I learned to drive in a Ford Escort (‘Start with something sensible, Anna’), but once I got my licence, the sky was the limit. In exchange for valeting every weekend, I’d borrow cars from the forecourt, knowing I risked the wrath of both my parents and Uncle Billy if I didn’t bring them back in mint condition. I never developed the same speed gene as my mother, but I learned how to handle fast cars.

‘You’re on.’

The wet roads mean the Boxster’s a little tail-happy on bends, and I head out of town so I can open her up. I grin at Billy, enjoying the freedom of a car with no baby seat in the back. A car with no back seats at all. I catch a worried look on his face.

‘I’m only doing sixty-two.’

Then I understand it’s not the speed Billy’s concerned about, but the sign for Beachy Head. I hadn’t been thinking about where we were going; I’d been enjoying the feel of a responsive engine, of a steering wheel that twitched like a live thing beneath my hands.

‘I’m sorry. It wasn’t intentional.’

Billy hasn’t been to Beachy Head since Mum and Dad died. On test drives he takes people the other way, towards Bexhill and Hastings. I glance to the side and see his face, pale and crumpled, reflected in the nearside mirror. I take my foot off the accelerator, but I don’t turn around.

‘Why don’t we take a walk? Pay our respects.’

‘Oh Annie, love, I don’t know …’

‘Please, Uncle Billy. I don’t want to go on my own.’

There’s a heavy silence, then he agrees.

I drive to the car park where Mum and Dad left their cars. I don’t need to look for ghosts here; they’re all around us. The paths they trod, the signs they passed.

I last came on Mum’s birthday, feeling closer to her up here than in the corner of the churchyard where two small plaques mark my parents’ lives. The cliffs look the same, but the questions in my head have changed. No longer ‘why’ but ‘who’. Who was Mum with that day? What was Dad doing up here?