The Family Remains(85)

She used her wet hands to smooth down her heat-frazzled hair and she tucked some loose strands behind her ears. She wanted to walk out of the front door. She wanted to run. But then she remembered that gross sports car, the car that her father had paid for, and then she remembered that she was not scared, that she was angry, that she was filled with a dark burning hate and that there was nothing this man could do to her that would hurt her more than what he was doing to her father.

She left the bathroom and peered down the length of the hallway. There were two more doors off it, one of which led into a small study overlooking the driveway with a clear view of the Maserati. She tiptoed in and quickly leafed through the paperwork on the desk. She opened the camera in her phone and took photos of as many things as possible, her hands shaking slightly, her heart still racing. She opened drawers and ran her hands under the desk. She opened a folder and took more photos of statements and letters. She didn’t know what anything was. She had no idea if any of it had any meaning, but Jonno had said to get as much evidence of his business activities as possible, so she was going for quantity over quality.

She tugged at a drawer in the bottom of the desk that finally came loose at her third attempt. She recoiled at what she saw inside, her hands clutching her chest.

‘Oh my God,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Oh my God.’

A gun.

A handgun.

Just sitting there.

She took a few photographs of it and then slammed the drawer closed again.

‘Are you OK, Mrs Rimmer?’

She jumped, hard, at the sound of a voice behind her.

It was Joy.

‘Yes. God. Sorry. You made me jump. I was just looking for something.’

‘That’s OK! No problem! Just come through when you’re ready.’

‘Thank you, Joy.’

She turned back to Michael’s desk and moved the mouse of his computer. The screen came to life: a photo of Michael on the back of a speedboat, a young woman under each arm, a bottle of champagne in the foreground of the shot in a silver bucket. Rachel had no idea who the girls in the picture were, or when it had been taken, but Michael was clean-shaven in it, so she assumed it had been taken before he met her. She tried his birth date for the passcode, but it failed. She tried it backwards, but it didn’t work. Then her eye went to the stupid car parked in the driveway, with its stupid personalised number plate: MR74.

On her fingers she counted up his initials, then condensed them down to one-digit numbers. A 4 and a 9. Then she added the 7 and the 4 and pressed enter. The screen opened up. Her heart galloped.

She clicked on his email and scanned the inbox with her eyes. And there it was, four days ago, PMX Wealth Management, entitled Your PMX: July Accounting Update. She opened it and pressed ‘Forward’, sent it to her own email address and then deleted it from the sent folder and from the trash folder. She closed the email and went back to his inbox. Lots of ‘Thank you for your order’ type emails; clearly Michael had been shopping. Menswear. Wine. Books. Jewellery.

She felt her throat pulse with anger. Her father’s money funding this monster’s five-star lifestyle.

There were sub-folders on his email account, and she was about to click one open when she heard a man’s voice.

She shut down the email account, slipped her phone back in her pocket and quickly strode back towards the living room, just in time to see Michael descending the last stair.

‘Oh my God. Rachel! Wow! How wonderful! What are you doing here?’

The beard was gone, his face was smooth with afternoon sleep, and he had a very nice tan.

‘I was in town. Thought I’d finally check out the legendary “house in Antibes”! Not renting it out this summer, then?’

‘Er, no! No. I had a few bookings, but I cancelled them. So good to be back! Can you stay? Are you in a rush?’

‘I can stay, sure, for a few minutes. Why not?’

Joy had laid out crisps, salami slices, olives and salted crackers on a plate, with a jug of iced water and two cut-crystal tumblers.

‘Thanks, Joy,’ Michael called out towards a room behind the kitchen.

‘My pleasure, Mr Rimmer,’ came the disembodied response.

‘Is she here full-time? Like, a housekeeper?’

‘Yes. But not a live-in. Eight ’til eight, Monday to Saturday.’

‘Wow! Get you with staff!’ She said this in a tone filled with bitterness but was not surprised when he didn’t pick up on it.

‘Well, you know, it’s a different lifestyle here to London. It’s more—’

‘Expensive?’

He laughed. ‘Yeah. That’s not what I was going to say, but yeah.’

‘So, how did you manage the turnaround in your finances? I mean, a year and a half ago I was having to do all our food shopping because you were penniless. And now look at you! And the car! Wow!’

‘Oh, so, I sorted the shit out with the lost shipment. It was found. Thank God. So yeah, all back up and running.’ He eyed her sheepishly, curiously. ‘Is this – are you here to discuss divorce?’

‘No. No, I’m not. I told you, I just wanted to see this house. Ella told me you were here. I was coming anyway. Just being nosey.’

‘But do you actually want a divorce?’

‘I don’t know. Do you?’