The Family Remains(97)

Lucy follows Rachel, now, into her apartment. It’s messy and modern with a teak kitchen counter suspended from the ceiling. The living room overlooks the canal at the back and the whole room is filled with sunlight. It is, Lucy considers, exactly the sort of flat she would love to live in if she were a single woman with no dependants.

‘You know,’ Rachel begins, as she fills the kettle from the tap. ‘We’ve actually met before?’

‘We have?’ Lucy peers at her, trying to find something familiar. And then it hits her. ‘Oh!’ she says. ‘Was it you? In Nice last year?’

‘Yes. February 2018. I was there. You played me “Firework” by Katy Perry.’

Lucy nods. ‘I remember,’ she says. ‘I remember now. You were very generous. Very kind. Why didn’t you—?’ She pauses. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’

‘Oh,’ says Rachel, pulling tea bags from a jar. ‘I don’t know. I suppose I’d come looking for answers and you gave them to me and I didn’t want to intrude any more. I didn’t want to make a mess.’

‘What answers?’

Lucy sees a film of tears cover Rachel’s eyes.

‘Oh, just that it wasn’t only me, I suppose. That I hadn’t done that to him, that he was already like that.’ She laughs nervously and drops the bags into huge mugs. Then the smile leaves her mouth and she sighs heavily and closes her eyes. ‘Lucy,’ she says, looking at her intently, ‘that day. The day Michael died. I was there. I saw you.’

Lucy shakes her head in shock and laughs, nervously. ‘What?’

‘I saw you at Michael’s house. Clearing up the kitchen. Taking Michael into the basement. I saw it all and all this time I wanted to tell you that I’d been doing everything I could to protect you, to keep you safe. Every time I talk to the police, I remind them that Michael was a criminal, that he wasn’t a victim of crime, that he was a victim of himself. And I knew that they still had searches open for you, that you were still an active line of inquiry. But then a few weeks ago I got a call from the investigation team in France. And it’s official. They’ve closed the case. It’s been recorded as an organised crime murder. They’re not looking for you any more, Lucy. It’s over.’

Lucy feels a bubble of nervous euphoria pass through her gut. She shakes her head slightly. ‘Are you sure?’

‘I am completely sure, Lucy. That’s what I wanted to tell you. Just that. After all these months, finally. It’s over.’

Lucy shakes her head again, not quite able to absorb this pronouncement. ‘But what if … I don’t know. What if someone suddenly unearths some new CCTV footage or someone suddenly remembers seeing me going in there. It could still—’

Rachel interjects. ‘No,’ she says. ‘That’s not going to happen. The investigation was thorough and all-encompassing, believe me. They have left nothing unturned and now it is over. Locked away in a box. Nobody is looking for you, Lucy. Nobody is looking for you ever again.’ She smiles brilliantly and Lucy returns the smile.

‘Oh my God,’ says Lucy. ‘I can’t get my head around it. All these months, every waking minute of every day, it’s been there. Right there. I’ve been ready to run. You know. Ready to hide. And now …’

‘Yes … it’s finished.’ Rachel smiles again. ‘But I really need to ask you, Lucy, what was it? What made you do it?’

Lucy glances down at the floor and then up at Rachel, her eyes shining with tears. ‘I went there to collect our passports. On that Sunday. I knew he’d expect sex in return, I knew that, but I thought it would be worth it to get my freedom back. To get back to the UK to find my daughter. So I was ready for it. Wearing nice underwear. Ready for sex. But that wasn’t what he wanted. He raped me in his kitchen. He pushed me into broken glass. Look.’ Lucy pulls up her T-shirt to show Rachel the small livid scar that is still there, over a year later. ‘I was bleeding and in pain and he kept raping me and there was this knife. The knife I’d been using to slice the tomatoes. And I – Well. You know what I did.’

Rachel takes Lucy’s hand in hers and her eyes fill with tears too. ‘I know,’ she says. ‘I know. You don’t need to say any more. I know.’

‘And you? What were you doing there? When you saw what I did?’

‘Ha! Well, I’d come to kill him too!’

Lucy gasps. ‘What? Really?’

Rachel smiles. ‘No. Not really. But maybe. If it had come to it.’

‘Because of how he treated you?’

‘Yes. Because of how he treated me. Because, you know, he raped me too. Raped me. In my sleep. I was asleep!’ Rachel clamps her hands over her mouth and makes a loud sobbing noise. ‘And then’ – she smiles apologetically and continues, drawing in her breath – ‘a few months later I found out that Michael had blackmailed my father out of all of his life savings by threatening to publicly share filthy photographs of me that he’d stolen from my phone at some point during our brief marriage. I went there that day to get him to pay the money back. I was going to get his gun – did you know he had a gun? And I was going to point it at him until he agreed to pay my father back all his money.’

‘And if he’d refused?’