Haven't They Grown(103)

‘I can handle a conversation about unpleasant things, Beth. It’s not that I’m worried about.’

‘Then what?’

‘I don’t know. Awkwardness, I guess. Not knowing what’s going to happen.’

‘Here’s what’ll happen. Flora’s going to say hello and ask how we are, like a normal person. Thomas and Emily will probably be jumping around on a trampoline, or splashing in the pool. Flora’s mum or dad will offer us a cup of tea.’

‘I want a beer,’ Dom says. ‘I’ll need one.’

‘And it won’t be awkward. Not for more than about two seconds, anyway. Flora’s doing okay, Dom. She says the kids are too. They’re getting better, all of them.’

‘And the other Thomas and Emily, the older ones? Do we mention them at all, or just carry on as if they don’t exist? It’s not that I want to bring them up, but …’

‘No. Definitely don’t.’

‘It’s so horrible for Flora.’

I agree, but I say nothing. Even saying, ‘Yes, it’s awful,’ would make a terrible situation feel worse somehow, by officially confirming its existence. Not that it can be denied or changed. Thomas and Emily Braid are living with Lewis’s mother, who has relocated to Delray Beach, in the same home they lived in with Lewis. They won’t see Flora. She’s written to them several times and so have I. So has Detective Sophia Steel. They’ve been told the true story of Georgina’s death and everything that happened between their parents before and after that, and they don’t believe it. Lewis’s mother doesn’t either. Their version of events, the one they’re determined to stick to though there’s no evidence for it, is that Flora and I conspired to murder Lewis, who never did a single thing wrong in his life. The one and only time I spoke to Emily Braid on the phone, a month ago, she said, ‘Why should I believe the mother who abandoned me and Thomas and who killed my little sister? I know that’s what happened – Dad told us when he thought we were old enough to know. And she never once tried to make contact in twelve years. And then you and she plotted to murder him and get away with it. You make me sick!’ I was cut off before I could say anything in Flora’s or my defence.

It’s not true, Emily. The truth is that only I planned to murder your dad, during those few seconds that I had the gun in my hand, when I realised that I could. I planned it alone, with no help from Flora. I made up the lie about the knife and him coming at me with it in his hand, I said what I wanted Lewis’s phone to record for the police to listen to later; I thought of all of it, the whole story and how it would play out, in those few seconds, while I clung to the gun with my trembling hands. All Flora did was corroborate.

Then I lied to Detective Steel. I didn’t aim for Lewis’s shoulder. I aimed for his head, and, even with my hand shaking violently, I must have aimed well. And maybe in a looser sense it was self-defence, but I’m never going to be able to think of it that way, knowing how much I wanted him dead, how deliberately I pointed the gun at the spot right between his eyes, willing the bullet through the air and into his warped brain.

And then I lied to Dom. And to Zannah and Ben. And I’ll never know their opinion of what I really did, whether they would praise me and say, ‘I’d have done the same’ or disapprove because I killed a man, deliberately, wanting him to die. Praying for it with every cell in my body, and feeling proud once it was done. That’s the truth, Emily.

‘Maybe they’ll change their minds one day,’ Dom says as we pull up outside turquoise-painted gates with a white sign on them: ‘Villa Agathi’. Flowers have been painted around the name. ‘If Kevin Cater and Yanina can overhear one conversation between Thomas and Emily and change their minds about everything after taking Lewis’s money for years …’

‘But how will Thomas and Emily Braid ever hear their younger siblings’ account of the things the horrible man from America used to say to Mummy when he appeared? Even if they did, they might not change their minds. They’re believing what they want and need to believe because they loved Lewis. They adored him.’

I don’t believe Kevin and Yanina truly changed their minds, but I don’t want to say so. Not now. I can’t prove it’s a lie, and I couldn’t bear to hear Dom stick up for them. I’ll never believe that they suddenly realised, after being unaware for years, that they were involved in something appalling, and took immediate steps to get the children to safety. They must have known, and tolerated it. Then I turned up, and they saw that they’d failed to convince me there was no cause for concern. Lewis’s instructions were becoming ever more alarming and bizarre – Yanina dressing in Flora’s clothes, Flora having to be flown out to Florida without the children – and then a policeman turned up asking questions, and Kevin and Yanina’s convenient, lucrative gig started to feel more risky.

Then, maybe, they overheard Thomas and Emily talking and discovered that Lewis’s treatment of Flora was a little bit worse than even they’d imagined. But I can’t believe they cared, at that point. If their worry for the children’s safety was genuine, surely they’d have bundled Emily into the car, gone to fetch Thomas from school and gone straight to the police or social services.

There’s something that doesn’t convince me about them ringing the school and handing in formal notice, cancelling Emily’s place. There was no need for them to do it, and it feels staged to me. Performative. So that they could claim, later, that they feared reprisals from Lewis to such an extent that they made a decision to take the children and flee to a different part of the country – which was what they did. Even if you did plan to escape, why think about giving notice to a school? Why not just go? Flora thinks they probably wanted to be upfront and end the relationship there and then, so that there would be no phone calls or enquiries the next day when Thomas didn’t turn up for registration in the morning. Perhaps that’s true. Flora will never ask Kevin or Yanina about it, or speak to them ever again, so there’s no way of knowing.