Haven't They Grown(84)
Lewis feigned resentment when he told me the story; so did Flora. They hadn’t wanted to tell me, they didn’t want to be in my hotel room unburdening themselves, but I’d been so persistent, I’d left them no choice. A lie. I knew Lewis Braid well for years, and people don’t change – not that much. There’s no way he’d ever dance to anyone else’s tune. The more reluctant to talk he seemed, the more I was likely to believe the story – that was his thinking.
Then there’s the eyes. Thomas’s, Emily’s. Flora can lie all she likes, but I’ve seen their faces. Yes, Rosemary Tillotson has brown eyes, but she doesn’t have those brown eyes. All four children are Lewis’s. That links to another part of the lie: Flora told me that, when Lewis rang her to say I’d contacted him, she hadn’t seen or heard from him in twelve years. That can’t be true, if the two of them had two more children together.
The truth is that Lewis came back to Hemingford Abbots and, while there, got Flora pregnant. Twice. Tilly, his former neighbour at number 3, saw him, and, to explain away his presence, he pretended he was obsessively in love with her, when really he was there to see Flora.
The Lewis Braid I knew would never leave me to decide his fate. He has no idea if I’ll keep the promise I made to tell no one but Dom, and he wouldn’t take that risk.
Another lie, possibly the most insulting one of all, is Flora’s claim that she distanced herself from me because she feared I’d drag the truth out of her. Doesn’t she think I have a functioning memory? Her altered behaviour towards me started long before Georgina’s death. In fact, it started many months before she was born, when Flora must have been just a few weeks pregnant. Whatever made her push me away, it had nothing to do with the guilt she felt after killing her daughter.
Maybe she didn’t kill her. If the rest was a lie, why not that too?
The main proof of Flora’s dishonesty, as I told her, is the house on Wyddial Lane. No one determined to cut all ties with their former life would willingly live in the house where the tragedy occurred that had brought their whole world crashing down. No one.
Then there are the things that seem more like contradictions or details that don’t add up than outright lies. Lewis was right: I knew from our various holidays with them that Flora often sunbathed topless and he never minded, so why did he scream at her when she breast-fed Georgina in front of me and Dom, as if there was something objectionably immodest about it?
If Flora did cause Georgina’s death, and her and Lewis’s aim was to stop me finding out, they could have succeeded. Easily. Flora could have brazened it out in the car park in Huntingdon. ‘Lewis and I have split up,’ she could have said. ‘Our kids are with him in Florida, apart from Georgina who died tragically – cot death – and I’m not part of their lives any more. He won’t let me see Thomas and Emily.’ When I asked her, as I certainly would have, why her children with Kevin Cater were also called Thomas and Emily, she could have said, ‘I wanted to annoy Lewis. It was a bit petty, but I didn’t care.’
What could I have done if she’d told me that, even if I didn’t believe her? She and Lewis could have told me that exact story today, instead of telling me the very thing they’ve supposedly gone to all this trouble to stop me finding out.
I go back into my room, unzip my bag and pull out my phone. I press the red button to stop it recording. Whenever I want to, I can listen to all those lies again – lucky me.
I lock the door to my room, slip the key card into my bag and head down to the lobby, telling myself there’s zero chance of me finding Flora still in the building. She’ll be long gone by now.
What should I do next? I can only think of one thing: go back to VersaNova and tell Lewis I’ve seen through his and Flora’s little performance.
And he’ll say you’re deranged and throw you out. He’ll say, ‘Look what happens when I try to talk to you, Beth. You don’t listen. You don’t believe me. Why should I bother wasting any more of my time?’
What will happen if I go back to PC Paul Pollard with Flora’s taped confession that she killed her daughter? Would she be brought in for questioning? What about Lewis, who admitted to misleading the authorities to protect his family? Does my recording count as admissible evidence? I have no idea how these things work.
There are lots of people in the hotel lobby, but Flora isn’t one of them. I approach the concierge, who stands smiling behind his lectern by the entrance doors, unoccupied. I describe Flora to him and he listens attentively. ‘Did you see her leave?’ I ask. ‘It was about ten minutes ago. Did she ask you to get her a taxi, maybe? She didn’t have a car with her. Or maybe her husband came to pick her up?’ I describe Lewis.
The concierge shakes his head. ‘No husband, but I think I know the lady you mean. She asked the quickest way to the beach from here.’
‘The beach?’ I suppose there must be one, though I haven’t seen any sign of it. ‘Delray Beach?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Can you give me whatever directions you gave her?’ I ask him.
Outside the hotel, I cross the busy road. On the pavement opposite, there’s a sign in the shape of an arrow that says, ‘To the beach’. I have a strange feeling: that if I find Flora like this, I’ll have found her too easily.
Except finding her isn’t the challenge. Getting the truth out of her is the hard part.