Haven't They Grown(99)

‘You aren’t soft-hearted.’ Flora steps forward. Her words spill out in a messy rush, barely distinct from one another. ‘You’re the opposite. You say you didn’t want to be vindictive, but you did. You still do. You want me to suffer as much as possible.’

Lewis nods. His eyes flash, as if her disagreement has given him new energy. ‘Interesting interpretation, Mrs Braid. I’ve not heard any of this before, Beth. Flora never talks back. I wouldn’t allow it. Today’s different, though. It’s True-Feel Reveal Day here in Delray Beach, Florida!’ He chuckles. ‘Go on, Flora, have your say. I’m sure you’re not afraid of anything, are you?’

‘What should I be scared of?’ she says. ‘You’re never going to kill me – you’ve got your playhouse on Wyddial Lane with all your toys in it and I’m the main one, aren’t I? Without me to torture, you’d have no interest in playing your game, and you love your game. You’re incapable of loving any human being properly, but you love the game, and the power it brings you.’

‘She calls it a game, Beth,’ says Lewis in a voice designed to sound sad. ‘I call it giving her another chance. I think we need someone more objective than either of us to be the judge – you, for instance. Sure, you’re on Flora’s side against me, but you’ve got a good brain. Did I do her a favour or am I the sadist she thinks I am? Tell her the story, Flora. Actually, wait.’

Using his free hand, he pulls his phone out of his pocket and sets it down on the table. ‘I’m going to record this. It’s good to have it all stored, for the official record. In case one day I write my story.’ He grins. ‘Who lives, who dies, who tells your story, Beth?’

His eyes flit up and down as he sets the phone to record. They’re never off me or the gun in his hand for long enough to give me a chance.

‘Recording,’ he says, looking at Flora. ‘On your marks, get set, go. Let’s let Judge Beth decide.’

‘He said I had to go,’ Flora says in a dull voice. ‘Far away from all of them. Lose my family. He would pay for my new life, but it had to be somewhere where there was no danger I’d bump into any of them by chance. First he sent me to Scotland. Until the job opportunity here came up, and he made a different plan: to put me back in the house where he …’ She chokes on the words. Starts again. ‘Where it happened. And keep me there. He’d keep an eye on me, he said, to check I was coping. He didn’t care what happened to me, but he pretended to. That’s what he does: pretends or uses the truth as it suits him, so that I never know what to expect. Him keeping tabs on me was a control thing. That was how the phone calls started. The Daily Responses.’

‘Beth won’t know what those are,’ says Lewis wearily, as if Flora’s a toddler who’s testing his patience to the limit.

‘She knows.’

‘And if you didn’t go to Scotland, and then back to Wyddial Lane, if you didn’t do his sick phone ritual every day, what did he say he’d do to you?’ Hearing myself ask the question, I realise I’m not as scared as I was at first. I don’t know why not. Lewis still has a gun pointed at me. Maybe burning hatred flowing through you for long enough makes you braver. ‘Did he threaten to tell Thomas and Emily that Georgina’s death was your fault? That you’d been a bad mother and killed her?’

Flora nods. ‘My parents too. It would have destroyed them. They’d have believed me over him if I’d told them everything, but I couldn’t risk it because he’d threatened something far worse than exposing me as a killer, even if he hadn’t stated the threat in words.’

‘If I didn’t say it in words, Flora, how could I have made the threat?’ asks Lewis.

‘Innuendos, suggestions,’ says Flora. ‘You know how you did it, and I knew exactly what you meant: if I didn’t keep my mouth shut and obey you, always, in every detail of what little life you’d left me, then you’d kill someone else I loved. Thomas and Emily, probably. Or my parents. Maybe all of them. There’s nothing too evil for you, and you don’t care about anyone apart from yourself.’

‘That’s not true.’ Lewis looks angry. Insulted.

I watch his face carefully, not quite believing what I’m seeing.

‘I cared about my family. You corrupted it beyond repair,’ he tells Flora.

‘Even if you cared once, that changed,’ she says. ‘Your obsession with making me suffer took over. You got addicted to it at some point. I’m not sure when. Maybe when the Florida job prospect came up and you realised you could force me to live—’ Flora stops with a strangled sob. ‘Live in that house again – the last place I’d ever want to go back to. The house where you killed Georgina, the house you make me live in.’

‘Who are Kevin Cater and Yanina?’ I ask.

‘Is that a trick question?’ Lewis sneers. ‘They’re Kevin Cater and Yanina. Yanina Milyukov. Kevin Cater used to work with me years ago, when we all still lived in Cambridge. Yanina’s his girlfriend. I’m glad you brought them up.’ There’s an edge of grim determination to his voice. ‘They’re the people I pay to keep things running smoothly. Flora’s not reliable these days, as you can see for yourself. She has two young children, whom she’d be incapable of looking after properly on her own. When I say “pay”—’ He breaks off and laughs. ‘“Through the nose” is the only way to describe it. I pay Cater and Yanina a fortune, in fact. Not that I mind – they’re worth it. Most people would ask awkward questions, or want a say in what happened in the house. Not them. They do as they’re told.’