The Other People: A Novel(23)

“Gabe, this has gone far enough—”

“No! Everyone is always telling me I must be mistaken. But what about you? What about Evelyn? You said yourself that little girls that age look alike. What if it wasn’t Izzy you identified? What if you were mistaken?”

“You really believe that I wouldn’t recognize my own granddaughter?”

“You believe I wouldn’t recognize my own daughter.”

They glared at each other. Stalemate. Harry’s face was calm, but Gabe could tell that, behind his eyes, there was a lot going on. Harry was not a stupid man. He never spoke or acted without considering all outcomes.

“Just think for a minute about what you’re suggesting,” he said. “For me to have wrongly identified Izzy’s body, there would have to have been another body. Another dead little girl. Who is she? Why has no one reported her missing? What you’re saying makes no sense, even if I was mistaken, which I was not.”

Gabe could feel his conviction wavering. Harry was good at that—being convincing. His calm, measured tones. His logic, his reasoning. Trust me, I’m a doctor.

“This hair bobble, Gabe. It could belong to any little girl.”

“It’s Izzy’s.”

“Okay, then maybe it is Izzy’s. Maybe you kept it. Maybe you have convinced yourself you found it in the car.”

“What?”

“Not consciously.”

“You think I’m making this up?”

“No, I think you believe it. And that’s the problem. That’s why you need help.”

Gabe snorted out a laugh. “Help. Right.”

“I have a friend who you could talk to.”

“I bet you do. Let me guess—nice, plush office and a ready prescription of happy pills.”

“Gabe—”

“I don’t need a psychiatrist. I need you to tell me the truth about that day.”

This time, Harry’s face did change. The bushy eyebrows furrowed, the blue eyes darkened.

“You’re accusing me of lying about the identification.”

Gabe didn’t reply. He had tried to think of other explanations: Harry and Evelyn didn’t see their granddaughter that often—another bone of contention between them and Jenny (“They live two hours away, not on the bloody moon”). It must have been at least three months since their last visit. They hadn’t even seen her on her birthday. Kids grew fast at that age. Izzy had had her hair cut. Lost a tooth.

Was it possible, in Harry’s grief, in the messy confusion of that day, that he had got it wrong? Terribly, hideously wrong? And now, he was too scared to admit it? Or was there another reason?

He still couldn’t say it. Still could not accuse Harry of something so awful, so unthinkable. Because to do so raised so many other questions, not least: Why? Why? Why?

“If I was a younger man, I’d punch you in the face for that,” Harry muttered.

He’d like to, Gabe thought, but there was the rub. Harry was not the man he used to be. He had aged in a way that had nothing to do with the march of time. Grief did that to you. Added decades in a day. He recognized the ache in his own weary bones. Sometimes, he felt like a ghost already, draped in the skin of a man who had once lived.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Harry shook his head, the fight that Gabe had seen fleetingly rise in him subsiding again. “No, I’m sorry. I always hoped you’d eventually snap out of it, see sense. I even hoped that you would find the damn car and realize you were wrong. But it seems that’s not going to happen.”

He reached into his inside jacket pocket and took out an A4 envelope folded in half.

“Hope is a powerful drug. Believe me, I’ve seen it work miracles in my patients. But there’s a difference between hope and delusion. That’s why I’m giving you this. Evelyn wanted you to see it before. I didn’t want to hurt you. But it’s time, Gabe.”

“What is it?”

“The post-mortem report.”

Gabe felt a hollowness opening in his stomach. “I read the post-mortem report. There’s nothing in it that says the body is definitely Izzy.”

Harry sighed. “Age, weight, hair color, even the missing front tooth.”

We’ll leave it under the pillow, for the tooth fairy.

“It all matches. But you don’t want the truth. You want to cling to a fairy tale.” He placed the envelope down on the bench between them and slowly stood. “I think it’s best if we don’t meet again for a while.”

Gabe didn’t reply. He was barely aware of Harry leaving. He stared at the envelope as if it were an unexploded grenade. Of course, he could leave it. Not look. Burn it, throw it in a bin. But he knew he wouldn’t.

He picked up the envelope and opened the flap. There were two sheets of paper inside. He slid them out. Lines of black type blurred before his eyes. Impenetrable medical terms, but some words stood out. Gunshot wounds. Artery. Perforation. Organ damage. He laid the papers to one side. There was something else inside the envelope. He tipped it up. Two Polaroids fell out.

Jenny and Izzy. Just their faces, green sheets pulled up to their necks.

Morgue photos.

He heard a noise. Like a moan. One of the undead. He realized it was him.

How the hell had Harry got hold of these? But then, Gabe supposed, he was a doctor. He had contacts.