The Other People: A Novel(54)

And then she had burst into tears. One of those sudden, violent storms of emotion that gather and break out of nowhere. He had knelt down and held her as she sobbed, her tears soaking hotly through his T-shirt.

He had felt her pain. Why can’t we save them all? Because we can’t. Because life isn’t fair. Because we have to pick and choose and, sometimes, those choices will be tough. Sometimes, we don’t even get the choice. Not everything or everyone can be fixed with some thread and a dab of glue and we won’t all end our days on the front porch in the sunshine.

He didn’t say any of this. He wiped her eyes and said, “Shall we go and get an ice cream?”



* * *



—

AFTER IT HAPPENED, somewhere within that huge chasm of darkness and pain, Gabe had found himself tasked with clearing out Izzy’s room. He couldn’t do it. He had shuffled around like a bewildered child himself, unable to give her things away, unable to let a single hair clip go. Eventually, he had called a removals company and everything—all of her toys, clothes and furniture—was put into storage.

Here. He stood staring at the anonymous row of shuttered garage doors, illuminated by the security lighting. Number 327. He hadn’t been back to this place, an industrial estate just outside Nottingham, for almost two years. Several times, he had thought about emptying the lock-up, giving away the contents, cancelling the direct debit. But the image of Izzy’s face that afternoon in the garage always stopped him.

“Are you throwing them away?”

If he let this go, then it would be the beginning of the end. He would be letting her go, casting aside that life jacket of hope that had kept him afloat these last three years. He would be admitting that she wasn’t coming back. The end.

He walked over to the keypad beside the door and tapped in the code. Izzy’s birthday. He stepped back as the door rolled open and the automatic lighting stuttered into life.

He steeled himself, but the pain still hit him, hard enough to cause him to wince. All in here. Izzy’s life. Her bedroom furniture, her toys, her pictures, playhouse, bike. All neatly stacked in this dark, cold storage space, the incongruity of the bright colors against the dismal cinderblock never starker. Toys need to be played with, he thought. Woody was right about that.

He walked forward, touched the headboard of her bed, her pink Barbie scooter, as if they could impart their memories to him. He realized he found it harder and harder to summon up the image of Izzy playing, or sleeping. She was fading, retreating into the past. And he couldn’t call her name or run after her because he was rooted in the present and you can’t go back, only forward.

“Gabe?”

He turned. Harry stood in the doorway, white hair haloed in the light. He leaned on his walking stick and looked thinner and more stooped than ever.

Gabe smiled thinly. “Come in—make yourself at home.”

He watched as Harry took an unsure step forward. Then Gabe pressed a switch on the wall. The automatic door slowly lowered, shutting them both inside.

“What the—?” Harry squinted at him across the lock-up. “What the hell is going on, Gabe? What is this place?”

“It’s all I have left of her.”

He saw Harry blink and look around, taking it all in. He watched every small movement: the bobbing of his Adam’s apple, the slight twitch above his left eye, a trembling in his hand.

“You said this was urgent. That there was something I needed to see.”

Gabe nodded. “That’s right. I wanted you to see this. I wanted you to understand how I never gave up hope. How I kept all of this because I wanted to be ready, for my little girl, when she came home.”

“And that’s why you’ve dragged me out here so late at night? For God’s sake!” Harry sighed, but it sounded forced. “I don’t know what more I can do to help you, Gabe.”

“You can tell me the truth.”

“I have.”

“No. You have lied. Right from the start. Right from the day when you misidentified my daughter’s body. Those pills Evelyn gave me certainly did the trick, didn’t they? Or was it something she slipped into my coffee before we left the hotel? Eye drops, perhaps? I mean, it was a risk, but you pulled it off. I just need to know why.”

Harry’s face regained some of the calm superiority that was the norm.

“I feel sorry for you. I really do. But this time, you’ve lost it.” He shook his head. “Open that door or I’m calling the police.”

“You do that. I think they’d like to talk to you—about why you faked a morgue photo, wrongly identified a dead girl. They know, Harry. But I wanted to talk to you first.”

Harry hesitated, mobile hovering in his liver-spotted hand. Gabe waited, wondered if he was still going to try and brazen it out. And then he saw Harry’s shoulders slump, the sag of defeat. He lowered himself onto the edge of Izzy’s bed.

He didn’t just look old, he looked ill, Gabe thought, and he could suddenly picture Harry in a few years’ time, lowering himself onto a hospital bed in much the same way, tubes hanging from his arms, skinny white legs poking out from his thin gown. Once the master of this domain, now at the mercy of doctors who were wielding dummies when he was wielding scalpels. Death might be indiscriminate, but time is merciless.

“I always thought faking the photo was a step too far,” Harry said. “But I kept it, just in case. When you told me about finding the car, I had no choice. I had to use it, to convince you to let it go.”