The Other People: A Novel(82)

Miriam struggled to get up from her chair. The wind obliged her wishes. It picked her up and held her there, scuffed black shoes dangling in mid-air, before slamming her back down again, so hard the chair skidded halfway across the floor. Miriam landed with a scream, cut abruptly short.

The two girls silently held hands as the storm raged around them.

Gabe fought to force his words out:

“Izzy!”

But she couldn’t hear him. She was somewhere else, staring at some point beyond him, beyond this room, beyond anywhere.

“Izzy!!”

And then, in desperation:

“Isabella!”

The wind seemed to dip. Isabella turned her head on the pillow. For the first time since the accident, he stared into her eyes. And he saw it all again. The beginning. The end. The ceaseless existence between. The beach.

“I’m sorry!” he cried. “I’m so, so sorry. But please, let Izzy go. I can’t lose her.”

She stared back at him, gray gaze unfathomable.

And then she closed her eyes…and let go of Izzy’s hand.

The wind immediately dropped. The lid of the piano fell with a heavy crash.

Izzy crumpled to the floor.

Gabe staggered across the room and gathered his daughter into his arms. She was still breathing. Thank God.

“Gabe?”

He turned. Katie stood in the doorway. He blinked at her. “What are you doing here?”

“I woke up. Izzy was gone. I was trying to get in the door when it just opened.”

She looked around, only just taking in the whole scene.

“Oh God.” She raised a hand to her mouth.

He followed her gaze. Miriam was slumped in the chair beside the bed, still holding her crucifix. Her neck was crooked at an odd angle and her eyes were flat and empty.

Gabe turned to Isabella. She looked, once again, as if she were sleeping. But he could see that the faint rise and fall of her chest had ceased and the machine beside the bed now emitted a single jarring beep. A final note.

She was gone. No, he corrected himself. She was released.

He clutched Izzy tighter.

“Goodbye, Isabella,” he whispered. “Safe journeys.”





He drank black coffee, plenty of sugar. He rarely ate. Occasionally, he would blow out a cloud of steam from a vape, despite a sign on the wall that read: NO SMOKING OR VAPING. But no one was going to call him on it. This was his place.

He wore black: overcoat, T-shirt and jeans. His skin was almost as dark. He was tall, but not overly so. Muscular, but not obtrusively so. His head was shaved clean. Sitting, still, in the corner, he was little more than a shadow. A shadow that most patrons gave a quick glance then chose a seat far away from. Nothing to do with race or prejudice. More a sense of unease. A feeling that if they looked at the man for too long, they might see something they could never erase.

Gabe walked across the dimly lit café and sat down opposite the Samaritan.

“Still can’t believe you’re running a café.”

The Samaritan grinned. “I’m a man of many talents.”

“That I can believe.”

“You look almost human for a change. Fatherhood suits you.”

Gabe smiled. He couldn’t help it. The word “father” did that to him. The thought of Izzy. It had been only a few months but already they were feeling more familiar to each other. She was calling out to him when bad dreams woke her in the night. “Daddy” was sounding more natural on her tongue. She no longer looked at him with a slightly suspicious expression. They still had some way to go to get to know each other again. But he felt eternally grateful that he had the opportunity.

Before, he had taken fatherhood for granted. He had been too busy, too tied up in his own life and his commitment to Isabella to devote enough time to his daughter. Gabe didn’t believe that “things happen for a reason.” People tried to make sense of tragedy, when the point of tragedy was that it was senseless. Bad things didn’t happen for a greater purpose. They just happened. However, he did feel that he had been given a second chance. A chance not to make the same mistakes again.

His daughter still held mysteries. They had talked a little about her narcolepsy, or “falling,” as she called it. It seemed to have started again after the day the “bad man” came—the day her mother was murdered. It worsened during her time with Fran. Probably the trauma. But Gabe couldn’t explain what she had told him about the beach, or the pebbles. It seemed insane, impossible. But then, he had seen what had happened in that room, with Isabella. He couldn’t explain any of that either. So, for now, he just accepted it. Although, fortunately, since that night, it seemed to be getting better. Slowly.

Izzy saw a counsellor once a week. Gradually, they were easing out some of the story; her time on the run with Fran. But the details of the day Jenny died were harder to retrieve. Izzy had locked them tightly away. The counsellor had warned Gabe and the police that they may never release those memories. But that was okay, Gabe thought. Frustrating as it was, sometimes, some things are best left alone.

DI Maddock already thought they had a reasonably full version of events. It transpired that Fran and her daughter, Emily, had recently moved to the same town as Gabe’s family. Emily had gone to Izzy’s school. Fran must have known Jenny casually, in the way mums at school gates do. Gabe had probably seen her once or twice. Perhaps he had even mistaken her daughter for Izzy when they ran out of the school gates at pickup time. Apparently, the two girls were “almost identical.”