27

They sat opposite each other at the kitchen table, facing in different directions: Helen towards the window, Flora watching the clock. Both were beyond sleep and as aware as the other of time running out and the case against Kate being as persuasive as it was when Flora opened her flat door, gasping, ‘Who are you?’ and Helen had replied, ‘Detective Sergeant Jamieson – I let myself in with your sister’s keys. You don’t mind, do you?’

Neither had spoken since Flora had said, ‘You’ve asked me that already. You’ve asked me every question more than once, and I wish I had other answers, better answers, answers that would help Kate, but I don’t. I don’t, all right. Stop, please, please. I’ve told you all I can, all I know. Kate wouldn’t have killed that poor man. She wouldn’t.’

In that ensuing interlude, Helen realized why she was trying so hard to prove Kate Tolmie’s innocence despite the strength of evidence against her. Helen was being guided by hollowness, a feeling inside her which she felt first at the age of six when her parents were killed in a motoring accident. That emptiness was like a gnawing hunger. If she’d been sent a postcard offering ‘the truth about your mother’, she’d have been eager for information, whatever it was, good or bad: anything being better than the dull ache of nothingness. Not so, it seemed for Kate. Otherwise why would she have stabbed Picoult without talking to him? Even Flora had behaved in a way that Helen never would. After receiving that first card, Flora had been cautious when Helen would have been hasty. She took her assistant, Luke, to the designated meeting place. They left after twenty minutes. Helen would have waited an hour, longer.

‘Do you remember if there was a beggar?’ Helen asked.

Flora: ‘Was there? Perhaps there was. I don’t know. I wasn’t looking for a beggar. I didn’t notice a beggar.’

Helen: ‘Perhaps turning up with your assistant frightened him away.’

After the second card, Flora took Maria, her cleaner. They were early. They waited longer, at Maria’s insistence, more than half an hour. Maria was more like Helen would have been. Nobody approached them; nobody signalled to them.

‘Was there a beggar?’ Helen asked again.

‘I don’t think so. I don’t know. Maybe I do remember seeing one of those homeless placards and a blanket. Did I? I’m not sure. Yes, I did, because I remember thinking the placard was familiar. I don’t know why, something about the words. I don’t remember a beggar, though, just the placard and a blanket.’

Helen: ‘He saw you coming. He saw you had someone with you. He took off.’

Flora said she ignored the other cards. ‘Luke said they were probably hoaxes. By then I thought so too.’

Helen asked, ‘You didn’t tell Kate about them?’

‘No, she would have been angry if I had.’

‘Angry with you, not angry with the person who sent the cards?’

‘Angry with us both, I imagine. Angry with the situation, me trying to find out what happened to our mother, and the writer of the cards for exploiting the situation, my emotions.’

‘You were frightened?’

‘I suppose I was, frightened of whoever was doing the writing, what he wanted; also, I suppose, apprehensive about what the truth might turn out to be, if he knew the truth.’

‘He?’

Flora nodded. ‘I thought so, yes.’

‘Did Kate know you were frightened?’

‘No.’

‘Once she read the cards, would she have guessed?’

‘I imagine so, yes.’

‘She stabbed someone once before to protect you.’

Flora rolled her eyes, sighed. ‘That was a long time ago. She didn’t really stab her. The girl who was bullying me pushed the knife in so Kate’s punishment would be worse.’

After talking to Flora for almost three hours, Helen realized there was a crucial difference between a child whose parents had been killed accidentally and one whose parent or parents had disappeared, where the reasons for the absence were unknown to the child. That child, if Flora and Kate were examples, would grow up to be inconsistent, sometimes angry and rejecting, at others longing for the parents’ return. The keenness of the hurt and the extent of the anger depended on whether or not that child had ever been loved by one or other of the parents before the separation. Helen had been loved by both; she loved both in return, still longed for them, the emptiness inside her still a raw and gaping hole that her adoptive mother, despite giving love to Helen and receiving love, had never filled. Flora had been loved by her mother. Kate had felt unloved. Flora was calmer than Kate, less hurt, less angry.

Was Kate so hurt, her rage so strong, she would have stabbed a man without asking any questions if she thought that man might be the father who had abandoned her?

Helen said, ‘I haven’t told anyone this before. When I was ten, I remember reading about two girls, one six, the other four, whose mother had gone missing, who didn’t have a father, who’d never known their father. I read everything I could about those girls because, you see, those girls were like me. They were orphans and I thought I’d like to look after those girls. I used to imagine …’ She made a sound to show how young, naïve she was. ‘Well, I used to imagine all of us living together, a community of orphans, all girls. I used to think I’d look after you, you and your sister. I’m sorry, Flora. It turns out I’m not able to do that. I’m sorry because, when I leave here, I’ll have to write a report which will result in your sister being charged with murder.’

Flora watched as Helen removed a folded piece of paper from her pocket.

Helen said, ‘I can’t withhold this any longer. I’ll have to show it to my senior officer.’

‘What is it?’

‘Do you remember Kate sending you an email threatening to kill your mother if she came back?’

Flora said, ‘Yes, but she wouldn’t have.’

Helen read: ‘“I won’t even let her open her mouth. I’ll kill her as soon as I see her. I will. I’ll fucking kill her because I won’t be able to listen to her fucking excuses for running out on us.”’

Flora closed her eyes and shook her head.

‘Is that what happened?’ Helen asked. ‘Somewhere inside her, when she felt that familiarity she mentioned, did she realize that Louis Dufour or Jacques Picoult was her father? Did something snap in her? Did she stab him before he could open his mouth, before he could make excuses?’

‘No,’ Flora said. ‘No.’

‘That’s the way it looks. The knife that killed him had a black handle – there are other identical knives in this kitchen. A similar knife with a green handle was found in Kate’s coat pocket. You have two others like it too.’

Silence hung heavy in the room.

Helen said, ‘I wish we’d met under different circumstances.’ She looked at Flora. ‘I’m sorry.’

At the kitchen door, she looked back. ‘You know Cal McGill, don’t you? I gather he’s helping you, something about a suitcase your mother had with her when she disappeared.’

Flora said, ‘That doesn’t matter any more.’

‘Let him carry on. He’s good. Once he’s on the trail he never stops. He’ll follow that suitcase to your mother and all the way to Jacques Picoult becoming Louis Dufour and turning up outside Haymarket Station, if that’s where it leads. Flora, once my boss has read my report, he won’t give me time to look for another killer. Kate will be charged with murder. If Kate didn’t kill Picoult, Cal McGill’s your only hope of finding out who did and of saving your sister.’

And then she said, ‘Would it bother you if Cal kept me in touch with his investigation? In case he finds out something important?’

Flora answered, ‘I wouldn’t mind, no.’

‘Then please tell him, because he can be a little uncommunicative when he’s working.’

Uncommunicative whether he’s working or not, Helen thought.