15

‘I heard you arguing,’ Izzy says now to her father. ‘It went on. It got nastier. Didn’t it? I remember … God. It’s all coming back to me now.’

He averts his eyes from hers. ‘I don’t recall that. She just walked off.’

‘I remember it, because it made me stop and think. You said she was a drama queen.’

‘I didn’t. But she was.’

‘Was she?’

‘She didn’t remember about your driving test, did she?’ he says snidely, and the atmosphere changes. There’s something about his expression. His teeth are gritted. And he’s changed the subject. Yet again. Away from the difficult topics, back to things that suit him, that paint him in a favourable light.

‘I thought she was just so … impressive. She did whatever she liked,’ Izzy says. ‘That’s the biggest thing I’ve learnt from her. Or am trying to,’ she adds, thinking bitterly of the long shifts at the restaurant, the smell of cooking fat in her hair afterwards, the empty feeling of counting down the hours until home time, the days until the weekend, the weeks until holidays. Pointless.

‘She had a huge ego,’ Gabe says with a small shrug. ‘I’m sorry to say. I loved her. But it was a failing of hers.’

‘Did she?’ Izzy says, but more to herself than Gabe. Maybe she did. Maybe that’s why she ignored some of Izzy’s achievements. Maybe inviting Pip to the restaurant was more an act of showing off than one of solidarity with her daughter.

She shakes her head. He has distracted her. He did call her mother a drama queen. He did. Two truths can’t co-exist and so instead their colours run together, muddied and confusing. And he has tainted Izzy’s memory of her, too. He didn’t need to say that she’d forgotten Izzy’s driving test. He just didn’t. Her mother is dead, can’t defend herself.

She tries to think. Maybe she could contact Pip. See what he remembers of her parents’ marriage. If he can verify her version of events. If he remembers these rows that are springing into her mind now, two decades later.

‘The bruise looked sore,’ she says.

‘Right, anyway. You said she’d been at work,’ Gabe says, his eyes on her.

‘Yes. I’m sure she had, because I remember thinking she was always at work. That she couldn’t have an afternoon off even for my driving test.’

‘Maybe it was work,’ Gabe says, shaking his head. ‘Maybe it was. I thought she’d been at her mum and dad’s. The mind, hey?’ He glances at her.

Another inaccuracy. But it was easy to misremember things. Izzy is amazed they can recall any of the details, is thankful for the signposts within her memories: her driving test, her upcoming ballet exam. They help anchor the events.

A tall, muscular man walks into the café, a woman next to him with angular, tense shoulders. His face changes as he sees them. ‘You can’t be serious,’ he says. He stops walking towards Izzy and Gabe. He’s in a black coat, blue skinny jeans.

Izzy has no idea who he is.

‘Gabriel English, released after murder, and just living his fucking life. Free as a bird,’ the man shouts, spreading his arms wide. ‘Free as a mother fucking bird.’

‘No, no, no,’ Gabriel says.

Izzy is surprised by his frightened tone. He seems to fold in on himself, like a snail retreating inside its shell. He bows his head towards the table, his shoulders rounded. She can see the points of his shoulder blades, the bald spot at the back of his head.

‘How about we don’t eat our dinner in the presence of a wife-killer?’ the man says.

Izzy begins to turn away from them, to ignore them completely, but then she looks at Gabe. He’s standing up, reaching for his coat and crossing the café before she can stop him.

‘Who were they?’ she asks, once they’re outside.

‘Don’t know.’ He looks furtively over her shoulder.

They begin to walk, unthinkingly, away from the café and down towards the seafront. It’s twilight, the sky still a pale blue, but the air is dark, with hardly any light remaining. The moon is up, full, and Izzy thinks of Pip and what happened between them. The moon is gunmetal grey. It’s mottled, just like the sides of her mother’s copper bathtub. Where did that green soap and those shells go? So much of the aftermath of her mother’s death is a mystery to Izzy. Not only the trial, and the exact presentation of the evidence that Izzy can only vaguely summarize, but the practicalities, too. She guesses the house was sold. Its possessions taken. But where to?

The beach is dotted with couples and the sand crunches underfoot. Where in the high season the pier is full of sweet stalls, fortune tellers and fairground rides, now it’s empty. Two figures pass under the boardwalk and Izzy instinctively shifts away from them. In the vacuum of tourism, other trades rush in like incoming tides. Nick says he does so many more drugs cases during the winter and spring months. She briefly wonders if Gabe knows any of these people. These dealers, these people Nick watches and who are quietly arrested in the night.

‘Who were those people in the café?’ Izzy asks again.

Her father turns to her in the half-light. He looks better in the dimness. Less ill and thin, even though he’s clearly feeling the cold, even in the heatwave. ‘There are one hundred and fifty thousand people on the island, Iz. Half of them will know what I did. The Isle of Wight hasn’t had many killers.’

‘I know,’ she says softly. It’s a fact she’s thought of often. A fact she uses to reassure herself. Statistically, there won’t be another. She’s been safe here on this little island with its small population of people she knows, her father in prison. Nick once said the island was ‘surprisingly seedy at times’, but she ignored it. She never sees that side of it.

They say nothing, walking on the promenade out towards the sea together. Eventually, she asks him what she’s been wondering. ‘What’s your … your plan? For work, and things?’ she says. Partly out of concern for him but partly so she knows what he’s doing. That he’s busy with something legitimate. Something innocuous. Involved and integrating, she supposes.

‘I don’t have a rule book, Iz. And I don’t have a plan, either. That’s up to God.’

I don’t have a plan. That’s what Pip always said to her. He said at the beach that his main aim was to wake up and enjoy every day. So different to Nick with his rigid views and routines. Where is Pip now? Off travelling, she expects. Living in Singapore or something. Learning to surf in Australia. Making some woman laugh.

‘Are you going to get a job?’ she says. She can’t bear the talk of religion. Her funny, easy-going father who once said at a christening, ‘What a load of creepy bollocks.’ Her mother wouldn’t have tolerated it, either. She was far too pragmatic. Her father. Converted to God. To believing. Does he really believe, or is it fantasy? Another story invented to paint him in the best light.

‘Trying,’ he says. He stops them, there, before they reach the water’s edge.

Izzy thinks of conversations she’s had with Nick about his cases. True-crime dramas. Nick’s always taken one angle – no smoke without fire – whether through nature or nurture, she isn’t sure. Izzy’s always been less cynical. Even more so, now. ‘Well,’ Nick’s always said of perpetrators, of suspects, of protestors of innocence. ‘I wouldn’t want to meet him in an alley at night, would you?’ Izzy’s never known what to say to that. Because it’s true, isn’t it? Once accused, once convicted, they’re tarnished … Would anybody take the risk? Why would anybody employ a convicted criminal, date one, be alone with one? Everybody has principles, until they’re close to home.

Izzy looks at her father, his face pale in the moonlight. But she is taking the risk. She is alone with him in the sea-scented night-time air.

‘How was it – at Mum’s parents?’ Gabe says enquiringly.

‘It was fine,’ Izzy lies, images flashing into her mind. The crinkle of the newspaper as her grandparents filled out the crossword together every Sunday in silence. Being told to stop practising her ballet because it would ruin the wooden floors. They were willing to help her out, so long as she slotted neatly into their lives like a handshake.

She spent her time wondering where the fun and joy of life had gone; spontaneous trips out, and laughter. She couldn’t separate her grief from her new living conditions. Everything had seemed bleak, tasteless, mundane. They had been grieving too, she supposes, looking back. But she couldn’t see that at the time, not when they shouted, not when they silenced her with a judgemental shh.

‘You’d better be off. I’m guessing your copper doesn’t know.’ It’s the first time he’s acknowledged Nick’s job.

‘He’s an analyst. Not police.’

‘All the same,’ says Gabe.

‘See you,’ she says to him, not knowing when she will. The lies in his accounts seem to be growing, multiplying like tumours.

‘See you soon,’ he says pointedly. He turns away from her and disappears, gradually, up the hill and into the night.

She wonders where he goes. How he gets around. Who else he sees. Where he sleeps at night. How he sleeps at night.

By the time she gets home, he has already texted her twice.

Izzy searches for David Smiths that evening. Maybe if she finds him, she can see if there really was an alibi in 1999 … to see if she made a mistake.

She’s been trying to do thirty per night: always the same message. Sorry to bother you … My name is Izzy English … Did you used to live at 18 Rainsdown Lane?

So far, only three out of sixty have responded, all saying no.

Next, she looks at a month of bank statements. She’s doing one month per night. When she can. It’s the best way to approach it: logically. Methodically. Tonight is June 1999, five months before her mother’s murder. She scans it, digesting the business’s financial position. Poor profits. Getting better towards the end of the month, as the weather warmed up, she guesses. It shows nothing. She doesn’t know what she’s looking for. She’s just … looking. For anything that might leap out at her. Next, she’ll look through the few possessions of her mother’s and father’s that she inherited.

Before she leaves, though, she opens an unmarked lever arch file. It contains plastic wallets. She opens the first one and a set of receipts falls out. Fuel. A blender purchased in 1999. The paper has started to age, and flakes in her fingers. She turns it over.

And there it is. Her father’s handwriting.

Sorry about the glass! Xx

That’s all it says. Izzy stares at it. Sorry about the glass. Could it be? The thrown glass he referred to? But he threw it, and not her mother?

She’ll confront Gabe. See what he says. She puts the note in her handbag, ready.

Nick and Izzy are in bed, later, when they hear Thea’s window shut.

‘Like clockwork,’ Izzy comments, to stop herself from telling Nick where she’s been.

‘Clockwork?’ he says.

He has brought his laptop home, and is still typing away, working into the evening as he often does. He should use a screen guard, but says it hurts his eyes. She leans over. G. Michaels visited the premises on the following dates and times, Nick has written.

‘Thea shuts that window every single night about eleven,’ Izzy explains. ‘She airs the bedroom in the day.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I just observe her,’ Izzy says, but she blushes.

I observe her because I want to be part of a family, she thinks. Because I want to experience what her children do: being parented when I myself am an adult.

‘You should come work with me,’ he says, pulling her towards him. ‘You’re good at pattern spotting.’

‘Maybe,’ she says. She leans her head back down on his black T-shirt which smells of their washing powder. If only he knew that just hours before, she was alone with Gabe, at the seafront, in the dark. She shifts closer and closer to Nick’s warm body, flinging a leg over his, too, trying to forget the way Gabriel had looked at her.

‘What’s G. Michaels suspected of?’ Izzy says, tapping the screen lightly.

‘Human trafficking,’ Nick says. ‘Owns a load of nail bars. We think he’s moving women through them.’

‘Like slaves?’

‘Yeah. Anyway. Look,’ he says quietly. He shuts the laptop.

‘What?’

He pulls her nearer to him. His laptop falls off his lap, tipping on to its side on the bed. ‘I ordered your father’s file,’ he says, very close to her ear.

Goosebumps appear on Izzy’s shoulders. ‘Did you?’ she says. She can’t believe it. Rule-abiding Nick.

‘I thought about the risks,’ he says, as if reading her mind. ‘But I thought this –’ he gestures to her, ‘is more important. There’s more at stake.’

She nods. That’s how he’s rationalized it. Still within his tight parameters. Still hyper-logical. She thinks of Pip, for the second time that day, his toes in the ocean. No plans for the next day.

‘It’ll take a couple of weeks,’ Nick adds.

‘Will anybody know?’

‘No. They put an alert on big files. Celebrity files. Huge murders. Myra Hindley, you know. Not … not him.’

‘Would you get in trouble if they did know?’

‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘Protecting you is more important.’

Everybody must do it. Everybody must look people up. Nick certainly isn’t stupid. He will have analysed the risk fully.

Izzy catches a glimpse of the moon outside, and decides what to wish for. That this all turns out well. That nobody loses anything. That they emerge unscathed.

He begins kissing her ear. She surrenders to it. For the next half an hour, she is not Izzy English whose father murdered her mother. She is Izzy Gainsborough. Nick’s wife.

It is only when, hours later, Nick is breathing steadily next to her, that she realizes what Gabriel said: There are one hundred and fifty thousand people on the island, Iz. Half of them will know what I did.

What I did. What I did.

It was a slip of the tongue, she thinks, as she falls asleep. A mistake.