19

‘Welcome to my humble abode,’ Gabe says. She has driven to Shanklin, where he is housed. That is the term he seems to use, and she has adopted it reluctantly. It’s what looks like a B&B set alone on a strip of land between two huge housing estates.

Three teenage boys are standing near the door as she pulls up. Two in tracksuits, one in a shirt and tie, smoking. They stare at her, hostile, as she drives past, trying to find somewhere to park.

She finds a space and walks past an off-licence on her way. It has bars running around the inside of it, like a cage. Not a single bottle of wine or packet of chewing gum can be picked up. The shopkeeper sits there, like a caged lion, watching her warily. Outside, above the sign – General Convenience Store – somebody has graffitied the word cock.

Gabe is waiting on the steps of the B&B when she walks up. ‘It’s shit, I know,’ he says, raising an eyebrow at the rubbish collecting in the road, at the strange luxurious cars, their blacked-out windows, a cluster of three- and four-year-olds playing football alone over the way even though it is a weekday morning. The youths have moved on, somewhere.

‘It’s not that bad,’ she says, trying to look behind him, hoping the bail hostel is neat, and clean. She can’t imagine him sleeping in filth. She just can’t.

The smell of marijuana drifts on the breeze.

‘What is a bail hostel, exactly?’ she says as they step inside.

‘It’s a room, here, with a load of other … well, mostly ex-convicts. Some drug addicts. You get a room – or a shared room, if you’re unlucky.’

‘Is it … can’t you …’ All of the restrictions on his strange little life cluster into her mind. Can he cook a meal? Does he have a sofa? A key?

He ignores her trailed-off question, clearly not wanting to answer, and leads her up a set of brown-carpeted stairs. They have metal nosings on the end of them like they are in a hospital or secure unit of some kind.

His door – dark, cheap wood – jams, and he puts his weight behind it to open it. Izzy has been wanting to paint all of the wooden doors in her cottage white, but she’s been waiting to find out if listed building consent is needed. She runs a finger over the splintered wood as she steps into his room.

‘Should I be here?’ she says. The first thing she notices is the temperature. She starts sweating immediately. The window isn’t open, and she looks across at Gabe, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

Maybe it’s the heat, maybe it’s something else, but she jumps as her father closes the door behind them, and they are alone. She is on edge, suddenly wondering if this is stupid. Reckless. The hairs on her arms rise up.

She stares at the closed, single-glazed window, covered in mould and condensation. ‘Bit hot, isn’t it?’ she says, trying to distract herself, but Gabe only shrugs.

‘Why do you ask if you should be here?’

‘Because you might have … I don’t know. Rules to follow?’

‘I don’t have any licence conditions relating to you. Bizarrely, in the distorted eyes of the justice system, you are not a victim of my alleged crime,’ he says. ‘Only Alex is.’

Alex. He hardly ever uses her mother’s name around her. It brings to mind the things she’s remembered and found out about Gabe and Alex. The artefacts of her parents’ marriage. That shared kiss in the dimness of the kitchen. Their love notes on the back of bank statements. Their history of counting beds slept in, if that isn’t a fabrication by Gabe.

She looks around the room. A neat, single bed. Pink bed sheets. A table. A miniature fridge. A radio on the inside shelf of the wardrobe – the door is missing, and she likes that he has capitalized on that.

She looks again at the mouldy window and removes her cardigan. If he is here – if he is living here amongst the grime, has been imprisoned before this – and he is innocent, she won’t be able to handle it. She just won’t.

A dog is barking incessantly outside. Six barks, seven. A pause, and then it begins again.

‘Staffie left outside all day,’ Gabe says ruefully to her. He sits down on the bed and rubs at his temples.

It’s a new mannerism. She sees his hair has thinned there, and wonders if he has simply rubbed it clean away.

‘Nah, mate,’ somebody shouts loudly outside, and Gabe looks up irritably.

She looks at the bed, at the tiny wardrobe containing all of his belongings in a pile on the open shelf – socks, trousers, T-shirts all jumbled up together – and at the coffee ring on the table. Next to that is a small bowl and a single plastic fork, smeared with dried tomato sauce.

She notices a stack of papers on the windowsill. ‘What’re they?’ she says, pointing to them.

To her surprise, his cheeks colour, and his shoulders rise as though he is suddenly cold and trying to keep warm. She has never seen him make such a gesture; the father in her memories is energetic but relaxed, too. Confident. Never tense like this. She watches him, trying to work him out.

‘Nothing … nothing,’ he says with a wave of his hand, but he picks the papers up and he hands them over.

The first sheet is a drawing of a large detached house. He’s used coloured pencils on thin, cheap paper that’s curled up and stiffened. It has his old flair – a wisp of smoke coming out of the chimney, the green depicting the grass and the hedges. A mobile number is written at the bottom in calligraphic font. Handyman: No Job Too Small alongside it.

She leafs through them. The next one is the same. There must be fifty of them. ‘You made these?’ she says, but as she utters it, she looks again. The house has a blue door. The first one is red. She looks back at the first sheet. They’re different. She leafs through them. Different shades of green, slightly different handwriting. They’re all different.

‘They’re not copies,’ she says.

‘Yes. Couldn’t get to a printer.’

‘What, so you … you just did them yourself? Again and again?’

He shrugs, his cheeks still pink. ‘I don’t know, Iz … I have too much time. Lots of time. It doesn’t matter.’

She opens her mouth to tell him about the software she has on her iPad for sketching. About the printer she owns that was £20 in Tesco. The way you can pay a company £5 to print your every Instagram photo, but finds she doesn’t know where to start. He probably doesn’t even know what Instagram is.

‘I enjoyed colouring.’

‘Is this the first time since …’

He nods quickly. ‘I’m rusty. You can tell,’ he says, gesturing vaguely to the angle of the first house against the horizon behind it.

‘You could’ve photocopied them.’

‘There aren’t photocopiers in newsagents any more,’ he says. Newsagents. Some of the language he uses is so antiquated. What do people say, now? The Spar. Londis. Budgens. They’re not newsagents. Many of them don’t even sell papers. Does he know that every major newspaper has a website, these days? She supposes not.

‘Oh,’ she says.

‘And anyway, it’s expensive.’

She looks at him. For the first time, he’s given her a measure of his budget. What would it be – ten pence per sheet? Embarrassed, she gathers up the flyers and straightens them into a neat pile.

‘I thought I could be a jobbing handyman again, anyway,’ he says. ‘No interviews. No DBS checks. Can come and go as I please.’

She nods enthusiastically. ‘Yes. Great idea. Some money for you. To spend how you like.’ It could work, she is thinking. It could really work. He’d have somewhere to go each day. He could save up, rent a flat. Paint pictures in his spare time. Just like how it used to be.

‘I’m going to put them up on the Sainsbury’s noticeboard,’ he says.

The optimism she had felt in her chest evaporates, leaving her deflated and sad. There is no longer a Sainsbury’s noticeboard. This isn’t how people advertise themselves any more. She should tell him about Google Places, about Facebook for Business, about TrustATrader. But where would she begin?

‘Maybe leafleting people’s houses is better,’ she says instead. ‘The nice estates in Newport. Maybe the people with scaffolding up. They’ll want the finishing touches done. Plastering and painting.’

‘Maybe,’ he says softly, just looking at her.

She puts the flyers back on the windowsill. They look childish and strange in the light from outside, sitting there on the grubby windowsill, its wood beginning to rot.

‘Anyway,’ he says, turning his gaze away from them. ‘Where were we?’ He stands and advances towards her.

She takes a sudden step back, bumping into his wardrobe. She can’t explain why she does it. She flushes with embarrassment as his eyes meet hers, hurt. She thinks again of the job interviews. Would she employ him to paint her house, co-exist comfortably with him in close proximity?

‘Where had we got to with our discussions?’ he says.

‘Four weeks before her death,’ she says, instead of saying what she is thinking.

‘Okay, yes,’ he says, sitting down on the bed.

There’s nowhere for her to sit so she stands, hovering by the wardrobe awkwardly.

‘Next, I need to tell you how I came to send that text.’

‘What text?’

‘The text the prosecution went to town on. Two weeks before your mother died.’