35

‘He has a previous conviction,’ Nick says quietly. ‘It wasn’t disclosed at the trial because his lawyers got it excluded.’

Izzy’s mouth turns dry. A previous conviction? A criminal record? Her father? Her shock is ludicrous, of course. Her father has the pinnacle of criminal records. But this previous conviction is from before she knew him. Before she existed. How could it be? In her mind, the night he killed her mother, her father transformed. But this would indicate he was always dangerous. Always, therefore, pretending. The thought chills her.

She can’t believe that just yesterday she was suspecting Tony. And why? Because a wine rack moved? She has been so foolish.

‘What for?’ she says, her voice dry and brittle-sounding.

She finds she is holding her breath. Her brain throws options into the nothingness, and she wishes she could stop it: a caution for a drunken fight. A speeding ticket. Theft of a supermarket trolley. Affray, on a stag do. Not returning money a bank deposited in error. Over and over again, she thinks of acceptable crimes. Victimless crimes. Identity fraud, sending phishing emails, accidentally leaving Tesco with a packet of toilet rolls. Oh, please let it be one of these. Let it have an explanation. Let it not be violent.

‘It’s for domestic violence,’ Nick says. He pushes the plate of sausages to one side and reaches for her hands. ‘The victim was his girlfriend.’

Babs. Izzy knows it before he tells her. The woman her uncle told her about.

‘What …’ Izzy says. Saliva fills her mouth. She really may be sick. She can’t look at the sausages, and she pushes them further away from her so she can’t smell them, either.

‘I’m sorry,’ Nick says. ‘I brought a printout, hang on. I knew you’d want to see.’

He strides into the hallway and comes back holding a piece of paper. It’s A4, plain paper. ‘Page 1 of 1’ written in the top right-hand corner. She scans it.

Assault occasioning Actual Bodily Harm contrary to s47 Offences Against The Person Act: suspended sentence (12 months). 15 May, 1969.

She looks for his name at the top and, sure enough, there it is: Gabriel David English.

‘What did he do?’ she says, staring at the paper in shock.

This was it. This was all of it. Everything they’d accused him of. Domestic abuse.

The behavioural patterns. Charming behaviour. Controlling her mother. Keeping tabs on her. Spying. Escalation. Hitting her, they said. Verbal assaults. That text. That bruise on her arm. Frightening her. He denied it all, but look: she holds the paper in shaking hands, the black text blurring as tears fill her eyes. Look. Here is evidence. Real evidence. Not her half-remembered memories. Not her father’s false accounts of his.

Domestic violence. She thinks of the newspaper cutting and her stomach turns over again. Oh Jesus. She needs to get away from Nick. She needs to think about this, this foolish thing that she has allowed to happen. That she has done.

‘I don’t know much yet – that’s all I’ve got. The file will come soon. But I wanted you to know …’

His body language has changed. She looks at him, trying to pinpoint exactly what it is. He puts his plate on the kitchen counter and asks if she’s okay. She nods quickly, not wanting to discuss it. That’s it. She realizes as he walks out of the kitchen. Those shoulders are up again. The chest puffed. He is … triumphant. He is right.

Rage starts off like a Catherine wheel in Izzy’s stomach. How dare he use this to score points against her? Her jaw clenches and she stands and opens the back door and breathes in the scented garden air. Don’t get angry, she tells herself. Don’t lash out, or you’ll be just like him, like Gabe.

She doesn’t share her cheese and biscuits with him, later. She eats them alone, in the kitchen, standing in the light of the refrigerator, thinking of the newspaper cutting, of her father’s betrayal of her, of how stupid she might have been. Of course her father’s memories have convinced her. They are not, after all, his memories, but his own accounts of his memories. The difference is subtle but vital. He has had almost twenty years to construct them. His own case. And look: he’s lured her in.

‘I’m sorry,’ Nick says later, as she climbs into bed.

She thought he was asleep.

He opens his eyes in the half-light and looks at her.

She says nothing.

‘It’s so understandable,’ he says, his tone softer.

Finally, finally: here it is. The sympathy. The understanding. It is easy to give it when you are in the right, Izzy thinks bitterly, unfairly.

‘The way you are is … I’d be the same,’ Nick adds, clueless about her nasty thoughts.

The way you are. Izzy is vulnerable, exposed, as if she has been cut open, there on the bed, and everybody can see all of the things she does to try and cope with what has happened to her. The Instagram family. Watching her neighbour too closely. Keeping people distant. Wanting approval from anybody senior: doctors, teachers, even the health and safety inspector at work who wore reading glasses and a kimono.

‘I wanted him to be good, I suppose,’ she says.

‘Wanting something to be true doesn’t make it so,’ Nick says. He looks up at her, his head in between their pillows. His eyes are soft and wet, too.