“You’re an adult!” I said, keeping my eye on the space behind him, and it worked—for a second he glanced over his shoulder and I let my arm slip lower between my legs, stretching out my fingers. Cold metal in my grasp, I straightened my back, prepared myself. “Do you really think it matters how you felt about her? You were her teacher. You’re twice her fucking age. You were the one who was supposed to do the right thing.”
“She loved me,” he said again, hangdog. Pathetic.
“She was too young for you,” I said, gripping the shaft of the nail tightly in my fist. “She was too good for you.”
I went for him, but I wasn’t quick enough. As I sprang to my feet, I caught my hand under the table, just for a second. Mark lunged at me, grabbing my left arm, yanking it as hard as he could, pulling me halfway across the table.
“What are you doing?” He leaped to his feet, still holding on to me, and pulled me sideways, twisting my arm back behind me. I yelped with pain. “What are you doing?” he shouted, pushing my arm higher, opening my fist with his fingers. He took the nail from my hand and shoved me down on to the table, his hand in my hair, his body on top of mine. I felt the metal spike graze against my throat, the weight of him on top of me, just like how she must have felt him when they were together. Vomit came up to my throat and I spat it out and said, “She was too good for you! She was too good for you!” I said it again and again until he’d crushed the breath out of me.
JULES
A clicking sound. Click and hiss, click and hiss, then: “Oh. There you are. I let myself in, hope you don’t mind.”
The old woman—the one with the purple hair and the black eyeliner, the one who claims to be a psychic, the one who shuffles around town spitting and cursing at people, the one who I’d seen just the day before, arguing with Louise in front of the house—she was sitting on the window seat, swinging her swollen calves back and forth.
“I do mind!” I said loudly, trying not to show her that I’d been afraid, that I was still—stupidly, ridiculously—afraid of her. “I bloody do mind. What are you doing here?” Click and hiss, click and hiss. The lighter—the silver lighter with Libby’s initials engraved on it—she had it in her hand. “That’s . . . Where did you get that? That’s Nel’s lighter!” She shook her head. “It is! How did you get hold of that? Have you been in this house, taking things? Have you—”
She waved a fat, gaudily bejewelled hand at me. “Oh, calm down, will you?” She gave me a dirty brown smile. “Sit down. Sit down, Julia.” She pointed at the armchair in front of her. “Come and join me.”
I was so taken aback that I obliged. I crossed the room and sat down in front of her while she shifted around in her seat. “Not very comfy this, is it? Could do with a bit more padding. Although some might say I’ve got enough upholstery of my own!” She chortled at her own joke.
“What do you want?” I asked her. “Why do you have Nel’s lighter?”
“Not Nel’s, it’s not Nel’s, is it? See here.” She pointed to the engraving. “There, see? LS.”
“Yes, I know. LS, Libby Seeton. But it didn’t actually belong to Libby, did it? I don’t think they were manufacturing that particular sort of lighter in the seventeenth century.”
Nickie cackled. “It’s not Libby’s! You thought LS was for Libby? No, no, no! This lighter belonged to Lauren. Lauren Townsend. Lauren used-to-be-Slater.”
“Lauren Slater?”
“That’s right! Lauren Slater, also Lauren Townsend. Your detective inspector’s old girl.”
“Sean’s mother?” I was thinking about the boy coming up the steps, the boy on the bridge. “The Lauren in the story is Sean Townsend’s mother?”
“That’s right. Jesus! You’re not the sharpest, are you? And it’s not a story, is it? Not just a story. Lauren Slater married Patrick Townsend. She had a son who she loved to bits and pieces. All hunky-dory. Only then, so the coppers would have us believe, she went and topped herself!” She leaned forward and grinned at me. “Not very likely, is it? I said so at the time, of course, but no one listens to me.”
Was Sean really that boy? The one on the steps, the one who watched his mother fall, or didn’t watch his mother fall, depending on who you believed? Was that really true, not just something you made up, Nel? Lauren was the one who had the affair, the one who drank too much, the wanton one, the bad mother. Wasn’t that her story? Lauren was the one on whose page you wrote: Beckford is not a suicide spot. Beckford is a place to get rid of troublesome women. What is it that you were trying to tell me?
Nickie was still talking. “See?” she said, jabbing a finger at me. “See? This is what I mean. No one listens to me. You’re sitting there and I’m right here in front of you and you’re not even listening!”
“I am listening, I am. I just . . . I don’t understand.”
She harrumphed. “Well, if you’d listen you would. This lighter”—click, hiss—“this belonged to Lauren, yes? You need to ask yourself, why’s your sister got it up there with her things?”
“Up there? So you have been in the house! You did take it, you . . . was it you? Have you been in the bathroom? Did you write something on the mirror?”
“Listen to me!” She hauled herself to her feet. “Don’t worry about that, that’s not important.” She took a step towards me, leaning forward, and clicked the lighter again, the flame flickering between us. She smelled of burned coffee and overblown roses. I leaned back, away from her old-woman scent.
“You know what he used this for?” she said.
“What who used it for? Sean?”
“No, you idiot.” She rolled her eyes at me and heaved herself back on to the window seat, which creaked painfully underneath her. “Patrick! The old man. He didn’t use it to light his smokes either. After his wife died, he took all her things—all her clothes and her paintings and everything she owned—and he put it out back and he burned it. Burned the lot. And this”—she clicked the lighter one final time—“is what he used to start the fire.”
“OK,” I said, my patience wearing thin. “But I still don’t get it. Why did Nel have it? And why did you take it from her?”
“Questions, questions,” Nickie said with a smile. “Well. As to why I’ve got it, I needed something of hers, didn’t I? So’s I could speak to her properly. I used to hear her voice nice and clear, but . . . you know. Sometimes voices get muted, don’t they?”