She moved closer, walking between her parents’ caskets, and looked down at their faces. Their eyes were closed but the area around her dad’s right eye looked messy somehow and heavily made up. His glasses were missing and she wasn’t sure if this was standard practice or more evidence that he’d been shot through the eye.
Ella studied her mother’s face, looking for the same telltale signs, but she found none and wondered where the fatal bullet might have struck. No doubt she’d find out in due course. No doubt she’d find out everything.
She realized what she was doing, looking at them as though they were exhibits, unable to connect them with the people she’d known. These were her parents and they were dead but she wasn’t sure what she was meant to feel as she looked at them.
Walking back around the bottom of her mother’s casket, she approached Ben’s from the far side, her gaze still drawn over the top of it to their parents, putting the moment off as long as possible. She didn’t know if she could stand to see him up close, but that was what she was there for.
At first it didn’t look like Ben and in a fleeting second of hope she thought maybe there’d been some terrible mistake. It was him, though, his face simply lacking the fluidity and expression she’d known, a face she’d taken for granted and worn lightly in her memory because she’d thought it would always be there.
She tried to fix him in her mind, seeing him for the first time as a stranger would have done—that he was good-looking, that girls would have found him attractive. She was taking in the details – the shape of his mouth, his nose, eyebrows—and then she spotted the small white scar on the underside of his chin.
She’d done that, had pushed him off his bike when they’d been little, an act of spite, the result of which had so terrified her that she vowed never to hurt him again. She hadn’t either, but seeing the scar now brought back the guilty memory: his small body splayed on the stone path, his desperate attempts not to cry.
A single sob convulsed through her body, violently clenching her chest cavity, her throat. She wouldn’t be able to live with this; it was too great a burden to carry and she was too small, too weak. She covered her face with her hands, forcing herself to breathe through them, and when she recovered some of her composure she looked at him again.
She wanted to hold him, but was afraid to. She stroked his collar-length hair, silky smooth, careful to avoid touching the falsely healthy skin of his face. And finally she noticed what should have been obvious from the start: the small reconstructed patch on his forehead, just above his nose bone.
That’s where he’d been shot, where his future, their future together as brother and sister, had been erased. It made her angry, an emotion stronger even than the sorrow, perhaps because she could at least direct it into a determination to see the killers caught and punished. It was the only thing she could do for them now.
She left, not looking back. When she stepped into the corridor, she didn’t see anyone at first, but near the main door she found Simon waiting for her, sitting on a chair like a schoolboy in trouble.
He jumped up at the sight of her. She’d always thought of them as looking alike but now he looked much younger than her dad, his hair still brown, his face lean and fresh. And he was all at sea. She’d seen him reach for his phone three or four times before stopping and each time, she was certain, it was because the person he wanted to call was lying in there in a casket.
He smiled helplessly and said, ‘Are you okay?’ She nodded. ‘Awkward business—probably best to get it out of the way.’
‘Do they have any idea who might have done it?’
He grimaced slightly, saying, ‘Not yet, and they’ll want to speak to you about that.’
‘They said they would, but why? What can I tell them?’
‘I expect they’ll just ask if Mark had any enemies that you know of, any arguments you might have overheard.’ He looked around quickly and added, ‘Might equally use this as an excuse to investigate the business—or at least, to get your permission to investigate. So if they ask to check records, accounts, anything like that, you just refer them to me.’
She felt uncomfortable, a sense that she was skipping any initiation and being fast-tracked straight into secrets she’d been shielded from her whole life.
‘Simon, that’s what I’d do anyway. I don’t want to be part of the business; I’m too young. I have college to finish. I’m not ready.’
He smiled again, more warmly this time, and said, ‘Don’t worry, you won’t have to. And I can’t bring them back, but I promise you, I’ll do everything in my power to get your life back as normal as possible.’ He put his arm over her shoulder and led her gently towards the main doors. ‘In the meantime, don’t discuss any of this in front of the police. We’ll talk in private back at the house.’
‘Okay.’