Nick had told her tersely when she’d asked about his family, one hot night in his villa in Ithaca soon after they’d met, that his stepmother had murdered his father and his baby half-sister and disappeared. And of course Lulu had immediately Googled Clyde family murder, Scottish Borders and discovered that this was only Nick’s interpretation of what had happened.
There’d been a documentary made a few years ago, ‘The unexplained disappearance of the Clyde family’, and Lulu had found it on YouTube and secretly watched a bit of it, fascinated to see a photograph of Maggie, Nick’s stepmother, in her wedding dress – a tiny woman with a strong face, smiling so happily into the camera – before stopping because it felt like a betrayal. She didn’t want to go rummaging around in his trauma without his permission. But basically, it seemed that the police had decided there was ‘no evidence of a crime’. It looked like Duncan and Maggie had taken little Isla and just up and left one day, leaving Nick behind. There was something about a murder at Duncan’s workplace a few weeks before involving dubious characters which could, it was suggested, have caused them to panic and run. One unexplained thing was that there were three mugs and three bowls left on the table, not the two you’d expect, but the police had explained that by postulating that Maggie might have started unloading the dishwasher (her fingerprints had been all over it) and collecting dirty crockery from around the house, but Duncan had told her to just leave it, they didn’t have time for housework. Lulu had shaken her head over such gender stereotyping. She supposed DNA technology must have been in its infancy in 1997, and it hadn’t been possible to get DNA profiles from the tiny traces of saliva on the mugs. Duncan and Maggie’s fingerprints were on two of the mugs, but the third one had yielded nothing, which seemed odd.
When she tried to talk to Nick about it, all he’d say was that the police were useless and everyone knew Maggie had killed them. No way would his dad have abandoned him like that.
‘She was convicted of GBH when she was seventeen after she attacked a girl and left her brain-damaged,’ he had half-shouted at Lulu, his mouth contorting. ‘She spent three years in a fucking young offender institution! She was still dangerous. She was still violent – had been on a number of occasions since she moved in with us. She was a suspect in a murder. She was a fucking psycho! What other explanation is there that makes any sense, other than that she killed them? I don’t know why there was a third mug and a third bowl. Maybe she had an accomplice.’
‘It must be so awful, not knowing –’
But, as he always did when she tried to get him away from the subject of psycho Maggie and into the more difficult area of his feelings about his dad and sister, he had clammed up. She saw this all the time with her PTSD clients: anger was so much easier than pain.
Gently, she unpeeled the sticky note from the glass over the photo of herself and, as she descended in the lift, read the words again. When Nick had first left her one of his notes, the morning after they’d moved into the apartment, she had told him that evening that she’d loved carrying it about with her all day, like a talisman. ‘A talisman,’ he had repeated slowly. ‘I like that.’ And then, almost shyly, diffidently: ‘Will you always take one with you? It would make me feel . . . I don’t know.’ But he didn’t need to say it. She knew what he was thinking, as they so often knew one another’s minds. It would be as if the physical evidence of his love could act as protection when he wasn’t with her. But this was soppy, illogical nonsense, so of course he couldn’t say it out loud.
‘Of course I will,’ she had said.
The lobby the lift opened onto had security cameras everywhere and a porter’s desk with pigeonholes behind it for mail. There was a 24-hour porterage service, and Lulu always felt sorry for the poor guys who had to sit here all day.
She couldn’t blame them for deserting their post rather frequently. Nick had complained about it a couple of times to the company that supplied the porters and CCTV cameras and the security for the building generally, and they’d assured him they would ‘address the issue raised’. But Harry, who was on most days, was just a young bloke, and Lulu felt it wasn’t fair to expect him to sit there on his skinny behind doing nothing all day. He seemed to spend a lot of time walking round the block and lingering on the Thames walkway under their balcony, and checking out the boats in the harbour, as if it were entirely possible that the multimillionaires who hung out on them could be a security threat.
Harry wasn’t at the desk now, which was a little annoying as she needed to speak to him about something. Her fuzzy brain wouldn’t immediately tell her what – the caffeine hadn’t kicked in yet. And then she remembered. She needed to tell Harry about the delivery she was expecting. Last week, he’d signed on her behalf for delivery of a rug, her attempt to add some colour to the apartment, not realising he was signing a form to say he’d checked the goods for damage, which he hadn’t. The rug must have been caught in machinery or something as it was being rolled up – it had a big, black, greasy line down it, and she’d had a terrible time getting them to accept a return and send a replacement.
She went round behind the desk and looked about for a pen and paper. There was a small notebook on the shelf under the desktop. She took it out and opened it, intending to tear off a sheet of paper.
Inside was some sort of log of dates and times, with comments opposite. She leafed through, looking for a blank sheet, but then her eye was caught by one of the comments. It was dated 12 May. A week ago.
Happy, chatted.
Weird.
And the next one, for 13 May, was Seemed preoccupied and tired. Followed by Small cut on right hand, about 1 cm long for 14 May.
She looked down at her right hand, at the now fading cut on the base of her thumb, where she’d scratched it opening a tin of sardines.
Harry had been watching her?
Making notes about her, timed and dated?
Why?
She knew what Jenny and Beth would say, rolling their eyes: Because he’s a creep!
Harry?