There could be no doubt who’d drawn it. Marianne’s style was inscribed in every line, every serpentine branch and tongue of flame.
Cory’s stare had a near-physical weight and when Rowan raised her head to look at him, his eyes were dark, all pupil. Lit from below by the lamp, the broad planes of his face were hobgoblin-like, a Halloween mask. Over the roar of emotional turmoil came a wash of physical fear.
‘Get out,’ she said. ‘Just . . . get out.’
Half a laugh: Come on.
‘I can’t believe you.’ Her voice was shaking with a mix of fear and fury. ‘I can’t believe you did this. How dare you break in here and go through my stuff?’
‘When did she draw it?’ he said.
‘This was . . . You must have gone through everything; you must have . . .’
‘When?’ Surging forward, he grabbed her by the top of the arms.
Rowan gave a cry of alarm and tried to shake herself free but his grip was too powerful, he was too strong. ‘Get off me! Get . . . You’re hurting me.’
‘Tell me.’
The sketch was still in his hand, clamped between her upper arm and his fingers. She heard it crunch as he tightened his grip again. ‘It’s none of your business,’ she yelled, her face inches from his. ‘It’s nothing to do with you – nothing!’
She thought he’d shake her, shout back, but instead he let go of her and stepped away. He took a moment but when he spoke again, his voice was calm and deadly serious. ‘If you don’t tell me what the fuck this means – the truth – I’m going to the police.’
She made herself look him in the eye. Nothing said he was bluffing.
‘I mean it, Rowan. You know I do.’
Behind her ribs, panic rose, bubbling. She was almost in tears. She tried to speak but she couldn’t do it.
‘Come on.’
‘Before,’ she said, finally.
‘Before what?’
‘Before it happened. Before Lorna was killed.’
She expected him to light up, to be filled with the glory of discovery, his triumph, but instead, at the moment he heard her, the glow in Cory’s eyes went out. It was as if a wire had snapped: the energy that hummed through him was gone; he slumped. Moving as if underwater, he let the picture drop on the table, went back to the stairs and sat down heavily, head in his hands.
For some seconds, there was silence. The air was thick, it bore down on Rowan, making it hard for her to breathe. She thought of the day Seb died, the unnatural quiet as she’d passed the police car on the drive, walked through the open front door.
‘So I was right.’ He spoke through his fingers. ‘She was Seb’s girlfriend.’
The word was a stone on Rowan’s tongue. At last she managed to get it out. ‘Yes.’
He made a sound in the back of his throat. ‘Why? If he had so many affairs, why her?’
‘He was going to leave Jacqueline.’
Cory lifted his head.
‘None of the other relationships mattered. They were just dalliances . . . crushes. He never loved them. Those women – they weren’t in the same league as Jacqueline, they were, I don’t know, like a . . . different species. Mazz used to say Seb relied on Jacqueline but it was more than that – much more. She inspired him – she made him see what he could be. They were really young when they met, only nineteen or twenty, and he always knew she’d helped make him the person he became.’
‘So why the hell would he . . . ?’
‘Seb thought Lorna was the same, as clever and original and generous – maybe she was, how would I know? – but she was younger and . . .’ Rowan closed her eyes, struggling. ‘Both his children had graduated – Marianne had just finished at the Slade. He wasn’t a family man any more, day to day, and he was turning fifty, getting older. He was looking for the next stage of his life.’
To her shame, tears came now, hot and insistent; she dashed them away with her cuff. If Cory noticed, he didn’t care.
‘It wasn’t just about sex for him,’ she said, voice thick. ‘Not in the long run: it had to be about brains, too. Lorna was both and she came along just when he was vulnerable.’
She remembered the evening they’d understood that it was really going to happen, that Marianne’s family as she’d known it was about to implode.