They’d been in the kitchen when Jacqueline arrived home to find Seb getting ready to go out. He was showered and newly shaved, exuding scents of soap and fresh laundry on one of the hottest evenings of the year. The atmosphere had been almost unbearable. Marianne hadn’t spoken a word to him since the party but after recovering from the initial shock, Jacqueline seemed to have decided to do what she always did: pretend nothing was happening and wait for it to blow itself out. The act had been tissue-thin, however, the strain visible in the hunch in her upper back, the false brightness of her voice and laugh. ‘Like a nursery school teacher in extremis,’ Mazz said.
The day after the party, Jacqueline had told Marianne that if it didn’t stop, if Seb didn’t tell Lorna it was over, she would go to the lab and confront her in person – turn the desks over, if she had to. They’d never known for sure if she’d actually done it, gone there that afternoon, but when she’d walked into the kitchen at Fyfield Road, it was clear that she’d reached breaking point. Her hands were shaking – her hair seemed to crackle with electricity. One look at Seb in his clean white shirt had been all it took. ‘Do it,’ she told him, tossing her shoulder bag on to the sofa. ‘Pack your case and get out. Go on – right now. Out. Here it is.’ She bowed, flourishing her hand in front of her like a medieval nobleman. ‘My permission.’
‘Jacq—’ He’d moved towards her but she’d put up her arms, barring him.
‘Don’t you dare try and touch me.’
‘Please, I never wanted this – I can’t bear the idea that . . .’
‘You can’t bear it?’ She’d jumped on his words, savage. ‘You? You’re tearing us all apart and you can’t bear it? Fuck you, Seb. Get out – just get out. Go and screw your bimbo to your heart’s content.’
A change had come over Seb then, they’d all seen it. Gone were apology and regret, the look that implored them not to hate him, and in their place was anger. ‘Don’t you dare,’ he said in a voice that had dropped an octave. ‘Don’t you dare talk about her like that.’
Jacqueline seemed to shrink. She stared at him as if she were looking at a stranger and then, in a whirl of hair and emerald silk, she ran out into the garden. Seb, face crimson, took several deep breaths, picked up his keys and phone and stalked out. Quick footsteps on the kitchen stairs then, seconds later, the bang of the front door.
When Rowan turned to her, Marianne looked as if she’d been slapped in the face. ‘It’s dying,’ she said. ‘My family’s dying and I’m just sitting here watching.’
‘You’re telling me she loved her father so much she killed his girlfriend to try and keep him.’
‘I’m not telling you – you’re forcing me to tell you.’
Rowan thought of the ten years she’d said nothing, kept the secret so that Marianne – all the remaining Glasses – could live their lives in peace. And here – today, now – she was saying the words. Marianne might be gone, beyond harm, but what about the others? ‘It wasn’t just to keep her father,’ she said. ‘It was to keep her family. Without Seb, it was broken.’
‘She thought killing someone would fix it?’ The look on Cory’s face was incredulity mixed with horror.
‘She wasn’t thinking at all.’
‘Then what?’
‘She was – not crazy but . . . She changed. We didn’t know at the time but it was the start of her breakdown.’
‘Did you know she was going to do it?’
Rowan recoiled. ‘No. Of course not. You think I would have let her? For Christ’s sake. I thought it was a fantasy, the picture: a way of getting some of her anger out. A vent, not a . . . plan.’
‘You want me to believe that? You think the police would?’
Icy fingers on the back of her neck. ‘When we went there,’ she said, ‘Mazz told me she just wanted to see it. Know your enemy – those were her words. It was only when it happened that I realised she’d been working it all out that day.’
Cory looked sick.
‘Lorna was away for the weekend, Seb had taken her to Devon, so Marianne knew she wouldn’t be there. She went aboard.’
She remembered her own heart pounding as she urged Mazz to get off, come away. Marianne on the foredeck, peering through the windows, lifting the lid of the locker under the bench, examining the cylinder of Calor Gas. Rowan hadn’t realised the significance of that until later.
For some seconds, Cory said nothing.
‘But if she did all this, how come you have the picture?’ he said finally. ‘It was in your room.’
‘I took it. Stole it, Marianne said.’
‘When?’
‘Afterwards – after she . . . After Lorna died. Mazz was acting so erratically, her behaviour was so irrational, I was scared she was going to give herself away. The police came here – obviously they found out about the affair. I had visions of them going up to the studio and finding it lying on her worktable like I did. I should have burned it. Why didn’t I just bloody burn it?’
Cory took the gloves off and dropped them on the step next to him. ‘I need a drink,’ he said.
As soon as she walked into the kitchen, Rowan saw how he’d got into the house. The door was closed or pushed to, at least, but even so, her eyes went at once to the damage to the jamb. The wood around the lock was splintered – shattered; the mechanism had been knocked right out.