‘You kicked the door in?’ She stared at him.
Going to it, she tried to press the handle but couldn’t: the catch was jammed. Not that there was anywhere for it to go now, anyway. The door swung open and she stepped out on to the patio. At hip-height, there was half a boot print on the paintwork, treads precisely defined. She fixed her eyes on it until she could barely see it any more. Behind her, the rain fizzed like static on the flagstones.
‘I’m supposed to be looking after the place.’
‘I’ll get it fixed,’ he said. ‘I’ll pay for it, obviously. Come in, you’re getting wet.’
He’d seen the brandy on the worktop and she left him to pour it while she went to the utility room and turned on the boiler. The old Fair Isle sweater was on the arm of the sofa so she put it on, guessing by the way Cory looked at it that he’d seen Marianne wear it, too.
Going to his usual seat at the table, he sat down heavily. His expression was one she hadn’t seen before: he looked sad. He laid his hands on the tabletop, one either side of his glass. ‘I suspected. No, I knew – she told me, pretty much. But I just . . . Even an hour ago, when I found the drawing, I still hoped there would be an explanation, that you’d tell me she’d done it afterwards, I was making a mistake. I wanted you to tell me it was an accident. Even manslaughter.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He took a long sip of brandy. ‘All that stuff about you not giving her space after Seb died . . .’
‘A lie.’ Rowan made herself look him in the eyes. ‘It’s what I’ve always said when anyone asked me because I couldn’t tell the truth.’
‘Couldn’t?’ He raised an eyebrow.
‘Wouldn’t,’ she said finally. ‘I couldn’t go on being friends with her afterwards. What happened – it was . . . sickening. Actually sickening – I was ill. I couldn’t sleep – it was days before I could eat anything or keep food down. The idea that she could do something like that; that she had it in her, that degree of . . .’
‘Evil?’
The word glinted in the air between them.
Rowan shivered, as if it had come to settle on her shoulders. ‘I was going to say hatred. But I told her I wouldn’t tell anyone. I promised. Not because I was scared of her, she didn’t threaten me, but because I’d loved her – I loved all of them. I didn’t want to tell anyone. The idea of what it would do to the rest of the Glasses if it came out – if the police found out. If there was a trial.’
‘She killed someone, Rowan.’
‘I’m not saying I liked it. I didn’t approve,’ she said, with a burst of frustration. She lowered her voice again. ‘It wasn’t . . . It was hard. It . . .’ She shook her head, struggling to find the words. ‘Knowing something like this, being party to it – it changes you. It warps you. Look at my life, for someone of my age. You think it hasn’t messed me up?’
‘Then why do it – why keep doing it? Ten years later, you haven’t spoken to her in a decade, and you’re still keeping her secret? Risking jail if anyone finds out. Why?’
‘Because I understand.’
‘What?’
‘I understand why she did it. It terrified me, it scared me to death, but it made sense to me.’
Cory was staring.
‘I didn’t have a family,’ she said. ‘Not really. When Mazz and I became friends, I became part of hers.’
‘But still, you were . . .’
‘I loved them,’ she said. ‘The whole family. I hated what Marianne did, despised it, but I understood. For the same reason she did it, I kept it secret.’
Cory stood at the door to the garden, his back to the room. It had been a minute or more since either of them had spoken and in the quiet, she could hear rain dripping from the gutter beneath the bathroom window.
‘It makes sense to me now,’ he said suddenly.
‘What does?’
‘Why you’re here.’ He turned around. ‘You needed to make sure no one had found out. You knew she jumped, and you wanted to make sure that wasn’t why.’
‘Yes.’
‘To protect her, still – and her mother and brother. It’s why you’re so hostile to me.’
‘You wouldn’t leave it alone!’
‘And to protect yourself.’ He looked at her. ‘Let’s not pretend it’s entirely selfless. You have something to hide, too. If the police find out you’ve known all this time, you’ll be in serious shit – aiding and abetting, an accessory. Jail, surely.’
She nodded. ‘Probably. Yes.’
‘What a God-awful mess. You were twenty-one, -two? Just kids.’
‘And after all of it, the irony is, Marianne still lost her father. Completely. What’s a divorce, really, once you’ve grown up? She could have seen him, talked to him – she hadn’t lived at home since she’d started at the Slade anyway. But doing what she did to Lorna and then his drink-driving – from what Peter Turk’s told me, I think she felt like she’d killed him.’