She shakes her head.
She gets up, and walks slowly up the stairs to Ellie’s room.
The duvet, milk-coloured without its cover on, and the mattress with striped ticking exposed, and the door to the bedside cabinet swung open. All is emptiness. She sits on the side of the bed and runs a hand over the mattress. What has Ellie done? Where has she gone?
In the pendulum swing between fury and envy and betrayal, Manon lies down on Ellie’s bed, her head on Ellie’s pillow and misses her sister. She would have left me a message. She would have explained. She thinks back to Ellie’s tears on hearing Fly was to be released. Was this the news that allowed her to ship out? Had she been waiting?
She wonders what Ellie might have done, how deep her ruthlessness might go. Manon feels the same capacity for coldness inside herself. This darkness doesn’t feel ‘other’. It feels like a part of herself.
We have parted before, we have had ruptures before.
We are our meanest selves.
Davy
‘Right, so if you could be quiet please everyone,’ Davy says, and his voice is powerful and strong without him having to forcibly billow any effort beneath it. Has a reduction in the amount he cares given him more confidence at work? ‘So Juris, our Latvian chap, has been charged with Ross’s murder. CPS is happy with the evidence against him, even though we don’t have a weapon. This is going to be a long one because evidence in our case is going to have to tessellate with the Met investigation into Titans and Dunlop & Finch, which is multi-agency – they’ve got vice and the FCA in on it. Even MI5, so I heard. Anyway, Juris is pretty happy with that, because he’s getting cooked meals in Whitemoor instead of freezing to death in some Latvian hell-hole. The question, however, remains: who was pulling his strings?’
‘Is there anything linking Juris directly to Dunlop & Finch? That’s the question,’ says Harriet, getting up from where she’s been perching against Colin’s desk. ‘Ellie Bradshaw inherits ￡9million, that goes to motive. Ellie was with Stanton on the evening Ross died. Ironically, after everything he did to cover it up, Ellie’s alibi is rock solid. They were at the George Hotel at the time Ross was stabbed.’
‘The other person with a motive is Giles Carruthers,’ Davy tells the room. He’s not bothered now, about lines of deference to Harriet or anyone else for that matter. He’s only interested in the work.
The rice worked its magic. Carruthers’ phone dried out eventually and on it were texts between Giles and Ellie, a seemingly intense history of involvement between the two.
When Davy questioned him about this, he waved a hand as if it were nothing, saying, ‘Oh, we met at a Dunlop & Finch do. She was there as his plus-one.’
Ellie: I think we should stop. I’ve had a change of heart.
Giles: Bit late for that, sweet cheeks.
Ellie: Don’t call me that. Don’t speak to me like that. I want to call it off. I want out.
Giles: Do you now?
Ellie: Why are you being like this?
Giles: Because it’s so typical. Now that it’s done, you want to wash your little hands clean.
‘It was about the money,’ Giles said. ‘She was having a crisis of confidence about being the beneficiary of Pavilion Holdings, it being a shell, ill-gotten gains, tax unpaid, all of that. Bit of a lefty, Ellie. But how Jon-Oliver stored his money and what he declared to the taxman, that was his business, right? That’s what I told her. She paid her dues and then some, working for the NHS. So we were arguing about the moral rights and wrongs of Solomon being the beneficiary and her being … well, exceedingly rich. Told her she should become a champagne socialist and stop worrying about it. You can be left wing and love money. Anyway, didn’t bother me. Managing the fund for her, well – not a problem. Can do it in my sleep.’
‘And you’re now deputy chairman of Dunlop & Finch?’
‘I am, yes.’
Davy addresses the room without a glance to check it’s all right with Harriet.
‘So Giles Carruthers gets his rival out of the way, and secures the job at the top of the bank. Ellie Bradshaw gets rid of an ex who is proving a thorn in her side, and comes away with ￡9million for herself and her little boy. She flew to Mexico City, we know that much, and tracing her whereabouts will not be a problem. The issue is evidence. Where is the evidence?’
Manon
Torrential rain came down in hammering sheets as she looked out of the windows, waiting for Davy’s car – waiting all morning for Fly to be discharged from hospital. At a court hearing in Fly’s absence, the CPS offered no evidence and his judge discharged the case. Harriet had persuaded Manon not to attend. ‘I won’t let anything go wrong, you have my word. You need rest,’ Harriet said. Manon spent the time fluffing about in his bedroom, laying out a selection of new books from the bookshop, smoothing out the clean bedding on his bed, plumping his pillows. She stopped short of putting flowers in his room, feeling this smacked of desperation. And anyway, young boys don’t notice flowers.
‘You’re home!’ she says, front door flung wide for him. Manon brandishes her monoboob like some mountainous harridan.
Davy shuffles behind Fly, into the house.
Fly, wet about the shoulders and head, still wears the white neck brace from hospital. The noise of the weather is deafening and she welcomes them in out of the rain.
She gives Fly a squeeze to which he submits but it is clear he’s not in celebratory mood; avoids her eye, hands in his pockets. He looks hunted, his face a cauldron of feeling.
‘Ain’t got a home,’ he whispers. His mockney is ridiculous.
‘It’s not “ain’t”, it’s haven’t and you have – with me, your mother,’ she says, her arm around him. Perhaps she can bluster her way through his bombed-out emotional rubble like some jolly wartime warden.
‘You’re not my mother,’ he says, finding her face and in his look she recognises his need to hurt her, to hand over to her his most ghastly feelings.
‘Anyone like a tea?’ Davy asks, forging ahead to the kitchen.
She nods at Fly, pushing back her tears, like a hand pushing down on the lid of a full rubbish bin. She wishes her bump, now careering past the six-month mark, was not so enormous.
‘Well, as far as I am concerned, this is your home,’ she says. ‘I am your home. I know I’m not your mother in the traditional sense, but I feel like your mother. I want to be your mother. Does that count?’
She shows him her tears, unable to close the lid on them. And why shouldn’t he see that she is vulnerable also – that he can hurt her?
They sit, stiffly, at the white Ikea table, which Mark has incongruously wiped before he left for the day and this act of fastidiousness made her vaguely suspicious. ‘Wiping the table – again?’ she said.