Chapter 57
A month later. Lucy doesn’t want to be back in a crematorium with its stench of lilies.
Death flowers. The smell is crawling up her nostrils.
But she had to come, had to support Rachel.
Anna can’t. She’s been recalled to prison for breach of her licence.
The bond holds between them all, the three of them united through the horror of the last weeks.
The chapel is full. Colleagues of Edgar, friends of the family. They come up and quietly say hello to Rachel, kiss her cheek or touch her on the shoulder, patting baby Rowan on the head. No one looks with any curiosity at the young woman sitting on her own.
Lucy owes Rachel. She knows this. She touches her forehead, the skin pink, nearly healed.
She knows what happened now. They told her everything when she came round after the attack.
As she had ten years before, Marie was lying in wait outside, and took her chance to strike while Rachel was upstairs and Lucy was in the garden.
She attacked Lucy by hitting her over the head with a blunt object, possibly an empty bottle, and once she was out cold, she went for Edgar and Rachel.
She didn’t get far. The police found her in a field just outside the ring road. She’s been held in custody ever since. Anna hasn’t seen her yet, though she has told Lucy she looks out for her in the echoing corridors of the prison.
They sing hymns, sit, stand at the right moments.
Lucy’s thoughts are stuck on their roller coaster.
Edgar did good work; he wasn’t a good man.
His ego, his infidelities – all of it brought them to this point.
It’s hard to feel too much sympathy for him.
At least this way, his reputation has been mostly preserved.
The Ministry of Justice has tamped down any suggestion of impropriety – it’s their reputation at stake, too. Same with the university.
Such a waste. This room’s packed with mourners, fellow academics from all round the world, all the researchers with whom he’d collaborated on such important work.
A women’s prison has just been opened in the north of England based on his principles.
The speaker is giving the eulogy, laying out Edgar’s professional achievements. A lot of plaudits.
No mention of his misuse of Ministry of Justice funds to set up his secret experiment.
No mention of how the power of it went to his head.
The closest it comes to uncovering his misdeeds is when he’s described as a maverick, who marched to the beat of his own drum. The room ripples with knowing laughter.
One brief reference to him as a family man. No one can labour that description of him, even in a eulogy.
Lucy still has so many questions. There’s so much she’ll never know; how Marie escaped, why the house in the Highlands was burned down, whether it was Edgar or Marie who was responsible for the attack on Tom and Victor.
However friendly Rachel might be to Lucy, she’s still on the outside, shut out from the endless meetings Rachel’s had with the police, visit after visit to the house by teams of forensics.
‘I’d like to invite you now to take part in a moment of quiet reflection, while we play a piece of music from one of Edgar’s favourite recordings, Barber’s Adagio for Strings.’
A shuffling, rustling, as the congregation settles itself down.
The music begins. Despite herself, Lucy feels her eyes welling up, unable to resist the emotions of the occasion anymore.
Her feelings are still all over the place – love for Edgar, the memories of how his work inspired her through the years after her mother’s death.
The guidance he gave her when there was none to be found from her father.
He wasn’t who she thought he was, though. Pull back his mask, and there was darkness inside.